| |
AI Topics Home | ||||
|
<< Headlines are listed according to date posted <-> Articles are organized by date published >>
June 30, 2003: Anti
spammers fight harder, smarter. Ottawa Business Journal. "The
statistics are grim. International Data Corp. research suggests 4.1 billion
of the 11 billion e-mail messages sent each day are spam. ... Both Nemx
and AmikaNow are developing software that has elements of artificial intelligence.
Rather than creating a product that filters out keywords or phrases in
a message's title, both firms are creating software meant to look at the
character and substance of an e-mail." June 30, 2003: Field
of vision. By Bill Lubinger. Plain Dealer. "Starting Wednesday
and through July 11, teams from 31 countries with about 3,500 participants
meet in Padua, Italy, for the RoboCup competition. ... Among the entries
this year is the RobobCats, a team designed and built by faculty and students
from Ohio University - the only Ohio representative. 'Our goal this year
is to make the playoffs,' said professor David Chelburg, the project's
leader. Winning is sweet, but RoboCup is merely using soccer for the science.
The broader picture is to someday use robotics and artificial intelligence
to help mankind. Perhaps a fleet of robots could rescue disaster victims
from places too dangerous for humans. Or robots could clean up nuclear
waste. Or serve as security guards in high-risk places. That technology
is already here, in fact. After Sept. 11, robots searched the World Trade
Center rubble. They didn't work too well, but the robotic designs continue
to improve. ... The robots use what scientists call artificial intelligence
to figure out their moves. To their creators, they seem almost human." June 30, 2003: A
Push From Homeland Security. By Steve Lohr. The New York Times (no
fee reg. req'd.). "The computer executives at the gathering in Washington
were suitably amused, nodding and smiling -- wistfully no doubt. Nothing,
of course, will bring back the dot-com heyday. But to much of Silicon
Valley, the government's mandate to improve homeland security looks as
if it could be the next-best thing -- a technology push, stimulated by
government, that is expected to create a lucrative market in computer
hardware and software for surveillance, data collection, data analysis
and cybersecurity. ... Dependence on the private sector was the mantra
of the Bush administration officials who spoke at the conference, 'Information
Technology Leadership in a Security-Focused World.' The gathering was
sponsored by the Information Technology Industry Council, a trade organization,
and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research group.
... One concern, Mr. [Lance] Hoffman said, is that the national effort
to improve homeland security will mean that all the investment and research
goes into computer security, while the privacy implications are given
short shrift. ... At the conference, industry executives spoke highly
of the raft of technologies that can and are being deployed in the quest
for homeland security -- data-sifting software, artificial intelligence,
probability theory, iris recognition and digital-video surveillance gear." June 30, 2003: Data
Mining - The Xbox Files. By Brad Grimes. PC Magazine. "Effective
data mining is all about connecting the dots. In the days after two men
were arrested for going on a shooting spree in the Washington D.C. area,
word got out that witnesses had spotted the snipers' car. What's more,
police had previously run the car's license plates through their system
several times. But authorities never made the connection, and the men
were eventually arrested based on other information. And if the terrorist
attacks of September 11, 2001, have taught law enforcement anything, it's
that authorities know more than they think they know about potential criminals
-- but they don't always know how to put the pieces together." June 29, 2003: You
humans have outlandish fears. By Theoden K. James. NorthJersey.com.
"Science-fiction writers of the past predicted that by the 21st century,
robots would be everywhere, assuming control of most daily tasks. But
we're now halfway through 2003, and the only thing machines have taken
over so far are the multiplexes. ... 'If ASIMO tried to take over the
world, I mean, we could just send a 10-year-old with a baseball bat, and
he would take care of the problem,' said Josh Calder, who works for a
futurist consulting firm in Washington, D.C., and is the creator of FuturistMovies.com.
But is it possible that artificially intelligent machines could one day
become self-aware and wage war on humanity - as they do in the 'Terminator'
series? Not until we find a way to produce a machine that has intentions,
a machine that actually could desire to destroy us. This type of human-level
artificial intelligence is at least a century down the line, according
to Andy Clark, who is director of the cognitive science program at Indiana
University and author of 'Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and
the Future of Human Intelligence.' And in 100 years, the world will be
very different - so different, he said, that we'll likely then realize
most of our fears about homicidal robots and parasitic machines that use
software programs to pacify us were totally unfounded. ... Of course,
it's easy to forget that machines have the capability to destroy us right
now. Today. This very minute. All they'd have to do is stop working properly.
... Modern, real-life anomalies include the partial meltdown at Three
Mile Island Nuclear Station in 1979 and the NASA space shuttle disasters
of 1986 and 2003. 'I'm more worried about machines not taking over,' said
Daniel Levi, an associate professor of psychology at California Polytechnic
State University who studies the human impact of technology. 'I'm more
worried about the breakdown of the technology we have than technology
gaining more and more power.'" June 29, 2003: The
Future Is Here! By Prerana Trehan. The Sunday Tribune (India). "If
this were the year, say, 2030, you wouldn't be holding a newspaper in
your hand right now, or at least it wouldn't be paper. Instead you'd be
reading this article on a flexible, paper-thin display screen while your
robotic pet dog would be rubbing itself against your legs. Elsewhere in
your home, a robotic vacuum cleaner would be doing the cleaning, navigating
around the rooms all by itself, while your washing machine would be washing
your clothes after having received verbal instructions from you. Earlier
in the morning, your alarm clock would have chosen the best time to wake
you up. ... Science fiction? Not really. ... Asking whether machines will
be as smart as humans is not really relevant since machines will not compete
directly with humans but instead develop a parallel system of intelligence
that will build on their strengths of speed and accuracy as opposed to
the human attribute of creativity. ... Another interesting aspect of technology
entering the workplace is working with artificially intelligent, thinking
machines, which (or should it be 'who'? See the problem has already begun!)
might even be educated. Will we have to treat them as colleagues or as
computers?" June 29, 2003: Program
could make flying safer. By Eric Tegler. The Capital. "A research
project that could change the way small planes are flown is being conducted
at BWI and Tipton airports and other Maryland facilities. The Small Aircraft
Transportation System program is a joint initiative from NASA that would
use some electronic wizardry to make flying in rural and congested areas
safer and easier. Partners in the project include University Research
Foundation in College Park, ARINC in Parole, BWI-based Hinson Aviation
and the Maryland Aviation Administration. ... Though the research foundation
is in College Park, it bases two of its SATS research aircraft at Tipton
and one at Baltimore Washington International. This places the aircraft
outside of the restricted flight zone around Washington D.C., but lets
researchers see how their systems work in a high traffic environment.
One of these is an artificial intelligence system called 'cockpit associate.'
It analyzes datalink, aircraft sensor and aircraft function information
and makes recommendations to the pilot." June 27, 2003: Seoul
promises support for venture firms. By Koh Byung-joon. The Korea Herald.
"Minister of Information and Communication Chin Dae-je unveiled several
initiatives to support venture firms, emphasizing the important role they
play in the national economy. ... In order to help the venture companies
do their part in this grand plan, Chin said that the government will concentrate
its investment in digital, artificial intelligence, computer and precision
machinery sectors, which are regarded as new growth engines." June 26, 2003: First
Virtual Stuntmen Ready for Hollywood. By Jennifer Viegas. Discovery
Channel News. "Special effects experts believe the software behind
the stuntmen, called endorphin, could revolutionize filmmaking and video
and computer games. Endorphin's virtual actors learn how to move and react
independently, unlike most computerized characters now that depend on
fixed databases containing animated clips. Torsten Reil, who developed
the program at Oxford and is now CEO of NaturalMotion, explained that
endorphin's technology relies upon models of the human brain, body and
nervous system. The virtual stuntmen learn how to move and react using
neural networks and artificial evolution, which is like an extended form
of artificial intelligence whereby characters build their knowledge base
over time. ... The process behind the artificial stuntmen's ability to
move and think, called active character technology, is controlled by an
artificial intelligence simulation of the human nervous system. ... Because
the characters react on their own once programmed, Reil believes they
will add a live interactive component to video games that has never been
seen before." June 26, 2003: Finally,
a Public Resting Place for History's Motherboards. By Tom McNichol.
The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "At the new headquarters
of the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, the ghosts of technologies
past still roam the grounds. ... The museum traces its roots to the Computer
Museum in Boston, which was founded in 1979 by Gordon Bell, a longtime
engineer and executive at the Digital Equipment Corporation, and his wife,
Gwen. A spinoff history center in Silicon Valley was established in 1996;
four years later, half of the Boston collection moved west. Since 2000,
the artifacts have been stored at Moffett Field, also the home of the
NASA Ames Research Center, about a mile from the museum's new headquarters.
The Computer History Museum is still a work in progress." June 26, 2003: Young
scientists use animal behaviour to design robots for competition.
By Dominique Loh. Channelnewsasia. "Budding scientists are taking
a cue from Mother Nature and wiring some of her secrets into robots. Seven
teams from the local polytechnics and universities pitted their robots
against one another on Wednesday to see which could perform the best in
a game of hide-and-seek at the Singapore Science Centre. ... One strategy
the students used - strength in numbers - having seen how bees behave
in nature. ... The competition was organised by DSO National Laboratories
as part of its Defence Science Matters exhibition." June 25, 2003: Openness
makes software better sooner - Sharing code for computer software
is best way to rid it of bugs. By Philip Ball. Nature. " June 18/25, 2003: Software
referees group calls. By Kimberly Patch. Technology Research News.
"Researchers from Palo Alto Research Center, Inc. (PARC), Stanford
University, and Carnegie Mellon University have devised a scheme that
gives a group of wireless phone or handheld computer users a more natural
teleconferencing environment by keeping track of who is talking when.
The scheme uses the moment-by-moment dynamics of talk to determine which
members of a group are actively conversing with each other, and adjusts
the audio accordingly, said Paul Aoki, a researcher at Palo Alto Research
Center. ... The researchers tapped a sociological discipline -- conversation
analysis -- to find ways to automatically tell who is talking to whom.
... Conversation analysts review examples of human interaction in order
to understand how these practices work. The researchers quantified speech
patterns gleaned by conversation analysts that generally show whether
or not people are in conversation, and built software that determines
what grouping of people is supported by the best evidence." June 25, 2003: Toys
Aiding Research. KXAN-TV. "You've probably seen them -- robotic
dogs. They're expensive toys. Researchers in Austin are using them to
learn. ... 'They are fully autonomous so there's nobody remote controlling
them. There's nobody telling them where the ball is -- they're doing the
whole thing by themselves,' [Peter] Stone said. It's part of a University
of Texas program developing artificial intelligence. ... 'We're now really
focusing on the teamwork aspects. How do you put together a team of four
robots that are all being controlled completely independently?'" June 25, 2003: The
Road to Oceania. Op-Ed by William Gibson. The New York Times (no fee
reg. req'd.). "Had [George] Orwell known that computers were coming
(out of Bletchley Park, oddly, a dilapidated English country house, home
to the pioneering efforts of Alan Turing and other wartime code-breakers)
he might have imagined a Ministry of Truth empowered by punch cards and
vacuum tubes to better wring the last vestiges of freedom from the population
of Oceania. But I doubt his story would have been very different. ...
