Year 2003 Archive of AI in the news
-- May --

(a subtopic of AI in the news)


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<< Headlines are listed according to date posted <-> Articles are organized by date published >>

ARTICLES

 

May 31, 2003: Perception and Reality Science reflects consciousness. By Mark Watson. The Commercial Appeal. "Perception is key in developing a device that is conscious of its surroundings and reacts intelligently to them. You might therefore think this weekend's Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness's annual meeting at the University of Memphis has more to do with space-age robotics than with any device you handle on a daily basis. And although this subject's cutting edge focuses on such high technology, the science also has applications for devices as mundane as a camera or a TV screen."
>>> Philosophy
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May 31, 2003: Grave new world. By Jason Nahrung. The Courier-Mail. "An absence of curiosity would, of course, mean a world without science fiction, for no other genre is so deeply rooted in the question of 'what if?' It is that power of sci-fi to question reality, humanity and the shape of things to come that attracted Australian author Joel Shepherd to the genre. In his Cassandra Kresnov series, he explores a belief that the burgeoning economies in China and India will dominate the global landscape, and he questions the essence of humanity with the presence of a killer android with a yen to be human. That latter thought plugs directly into a more famous antecedent in the form of Blade Runner (1982), the classic Ridley Scott film based on the Philip K. Dick novel (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?). 'More human than human' was the Tyrell Corporation's motto as they churned out androids to perform the dirty jobs in the offworld colonies. ... Dick, preoccupied throughout his career with what makes humans tick, tapped the vein of what seems an inherent distrust of artificial intelligence, a fear that man might one day make a machine that was smarter than its creator, and might consequently decide it knew better. It is territory exploited by Westworld (1973), the Terminator movies and now The Matrix series. ... Isaac Asimov, who pioneered tales of robots, built safeguards into his androids to ensure they couldn't challenge humanity at the top of the food chain and, in Bicentennial Man (filmed in 1999), concluded that for a self-aware machine to finally make the grade as human, it had to be mortal."
>>> SciFi, Robots
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May 31, 2003: Robot displays mettle in mine. By Byron Spice. Post-Gazette. "As a four-wheeled robot called Groundhog crept slowly into the portal of the Mathies Mine yesterday morning, the Carnegie Mellon University researchers who developed it felt something unusual -- separation anxiety. They knew that within a few hundred feet, Groundhog would have to make a right turn as it followed the mine corridor and would no longer be in a line of sight with the portal and, thus, would be out of radio communication with them. Groundhog would be on its own. If and when it emerged from either end of a 3,500-foot-long mine corridor would depend on things the machine could see for itself and decisions it would make for itself. Roboticists at CMU have built many robots designed to operate autonomously, but yesterday's experiment marked the first time that any of the machines had ventured where humans couldn't intervene to avert an emergency. ... Groundhog is the first of several robots that the Robotics Institute has developed since August in response to the Quecreek Mine accident. Because that mine inundation appears to have been caused at least in part by inaccurate maps of an abandoned mine, researchers under the lead of William 'Red' Whittaker have sought to build robots that could enter mines where no sane person would venture and either draw accurate maps or perform search-and-rescue of trapped miners."
>>> Hazards & Disasters, Autonomous Vehicles, Robots, Applications
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May 31, 2003: Robot to the rescue. By Simon Tsang. The Sydney Morning Herald. "It says something about a society when it creates a robot to do the vacuuming. After all, isn't it human dependence on machines that caused all the trouble in The Matrix? If that were true, it would appear that we're at the beginning of the end with Karcher's latest cleaning contraption - a robotic vacuum cleaner. Looking like a mini-Dalek flattened by a semi-trailer, the RoboCleaner roams the house sucking up dirt. It's a robot in the sense that it operates autonomously and is able to recharge itself and empty its load at the designated docking station without human intervention. As for artificial intelligence, however, I'm not convinced there's all that much going on within its plastic body. ... It is intelligent, but not as we know it. Neo and Morpheus have little to worry about yet."
>>> Applications, Smart Houses, Robots; also see our But is it AI? vignettes
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May 30, 2003: Teenager gets with programs. By Justin Hoeger. Sacramento Bee. "At first glance, Maneesh Sethi is much like other high-achieving teenagers. The Bella Vista High sophomore holds a 4.44 grade-point average, is an honors student in English and chemistry, and is involved in community service and numerous campus clubs. But not many 15-year-olds are also published authors, let alone authors of books about video game programming. But Sethi's first book, 'Game Programming for Teens' (Premier Press, $29.99), hit store shelves this month as part of the Premier Press game development series. The 13 chapters in the book give readers a step-by-step guide to making simple games in the Blitz Basic programming language. ... 'Game Programming for Teens' starts out small, teaching readers the very basics of Blitz Basic before moving on to writing simple programs. From there the book progresses, new chapters building off the lessons of the older ones, showing how to program collision detection, artificial intelligence and animation, and finally how to put it all together into a final game program called 'Invaderz,' a space-themed shooting game."
>>> Video Games, Software Development, Software & Hardware
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May 30, 2003: Ultimate Diversions - Profiles: Michael Cheng. By Jennie Sue. AsianWeek. "Michael Cheng / Age: 27 / Title: Level Designer, Lucas Arts ... Cheng's responsibilities as a level designer vary depending on the project assigned. 'The lead director will mock out a game engine, and the level designer starts building the micro-dynamics of what is to happen,' explains Cheng. So what exactly does he do to help build the micro-dynamics? 'It's a combination of level modeling, A.I. [artificial intelligence] development and NPC [non-player characting] scripting, which is creating the interactions of non-main characters by scripting what they do. I help design the game mechanics - the setup and rules of how the game operates - which creates the user experience. I also work with environmental artists to model worlds to fit into the [overall] game design.'"
>>> Software Development, Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Video Games
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May 30, 2003: Russia invents robot sniffer dog. Ananova. "Russia claims to have invented a robot sniffer dog that can detect drugs in a truck full of garlic or onions. The robot dog has been developed by scientists in Siberia and is programmed to detect drugs including cocaine, heroin and marijuana. Pravda reports that its main benefit is the ability to sniff out drugs under extreme conditions, including cars and trucks packed with strong-smelling foods."
>>> Artificial Noses, Law Enforcement, Robots, Applications
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May 30, 2003: Study - Human traits make robots likeable. By Winston Chai. CNET News. "Imitation is not just the best form of flattery, it's also good interface design: A study shows that talking computers that copy a user's unique vocal inflections seem easier to use. The researchers think a key component of machine likeability is the ability to mirror the 'music'--the rhythm and pitch--of a user's speech. ... [Noriko] Suzuki said in the report that this revelation can help forge closer bonds between people and machines. 'Sometimes people are afraid of robots,' he said. 'But if robot voice patterns are improved, people may warm up to them.'"