Orwell's projections come from the era of information broadcasting, and
are not applicable to our own. Had Orwell been able to equip Big Brother
with all the tools of artificial intelligence, he would still have been
writing from an older paradigm, and the result could never have described
our situation today, nor suggested where we might be heading. That our
own biggish brothers, in the name of national security, draw from ever
wider and increasingly transparent fields of data may disturb us, but
this is something that corporations, nongovernmental organizations and
individuals do as well, with greater and greater frequency. The collection
and management of information, at every level, is exponentially empowered
by the global nature of the system itself, a system unfettered by national
boundaries or, increasingly, government control." June 25, 2003: Mammography
returning to HCMC. Hillsboro Free Press. "Forty-thousand American
women die from breast cancer every year, but this number may change thanks
to a new technology. The device, called an R2 Image Checker, gives physicians
a second method for examining mammograms. ... 'Early detection is critical
and the Image Checker greatly improves our odds,' [Hilary] Zarnow said.
Image Checker analyzes a digital image of the regular mammogram to data
associated with tumorous cells, using a sophisticated artificial neural
network. 'This is artificial intelligence,' Zarnow said, 'and it finds
potential problem areas that can't be seen by the naked eye. It functions
like a very sophisticated 'spell check', if you will, for medical images.'" June 24, 2003: Letting
your computer know how you feel. By Cliff Saran. ComputerWeekly. "Kate
Hone, a lecturer in the department of information systems and computing
at Brunel University, is the principal investigator in a project that
aims to evaluate the potential for emotion-recognition technology to improve
the quality of human-computer interaction. Her study is part of a larger
area of computer science called affective computing, which examines how
computers affect and can influence human emotion. Hone described her research
at Brunel as a human factor investigation. She said, 'We are trying to
build a system that recognises emotion to support human-computer recognition.'
The project, called Eric (Emotional Recognition for Interaction with Computers)
has three main goals. ... 'Many of the approaches used in speech recognition
can be applied to recognising emotion through facial recognition,' Hone
said. ... Affective computing can be defined as 'computing that relates
to, arises from, or deliberately influences emotion'. A number of different
types of research are encompassed within this term. For instance, some
artificial intelligence researchers in the field of affective computing
are interested in how emotion contributes to human and, by analogy, computer
problem solving or decision making..." June 24, 2003: Building
Robot Soldiers - Researchers are rushing to create battlefield robots
that can assist humans in combat. Michael Roger's Practical Futurist column
in Newsweek / available from MSNBC. "After years of on-again, off-again
funding of advanced robotics, the U.S. defense research establishment
is finally putting big, long-term money into military robots. ... During
this decade, military robots will probably save lives not by fighting,
but by performing some of the more mundane but still hazardous support
activities. That will cut casualties right away -- only about a third
of the servicemen killed in Iraq since May 1 have died in actual fighting.
But someday, in some army, robots will bear and fire arms on their own.
Science fiction fans may recall that the first of Isaac Asimov's Three
Rules of Robotics in his 1950 classic book 'I, Robot' was: 'A robot must
never harm a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to
come to harm.' In the book, that rule was ascribed to 'Handbook of Robotics,
56th Edition, 2058 A.D.'" June 24, 2003: Toys
bridge tech divide for children - Toys could play an important role
in helping children interact with computers a study has found. BBC. "Speech
recognition software needs to improve significantly before the perfect
PC toy can be designed thinks Dr [Lydia] Plowman. But signs that children
were comfortable using toys in conjunction with computers were encouraging.
'We found that children can co-ordinate the multiple links between toy
and screen and don't appear to get confused,' said Dr Plowman. 'Having
a toy also seemed to increase the social interaction at the computer with
the children talking to each other and helping each other more,' she added." June 23, 2003: Some
view spam as an opportunity. Capital Focus by Ted Bunker. The Boston
Herald. "Increasingly sophisticated spammers are beginning to overwhelm
e-mail, threatening to make it far less useful as a way to communicate.
Even direct marketers - those companies that send us junk e-mail and 'snail
mai'' - agree that spam is out of hand. ... Sources in the venture community
say that some entrepreneurs see the opportunity this crisis in the online
world has created, and they're working to capitalize on it. What they
need to do is harness artificial intelligence techniques such as 'fuzzy
logic' and build that into better e-mail filters." June 23, 2003: Students
make robot. The Tribune (India). "Students of Engineering College
and Polytechnic College, Chhapianwali (Muktsar), have made a robot, which
they claim can replace human beings working in hazardous industries and
can be used for detecting landmines, if it is developed and manufactured
on a commercial scale. Nine students from the colleges took three months
to make the smaller version of the robot. They claim that the robot can
be used at places where the working for human being is dangerous, if it
is upgraded and made on a larger scale. The robot can pick and put the
objects from one place to another with accuracy. The robot, which can
lift a weight of 300 gm, can move in left and right directions and can
be programmed to work either manually or automatically. In the manual
mode, the robot can be commanded through a remote control, while in the
automatic mode, it is programmed to do a specific work, which it keeps
on doing without any outside help." June 23, 2003: Computing
is key force in war on terror. (Part of the series: Technology
overturns five major businesses.) By Robert Lemos. CNET News. "The
[Department of Homeland Security] has allocated $3.75 billion for information
technology in fiscal 2004, and is expected to spend more than $11 billion
through 2005, according to data from research company FSI. Among civilian
agencies, only the Department of Health & Human Services has a larger
budget. Initial projects will include systems for mining data from collections
of unsorted electronic documents and databases, biometric identity cards
and checkpoints for critical workers, and systems for regulating passage
over national borders." June 23, 2003: Computer
Scientist Julia Hirschberg Explores Frontiers of Computational Linguistics.
By Joseph Kennedy. Columbia News. "While artificial intelligence
researchers have managed thus far to avoid creating monsters like HAL,
the idea of humans and computers speaking to each other is no longer the
stuff of science fiction. It is instead the driving force behind the growing
discipline of computational linguistics, which studies the computational
aspects of human language. 'Basic speech recognition systems have now
become commonplace,' says Julia Hirschberg, who joined the Department
of Computer Science in Fall 2002. 'Researchers today are moving into some
very interesting and complex areas. We're looking at how to enable computers
to recognize speech errors, perform audio browsing and retrieval of email,
and recognize and produce emotional speech.' June 23, 2003: NOAA
Using Artificial Intelligence to Improve Navigational Safety Data.
NOAA News. "The NOAA Center for Operational Oceanographic Products
and Services (CO-OPS) is now using artificial intelligence to extend and
improve its existing real-time quality control monitoring system. This
system, called CORMS (Continuous Operational Real-time Monitoring System)
operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week ensuring the availability and
accuracy of the real-time water levels, currents and meteorological data
provided by CO-OPS for navigational safety. CO-OPS is part of the NOAA
Ocean Service. ... The benefits of using artificial intelligence are four-fold:
1) the ability to monitor more sites; 2) provide more information to CORMS
managers to assist them in decision-making; 3) ensure consistency in monitoring
performance; and 4) significantly reduce reaction time to any instrument
failures." June 23, 2003: Investment
Newsletter Insights - Bonding with the Fed; Stock picker's plight;
A.I. By CBS.MarketWatch.com. "A.I. Stock Forecast may not be the
sequel to Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence, but it could very
well be the prequel. While editor Michael Henry won't have a robot boy
to help him retool his investment newsletter, formerly the Top-Down Market
Forecast, he does plan several new features over the next two months that
include the use of 'artificial intelligence' techniques to aid in his
stock selection." June 23, 2003: Spy
planes steal the Paris show. By Chelsea Emery. Reuters / available
from The Economic Times. "The success of US unmanned spy planes during
the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had prospective foreign buyers packing
the conference rooms at this year's Paris air show. ... 'In the discussions
we've had with international governments, it would appear that there's
a much more serious interest and a better understanding of what Global
Hawk could do,' said Carl Johnson, vice president of the Global Hawk programme
at Northrop Grumman. Unmanned technology 'is the most exciting place to
be in aerospace right now.' ... Some defence industry executives attending
the Paris air show even suggested that Lockheed Martin Corp.'s F-35 Joint
Strike Fighter, which is still being developed, may be the last manned
fighter plane needed for battle. But others were adamant that artificial
intelligence will never totally replace humans, especially in combat." June 22, 2003: Inspired
by Ants - A boyhood fascination led to Baldwin native's robotic breakthrough.
By Martin C. Evans. Newsday. "'The connection between the playful mind
and the serious mind is very strong,' [James McLurkin] said later. 'Sometimes
to understand a concept, you've got to put a girl in a box.' McLurkin's
own whimsical approach to science hit pay dirt earlier this year, when
he netted the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize. The prestigious annual
award goes to an MIT student whose work demonstrates remarkable inventiveness.
'The only difference between an engineer and an artist is mathematics,'
said McLurkin, who is working on a doctorate in computer science. 'I'm
a big believer that art and engineering ought to intersect.' McLurkin
won the prize for his work on artificial intelligence. He developed a
fleet of tiny, sensor-crammed, wheeled robots that zip about while communicating
among themselves by using infrared- light beams. The 'microbots' are capable
of working together on solving problems. Researchers look forward to the
day when teams of robots may be deployed to tackle tasks considered too
dangerous or too intricate for humans, such as searching collapsed buildings
for survivors or locating explosives in a minefield. Already, miniature
robots like the ones McLurkin designed have mastered such complex interactions
as playing soccer. They reposition themselves as other robot-players move,
cut to the goal and pass or shoot, depending on whether they are open.
McLurkin's impulse to probe the world of robotics was born on Long Island.
... But interest in the ants he observed on a Long Island soccer field
began pulling him into the research he pursues today. ... How, he wondered,
could such independent actors coordinate their behavior to adapt to complex
problems that often change in mid-task? And could this kind of adaptive
logic be programmed into robots?" June 21, 2003:
The semantic web - A touch of intelligence for the internet? By Ben
Williamson and Libby Miller. EducationGuardian.co.uk. "When discussing
the semantic web, it is important to get one thing clear from the start:
this is not a new version of the internet. Casual web users will probably
not even notice semantic web technologies running behind their browsers.
But they might notice a vast improvement in the relevance of the data
returned to them through search engines. ... Semantics is perhaps a misleading
term, Mr [Paul] Shabajee admits. 'We need a term that is somewhere in
between semantics and artificial intelligence.' Semantics is concerned
with meanings, which some argue exist only through human interpretation,
and AI is the pursuit of machine replication of biological behaviours.
Semantic web research seeks to produce machine-readable languages such
as RDF (Resource Description Framework) - a consistent, standardised way
of describing and querying internet resources, from text pages and graphics
to audio files and video clips - that allow web content to be indexed
and retrieved more intelligently." June 21, 2003: Interview
- Biometric systems are a favoured new anti-terrorist method, but James
L. Wayman has grave reservations. Interview by Wendy M. Grossman.
New Scientist (p.48). "People are the problem for the new biometrics
that governments are under pressure to use as global security systems
get tougher. James L. Wayman of San Jose State University, California,
worries about this. He's a key biometrics adviser to the UK and the US
- a far cry from his dream to play with the Beach Boys. ... How is
face recognition doing? Face recognition still seems to be the holy
grail. Perhaps it's more acceptable to people than being fingerprinted
or iris-scanned. And often if we have any information at all on terrorists,
the face may be the only thing we have. But there are many problems. Take
the London mayor, Ken Livingstone, and his idea that you can point a camera
at a car and do facial recognition of the occupants. We did that at a
Mexico border crossing in Otay Mesa. The immigration service tried to
automate the crossing by installing facial recognition cameras in a system
called SENTRI, but the driver had to stop and look into the camera. That
was highly problematic because the height of the cars varied, and window
frames obscured the faces. The state of this technology is we are still
trying to teach the cameras that the two people in each scene are the
same person." June 2003: Fast
Forward -25 Trends That Will Change the Way You Do Business. From
e-mail to health care, and from artificial intelligence to the end of
HR as we know it, here are forecasts of how different the world of workforce
management will be 10 years from now. Workforce (pages 43-56). "#6
- Artificial Intelligence: Making computers think more like people is
an idea that persists. In the workplace, software already predicts customer
behavior and machine failures on the factory floor. These capabilities
will continue to evolve. As the Web and data warehouses grow, artificial
intelligence will solve problems that are beyond the reach of the human
brain. ... 'AI will bring advances but also usher in ethical concerns,'
[Owen P.] Hall says. ... #22 - Security vs Privacy: ..." June 20, 2003: Summer
fun gets scientific. By Karen Harrell. The Pensacola News Journal.
"For an hour each week, a dozen or so children from rotating age
groups gather in a small classroom-like setting at the Boys and Girls
Clubs of Escambia County on H Street to interact with some of Pensacola's
brightest scientists. The summer partnership is the first of its kind
for the University of West Florida's Institute for Human and Machine Cognition,
a program that has gained national and world recognition for its breakthrough
research. The program, one component of the Boys and Girls Clubs' regular
summer day camp, introduces science concepts through balloon cars, lemon-powered
batteries, straw bridges, robotics, artificial intelligence and other
projects illustrated only through the use of simple household materials
that can be purchased inexpensively at area discount and hardware stores." June 20, 2003: The
shape of things to come. By Peter Griffin. New Zealand Herald. "There
have been many futurists over the years - Arthur C. Clarke and Alvin Toffler
among them. Time has proved some more accurate than others. That's the
problem with talking about the future, anything can happen. No one knows
that better than, Jeff Wacker, a computer science graduate with 30 years'
experience applying new technologies to big business. ... Increasingly,
the complexity will be held within the gadgets we buy, which will serve
to simplify rather than complicate our lives. Even Wacker is reluctant
to take any serious shots at what we can expect beyond five years. But
he points to the obvious hotspots - nanotechnology, wireless connectivity
and 'expert systems' or the precursor to true artificial intelligence.
... 'The dotcom debacle swept away a lot of good technologies. People's
good ideas have been lying fallow.' Now those ideas are being resurrected.
... Wacker calls it the 'fear factor', the worry that the microscopic
robots will 'replicate out of control and turn the world into a great
mass of grey goo'. It's the stuff of a hundred sci-fi movies, but there
are more subtle pitfalls to our greater use of technology." June 20, 2003: Robots
gear up for European football championship. By Matthew Broersma. ZDNet
UK. "More than 50,000 visitors are expected at next month's RoboCup,
to be held in Italy More than 200 organisations are preparing to bring
their teams of robots to RoboCup 2003 next month in Padua, Italy, an event
where researchers test out the latest artificial intelligence techniques
in games of football or rescue simulations. Event organisers said last
week that 183 teams from around the world, mostly from universities, have
registered for rescue simulation competitions and various leagues of football,
while another 80 groups are to show off robots aimed at children. The
event is expecting more than 50,000 visitors. While RoboCup has its lighter
side, it is one of the most prominent events in the world for both artificial-intelligence
researchers and for companies such as Honda and Sony wishing to show off
their latest robotics technology." June 19, 2003: The
sentient office is coming. The Economist Technology Quarterly. "As
computing plays an increasing part in people's lives, much research is
being focused on making computers genuinely friendlier and more useful.
This is why 'sentient computing' has begun to capture people's attention.
... Sentient computing systems are always on, ubiquitously available,
and can adapt to their users. ... According to Emile Aarts at Philips
Research in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, these convivial technologies will
emerge in a number of ways. User interfaces, for example, will move from
'cognitive' to 'intuitive'. So, instead of having to turn the television
on, the TV will know what you want by combining an understanding of what
you say, your expression, your gestures and even how you walk. ... With
such usefulness in mind, research on sentient computing has become increasingly
active in information technology (IT ) laboratories in Europe and America.
Projects under way at the University of Cambridge, the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (MIT ), Philips and elsewhere are attempting to stake out
the territory by delving into such topics as 'ambient intelligence', 'ubiquitous
computing', 'aware environments' and the 'intelligent home'." June 19, 2003: Spare
parts for the brain. The Economist Technology Quarterly. "For
decades, artificial-intelligence buffs have been trying to create a synthetic
mind, an artificial consciousness. Achieving that goal would answer many
interesting philosophical questions about what it means to be human. That
is well into the future. Meanwhile, a quiet revolution has got under way
in the world of neuroscience and bioengineering. These disciplines have
made significant progress in understanding how brains work, starting with
top-level functions such as thinking, reasoning, remembering and seeing,
and breaking them down into underlying components. To do this, researcher
have been studying individual regions of the brain and developing 'brain
prostheses' and 'neural interfaces'. The aim is not to develop an artificial
consciousness (although that may yet prove to be a by-product). Instead,
the goal is more pragmatic: to find a cure for such illnesses as Parkinson's
disease, Alzheimer's disease, Tourette's syndrome, epilepsy, paralysis
and a host of other brain-related disorders." June 18, 2003: An
ovarian cancer screening test being developed in Detroit promises new
hope for Jewish women and general population. By Ruthan Brodsky. Detroit
Jewish News. "A new screening test for early detection of ovarian
cancer is being refined and expanded at the Detroit-based Karmanos Cancer
Institute in preparation for government approval. Michael A. Tainsky,
Ph.D., professor and director of molecular biology and genetics at Wayne
State University School of Medicine, developed the project. The research
concept is novel. It doesn't follow the traditional template of screening
for single markers. In Dr. Tainsky's screening, there are multiple markers
reflecting the varying behaviors of proteins in a heterogeneous population.
Secondly, the test would have been impossible to create without enlisting
cutting-edge technology in robotics and artificial intelligence. The need
for the new test is compelling. More than 80 percent of ovarian cancer
patients are diagnosed at a late clinical stage and have a 20 percent
or less chance of surviving at five years. In contrast, the 20 percent
of women diagnosed with early-stage disease have a 95 percent prognosis
at five years." June 18, 2003: McCarthy,
'great man' of computer science, wins major award. By Dawn Levy. Stanford
Report. "John McCarthy, professor emeritus of computer science and
pioneer in artificial intelligence (AI), received the Benjamin Franklin
Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science on April 24. The Franklin Institute
in Philadelphia bestowed the award, lauding McCarthy for 'multiple contributions
to the foundations of artificial intelligence and computer science including
the development of the LISP language, the invention of time-sharing interactive
programming, and key developments in the application of formal logic to
commonsense reasoning.' ... One big remaining challenge, McCarthy says,
is getting machines to act in a spatial, or 3-D, world. 'Nobody has a
computer that could describe the mess on this desk,' McCarthy tells a
visitor to his office. 'If you asked a robot to find a stapler amidst
the clutter and then have a robot arm pick it up, that's a bit beyond
the current state of the art.' Computers can recognize patterns and conclude
'this is a stapler,' but humans can one-up computers because they are
not limited to the sense of sight to understand the 3-D world." June 17, 2003: I,
robot. Can we create machines in our own image and likeness? By Chip
Walter. The Boston Globe (page C1). "When Asimo, Honda's latest humanoid
robot, recently walked on stage waving to the crowd as part of its North
American educational tour, the audience cheered and waved back as if it
were a live celebrity rather than a piece of machinery. But then, why
not? Machines that look and act like us have been part of our imaginary
landscape since 1927 when Futura, the sultry robot in Fritz Lang's film
classic, 'Metropolis,' first stepped into the public eye. ... In the end,
the underlying argument for creating humanoid robots is that if they are
to become truly useful, they have to be capable of operating independently
in a human world. 'Our environment has been created around the physiology
of humans,' said Keeney of Honda. 'It's full of stairs and doorknobs,
light switches, counter tops, and cupboards. . . . It's got to work in
our world.'" Also see the side-bar: Robot Roll Call - From cuddly
friend-to-all-humans to the stuff of nightmares, robots have played a
huge part in our visions of the future. June 17, 2003: Surely,
a little insider trading can't hurt? Think again. Opinion by Howard
Kalt. The Mercury News. "The stock exchanges won't discuss their
monitoring of transactions and trading patterns, but they examine thousands
of transactions and bring several hundred suspicious trades to the SEC's
attention each year. ... Computer databases containing public information
identify any links between investors and possible information sources
from within the company. For example, NASDAQ's SONAR text mining and artificial
intelligence system examines internal regulatory data, public records,
up to 10,000 news stories a day and even Internet message boards."
June 17, 2003: Living
in 'The Matrix.' By Kim Seong-kon. The Korea Herald. "In [Gregory]
Peck's time, the reality he and his contemporaries perceived was rather
simple and stable. The distinction between good and evil was crystal-clear,
and human prejudice, too, was far less complex. Today, however, reality
seems ever more inscrutable and illusive, and all distinctions between
good and evil, between truth and untruth, between the real and the imaginary
seem rapidly disintegrating. That is why contemporary moviegoers are crazy
about 'The Matrix' (1999) and its sequel 'The Matrix Reloaded' (2003)
which vividly delineate the nightmare landscape of the so-called 'post-human
era.' Watching 'The Matrix,' we come to realize that what we perceive
as reality may be a simulation, that is, a virtual reality computer program
designed by some supernatural beings or A.I. (Artificial Intelligence)
to keep the humankind under control. And that realization, even though
it is only a hypothesis, has fundamentally altered our consciousness and
lives for the past few decades." June 17, 2003: Phone
butler organises your life. BBC. "Imagine your very own mobile
butler, able to travel with you and organise every aspect of your life
from the meetings you have to the restaurants you eat in. Software, developed
by scientists at the Department of Electronics and Computer Science at
the University of Southampton, promises to do just this. The artificial
intelligence program works through mobile phones and is able to determine
users' preferences and use the web to plan business and social events."