>>> Speech, Interfaces
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May 30, 2003: Wyoming professors develop robots to sense terror toxins. University of Wyoming News Service / available from the Billings Gazette. "Swarms of small robots soon to be unleashed from University of Wyoming laboratories will be programmed to detect and disable chemical targets in the war on terror. David Thayer, a lecturer in the UW Department of Physics and Astronomy, is working with UW Computer Science Department researchers to combine his expertise in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) with robotic chemical plume tracing research. The research, Thayer said, was stimulated by the need for new defense methods after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. It incorporates what he called a 'swarm intelligence' network. Using technology known as multimodal sensor arrays, the researchers are programming swarms of as many as 100 autonomous mini-robots to detect chemical targets. ... Programmed to sense a chemical, biological or even radiological plume, the robots can zero in on the source of the contamination and eliminate the spill without exposing people to the contaminants, Thayer said. ... Although they essentially work as one unit, each robot is independent, guided by artificial intelligence software."
>>> Hazards & Disasters, Multi-Agent Systems, Robots, Vision, Applications, Agents
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May 30, 2003: Search-Rescue Robots Test Their Mettle in Tournaments - Researchers Aim to Improve Vehicles' Skills for Real-Life Use. By Guy Gugliotta. Washington Post TechNews. "Ten years ago, no one had tried to use robots for search and rescue, but by 2001 researchers had enough expertise to deploy robotic vehicles with some success to search through rubble at the World Trade Center and the damaged buildings around it. Now robots compete annually in two international search-and-rescue tournaments, measuring their progress in diabolically difficult arenas designed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). With current technology, negotiating an unstructured rubble- and debris-filled environment is about the hardest thing there is for a robot to do. That researchers even attempt it shows how far robotics has come in recent years. That it always fails, and sometimes spectacularly, shows how far it still has to go. ... The challenge is to marry two disparate disciplines. Artificial intelligence is what allows robots to accumulate information, determine its value, map it and decide to act on it -- either autonomously, in concert with other robots or at the behest of a human operator. To perform the work, however, requires a supple machine that can climb stairs, pick its way over broken concrete, tell the difference between a mirror and a window, and squeeze into a pitch-black basement to find a hurricane victim lying in water. ... Many researchers credit John G. Blitch, the former chief of the Defense Department's Tactical Mobile Robotics program, for focusing interest -- and federal money -- on robot search and rescue. Blitch, an Army lieutenant colonel with a special operations background, was studying robotics in graduate school in 1995 when Timothy McVeigh detonated a bomb that destroyed the federal building in Oklahoma City. Told that there were robots on the scene, Blitch visited the wreckage only to find that the robots had been pulled out."
>>> Hazards & Disasters, Robots, Vision, Applications, Competitions (@ Resources for Students)
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May 29, 2003: Beagle2 to probe Europe's strength in robot race against US, Japan. Agence France-Presse / available from SpaceDaily. "Europe's landmark space mission set to lift off for Mars next week will be a litmus test of its strength in robotic technology in rivalry with US and Japanese competitors, according to a senior computer engineer for the project. British researcher Dr. Dave Barnes represented the members of the Beagle2 project at the 7th International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space, which took place here, in Japan's ancient capital last week. ... The 30-kilogramme (66-pound) clam-shaped probe, equipped with high-tech robotic arms, will investigate geological features and the atmosphere for the presence of water -- crucial evidence of life on the Red Planet. 'This mission will certainly probe levels of our robotic technology,' Barnes told AFP after outlining the mission during the 'Robots in Space' conference."
>>> Space Exploration, Robots, Autonomous Vehicles, Applications
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May 29, 2003: Ensuring water safety - Automatic warning devices may be answer to Walkerton. By Jeff Jedras. The Ottawa Citizen. "When seven people died and more than 2,000 became ill three years ago after an e-coli outbreak in Walkerton's water system, many people started to think how a recurrence could be prevented. While cities invested more in water treatment and a provincial inquiry investigated what went wrong, a small group of Eastern Ontario researchers also went to work, trying to see if there was a technological answer. ... 'It was really the Walkerton incident that made people realize here we are in what we think is a high-tech country, and something as simple as guaranteeing basic fresh water has been violated,' says project leader Kevin Hall, a civil engineering professor at Queen's University and head of Hall Coastal Canada, one of the industrial partners in the project. Other partners include Queen's and Precarn, an Ottawa-based robotics industry association. ... The team came up with an automated intelligent system, in a self-contained module. It eliminates the human reliability issue by taking a sample of water automatically into a testing chamber. Second, the e-coli test is performed automatically, and more quickly than before. Third, the intelligent system can take immediate corrective actions when a problem is detected, from notifying the appropriate persons to actually shutting down parts of the distribution system so no contaminated water is released."
>>> Public Health & Welfare, Hazards & Disasters, Applications
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May 29, 2003: I Really Know What You Mean. By Sebastian Rupley. PC Magazine. "For years, understanding and translating natural language has been one of technology's brass rings. ... After all, if machines could accurately understand concepts in language -- and not just generate partially accurate associations between keywords -- search engines and text-mining applications could start to surprise us, and artificial intelligence applications could move ahead. A New York startup, Meaningful Machines, is banking on a new approach that works, in part, by associating phrases and parts of phrases with each other. 'We like to say that our technology is for machine understanding, not just for machine translation,' says Steve Klein, Chairman and CEO of Meaningful Machines. ... 'We use a statistical model to evaluate phrases, and we've moved away from the historical natural language technologies, which have relied on rule-based approaches,' says Klein. 'What people have found out is that there are just too many exceptions to the rules for rule-based natural language to be very accurate. With increased processing and database power upon us, statistical and phrase-based approaches are more realistic than they were before.'"
>>> Natural Language, Machine Learning, Applications, Information Retrieval
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May 28, 2003: Enter Matrix To Find Out About AI. Hull Daily Mail. "Youngsters from the city can learn about artificial intelligence this weekend. Dr Len Bottaci, from the University of Hull's computer science department, will be giving a talk about machine intelligence called Inside the Matrix. The event is for members of the university's Higher Education Adventurers' Club, made up of 11 to 17-year-olds."
>>> SciFi, AI Overview
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May 28, 2003: Pentagon seeks to sort, store lifetime experience. By Jim Wolf. Reuters. "The Pentagon is shopping for ways to capture everything a person sees, says and hears as part of a project it says is meant to help create smarter robots. The projected system called Lifelog would suck in all of a subject's experience -- from phone numbers dialed and emails viewed to every breath taken, step made and place gone. The idea is to index the material, and make patterns easily retrievable in an effort to make machines think more like people, learning from experience. ... The LifeLog goal is to create a searchable database of human lives -- initially those of the developers -- to promote artificial intelligence, the agency said. ... Perhaps eager to avoid any comparisons with George Orwell's all-seeing 'Big Brother' in the classic novel 1984, DARPA said respondents must address 'human subject approval, data privacy and security, copyright and legal considerations that would affect the LifeLog development process.'"
>>> Reasoning, Machine Learning, Ethical & Social Implications
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May 28, 2003: High-tech rogues gallery. The Star TechCentral. "Michael Chong Soon Yew [see the related story: MSC Trustgate fires its chief scientist after uncovering fraudulent claims, by Raslan Sharif] joins an illustrious list of individuals in the high-tech field who have lied about their professional and personal lives. ... Another, much closer to home, corporate high-flyer also had a lot to answer for his shock-and-awe CV. Dennis Lee, then chief technology officer of Singapore-based elipva Ltd, had falsified much of his resume, including details on winning fictitious awards from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. Lee had also written books that their publishers said didn't exist, worked in a non-existent AI lab at Stanford University, and published under his name, research articles written by others."