June 17, 2003: Robots
without a cause - Thanks to the newest wonders of technology we can
get robots to do our vacuuming, transmit pictures on our mobile phones
and unlock our cars (and adjust their seats) merely by touching them.
In the face of this wizardry, Stuart Jeffries has only one question: why?
The Guardian. June 17, 2003: Defence
tightens security. By Chris Jenkins and Kelly Mills. Australian IT.
"The Australian Defence Force is upgrading its restricted network
to deal with the threat of hacking. ... 'We are looking at evolving technologies
to protect our communications networks and systems. The Defence Science
and Technology Organisation is doing some work in that area as well,'
Mr [David] Marshall said. A DSTO project known as Shapes Vector is developing
artificial intelligence and three-dimensional visualisation techniques
'to patrol and report on wide-area anomalies. That is still in its early
days,' Mr Marshall said. 'We are looking at commercial products and how
to use those on our networks.'" June 16, 2003: AI
software gives virtual guitars a lifelike sound. By R. Colin Johnson
EE Times. "Sibelius Software Ltd. has successfully applied the principles
of artificial intelligence to give the performances of its music software
a more humanlike sound. By crafting a rule system that simulates a human
virtuoso, Sibelius and its new 'guitar-only' version, called G7, perform
music convincingly enough to turn heads. Sibelius began its AI quest with
'expressivo' - an expert system embedded into Sibelius 1.0 for varying
the dynamics (amplitude) of individual notes as they play, but Sibelius
2.0 and G7 also add 'rubato,' which slightly changes the tempo (speed)
for emphasis and dramatic effect. It also contains an autoarrange feature
that extends its AI rule set for music into the realm of orchestration." June 16, 2003: Robot
Vacs Are in the House. By Leander Kahney. Wired News. "After
years of fits and starts, the market for robot housemaids finally seems
to be taking off. New models of robot vacuum cleaners -- and the promise
of more in the near future -- are the first signs that a nascent commercial
robot industry finally is taking hold. ... Ask the manufacturers, and
they all say robot vacuums soon will be as common as microwave ovens.
For a roboticist like Hans Moravec, it means the robot revolution is finally
here. 'I've been waiting for decades for the pieces to come together so
that we have a real robot industry,' Moravec said. 'After decades of false
starts, the industry is finally taking off. I see all the signs of a vigorous,
competitive industry. I really feel this time for sure we'll have an exponentially
growing robot industry.' ... According to Moravec, the second-generation
robots likely will navigate with the help of electronic beacons placed
around the house, possibly in wall sockets. The third-generation bot would
use vision. A built-in camera, perhaps pointed upward at the ceiling,
would guide the robot by visual landmarks. June 16, 2003: The
New Pet Craze: Robovacs. By Leander Kahney. Wired News. "Just
as owners of robot pets like Sony's Aibo develop emotional attachments
to their mechanical companions, people are acquiring similar feelings
for their robot vacuum cleaners. The two leading robovac manufacturers
-- iRobot and Electrolux -- report that owners treat their robovacs somewhat
like pets. ... Scientists believe that robot pets trigger a hard-wired
nurturing response in humans. It appears robot vacuums tap into the same
instincts. MIT anthropologist Sherry Turkle, one of the leading researchers
in the field, is conducting studies on how children perceive smart toys
like the Aibo, Furby, Tamagotchi and My Real Baby. She says humans are
programmed to respond in a caring way to creatures, even brand-new artificial
ones." June 16, 2003: Captchas
- Computer Tests Can Defeat Spam. Ingenious computer tests may also
advance machine vision and AI. By Jaikumar Vijayan. Computerworld. " June 16, 2003: Washington
fertile ground for brain research - How science and society can build
brighter babies. By Marietta Nelson. The Sun. "At the heart of this
effort is the Center for Mind, Brain & Learning at the University of Washington
in Seattle. Led by Patricia Kuhl, a professor of speech and hearing sciences,
and her husband, Andrew Meltzoff, a psychology professor, the center is
becoming a place for innovative scientific research on learning and the
brain. ... Other research includes: . Using human learning to design machines
that learn more efficiently, and using artificial intelligence to improve
human learning. ..." June 15, 2003: Dinner
with Simon - Featherless Bipeds. Astrobiology Magazine. "This
featured 'Dinner with...' series builds on the classic thought experiment:
'Which 5 historical figures would you invite to dinner, and how would
you seat them?' While the field of astrobiology historically rests on
many 'shoulders of giants' -- too many for one dinner party, the Astrobiology
Magazine has selected some initial candidates for our dinner party, and
then asks them to introduce their area of expertise in a brief question
and answer format. The answers are their own, as gleaned from some of
their most famous, controversial, or seminal contributions to science
and technology. ... Tonight's dinner introduces Nobel Laureate, Herbert
Simon, widely considered the father of artificial intelligence. As Ronald
Marks, a senior analyst with the SAIC Strategies Group, wrote about Simon:
'Speaking as the economic 'everyman', I believe our new Internet Age will
continue to make Herb Simon look like the genius he was.' Today also commemorates
Simon's birthday, June 15 [1916]." June 15, 2003: My
Son, the Cyborg. By Margaret Talbot. The New York Times Magazine (no
fee reg. req'd.; pages 11 - 12). "Why, exactly, was it front-page
news (and Starbucks -line conversational fodder) that playing 'first-person
shooter' video games enhances visual skills? Maybe it had that tang of
the counterintuitive that makes certain stories from academia attractive
far beyond it: Hey, violent video games can be good for you! Maybe it
was a consolation prize for parents whose kids can't get enough of games
like 'Grand Theft Auto 3' 'Rogue Spear' and 'Medal of Honor,' where the
object is to terminate with extreme prejudice as many enemies as you can.
... It might seem odd to say that neurological studies on how technology
might be changing the way we use our hands or take in visual information
have anything to do with that cyborgian dream, but it's not really such
a stretch. ... But there's probably another reason that the article about
violent video games and visual attention got good play: it took us away,
for a moment, from the eternal debate about whether violent video games
cause children who play them to become more aggressive. The truth is that
while partisans on both sides are always declaring the matter resolved
by social science, it hasn't been. ... In its own way, the quest for a
definitive scientific answer to the question of whether violent media
cause violence is as persistent and as elusive as the dream of mechanical
life." June 15, 2003: Insider
trading inside out. By Kathleen Pender. San Francisco Chronicle. "Even
when they have time to consider the consequences, some people trade on
inside information anyway. Like criminals everywhere, they gamble on not
getting caught. 'Maybe 10 years ago, it was pretty easy to get away with,'
says Peter Romeo, an attorney with Hogan & Hartson. Today, it's not. 'The
surveillance techniques have been improved, and the companies themselves
are exerting a lot of oversight,' says Romeo. The stock and options exchanges
monitor price and volume in individual securities, using artificial intelligence
to flag trades that fall outside certain parameters. When trading looks
suspicious, the exchanges may refer the case to the Securities and Exchange
Commission or U.S. attorneys." June 14, 2003: Smart
cellphone would spend your money. By Duncan Graham-Rowe. New Scientist
(page 17). "A consortium of the world's top consumer electronics
firms, mobile networks and broadcasters are funding the development of
cellphones that will spend money on your behalf. The consortium, called
Mobile VCE, includes Nokia, Sony, Vodafone and the BBC. It might sound
like a bankruptcy waiting to happen, but software engineer Nick Jennings
is supremely confident the phones will not mess up anybody's life. Jennings's
team at the University of Southampton in the UK are developing programs
known as software agents for the consortium. 'I see the artificial agent
as more like a butler-type character,' he says. The agents, which will
run on the new generation of 3G phones, will watch how you use your mobile
and learn to anticipate your next move. 'They start off monitoring what
you do and gradually look for ways to increase their role. Over time they
get to know your preferences,' says Jennings." June 14, 2003: TSA
Modifies Screening Plan - Computerized Analysis Changed in Response
to Criticism That It's Intrusive. By Robert O'Harrow Jr. The Washington
Post (Page E01). "Under the new approach, the system known as CAPPS
II ["second-generation Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System"].
would draw less personal information about passengers into the government
computers, the documents show. ... An earlier version of the system would
have used a more intensive mix of government computers and artificial
intelligence to analyze passenger records. Previous plans also suggested
that officials wanted far wider latitude in how they used records about
passengers' lives. The government and business officials behind those
efforts are no longer involved in the project. New details about the system
are expected to be included in a Privacy Act notice to be published in
the Federal Register next week. ... According to a draft of the document,
the notice will sharply narrow how officials intend to collect and share
personal information about passengers. It also probably will describe
plans for a 'passenger advocate' for handling complaints about inaccurate
scores or other problems. The new notice is intended as a signal that
officials are committed to finding the right balance between security
and privacy. 'We care about those issues, and we're addressing them,'
one senior government official said." June 14, 2003: Allen
claims success in work on computers that can reason - Project Halo
aims to develop a 'Digital Aristotle.' By Dan Richman. Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
"In the 1980s, the words 'artificial intelligence' carried the expectation
that computers would soon actually think and reason -- even feel. It turned
out such hopes were hugely exaggerated, so much so that AI became an embarrassing
phrase to use. But not everyone has given up on the idea, at least in
a more modest form. Paul Allen, who co-founded Microsoft Corp. with Bill
Gates, claimed preliminary success in a hitherto secret project to enable
computers to answer questions they've never seen before, and to state
their reasoning. ... University of Washington computer science professor
Henry Kautz yesterday called Project Halo exciting, saying that the idea
of starting with a core knowledge base and giving computers the ability
to parse text and extract information from it 'is a very hot area.' Just
as they did with AI, the market and public embarrassed themselves over
the Internet. Now AI looks good again, Kautz said. About 40 percent of
the students coming into his department say AI is one of their main interests,
he said." June 13, 2003: Security
habits. By Julia Pierce. The Engineer. "Both the UK and US governments
are pushing the use of biometrics as a means of increasing security at
airports and cracking down on crime, but many critics claim the technology
remains unproven on a large scale, and may not be up to the job. ... The
Intelligent Agents for Multi-modal Biometric Identification and Control
(Iambic) system, developed by Southampton-based neural network and algorithm
specialists Neusciences in collaboration with the University of Kent,
relies on authentication using more than one biometric measurement coupled
with a password for initial access. ... Software built into the network
server then takes data on the user's working habits in the form of algorithms
and compares it to warnings and rules placed in the system by its administrator,
such as the threat of an imminent attack on data, before adding it to
the sign-on score. The computer then decides what level of access to sensitive
data the user should be permitted." June 13, 2003: The
clean mean machine. By Astrid Wendlandt. Financial Times. "According
to Electrolux, the household appliance manufacturer, it's here. Meet the
first robotic vacuum cleaner in the UK: the Trilobite. Resembling nothing
so much as a large ladybird, the Trilobite can theoretically vacuum your
house on its own, navigating its way around tables and small objects as
if it had eyes. Named after the extinct primitive marine arthropod that
crawled the seabed feeding on plankton, the Trilobite uses artificial
intelligence (AI) to make random decisions about where to vacuum next,
or when to stop and return to base to recharge. ... 'When a robot is in
a room, it needs to make a plan,' explains John Gordon, director of the
Applied Knowledge Institute, attached to Blackburn College in Lancashire,
UK, and a member of the judging panel for the British Computer Society's
annual prize for progress towards machine intelligence. 'Sometimes it
is better to have a robot that knows roughly where it wants to go and
deals with things as they crop up,' says Mr Gordon. 'But one difficulty
with that approach is that environments are often complex. This is very
much the subject of debate in the AI research community.'" June 13, 2003: Craig
grad 'one in a million.' By Frank Schultz. The Janesville Gazette.