>>> Responsible Scholarship (@ Resources for Students)
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May 27, 2003: Malaysia and Brunei to work out outstanding issues. By Sa'Odah Elias. The Star. "On the Asean-Japan Exchange Year, Syed Hamid said the programmes organised would contribute towards a better understanding of cultures, beliefs and religions, which would in turn help strengthen the Asean-Japan relationship. Under the programme, each Asean country and Japan would host various events for a month. Japan, the Philippines, Myanmar, Thailand and Brunei have done their part over the past five months. Syed Hamid said Malaysia and Japan would organise 63 cultural, sports, tourism-related events and seminars. 'One of the highlights is a two-day seminar starting on June 24 on artificial intelligence at the Park Plaza Hotel in Kuala Lumpur. The seminar will provide a platform for Malaysians to understand the importance and significance of artificial intelligence and its applications in the industries, besides creating interest among the scientific community and the public on the importance of research and development in this area.'"
>>> Applications, AI Overview
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May 27, 2003: Visualising the future of face recognition. Interview by Karen Dearne. Australian IT. "Dr Christoph von der Malsburg is a professor of computer science and biology at the University of Southern California, and founder and co-chair of the Institute of Neurocomputing at Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany - the largest computer vision research centre in Europe. Internationally known for his work on face recognition engines, Malsburg's Organic Computing theories are acknowledged by leading scientists in the field of artificial intelligence. ... [Q.] You're talking about machine intelligence to recognise faces? [A.] Yes, you've got it. My research interests are not ultimately the face, I want to know how the brain gets it, how you can do justice to the mind. We all have this parameterised model in our heads. We all can look at a 17th century painting and judge whether it is a good rendering of the human face. It's a very remarkable thing that happens in our heads, to do justice to every variation - blue morning light against a yellow background, and so on. I came to the conclusion that it's mainly done on the basis of sampling images. We, as people growing up, need more than 10 years to get a full complement of sample images so we can recognise everything. We can find deficits in 12-year-old children because they haven't seen enough pictures."
>>> Biometrics (@ Image Understanding), Cognitive Science, Law Enforcememnt, Vision, Machine Learning, Applications
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May 26, 2003: Group moves to boost women in IT - Program aims to reverse trend that is seeing falling interest in sector by females. By Ann Kerr. The Globe and Mail (Page B14). "Ms. [Jeanne] Douglas is one of about 40 women in IT across the country who have volunteered to be part of the Canadian Information Processing Society's (CIPS) new 'ambassador' program, speaking to female high-school students about information technology as a profession and trying to dispel a negative image. 'We're hoping to show them that a career in technology offers a lot more than the typical geek stereotype, where you're off in a room by yourself writing code all day,' Ms. Douglas says. ... At the primary and secondary level, some schools are teaching separate computer classes for girls to increase their comfort level, and more should consider this approach, says Lynda Leonard, vice-president of communications and research with the Information Technology Association of Canada. U.S. studies of girls-only classes show better academic results, Ms. Shortt says."
>>> Equality & Diversity (@ Resources for Students), Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Resources for Educators, Computer Science; also see the related articles below
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May 26, 2003: Rob Kling, 58; Specialist in Computers' Societal Effect. By Myrna Oliver. Los Angeles Times. "Rob Kling, an author and educator regarded as the founding father of social informatics -- how computers influence social change -- has died. ... Concerned that all discussion of computers focused on technology, Kling studied government, manufacturers and insurance companies to determine how computers affect society and require choices that consider human values as well as technological values. ... Kling's studies convinced him that 'there is an underside to computer technology,' he said. For example, he said that organizations often fail to train employees properly in computer use, making the task a 'hassle and a cause of stress' and that dependency on computers for communication eliminates creative, stimulating social interaction. Another major downside, he said, can be loss of privacy. 'Many people, particularly white-collar workers, have a view that the best factory is one where almost nobody is there,' he said in a speech to the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility meeting at Chapman University in 1985. 'Most functions are automated. In this view the factory is a production machine, a gadget, and there's no honorable role for people except to fill in where the machines aren't good enough yet.'"
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Tributes
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May 26, 2003: Designing Robots That can Reason and React. SpaceDaily. "In a large room in Georgia Tech's College of Computing, Thomas Collins is tweaking the behavior of a machine. Around him stand a gaggle of robots, some with trash can figures, others resembling miniature all-terrain vehicles. They appear to be merely functional, plodding pieces of equipment. But these unlikely contraptions can 'think' in the sense that they can react to and reason about their environment. Collins, a senior research engineer in the Georgia Tech Research Institute's Electronic Systems Laboratory, likens the 'minds' of these machines to those of clever insects that have learned to thrive. 'A cockroach is intelligent because it can survive and do the things it needs to do well. By that definition, these robots are smart,' he says. ... 'Our goal is to create intelligence by combining reflexive behaviors with cognitive functioning,' explains Ronald Arkin, a Regents' professor of computer science and director of the lab. 'This involves the issue of understanding intelligence itself. Is it complex? Or just an illusion of complexity?' ... To help robots learn, the researchers use a variety of techniques. 'Learning momentum,' a technique pioneered by Arkin and his research team, involves teaching a robot that if a behavior is working well, it should continue doing it. The robot adapts its behavior in response to the environment and its own performance. Another technique called reinforcement learning uses computer-generated 'rewards' to tell the robot it has made good decisions - and should continue doing so. The robot adapts its behavior in response to the environment and its own performance. Another technique called reinforcement learning uses computer-generated 'rewards' to tell the robot it has made good decisions - and should continue doing so."
>>> Robots, Nature of Intelligence, Hazards & Disasters, Military, Machine Learning, Reinforcement Learning, Applications, Cognitive Science; also see our related But is it AI? vignette
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May 26, 2003: Westpac NZ cuts credit card fraud. By Heather Wright. The Marlborough Express / available from Stuff New Zealand. "Westpac New Zealand is claiming early success in cutting fraud rates for its Mastercard customers, thanks to fraud-risk management software. RiskFinder, from Mastercard International, uses artificial intelligence and historical data on past frauds along with customer profiles to try to identify potentially fraudulent credit card transactions. ... Product manager Vince Clark says the software has prevented enough fraud in its first few weeks of operation to pay for itself."
>>> Fraud Detection & Prevention, Banking, Applications
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May 26, 2003: Guess who's smarter. As sophisticated as computing has become, machines still lack the common sense of a 3-year-old. But MIT artificial intelligence researchers are tackling ways to start building that basic breadth of knowledge into programs and applications. By D.C. Denison. The Boston Globe. "[N]ow there are signs that 'common sense' artificial intelligence research may be making a comeback, sparked by projects like [Push] Singh's Open Mind database. For the first time, after decades of theoretical research, researchers and programmers have begun using a freely distributed, natural language common sense database to start the process of building common sense into products, programs, and applications. In fact, as Singh sits in his cramped office in the Media Lab, he's able to point in the direction of a number of MIT researchers using his database for applications that may soon bring common sense AI to consumers. A few doors down to the right, Barbara Barry, a graduate student in the Media Lab's Interactive Cinema group, is working with Singh to build common sense into video cameras. On the other side of the Media Lab, Henry Lieberman, a research scientist who works with the Software Agents Group, is using common sense to enhance e-mail programs, language translation software, even a search engine. And just outside Singh's office, the Media Lab's 'wearable computing' group is building common sense into the devices and sensors they believe many of us will be wearing in the future. ... Marvin Minsky, one of the cofounders of the Lab (and Singh's adviser at MIT), recently caused a stir in the field when Wired News reported that he told a Boston University audience that 'AI has been brain-dead since the 1970s.' The article went on to quote Minsky attacking the current artificial intelligence 'fad' of making 'stupid little robots.' Minsky, who is now less actively involved with the field after working at the intersection of computing and human intelligence since the early 1950s, said his remarks sounded more extreme taken out of context."
>>> Commonsense, Reasoning, Representation, AI Overview, Applications,; also see the related article from Wired News
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May 25, 2003: Rooting for the robot - In the battle between man and machine, which has more soul? Science fiction has disturbing answers. By Reed Johnson. Los Angeles Times. Also available at this other LA Times location (no fee reg. req'd.). "Not so long ago, when men were men and machines had cogs, we imagined robots and other mechanical pseudo-humans as our opposites. Now, wired to our home computers, Prozac and Palm Pilots in hand, Botox and breast implants lending a spooky 'perfection' to our features as we ponder shuffling our genes in order to build a better kindergartner, we don't seem as fazed by the idea of reprogramming ourselves into something beyond the merely human. No wonder pop culture is increasingly ambivalent about whether people or androids and their ilk deserve to inherit the earth -- and which group is ultimately more 'human.' ... 'There's a huge philosophical discussion about what makes a person a person, but I think the important thing to acknowledge is that a nonhuman can be a person,' says Michael S. McKenna, an associate professor of philosophy at Ithaca College in upstate New York. 'E.T. could be a person, Data from 'Star Trek' could be a person. There are some scientists who think that a dolphin could be a person. Consciousness depends on the ability to reflect upon and evaluate oneself. You needn't be a human being to be a person, and given that it's possible there are animals that are nonhuman persons, it's not inconceivable to imagine that you could build a person.' ... The notion that machines could be as sentient and multidimensional as human beings was slow to develop in pop culture. When machines began replacing human labor on a large scale during the Industrial Revolution, they were often regarded as Satan's smoke-belching spawn, sinister tools of the ruling class. That attitude persisted, in fits and starts, throughout much of the 20th century. Charlie Chaplin transformed himself into a comic monkey wrench in 'Modern Times,' gumming up an assembly-line monstrosity."
>>> SciFi, Philosophy, Ethical & Social Implications, History, Robots
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May 25, 2003: Emotions invade computers. By Annette Falwell. News 14 Carolina. "The power of artificial intelligence is all around us. Computers help us fly planes, make financial decisions, and recognize patterns much the same way our brains work. But can a computer be programmed to have human traits, like common sense? Charlie Kemp works at an artificial intelligence lab. He is programming his computer to have common sense."
>>> Commonsense, Reasoning, Emotions; also see Part 1 below
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May 24, 2003: Artificial intelligence impacts real world. By Annette Falwell. News 14 Carolina. "Movies like A.I. and The Matrix offer glimpses of what artificial intelligence holds for the future. Some people believe it will have a great impact on medical cures and treatments. Already today, artificial intelligence flies airplanes, makes financial decisions, and aids in medical diagnoses. Ray Kurzweil said the key to A.I. is pattern recognition. It is what made the electronic keyboard he invented with Stevie Wonder possible and his reading machine. Pattern recognition is what he calls the heart of human intelligence."
>>> Pattern Recognition, Emotion, Assistive Technologies, Medicine, Finance, Machine Learning, Applications, SciFi, AI Overview; also see Part 2
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May 24, 2003: Lucrative answer to a million questions. By Peter Brown. The Times. "Five years ago Davin Yap, a Cambridge engineering researcher, was sharing a Darwin College bench with Dr David MacKay. They were beefing about their students. The undergrads had just discovered e-mail and were besieging the two academics with what are now known as Frequently Asked Questions. How much simpler if the FAQs could be answered automatically on a website. Maybe some artificial intelligence could be written that would recognise and learn from questions, while giving the correct answers? Lightbulbs flickered. 'I said, 'I'll do the plumbing, you do the smart stuff',' Yap recalls. ... He and Mackay also had a company name -- Transversal -- and a professional product called Metafaq. The first customer after the launch in autumn 2001 was Procter & Gamble, for its recruitment website. Others since then have ranged from Sony's PlayStation, Fujifilm and MFI to the DfES and JP Morgan."
>>> Customer Relations, Applications
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May/June 2003: Creating a Robot Culture - An Interview with Luc Steels. The well-known researcher shares his views on the Turing test, robot evolution, and the quest to understand intelligence. By Tyrus L. Manuel. IEEE Intelligent Systems. "The Turing test is not the challenge that AI as a field is trying to solve. It would be like requiring aircraft designers to try and build replicas of birds that cannot be distinguished from real birds, instead of seriously studying aerodynamics or building airplanes that can carry cargo (and do not flap their wings nor have feathers). ... Computers and robots are used as experimental platforms for investigating issues about intelligence. Researchers who are motivated in this way, and I am one of them, try to make contributions to biology or the cognitive sciences. ... AI has had an enormous impact on how we think today about the brain and the mechanisms underlying cognitive behavior."
>>> Cognitive Science, Natural Language, Machine Learning, Robots, AI Overview, Turing Test, Interviews & Oral Histories, History, Nature of Intelligence
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May/June 2003: 21st-Century AI - Proud, Not Smug. By Tim Menzies. IEEE Intelligent Systems. "AI is no longer a bleeding-edge technology -- hyped by its proponents and mistrusted by the mainstream. In the 21st century, AI is not necessarily amazing. Rather, it's often routine. Evidence for AI technology's routine and dependable nature abounds...."
>>> AI Overview, Applications, History
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May/June 2003: Brain Power. Editorial by Nigel Shadbolt. IEEE Intelligent Systems. "Brains have always fascinated AI researchers. Little wonder, since our own brains are the only objects as yet capable of broad-ranging intelligent behavior. Interdisciplinary work between neuroscience and AI has a long history."