"Christina Riggs graduated Thursday night with about 390 other members
of the Craig High School Class of 2003. In a recent conversation in the
living room of her parents' northeast side home, Riggs talked about her
hopes for the future. She plans to be a computer engineer and to work
in robotics and artificial intelligence. 'I want to do something that
no one's ever done before, that somehow will make a dent in history,'
Riggs said. ... Riggs remembers reading about artificial intelligence
for a class project in fifth grade. She remembers how her grandmother,
a strong woman, was disabled by cancer and Alzheimer's at the end of her
life. ... Riggs noted that colleges are trying to reverse the male domination
of engineering, and employers are feeling pressure to do the same." June 13, 2003: People
Genie spearheads the European launch of artificial intelligence technology.
Online Recruitment. "Technology to understand and analyse CV's just
as a human would has been launched in Europe by recruitment software innovator
People Genie. ... This cutting edge technology uses artificial intelligence
to understand each CV to the extent that it can spot the difference between
a skill studied on a course and hands on experience. ... 'Smart Genie
will pioneer the way forward by enabling recruiters to spend more time
with a true shortlist of candidates and less time processing irrelevant
CV's.' ... Smart Genie requires no manual data entry or human intervention
as it is powered by machine learning technology. Using highly advanced
pattern matching and predictive techniques it trains itself to search
for patterns of career progression rather than solely relying on matching
job titles and skills to a job specification." June 13, 2003: IT
technology to form backbone in future navy activities. newindpress.com.
"Vice-Admiral and flag officer Commanding-In-Chief, eastern naval
command, Raman Puri has said the Indian navy will deploy convergence and
intelligent internet working technologies to support critical and enterprise-wise
applications in the coming years. ... He said the technological breakthrough
in expert systems and artificial intelligence would be suitable to enhance
the Indian defence framework for integrating data from unmanned sources
such as aerial vehicles, electronic warfare receptors and distributed
information systems. ... Stating that the benefits of information technology
had not reached the common man in the country primarily due to language
barrier, the vice-admiral said the inability to understand the operating
systems or software applications in regional languages had slowed down
the process of it benefits percolating to all sections of the society."
June 12, 2003: Artificial
intelligence identifies effective drugs for HIV patients whose treatment
is failing. Press Release from the HIV Resistance Response Database
Initiative. "New data presented for the first time today at the 12th
International Workshop on HIV Drug Resistance demonstrated that artificial
intelligence (AI) could find effective treatments for patients whose drug
therapy is failing. The system identified potentially effective drug combinations
for patients who were continuing to fail on therapy, despite having their
combinations of HIV drugs changed by their physicians according to current
clinical practice. 'These patients had high viral loads and were failing
because of drug resistance, despite multiple changes to their treatment
and the use of current resistance tests', commented Professor Julio Montaner
MD, Professor of Medicine and Chair in AIDS Research, at the BC Centre,
University of British Columbia, Canada. 'Today's results hold out the
possibility of being able to reverse the process of treatment failure
for such patients, using artificial intelligence to help us identify the
best possible drug combination for the individual.'" June 12, 2003: Poker
playing computer will take on the best. By Ryan Cormier. The Edmonton
Journal. "There's a new poker player that never sweats, never gets
tired, never tips a hand and can still bluff with the best of them. University
of Alberta artificial intelligence researchers bet their new poker computer
program will be the best player in the world, perhaps within a year. 'We've
made some really fantastic progress over the last year and a half,' says
Jonathan Schaeffer, who heads up the university's Games Research Group.
PsOpti -- the pseudo-optimal poker program -- is the latest version in
the team's decade-long attempt to create the ultimate poker player. The
program has some crucial tools, including the ability to bluff. ... 'A
lot of the original research in games involved games with perfect information.
Like in chess, you always know where the pieces are, there's nothing hidden,'
Schaeffer says. 'Games with imperfect information, like poker, are actually
much more important in the real world than games of perfect information.'
Figuring out how to reason with imperfect information has many benefits:
in international negotiations, in poker, or in buying a car." June 12, 2003: College
Courses Foreshadow A Tech Comeback. By Ellen McCarthy. The Washington
Post (Page E01). "But many forecasts say the demand for technical
skills will return. After a downturn in enrollments in 2001, college-level
computer science programs have rebounded a little, the Computing Research
Association says. Several local schools have launched new programs, degrees
and initiatives." June 12, 2003: NeuralWare
announces Strategic Alliance with DuPont Canada and CIMTEK. Pittsburgh
Technology Council. "NeuralWare, a leading provider of neural network
software for developing and deploying innovative and intelligent business
and scientific analytics solutions, has announced a strategic alliance
with DuPont Canada and CIMTEK Automation Systems. ... With its roots in
research conducted by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada scientists, the
Acurum System relies on neural network-based artificial intelligence to
assess the quality of grain, barley, and other seeds and commodities.
Acurum provides rapid, repeatable, accurate and consistent analysis of
grain quality. This innovative tool utilizes digital imaging to evaluate
various seed characteristics including diseases, handling and environmental
conditions, seed classification and determination of admixtures of seeds.
By imitating the human eye, it performs the analysis objectively through
artificial intelligence software." June 12, 2003: Technology
Tomorrow - War Games: Timonium firm makes software for military. By
Reed Hellman. The Jeffersonian. "Games are not always for entertainment.
Throughout history and across cultures, games also served to teach lessons,
pass on traditions and simulate combat. Parlaying its expertise in strategy,
sports, and historical simulations, BreakAway Games of Timonium has created
software used in war-gaming by all branches of the armed forces. ... Most
of BreakAway's 43 programmers, artists, and designers are veterans of
the interactive entertainment industry. They have helped bring 140 titles
to market and transition to the new genre, content, and working conditions
was relatively smooth, company officials said. 'The underlying technology
is designed to be fairly agnostic,' said Tillett. That technology is helping
BreakAway tap into the $12 billion military budget as well as the $10
billion entertainment industry. ... BreakAway's programmers use artificial
intelligence tools to build their software. 'It's all standard stuff,
C++ programming,' said Tillett. 'We create some tools internally.'" June 12, 2003: Robo-thespians
Help Mothers Of Kids With Cancer. ScienceDaily ("adapted from
a news release issued by University Of Southern California"). "Cartoon
figures animated by robotic artificial intelligence can help mothers cope
with the stresses associated with caring for a child who has cancer. In
the first clinical trial, 26 mothers of children being treated for malignancies
gave 'uniformly positive reviews' of the system, called 'Carmen's Bright
IDEAS,' (CBI) developed by the University of Southern California, according
to a paper that will be presented at International Conference on Artificial
Intelligence in Education, Sydney, Australia, July 21-24. ... CBI 'is
an interactive animated health intervention designed to improve the social
problem-solving skills of mothers of pediatric cancer patients' who must
balance the needs of their sick child, their well children, their spouses,
and their work, according to the paper. ... Complex and sophisticated
software is used to orchestrate drama from the mother's choices. It is
not a simple matter of creating canned incidents illustrating various
outcomes. Instead, explained [Lewis] Johnson, the AI characters actually
create their actions and dialog 'on the fly,' acting much as humans do,
from goals and desires evoked by what occurs." June 11, 2003: Mars
probe lifts off for 7-month trek - Robotic unit and 2 other craft
to search for evident evidence of water and life. By Mark Carrreau. Houston
Chronicle. "NASA plans to explore the Red Planet with ever more sophisticated
robotic orbiters and landers. Sometime in the next decade, the space agency
plans a robotic mission to gather rocks and soil from the Martian surface
and return them to Earth for study by planetary geologists, setting the
stage for something bolder. 'We see the twin rovers as stepping stones
for the rest of this decade and to a future decade of Mars exploration
that will ultimately provide the knowledge necessary for human exploration,'
said [Orlando] Figueroa." June 11, 2003: Science
behind the art of defence - Public exhibition here aims to show off
the defence technologies that underpin Singapore's national security.
The Straits Times. "ROBOT HUNTER ... EYES IN THE AIR ... ROBOTS UNITE:
A group of 'Cooperative Robots' communicate to help each other seek out
a light source. Wireless communication and artificial intelligence algorithms
help them do this. The beeping robots are tracked via sound waves. Their
positions can be seen on a monitor." June 11, 2003: Royal
Colleges launch attack on spam. By Peter Williams. vnunet.com. "A
consortium of 18 medical Royal Colleges, plus the Nursing Midwives Council
and the General Medical Council, has begun implementing a service to tackle
the huge problems of spam, porn and viruses. ... The anti-porn module
uses image-recognition technology and artificial intelligence to identify
such things as suspect poses, clothing and overall image content."
June 11, 2003: Attack
of the Two-Headed Scientists. By Charles Mandel. Wired News. "[Rodney]
Brooks is the director of the newly created New Laboratory for Computer
Science and Artificial Intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. NLCSAI is a merger, announced in late May, of MIT's Laboratory
for Computer Science and its Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. ... The
merger came about as MIT scientists realized that the distinction between
computing science and AI had become blurred over the past few years. Having
already collaborated on a couple of large projects, the two labs decided
the time had come to combine forces." June 11, 2003: So,
Does IT Matter? Opinion by Jon Strande. Darwin Magazine. "A recent
article by Nicholas Carr in the May issue of Harvard Business Review ,
entitled 'IT Doesn't Matter,' suggests that IT has become ubiquitous and
therefore is no longer a strategic advantage for business. He further
states 'that companies should be focused on managing risk, not aggressively
seeking an edge through IT.' ... Instead of talking about how certain
technology assets have become commodities, I prefer to focus on the things
that will help clients improve efficiencies, reduce costs, strengthen
relationships and so on. Along those lines, there are many things that
companies can be working on that, from a strategic standpoint, can provide
an advantage, like artificial intelligence (AI), handheld development
and voice interfaces. Let's take artificial intelligence as an example:
The March 2002 issue of Wired magazine featured stories about
real world implementations, the most compelling business use being smart
airports. ... AI has held great promise for many years, but has never
lived up to its hype. Until now. In the years to come, I think we will
see many more mainstream implementations of AI in virtually every industry.
What happens when today's MRP [Manufacturing Resource Planning] systems
are injected with a healthy dose of artificial intelligence? Imagine the
productivity gains of the average shop floor through more intelligent
line scheduling and so on." June 10, 2003: What
a chatterbot! By Anita Bora. Rediff Guide to the Net. "We survey
a few of the Web's coolest chat bots to find out how close they are to
replacing real conversation. It all started with Eliza, a program developed
by Joseph Weizenbaum of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which
made natural conversation possible with a computer." June 10, 2003: Rogue
agents aren't a reload of Hollywood rubbish. By Adam Turner. The Age
/ also
available from The Sydney Morning Herald. "Self-replicating rogue
software agents set loose on the internet sound like figures from the
latest Matrix movie but they're really out there, sometimes with our lives
in their hands. Agents are autonomous applications endowed with advanced
reasoning capabilities and are often entrusted with mission-critical decision-making
tasks in dynamic environments such as air-traffic control and weather
forecasting. ... Agents are set 'goals', such as providing users with
aggregated data, and given the freedom to decide the best way to achieve
their goal, says Lin Padgham, associate professor of computer science
at RMIT. As such, the development of autonomous agents and multiagent
systems is closely tied to artificial intelligence research, she says.
... The ability of agents to learn from their mistakes is a leading-edge
research area and is yet to be widely used in commercial systems. Agents
do have the ability to breed though, 'spawning' new agents to complete
specific sub-tasks. ... Containing rogue agents is one of the issues to
be addressed at the Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems conference
(AAMAS'03) to be held in Melbourne next month." June 10, 2003: Enough
Already - Curbing Info Glut. Wired News. "'It was great to have
access to so much info but your brain can become data-fatigued very quickly,'
said retired Marine Communications Specialist Thomas Castro, who served
in the first Persian Gulf War. 'All of a sudden you're flooded with information,
and frantic that you'll miss the one bit that could save lives. It's a
truly horrible feeling.' But new open-source software developed by a team
of university researchers may help soldiers and emergency workers avoid
information overload and handle threats more efficiently. CAST, which
means Collaborative Agents for Simulating Teamwork, makes computers part
of a military unit or team, according to Pennsylvania State University
researcher John Yen, one of CAST's developers. Using software agents --
semi-autonomous, adaptive 'personal assistants' -- CAST can predict what
kind of data humans will need to handle a specific situation, then deliver
that information on a need-to-know basis." June 2003: The
Translation Challenge - Software based on rules, examples, or statistics
seeks to erase language barriers. It's far from perfect, but sometimes
close is good enough. By Chip Walter. Technology Review. "In the
early, post-World War II days of computing, scientists dreamed of creating
software so intelligent it could accurately translate one language into
another. If computers could crack enemy codes, the thinking went, then
why not foreign languages? Five decades later, researchers are still working
on the problem. But what was a dream in the 1950s has become an overwhelming
demand as business increasingly ignores traditional borders. ... Researchers
are making progress today using three basic approaches drawn from natural-language
processing. Knowledge-based machine translation ... A second approach,
example-based systems ... Statistical techniques also depend on computing
power to compare reams of previously translated text. However ..."
June 10, 2003: A
Conversation with Cynthia Breazeal - A Passion to Build a Better Robot,
One With Social Skills and a Smile. By Claudia Dreifus. The New York Times
(no fee reg. req'd.) / also
available from CNET. "Dr. Cynthia L. Breazeal of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology is famous for her robots, not just because they
they are programmed to perform specific tasks, but because they seem to
have emotional as well as physical reactions to the world around them.
They are 'embodied,' she says, even 'sociable' robots -- experimental
machines that act like living creatures. As part of its design triennial,
the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York is exhibiting a 'cyberfloral
installation,' by Dr. Breazeal, which features robotic flowers that sway
when a human hand is near and glow in beautiful bright colors. 'The installation,'
said Dr. Breazeal, 35, 'communicates my future vision of robot design
that is intellectually intriguing and remains true to its technological
heritage, but is able to touch us emotionally in the quality of interaction
and their responsiveness to us -- more like a dance, rather than pushing
buttons.' ... Q. What is the root of your passion for robots?
A. For me, as for many of us who do robotics, I think it is science fiction.
My most memorable science fiction experience was 'Star Wars' and seeing
R2D2 and C3PO. I fell in love with those robots." June 9, 2003: June 9, 2003: Prototype
robots on display in Halifax. CBC. "Researchers at a Canadian
conference on artificial intelligence showed off a moody robot on Monday
that is able to learn simple tasks and interact with humans. ERIC has
an animated 'face' that looks upset when a bright light on him, but he
quickly recovers. The robot's two-cameras act like eyes and it has specialized
hardware for speech." June 9, 2003: Students
ready to join in space race. By Katie Campling. The Huddersfield Daily
Examiner / available from ic Huddersfield. "Huddersfield University
students have won two coveted work placements with the USA's Nasa space
agency. ... Karen [Petrie] and Tien [Da Binh] are researching artificial
intelligence as part of their PhD courses at Huddersfield. This is partly
why they were selected by the Nasa panel. Prof [Barbara] Smith said: 'Artificial
intelligence is of prime importance to unmanned space missions. Autonomous
robots are being developed for missions to Mars, as they can act independently
without the need for immediate human control.'" June 9, 2003: Robot's
knives cut drudgery. By Liam Dann. New Zealand Herald. "The [PPCS]
meat company is about to finish trials on a knife-wielding robot that
can remove the pelvis from a lamb's hindquarters with the precision of
a surgeon. The Machine is so smart that as well as measuring the size
of the carcass before it begins cutting, it can sense when a blade is
getting blunt and change knives. ... The robot cuts the meat perfectly
every time at almost twice the speed of a human, and never complains.
... But totally mechanising a processing plant was not a realistic option
in the foreseeable future, [Keith] Cooper said, and the robot was no threat
to staff. The industry faced constant staff shortages, and workers replaced
by the robot could be allocated to other parts of the chain." June 9, 2003: High
Tech Help For Elderly. KRON. "New technology is not just to help
increase productivity in the workplace. It is also helping preserve the
independence and improving the quality of life and care for the elderly.
Max may look like just a cute kitty, but it's a cat with a twist. Max
is a robotic cat, a furry feline with artificial intelligence and sophisticated
software. He responds to touch and commands and can brighten the lives
of nursing home patients." June 9, 2003: MSU
prof helps NASA build robots - Eric Hansen focuses on artificial intelligence
for the metal explorers. The Clarion-Ledger "A Mississippi State
University professor is among U.S. scientists helping NASA develop a new
generation of roving robots that can 'think' their way out of tight spots
and secure valuable data while exploring the far reaches of outer space.
'It's a high-level project to build software that will help these robots
make decisions,' said Eric Hansen, an assistant professor of computer
science at the university. 'I'm working on the brain, so to speak. It's
an application of artificial intelligence.'" June 9, 2003: Possibilities
limitless for MSU's thinking robots. By Mike Wendland. Detroit Free
Press. "Artificial intelligence is one of the hottest areas under
investigation by computer scientists, who, instead of creating an AI machine,
are trying to somehow raise one. "Instead of programming a computer how
to solve some problem, we can take another approach by bring up an AI
machine like a baby -- teaching it how to read instead of programming
it how to recognize characters and grammar," he says. That is exactly
what John Weng, an associate professor in the MSU Department of Computer
Science and Engineering, is doing. ... Weng refers to Dav as an autonomous
mental development, or AMD, machine. 'Conventional machines perform after
they are built,' he says. 'An AMD machine must perform while it builds
itself mentally.'" June 8, 2003: And
now, artificial intelligence as a medical tool. By Aniket Alam. The
Hindu. "In a few small rooms in a non-descript commercial building
in Secunderabad, a group of scientists and entrepreneurs have been busy
for the last three years developing an Artificial Intelligence tool which
would provide doctors a 'decision support system' in making diagnosis
fool proof. A similar venture in the US took over 25 years, 70 million
dollars in funding and nearly 30 Ph.Ds to complete it. ... The proposed
software is based on a mathematical tool called the Bayesian Probabilistic
Belief Networks developed over the last few decades at MIT, Stanford,
UCLA and Berkeley in the USA. It has powered advanced AI equipment like
the Mars Rover as well as simple things like the predictive 'Help' of
MS Word. ... If this is successful, the final product would not only list
out all the known diseases which match the given set of symptoms, but
also provide the percentage probability of its occurrence along with the
reasons for that." June 7, 2003: Meat
vs machine. M John Harrison is hugely impressed by the widescreen
imagination of Justina Robson's Natural History. Book review in The Guardian.
"Justina Robson's first two novels took much of their energy from
her interest in consciousness and artificial intelligence. To these elements
she now adds molecular biology, visualising DNA as cut-and-pasteable." June 7, 2003: Pick
a Language, Any Language. By Katie Dean. Wired News. "Like the
elite group of government agents on the 1960s television show, a group
of computer scientists and natural language experts were given a 'mission'
earlier this week: within a month, build a program that translates between
English and a randomly chosen language. The project, funded by the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency, challenges researchers to quickly build
translation tools when unforeseen needs arise." June 7,
2003: Weedkilling
robots slash herbicide use. By Duncan Graham-Rowe. New Scientist Magazine
[page 16]. "Robots make unlikely green warriors, but they could soon
be doing their bit for the environment. Trials of a Danish robot that
maps the position of weeds growing among crops suggest that herbicide
use could be slashed by 70 per cent if farmers used it to adopt more selective
spraying techniques. The robot drives across fields scanning the ground
for any weeds and noting their positions. A later version will be able
to kill the weeds too by applying a few drops of herbicide, says developer
Svend Christensen from the Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences in
Tjele. But the longer-term goal is to avoid herbicides altogether by having
the robot pluck the weeds out of the ground rather than poisoning them.
... The Danish weedkilling robot - a four-wheeled, battery-powered cart
with high ground clearance - works by scanning the ground with a camera
and recognising the shape of particular plants. It does this by harnessing
software techniques from face-recognition research." June 7, 2003: Self-drive
cars ahead. BBC. "In the future technology will drive cars for
us, eliminating road rage and accidents and making traffic jams a thing
of the past. This is the view of BT's resident futurologist Ian Pearson,
who is convinced that it will be technology rather than tolls that can
solve the UK's current traffic crisis. 'The only real solution to traffic
congestion may be to stop people from driving cars,' he said. 'I don't
mean that we shouldn't have and use cars, just that they should be driven
by computers and not humans, electronically tethered to cars in front
and behind,' he said." June 6, 2003: BSC
robot beats out national competition. June 6, 2003: A
Pentagon computer as your cyberdiary. Opinion by William Safire. The
New York Times / available from the International Herald Tribune. "DARPA's
LifeLog initiative is part of its 'cognitive computing' research. The
goal is to teach your computer to learn by your experience, so that what
has been your digital assistant will morph into your lifelong partner
in memory. ... Followers of Ned Ludd, who in 1799 famously destroyed two
nefarious machines knitting hosiery, hope that Congress will ask: Is the
computer our servant or our partner? Are diaries personal, or does the
Pentagon have a right to LifeLog?" June 6, 2003: Breaking
through the computer/human language barrier. By Ed Brock. News Daily.