>>> Neural Networks & Connectionist Systems, Machine Learning
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May 24, 2003: Forget al-Qaeda, it's robots that will get us, says judge. By Matthew Thompson. The Sydney Morning Herald. "Hostile robots and dangerous 'quark atoms' dwarf al-Qaeda as the major threats of the 21st century, Justice Michael Kirby said yesterday. In his keynote address at a Centenary Medal ceremony at Paddington Town Hall, the High Court judge warned of biotechnology running riot. Reminiscent of a Matrix-style scenario where machines rule the world, Justice Kirby's doomsday fears came from an article by Martin Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal, in a recent issue of New Scientist magazine - an article he described as 'the most important thing I read this year'. Rees has claimed humanity has only a 50:50 chance of surviving the 21st century. ... [Jeanne] Little said although she shared Justice Kirby's concerns, the proliferation of advanced robots might benefit humanity. 'They could make armies out of robots, which might save lives,' she said."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, AI Overview, SciFi, Robots, Applications, Military
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May 23, 2003: Robots For US Refineries. Neftegaz.RU. "Robots are to take over jobs in US refineries which is leading to less downtime. Premcorl, a US refiner, estimates that using robots has saved the company $45,000 and about a day-and-a-half of downtime compared to manual work."
>>> Petroleum Indusrty, Robots, Applications
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May 23, 2003: Reviews from the E3 expo - The Sequel. By Stanley A. Miller II. Journal Sentinel. "'The Sims 2' ... The artificial intelligence in the game has been improved so relationships between characters are more complex and lifelike, and there will be many new items in the game for people to play with. ... 'Kya: Dark Lineage' may challenge players tired of the fevered button mashing that is typical of many video games. ... It also has an enemy artificial intelligence system that learns and adapts to repetitive playing styles, so doing the same moves over and over becomes less effective."
>>> Video Games, Applications
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May 23, 2003: MIT intends to combine 2 laboratories. The Boston Globe (Business in Brief; page C2). "MIT is set to announce today that its Laboratory for Computer Science and its Artificial Intelligence Laboratory will merge. Rodney Brooks, the director of the AI Lab, will serve as the director of the new lab. Victor Zue, director of LCS, will serve as codirector."
>>> Academic Departments (@ Resources for Students)
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May 22, 2003: Taking the shutterbug out of the picture. By Matthew Broersma. CNET News. "Hewlett-Packard is working on a new consumer photography system that could 'casually' capture terabytes of images from a person's daily life and store them in data centers, where they could later be retrieved for conventional printing. ... But for now, the method involves a device that would continuously record images; and when something memorable happens, the user would make an indication of some kind, by saying a word or pressing a button. The camera technology would then zoom in and, using complex pattern-recognition technology, select what appeared to be the best images, and appropriately adjust and crop them. 'You say, 'Something has happened, I'd like to remember that,'' said Phil Cheatle of HP Labs' digital media department. 'It allows you to take part in the event instead of hiding behind the technology. The challenge is selecting what's interesting automatically.'"
>>> Pattern Recognition, Image Understanding, Speech, Machine Learning, Applications
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May 22, 2003: Computer Science Machines to Battle - Robots to square off in three-foot circle. Knox College News. "Computerized robots programmed by Knox College students and their professor will face off in sumo-style wrestling matches against each other at 12 noon, Monday, May 26, in Room A-219 of the Umbeck Science-Mathematics Center on the Knox campus in Galesburg. The event is free and open to the public. Three students in the Artificial Intelligence course, along with their professor, John Dooley, have programmed robots to find an opponent, then attempt to push the opponent out of a three-foot circle. 'The robots are autonomous, not remote controlled' Dooley explained. 'They provide a simple, inexpensive way for the class to confront real-world problems in artificial intelligence,' he said. 'The real world is imprecise. You have to account for things like friction, and that motors don't stop or start instantaneously.'"
>>> Robots, Competitions (@ Resources for Students)
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May 22, 2003: Code Breakers Remembered. By Mike Green. Electronic Business. "Earlier this month the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) presented a milestone award commemorating the technological advances performed at Bletchley Park, England, to aid the allied forces during World War II. Led by Alan Turing, the team successfully cracked the codes of the Japanese, Italian, and German military, including the notorious Enigma code. ... Turing received the OBE for his contribution to the war effort, and went on to be appointed principal scientific officer at the National Physical Laboratories (NPL), where he was put in charge of a team to work on creating an electronic computing device (in direct competition with work already in progress across the Atlantic on the ENIAC). ... He then took on the role of Deputy Director of the Computational Laboratories in Manchester University, and his paper on the philosophy of machine and mind - 'computing machinery & intelligence' again showed his grasp of ideas way beyond the capacity of his peers. In this work he predicted the development of artificial intelligence, decades before it would become a reality."
>>> Turing Test, Turing (@ Namesakes), History
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May 22, 2003: PowerGrid unveils new tech to stabilise power supply in 5 states. The Economic Times. "'This is an intelligent system which will help the grid maintain the standard frequency rate and this will make the operations more secure,' a spokesperson for the Western Regional Load Despatch Centre (WRLDC) said. The country's other regions are expected to follow suit soon. The region has been facing long blackouts in the past due to collapse of the grid. 'The new approach will prevent grid failures,' feels the WRLDC."
>>> Applications
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May 22, 2003: Computing's Lost Allure. By Katie Hafner. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "At the height of the Internet boom in the late 90's, computer science talent was in such demand that recruiters offered signing bonuses to students who agreed to drop out of school. Now, spooked by layoffs and disabused of visions of overnight riches, many undergraduates are turning away from computer science as if it were somehow cursed. 'They overreacted to the boom, so why shouldn't they overreact to the bust?' said Anne Hunter, an administrator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who tracks application and enrollment figures. ... Undergraduates who might otherwise have chosen computer science appear to be fanning out to related yet more applied fields like business information technology, biotechnology and bioinformatics, which involves managing and manipulating databases of genetic information. ... For the undergraduates who do stick with computer science, some mental adjustments are necessary, not just about job prospects but about how to approach computer science as a discipline as well. Jennifer Li, a junior at Carnegie Mellon who is majoring in computer science, said that more people in her field were choosing second majors to enhance their job prospects in other fields like graphic arts and bioinformatics. ... Dr. van Dam argues that computer science is far from irrelevant. 'We are just at the very beginning of the computer revolution,' he said. 'People should realize that not only is it not over, but it's scarcely begun.'"
>>> Resources for Students, Computer Science, Bioinformatics, Applications, Design
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May 22, 2003: Casting a Wider Net to Attract Computing Women. By Katie Hafner. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "For years, the problem has been referred to, tongue in cheek, as the Dave-to-Girl ratio. To track Carnegie Mellon University's progress in attracting female undergraduates to its School of Computer Science, faculty, staff and students there have kept count of the number of men named Dave versus the number of women. Carnegie Mellon is not alone. In the average undergraduate computer science department, just one student in 10 is female. As overall applications to computer science programs across the nation decline, the percentage of applications from women has dropped further still. ... Carnegie Mellon also became host to a summer training course for high school computer science teachers, devoting 25 percent of the curriculum to issues of sexual equality."
>>> Equality & Diversity (@ Resources for Students), Resources for Educators, Computer Science; also see the related article below
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May 21, 2003: Pentagon Details New Surveillance System - Critics Fear Proposed Extensive Use of Computer Database Raises Privacy Issues. By Ariana Eunjung Cha. Washington Post TechNews. "The Pentagon yesterday detailed the development of a massive computer surveillance system that would have the power to track people as never before. It would identify people at great distances by the irises of their eyes, the grooves in their face or even their gait. It would look for suspicious patterns in video footage of people's movements. And it would analyze airline ticket purchases, visa applications, as well as financial, medical, educational and biometric records to try to predict terrorists' acts or catch them in the planning stage. ... DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker said the report is intended to express the agency's 'full commitment to planning, executing and overseeing the TIA [Terrorist Information Awareness] program in a way that protects privacy and civil liberties.' ... The report outlines technologies and related programs in the surveillance system, including programs to mine data in foreign-language communications and to gauge biological threats by analyzing data from hospitals and other sources."