"One could call Alison Alvarez of Jonesboro an erstwhile Dr. Dolittle
of the computer world. ... Alvarez already has a bachelor's degree in
computer science and Japanese from George Washington University in Washington,
D.C. She became fascinated with artificial intelligence when, at 17, she
underwent a procedure to have titanium springs and rods attached to her
vertebrae to correct a severe case of scoliosis. 'After becoming partially
artificial myself, I have had a different way of looking at artificial
life,' Alvarez said in her biography provided by the Cooke Foundation.
... [H]er eventual goal is to find a way to teach computers to truly understand
human speech. Her knowledge of Japanese will be useful in that because
it depends heavily on context and is an 'Altaic' language, a language
family in which the verb always comes at the end. 'They're basically the
most difficult language if your going to use natural languages,' Alvarez
said. One of the more difficult things to teach a computer is how to understand
the overlying narrative and 'reference resolution,' Alvarez said. In other
words, when the word 'they' appears in a lengthy transcript the program
has to be able to understand which 'they' are being referred to according
to the context of the overall conversation." June 6, 2003: North
Korea suspected of training computer hackers. Associated Press / available
from Hindustan Times. "North Korea demonstrated its artificial intelligence
technology when it won Japan's FOST, a tournament for computers playing
Chinese chess, for two straight years in 1998 and 1999." June 5, 2003: 'Groundhog'
ventures into dark caves and updates inaccurate maps. Associated Press
/ available from USA Today. "Heavier than the Denver Broncos offensive
line and able to turn on a dime, a robot nicknamed "Groundhog" has made
its debut voyage into a Pennsylvania coal mine. ... The 1,600-pound Groundhog
is designed to take vertical and horizontal laser scans every few feet
in underground labyrinths to create incredibly detailed maps, revealing
even the bolts in roofing supports. Unlike tethered robots that explore
volcanoes and other hazardous places, Groundhog is built to do all right
on its own." June 5, 2003: New
tool for Big Brother or terrorist spotter? By Dave Schwam. La Jolla
Light. "The battle against terrorism is getting a boost thanks to
an automated surveillance system for detecting and tracking faces in a
crowd being developed at UCSD. A federal interagency organization for
combating terrorism, the Technical Support Working Group, has awarded
$600,000 to the 18-month project led by Mohan Trivedi, a professor of
electrical and computer engineering at UCSD's Jacobs School of Engineering.
The surveillance system links a network of 360-degree cameras that interact
intelligently, with the use of sophisticated computer algorithms developed
at UCSD's Computer Vision and Robotics Research laboratory. ... 'With
our system,' said Trivedi, 'there really doesn't have to be any human
being who is actually analyzing these camera images. This is real artificial
intelligence with the machines sensing and analyzing things they've been
programmed for, like traffic patterns.'... Another important feature of
the UCSD project is to incorporate automatic camera 'hand-over' capability,
to make multiple cameras work cooperatively. Based upon the tracking results
performed by one set of cameras, other cameras can capture higher resolution
images of suspicious developments for human and event recognition." June 5, 2003: Convention
envisions a more robotic future. By John Keilman. Chicago Tribune
(no fee reg. req'd.). "Robots perform surgery, squire patrons though
museums, even milk cows. And robots in the home could become commonplace
soon, some experts said Wednesday at a robotics convention in Rosemont.
... [Joe Engelberger] said a machine could be helpful in home care, assisting
an elderly person to get out of bed, preparing meals and cleaning the
house, all the while keeping up a flow of cheery conversation. ... Henrik
Christensen, a Swedish robotics professor, said a sophisticated helper
robot could prompt a backlash from displaced workers. Several on the panel
and in the audience brought up questions of regulation and liability.
... Some questioned whether the elderly would welcome the formidable technology
into their homes. ... [Colin] Angle added that in his experience, people
are not reluctant to bond with a robot. More than 60 percent of the people
who have bought his company's automated vacuum cleaners have given them
names, he said." June 4, 2003: £130m
IT project sorts Royal Mail. By Emma Nash. Computing. "'We used
to look at an address and then make a sorting decision. But now we mainly
use optical character recognition (OCR) technology,' said Alan Scott,
project manager, Address Interpretation at Royal Mail. 'We send it to
an OCR computer and the software deciphers it and says that has to go
to Glasgow. If the software isn't certain it will send it to a keyer and
use manual data handling.' AI technology will increase the accuracy of
OCR. Using previous systems, Royal Mail achieved accuracy rates of 70
per cent - AI raises this to 89 per cent." June 4, 2003: Insurer
hopes to boost online sales. By Emma Nash. Computing. "Insurance
provider Direct Line plans to introduce web services technology that uses
artificial intelligence (AI) to increase the number of customer transacting
online. The company, which sells a range of financial services including
home and motor insurance, loans and mortgages, is looking to increase
its online sales by offering users a more intuitive web site." June 4, 2003: Automatic
Astronomy - New Robotic Telescopes See and Think. By Robert Roy Britt.
Space.com. "If an asteroid is discovered tonight and found to be
on a collision course with Earth, you may have a robot to thank for the
warning. If a star blinks for a nanosecond, you won't notice it, but a
robot might, and it will deduce that an object no bigger than this city,
roaming the solar system in Pluto's realm, has just passed in front of
a distant star. A surprisingly cheap new crop of thinking and seeing machines
work alone, scanning the heavens every night, from dusk to dawn with no
coffee breaks, looking for objects that humans have so far failed to find.
... More than a dozen teams from around the world, all involved in creating
fully autonomous, semi-intelligent observatories, met here last week at
a meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) to present new findings
and swap ideas." June 4, 2003: Smartcams
Take Aim at Terrorists. By Kari L. Dean. Wired News. "These distributed
digital video arrays, or DIVAs, are collections of really smart cameras
able to detect and identify an individual in a crowded train station and
track him wherever he goes -- out of the station, into the parking lot,
onto the freeway and so on. They also notify authorities when they 'think'
the individual engages in suspicious activity or meets with questionable
cohorts. You can watch for these DIVAs in summer 2004. ... For the past
four years, CVRR's DIVAs assessed traffic patterns, located accidents
and notified firefighters of emergencies, according to Mohan Trivedi,
director of the DIVA project and professor at UCSD's Jacobs School of
Engineering. ... The capability to identify a man automatically based
on his facial structure, or to locate a woman digitally based on her distinctive
gait is not what makes DIVA special. The Department of Defense has been
contracting with developers of those technologies for years. What's unique
is the DIVA systems' ability to communicate with each other automatically
and intelligently in order to better detect and then follow individuals,
according to Trivedi." June 4, 2003: Imagine
Machines That Can See. By Mark Baard. Wired News. "Robotics experts
are turning to nature for guidance in making machines that see, hear,
smell and move like living creatures. Inspired by the neurobiology of
small animals, they're learning to make robot lobsters and other critters
that might be able to clear minefields or sniff out dangerous substances.
... Scientists are working in the emerging field of biomimetics, in which
machines are designed to function like biological systems. They have only
the foggiest idea of how the human brain perceives and acts on information
from the body's sense organs, even though they've known the mechanics
of those organs for many years. ... M. Anthony Lewis, another researcher
who attended the [Conference on Cognitive and Neural Systems], is trying
to teach robots to respond in a more natural way to obstacles in their
environments. 'Getting limbs to behave without conscious thought and under
visual guidance, as they do in humans, remains a challenge,' said Lewis,
CEO of Iguana Robotics. The company is building a walking robot that runs
on a network of artificial neurons, densely packed computer chips that
can process data more quickly than conventional chips. ... 'The difference
between robots and animals is that if we get stuck, we can wriggle out
of it,' said Joseph Ayers, director of the Biomimetic Underwater Robot
Program at Northeastern University and co-editor of Neurotechnology for
Biomimetic Robots. Ayers is on sabbatical at the Institute for Nonlinear
Science at the University of California at San Diego, where he is trying
to give his own invention, a biomimetic robot lobster, the ability to
vary the levels of chaos in its neural network. 'Robots need this ability,'
Ayers said. 'Because if they can't do this out in the real world, they're
toast.'" [Also available: video clip of "Walking bot learns
from mistakes."] June 3, 2003: Two articles
from Mark Watson. The Commercial Appeal. Dennett:
Stick to real science. "People attending this weekend's seventh
annual conference of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness
strive to avoid the logical pitfalls of pseudoscience. But Daniel Dennett,
the association's pre-eminent philosopher regarding the theory of consciousness,
has expressed concern that the field may be sidetracked toward a somehow
'magical' view of consciousness. Through meetings such as the one that
ended Monday, ASSC promotes research in fields such as cognitive science,
neuroscience and philosophy directed toward understanding the nature,
function and mechanisms of consciousness. This research has practical
applications in computer science, artificial intelligence, robotics and
health care." Scientist
describes processes of consciousness. "Solving the riddle of
the structure of consciousness may dwarf in complexity James Watson and
Francis Crick's discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA. So it's
a good thing that Crick is working on the consciousness problem with Christof
Koch of the California Institute of Technology, who described a framework
of consciousness on Monday, the last day of the seventh annual world conference
of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness." June 3, 2003: Coal-fired
power generation - The need to be nimble. By Steve Blankinship. Power
Engineering and Power Engineering International. "One of the most
cost-effective means of improving the performance of the existing coal
fleet is by employing advanced computer technology unavailable when the
units were commissioned two or three decades ago. Emerson says the typical
coal-fired generating unit can achieve significant performance improvements
through solutions that are easily implemented in a few months with no
outage required, and provide quick payback within six to 12 months. Typical
examples are tuning, minor control changes, and advanced control and optimization
software. ... Although engineering optimization methods have been around
for a long time, it has been inexpensive Pentium-based computers and their
mind-boggling ability to crunch large amounts of numbers that have brought
optimization to full fruition. In addition, algorithms for addressing
previously daunting challenges have emerged, mostly from what is loosely
termed the artificial intelligence community. 'That's the only way we
can manage the huge number of variables that must be considered,' says
[Curt] Lefebvre." June 3, 2003: Sims'
creator inks TV deal with Fox New shows likely -- will a robot star
in a reality series? By John Gaudiosi. Reuters / available from MSNBC.
"Will Wright, creator of video game sensation "The Sims," has signed
a first-look development deal with Fox Broadcasting Co. ... While Wright
said he wants to start with a clean slate with his Fox deal, he would
like to explore the themes of these earlier projects. 'I'd like to fast-forward
into the future a bit and explore how machines and artificial intelligence
will impact human beings and how robots will help us define ourselves,'
Wright said." June 2003: Robo
Space - How Space Perception Seperates Man From Machine. By Luc Steels.