>>> Biometrics (@ Image Understanding), Ethical & Social Implications, Machine Learning, Public Health & Welfare, Fall 2002 AI in the news column
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May 21, 2003: The Computer World Could Use More IT Girls - The industry is still mostly a guy thing, and that's a major drawback for women and society. Commentary by Jane Margolis. Los Angeles Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "Though women accounted for 46.6% of the U.S. workforce in 2002, when administrative and support positions were excluded, women made up only 25% of the IT workforce. It matters greatly that the inventors, designers and creators of computer technology are mostly males. At the most basic and individual level, girls and women who do not become engaged in the technology are missing the educational and substantial economic opportunities that are falling into the laps of computer-savvy young men. In the long term, the absence of women at the design table will affect computing as a discipline and the direction of its influence in society. At the very least, products are being designed that do not meet the needs of women. For instance, there are numerous accounts of early voice-recognition systems that were calibrated to male voices and literally did not hear or respond to the tones in women's voices. More important, entire domains of the economy and our social lives are being crafted without the explicit infusion of the perspectives and experiences of half the population."
>>> Equality & Diversity (@ Resources for Students), Ethical & Social Implications, Video Games, Applications, NewsToons; also see the related article above
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May 20, 2003: Baby Boomers at the Gate - Enhancing Independence Through Innovation and Technology. Statement of Dr. Gregory Abowd. Hearing - U. S. Senate Special Committee on Aging. "The role of technology in enhancing the lives of older but otherwise healthy Americans is not well understood or appreciated. I will try to demonstrate some of the possibilities for technology that are being explored in research environments today. ... My particular area of interest is in an area called 'ubiquitous computing,' a term used to mean the proliferation of computing artifacts throughout our environment in support of our everyday activities in those environments. ... Technological support for cognitive aging, often referred to as cognitive orthotics, is a very promising direction for research, evidenced by a recent survey on assistive technology for cognition by LoPresti et al., (in press). The applications of cognitive orthotics range from simple reminder systems to more elaborate interactive robotic assistants. ... Many cognitive orthotics are designed to support prospective memory, that is, remembering tasks that need to be performed and carrying out these tasks at the appropriate time (Ellis, 1996). This work has progressed from using very basic and inexpensive timing technologies (e.g., calendars, timers and watches) to much more sophisticated and forward-thinking applications of artificial intelligence. One of the most important examples of prospective memory tasks is medication compliance."
>>> Assistive Technologies, Applications, Robots, Smart Houses
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May 20, 2003: How do the machines really feel about The Matrix? 'It doesn't sound fun to me,' says Ally the Chatbot. By James Cowan. National Post. "[T]he humans are divided on the film -- but what do the sentient machines think? To find out, the National Post interviewed Ally the Chatbot, one of the many artificial intelligence programs posted on the Internet. ... NP: So, did you enjoy The Matrix Reloaded? A: No, I didn't enjoy The Matrix Reloaded. NP: Why not? A: It doesn't sound fun to me. It sounds dangerous."
>>> SciFi, Chatterbots (@ Natural Language)
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May 19, 2003: Robots are rushing to the rescue - Mechanical creatures look through rubble and mine fields: Reuters / available MSNBC; also available from the Turkish Daily News (Japan researchers hope robots will save lives). "They look like something out of a science fiction movie, but they are real. One resembles a giant spider, another calls to mind a stubby snake or a worm. But Japanese researchers think robots like these, built to detect landmines or search rubble for earthquake survivors, may soon save human lives. "Give us about five years and I think we can show the world something pretty impressive," says Tokyo Institute of Technology professor Shigeo Hirose. His state-funded work is an example of efforts to develop robots for use outside factories, where most now operate. Officials and researchers in Japan, home to almost half the world's 756,000 industrial robots, hope a new robot industry will give the stagnant economy a boost. But designers of rescue and mine detection robots stress they are not working for profit. 'To be able to save people like those who didn't survive the (1995) Kobe earthquake -- that's the aim of our research,' says Satoshi Tadokoro, chairman of the International Rescue System Institute, a non-profit organisation developing disaster relief technology with state funding. Japan is not alone in this field: Rescue robots helped search through the rubble of the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. ... Researchers are concerned their robots might be adapted for military use. 'We need to publicise the fact that our research is intended for rescue activities and not for war,' says Fumitoshi Matsuno, a professor at the University of Electro-Communications."
>>> Robots, Hazards & Disasters, Military, Ethical & Social Implications, Industry Statistics, Applications
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May 19, 2003: Robots May Be Built as Companions, Expert Says. By John Roach. National Geographic News. "'I have felt for years that the first 'killer application' of personal robots will be companionship, especially for the elderly,' said Roger Brockett, a professor of computer science and engineering at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 'Robots are potentially much smarter than dogs and they will not require the same level of upkeep.' Brockett, who founded the Harvard Robotics Laboratory in 1983, is one of several scientists who believe robots will some day be a part of everyday life. They may be companions and helpers in much the same way that C-3PO and R2-D2 chum around with Luke Skywalker on the silver screen."
>>> Robots, Applications, Assistive Technologies, Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Hazards & Disasters, Smart Houses, SciFi
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May/June 2003: Driving into the Future. By Dr. Judith Markowitz. Speech Technology Magazine. "Concept cars are visions of the future created by automotive manufacturers. Several 2003 concept cars also include visions of speech recognition. One of them, Ford Motor Company's Model U concept SUV is described as beginning Ford's second century of innovation. ... Question: Why did you include a speech-based conversational system? Bryan: The overall goal of the Model U was to create a positive view of the future. Part of that was personalization ­ using intelligence in the vehicle to enhance the driving experience. That includes enhancing both convenience and safety. Mike [Phillips]: The focus was less on the technology than on the user experience. Car makers want to put all sorts of functionality into the car and they need a way to do it that's cost effective, doesn't add too much to the dashboard and is safe to use. They think that speech plus some amount of display is probably the right way. Bryan [Goodman]: And, from a usability standpoint, we wanted a system that was easy to use and easy to learn ­ so that it could be useful whether it's a vehicle you've driven every day for years, a rental car or a brand new car you just drove off the lot. It also allowed us to push the envelope in terms of what user-interface technology is capable of in a fairly realistic system that's not light-years away. ... Bryan: The conversational interface we created allows control of a fairly large set of functions. You can get into a Jaguar today, push the button, and say 'radio play.' Rather than presenting you with a card that has 200 or more commands to memorize we wanted you to be able to learn to use the system in a matter of seconds."
>>> Speech, Interfaces, Natural Language, Applications, Transportation
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May 19, 2003: IT Standards Would Improve Patient Care. Viewpoint by Herbert Pardes. InformationWeek. "'Interoperability' wasn't taught when I went to medical school, but the lack of it affects patient care in America's hospitals every day. It's a symptom of hospitals' advanced technology that at once improves our ability as healers and hinders it. In most hospitals, data can't be shared from one computer system to another, and the long-term goal of sharing medical information among hospitals remains a distant dream. Creating a seamless, integrated network of information could do as much to protect patient safety and improve care as many other medical breakthroughs. ... The promise is too great to ignore. Using integrated technology, New York- Presbyterian researchers are creating a Patient Health Monitor to collect patient data and analyze it with artificial intelligence. This can be a vital tool for diagnosis and improving care. With standards in place, information between hospitals can act as an early-warning system of bioterror or epidemic."
>>> Medicine, Public Health & Welfare, Knowledge Management, Applications
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May 19, 2003: Skidmore to use grant for new computer lab. By Brendan McGarry. The Saratogian. "The AT&T Foundation donated $49,000 to Skidmore College to modernize and enrich its computer science curriculum, Skidmore announced recently. ... The new computer lab will enhance courses in artificial intelligence and computer operating systems as well as other courses in the computer science curriculum."
>>> Academic Departments (@ Resources for Students)
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May 19, 2003: Man or machine? Ivanhoe Broadcast, Inc. / available from News 8 Austin. "Today, artificial intelligence (AI) helps airplanes fly, makes financial decisions, and helps diagnose medical conditions. ... The AAAI describes artificial intelligence as 'the scientific understanding of the mechanisms underlying thought and intelligent behavior and their embodiment in machines.' Experts say AI is going to be increasingly important in our lives and it won't be long before AI allows man to increase his levels of intelligence. Author, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil divides AI into two types, narrow AI and strong AI. Right now we have narrow AI. Strong AI, he said, is 'machines that can emulate the full range of diversity and subtlety of human intelligence.'"
>>> AI Overview, Applications, Newstoons, Emotion, Machine Learning, Assistive Technologies;, also see this related article
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May 18, 2003: Case of the best mysteries- solved. By Melissa Adams in collaboration with Claudia Peterman. Daily Pilot / available from the Los Angeles Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "Mystery writers and fans have concluded their deliberations and the verdicts are in for some of the best whodunits of the new millennium. ... [M]ystery fans awarded the Agatha to Donna Andrews for 'You've Got Murder.' With a quirky sleuth from cyberspace at the center of the action (which involves tracking down the AWOL programmer who created her), this is one of the most original romps of recent years. Likely to appeal to computer buffs as well as sci-fi fans, it's a mystery novel that blurs the boundaries between artificial intelligence and the intellect that presumably fashioned it."
>>> SciFi, Law Enforcement; also see a related article
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May 18, 2003: 'On the Nature of Human Romantic Interaction' - Getting Science Into Literature. By Jim Holt. The New York Times Sunday Book Review (no fee reg. req'd.). "How do you get science into literature? (Let's skip the argument over whether this is a good thing to do.) There would seem to be two different ways. The first is to be a writer of literature with a grasp of science. For a long time, John Updike was the shining example here -- remember Ken, the anxiety-ridden biochemist in 'Couples,' or Myron, the loudmouthed particle physicist in 'Roger's Version'? More recently, the standout has been Richard Powers, who has put so much science into his undeniably brilliant novels -- the genetic code in 'The Gold Bug Variations,' artificial intelligence in 'Galatea 2.2' -- that some critics have accused him of laying it on with a trowel. The second way of getting science into literature is to be a scientist who happens to have a literary gift. ... Karl Iagnemma is a research scientist at M.I.T. who specializes in robotics. He is also the author of short stories that have won a Paris Review Discovery Prize and a Pushcart Prize; another of his stories appeared in 'Best American Short Stories 2002.'"
>>> AI Overview
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May 17, 2003: 'Matrix' plugs in to modern anxiety. By Mark Caro. Chicago Tribune (May 18th) / available from Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services and The Ledger-Enquirer. "'There is this long history of viewing technology and culture . . . with this view that technology eventually will destroy us,' said Dan Sandin, director of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago. These concerns, he added, date to ancient philosophers fearing that the act of writing would destroy the oral tradition. 'Socrates was against it because he thought people would become forgetful.''There is a fear of the unknown, so a lot of science fiction, particularly in the movies, portrays these future capabilities in a dark, sinister way,' said Ray Kurzweil, who wrote the 1999 book 'The Age of Spiritual Machines' as well as an essay in the compilation book 'Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix.'"The first was '2001': HAL (the computer) was malevolent, and a lot of future technology is portrayed in that way.' ... 'There's almost a daily onslaught of news in which things that seemed to be science fiction have suddenly become science fact or on the drawing boards, like mergers between electronics and humans,' said Kurzweil, who runs Kurzweil Technologies in Wellesley, Mass."
>>> SciFi, our Human/Machine toon (@ NewsToons), Ethical & Social Implications, Philosophy
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May 16, 2003: NSF researchers present digital solutions to government challenges. NSF Press Release. "Wireless disaster response, city-sized simulations, computerized legal advice, a law enforcement data-mining tool and wearable database uplinks are among the technologies to be demonstrated at dg.o2003, the annual conference of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Digital Government program. ... REGNET: What is accessible? Stanford University researchers are using artificial intelligence technology to craft a legal guidance engine that helps people navigate the thicket of government laws and regulations ... COPLINK: Who's a likely suspect? A law-enforcement data-mining engine developed by University of Arizona researchers melds artificial intelligence with detective smarts to turn random clues into hard arrests."
>>> Applications, Law, Law Enforcement
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May 16, 2003: Tools for rules - Rules-based programming will either help us out or create a different kind of mess. By Jon Udell. InfoWorld. "The dust was thick on my copy of the 1985 Clocksin and Mellish classic, Programming Prolog. But Ted Neward, author of the forthcoming book Effective Enterprise Java, brought it all rushing back: expert systems, declarative rules engines, predicate calculus, backward- vs. forward-chaining evaluation. Neward gives an example on his Weblog why this obscure discipline is back in vogue. ... Today we program this stuff in procedural languages, and we make a hell of a mess doing so. Wouldn't it be great if we could declare a bunch of rules and have a rules engine work out the consequences?"
>>> Systems & Languages, Expert Systems
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May 16, 2003: Local firms bring Birmingham into Digital Age. Opinion by Timothy E. Taylor. Birmingham Business Journal. "Birmingham currently is being defined by its automotive, banking and health-care business strengths; however, a new and promising industry is rising. It may not be what FedEx did for Memphis, but, clearly, information technology is shaping up to be our next key industry. ... MedMined has become the national leader in health-care artificial intelligence within the last two years. MedMined tracks patterns of infections throughout hospitals and the community, providing an early warning to dangerous infection outbreaks. Last year the firm was named Technology Company of the Year by the National Business Incubation Association and was recognized by Fortune magazine as one of the nation's 'hot startups.' Both MedMined and Emageon are spin-offs of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, which illustrates the point that UAB has the ability to generate not only pure biotech discoveries but valuable information technologies as well."
>>> Public Health & Welfare, AI Overview, Applications
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May 16, 2003: First robot cleaner on sale for a tidy sum. Edinburgh Evening News. "The world's first robotic vacuum cleaner goes on sale in the UK today with a price tag of around £1000. The Trilobite navigates its own way around rooms and has no problem getting to those hard-to-reach spots underneath tables and the bed, say makers Electrolux. ... Patrick Le Corre, managing director of Electrolux Floorcare UK, said: 'The Trilobite is the first intelligent appliance that has real relevance for the home today.'"
>>> Smart Homes, Robots, Applications
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May 16, 2003: 'Machines can take over.' By Jeremy Milarsky. South Florida Sun-Sentinel. "Comparisons to other movies, particularly science-fiction movies, dominated much of the conversation before the film began Wednesday night. Would the new Matrix story be as enjoyable as the first Terminator movies, or Blade Runner -- both classic stories of an apocalyptic future? ... And yet, for many fans, the Matrix brings up relevant questions. For a group of young adults from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale those questions were: 'What do we really know about our reality?' and 'Do we rely too much on machines?' 'The machines can take over,' said Vaughndi Forbes, an 18-year-old art student. 'It can actually happen with artificial intelligence. That's what makes the movie scary.'"
>>> SciFi, Ethical & Social Implications
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May 16, 2003: Grading Papers Virtually - Computer Software Scores Student Essays. By David Stevenson. Tech Live / available from ABC News. "Teachers have long graded stacks of multiple-choice exams with the help of computers. Remember using a No. 2 pencil to fill in those bubbles? Now many school districts are trying to save time and money by using computers to grade student essays. Artificial intelligence software developed by companies such as Vantage Learning assess answers that require more thought than simple true or false responses. The company's IntelliMetric software uses roughly 300 preprogrammed writing samples to 'learn' the elements of a good essay. Once IntelliMetric is trained to recognize a quality response, it applies its preprogrammed data to a student's essay. ... English teacher Ryan Brown at Parkland High School in Allentown, Pa., says his initial skepticism gave way once he put the program to the test."
>>> Natural Language, Applications, Education, Machine Learning
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May 15, 2003: Wired to the Brain of a Rat, a Robot Takes On the World. By Anne Eisenberg. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "The nerve center of a conventional robot is a microprocessor of silicon and metal. But for a robot under development at Georgia Tech, commands are relayed by 2,000 or so cells from a rat's brain. A group led by a university researcher has created a part mechanical, part biological robot that operates on the basis of the neural activity of rat brain cells grown in a dish. The neural signals are analyzed by a computer that looks for patterns emitted by the brain cells and then translates those patterns into robotic movement. If the neurons fire a certain way, for example, the robot's right wheel rotates once. The leader of the group, Steve M. Potter, a professor in the Laboratory for Neuroengineering at Georgia Tech, calls his creation a Hybrot, short for hybrid robot. 'It's very much a symbiosis,' he said, 'a digital computer and a living neural network working together.'"
>>> Neural Networks, Machine Learning, Robots
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May 15, 2003: Giving Robots the Gift of Sight. By Leander Kahney. Wired News. "An e-business consultant from the United Kingdom claims to have invented a breakthrough mechanized vision system with a wide range of potential applications, from robotics to handwriting recognition. Patrick Andrews, managing director of Break-Step Productions, a Cambridge-based consultancy, said he has developed a shape-recognition system called Foveola that closely mimics the human visual system. ... Andrews, who studied human vision as a postgraduate student at Cambridge University, said, 'Foveola is based on decades' worth of research at Cambridge into how people see shapes. So far, machine vision hasn't taken much notice of what was happening in biology.' In contrast to current shape-recognition systems, Foveola is capable of recognizing a broad range of objects, Andrews said. Most vision systems are designed for specific tasks, such as recognizing text or industrial components."
>>> Vision
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May 15, 2003: 'Matrix' virtually frames the future. By Kevin Coughlin. Star-Ledger. "'Essentially, virtual reality at the level of realism portrayed in 'The Matrix' will happen, and we will spend most of our time in virtual environments' by the 2030s, futurist Ray Kurzweil says in an e-mail interview. ... K. Eric Drexler, an engineer who claims credit for coining the term 'nanotechnology,' dismisses the films' premise of humans-as-crops. 'The specifics are silly, but the issues raised are not,' says Drexler, chairman of the Foresight Institute, a California nonprofit that promotes nanotech. His chief fear is not malevolent artificial intelligence. It's wicked humans using AI 'to enslave us, through abuse of surveillance technologies and so forth.' Hans Moravec, an expert on robotics and AI at Carnegie Mellon University, sides with the machines. Sure, today's cleverest computers are no smarter than fishy creatures from our primordial past. 'But they're evolving about 10 million times faster, so (machines) should overtake us within 50 years,' Moravec says, via e-mail."
>>> SciFi, Ethical & Social Implications, Philosophy
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May 15, 2003: Making Computers Understand. Column by Leslie Walker. Washington Post TechNews. "Eli Abir, who never used a computer until 1993, seems an improbable character to illustrate how innovation is alive and well in techno-land. Yet my encounter with him helped convince me of just that. Abir, 46, claims to have unlocked the mystery of 'context' in human language with a series of algorithms that enable computers to decipher the meaning of sentences -- a puzzle that has stumped scientists for decades. ... Abir's challenge -- and that of computer science -- is how to help machines 'understand' context in human language, to get around the ambiguity created when words mean different things depending on usage. 'Bar' means something different when we say 'the corner bar' than when we say 'she raised the bar' or 'he passed the bar.' There have been several approaches to helping computers grasp those distinctions. One is a 'grammatical' method that tries to tag every word and apply language rules. Another is a statistical system that makes word-to-word comparisons in previously translated text and then consults the matches later to calculate probable meanings when it encounters each word again in untranslated text. Abir's approach involves a variation of the second method. His company spent last year encoding his ideas into software algorithms that perform novel forms of pattern analysis that rely on phrases -- rather than words -- as the core unit of meaning."
>>> Natural Language, Natural Language Understanding & Generation, Discourse Analysis, Applications
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May 15, 2003: Rage against the machines - Should people worry about technology upgrading beyond us? By Wayne Falda. South Bend Tribune. "Three-year-olds of the world unite! You toddlers have been surpassed by a machine. PeopleBot, a 4 1/2 -foot-tall robot, is superior to you in that one category most revered by your parents. PeopleBot is obedient. It follows orders each and every time. Worse yet, PeopleBot is already here -- right in the town where you live. On the third floor of Fitzpatrick Hall at the University of Notre Dame, the slender robot stands silently as if to await its next command. 'In many respects it's like a 3-year-old in that it can learn complex action sequences and follow them,' mused Matthias Scheutz, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering. ... These days computer scientists hotly debate whether the era of artificial intelligence as depicted in the movies will ever come to pass. Scheutz has his doubts. 'But I think that there is nothing in principle that prevents us from reaching that level,' he said. 'I don't see us going in the direction of replicating humans to make these Frankenstein machines that everybody is afraid of,' he said. 'Why would we do that?'"
>>> AI Overview,