Wired Magazine. "For a robot coming fresh into the world, there is
at first total confusion. What is "above"? What is 'behind'? To the newborn
android, all sensory input is a blur. Blobs float into view, the occasional
sound drifts by, 3-D space is a mass of contradictory coordinates. The
problem isn't the hardware. Autonomous bots like Honda's Asimo and Sony's
SDR-4X II have cameras for depth perception and microphones to help pinpoint
a sound source. And in the lab, researchers in artificial intelligence
have made strides in symbolic reasoning, allowing machines to make inferences
based on definitions of spatial concepts. But combining sensory perception
and spatial reasoning remains elusive, which explains why robots lack
a true sense of space. ... Figuring out how to teach spatial cognition
is precisely what's going on in current robotics research, including in
my own laboratory. We are trying to create robots and robot cultures that
develop an autonomous approach to space, time, and action." June 3, 2003: Fire-hit
robots unit set for £50m centre. By Sam Halstead. Scotsman.com. "An
internationally-renowned Edinburgh University department is set to rise
from the ashes of the Old Town blaze with a new £50 million research centre
in the Capital. ... The School of Informatics is regarded as a leading
contender for the purpose-built complex, which would see the department's
four sites amalgamated into one. ... The new building would help cement
the school's global reputation as a leader in the fields of artificial
intelligence, cognitive science, computer science, computing engineering
and speech recognition." June 3, 2003: Playing
Music as a Toy, and a Toy as Music. Essay by James Gorman. The New
York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "The games can even, it seems, put
a veil between mind and body. The Cartesian mind/body division is no longer
accepted by science, but video games are Descartes's revenge. The eyes
and fingers are allowed in the game, but the rest of the body becomes
dead weight -- meat, as William Gibson described it in the science fiction
novel 'Neuromancer.' And yet, researchers in artificial intelligence and
behavioral sciences often talk now about embodied intelligence. Dr. Antonio
R. Damasio, a neurobiologist at the University of Iowa, who is the author
of 'Descartes's Error' and more recently 'Looking for Spinoza,' has argued
that the mind contains a model of the human body and that the actions
of the body inform the brain. 'The mind exists,' he writes in 'Spinoza,'
'because there is a body to furnish it with contents.' In 'The Hand,'
written several years ago, Dr. Frank R. Wilson, a clinical professor of
neurology at Stanford, suggests that the hand has molded human language
and consciousness during the course of evolution and that its activities
are powerfully connected to the development of the individual." June 3, 2003: 'Big
Brother' watching new super diary? By Michael J. Sniffen. Associated
Press / available from CNN / also available from The Seattle Times (Super
Diary Worries Privacy Activists). "A Pentagon project to develop
a digital super diary that records heartbeats, travel, Internet chats
-- everything a person does -- also could provide private companies with
powerful software to analyze behavior. That has privacy experts worried.
Known as LifeLog, the project aims to capture and analyze a multimedia
record of everywhere a subject goes and everything he or she sees, hears,
reads, says and touches. ... LifeLog's goal is to create breakthrough
software that 'will be able to find meaningful patterns in the timetable,
to infer the user's routines, habits and relationships with other people,
organizations, places and objects,' according to Pentagon documents reviewed
by The Associated Press. DARPA's Jan Walker said LifeLog is intended for
those who agree to be monitored. It could enhance the memory of military
commanders and improve computerized military training by chronicling how
users learn and then tailoring training accordingly, officials said. But
defense analyst John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org is dubious about the project's
military application. 'I have a much easier time understanding how Big
Brother would want this than how (Defense Secretary Donald H.) Rumsfeld
would use it,' Pike said." June 2, 2003: Computers
replace petri dishes in biological labs. By Ed Frauenheim. CNET. "All
this is giving birth to a new approach whereby computer technology and
'in silico,' or simulated, experiments will largely replace painstaking,
traditional petri-dish research. 'We'll see over the next decade the complete
transformation (of the industry) to very database-intensive as opposed
to wet-lab intensive,' says Debra Goldfarb, a group vice president and
life sciences specialist at IDC. ... Combining biology and computer technology
offers the promise of breakthroughs that are even more startling. A report
last year from the National Science Foundation and the Commerce Department
concluded that the 21st century may witness such advances as people linking
their brains to form a global collective intelligence, humans living well
past 100, and computers uploading aspects of our personalities to a network.
The prospect of molecular-scale 'nanobots' suggests a scenario of tiny
machines coursing through our bodies, able to identify and kill cancer
cells while warding off disease. ... Moreover, the industry must contend
with the threat of a public backlash, on ethical grounds, to biotech advances.
Debates on cloning and on genetically altered foods have already made
apparent the fierce opposition to some forms of genetic tampering. Even
those within the high-tech community are torn on the issue. In a controversial
essay a few years ago, Bill Joy, chief scientist with Sun Microsystems,
warned of possible dangers arising from genetics, nanotechnology and robotics.
His conclusion: Further research is just too risky." June 2, 2003: What
is game theory and what are some of its applications? Explained by
Saul I. Gass. Scientific American - Ask the Experts. "A game is said
to have perfect information if, throughout its play, all the rules, possible
choices, and past history of play by any player are known to all participants.
Games like tick-tack-toe, backgammon and chess are games with perfect
information and such games are solved by pure strategies. But whereas
you may be able to describe all such pure strategies for tick-tack-toe,
it is not possible to do so for chess, hence the latter's age-old intrigue.
Games without perfect information, such as matching pennies, stone-paper-scissors
or poker offer the players a challenge because there is no pure strategy
that ensures a win. ... Games such as heads-tails and stone-paper-scissors
are called two-person zero-sum games. Zero-sum means that any money Player
1 wins (or loses) is exactly the same amount of money that Player 2 loses
(or wins). That is, no money is created or lost by playing the game. ...
The power of game theory goes way beyond the analysis of such relatively
simple games, but complications do arise. We can have many-person competitive
situations in which the players can form coalitions and cooperate against
the other players; many-person games that are nonzero-sum; games with
an infinite number of strategies; and two-person nonzero sum games, to
name a few. Mathematical analysis of such games has led to a generalization
of von Neumann's optimal solution result for two-person zero-sum games
called an equilibrium solution." June 2, 2003: Microscope
detection of shellfish bacteria. Food Production Daily. "Research
by University of Plymouth experts into the detection of harmful species
of algae has helped develop a unique microscope, which could dramatically
decrease cases of poisoning from contaminated shellfish. The HAB (harmful
algae blooms)-Buoy is a project, funded by the European Union, involving
Dr Phil Culverhouse, a senior lecturer at the University of Plymouth,
representatives from marine aquaculture and food health and academic partners,
who are technology developers in marine pump design, marine equipment
build, telecommunications and advanced artificial intelligence software.
... The HAB-Buoy - which is in essence a microscope coupled with natural
object recognition software - will be developed further so that it can
image and recognise harmful algae. It will be operated either underwater
suspended from a buoy, or on a mussel-producing raft, or in the laboratory
to assist government scientists monitoring algae. It will image everything
in each filtered seawater sample, including detritus and non-harmful plankton." June 2, 2003: Architecture
Review - Sophomore Jinx: Like its predecessor, the Cooper-Hewitt's
second triennial exhibition is all over the design map; this time, however,
the curators fail to come up with a coherent theme. By Joseph Giovannini.
New York Magazine. "[T]he exhibition brims with other themes that
invite elaboration that would give interpretative depth. For example,
in MIT Media Lab assistant professor Cynthia Breazeal's garden of mostly
machined-aluminum delights ['Cyberfauna'], the subject of interactivity
permitted by electronic gadgetry and artificial intelligence is raised
brilliantly, if only passingly, with robotic blooms in a 'flower' bed
that move toward you or shy away when you wave a hand." June 1, 2003: UK
first for digital pacemaker - Two patients are due to become the first
in the UK to have digital pacemakers implanted, in operations to be carried
out on Monday. BBC. "Digital technology is already used in various
appliances - such as CD players and cameras - but previously has never
been applied to pacemakers. The main advantages of using digital pacemakers
over traditional analogue versions, are that signal processing is much
faster, they have more storage capacity and can provide accurate diagnostic
data. ... Consultant cardiologist Cr Derek Connelly ... 'The implanting
of this device is no different to other types of pacemaker procedures
but monitoring and follow up will be much easier and quicker for the patient
and the hospital because the data stored by the pacemaker can be downloaded
onto a computer within seconds. In addition the pacemaker has its own
artificial intelligence which can analyse the patient's rhythm disorders
and suggest changes in programming in order to improve the patient's quality
of life.'" June 1, 2003: Trade
software, snoring aid win think-tank contest - Winners of UCI-overseen
competition will split $60,000. By Mary Ann Milbourn. The Orange County
Register. "Entropy Unlimited Inc. was the runner-up in Saturday's
competition. Its proposal uses artificial intelligence to develop digital
entertainment primarily for use by video-game developers." June 2003: Striving
for dependability. By Armando Fox and David Patterson. Sidebar to
their primary article: Self-Repairing
Computers. Scientific American. "As the costs of administration,
oversight and downtime expand in response, scientists and engineers in
the computer industry are working to enhance the dependability of their
products. Significantly, many of their efforts aim to take humans (and
the errors they inevitably engender) out of the loop. ... IBM's scheme
borrows ideas from control theory (the use of feedback to stabilize closed-loop
systems) and artificial intelligence (mimicking or otherwise capturing
expert human skills or intelligence to solve complex problems). These
concepts will help create data centers that can diagnose problems on their
own, adjust their configurations to match changes in demand, repair themselves
and defend against hacker attacks. Drawing an analogy with the body's
autonomic nervous system, IBM's management calls this goal Autonomic Computing." June 2003: Computers
That Speak Your Language - Voice recognition that finally holds up
its end of a conversation is revolutionizing customer service. Now the
goal is to make natural language the way to find any type of information,
anywhere. By Wade Roush. Technology Review. "If computers could understand
and respond to such routine natural-language requests, the results would
be win-win: airlines wouldn't need to hire so many agents, and consumers
wouldn't have to struggle with the confusion of touch-tone interfaces
that leave them furiously tapping the '0' button, vainly trying to reach
a live operator. Futurists have been envisioning such a world since at
least 1968, when 2001: A Space Odyssey's HAL 9000 became the archetypal
voice-interactive computer. Academic and corporate researchers intrigued
by the sheer coolness of the idea have been tinkering for just as long
with systems for recognizing and responding to human speech. But technologies
don't take hold because they're cool: they need a business imperative.
For language processing, it's the enormous expense of live customer service
that's finally driving the technologies out of the lab. ... Such improvements
have set up natural-language systems for explosive growth: 43 percent
of North American companies have either purchased interactive voice response
software for their call centers or are conducting pilot studies, according
to Forrester Research, a technology analysis firm. As more companies replace
their old touch-tone phone menus, today's $500 million market for telephone-based
speech applications will grow -- reaching $3.5 billion by 2007, according
to Steve McClure, a vice president in the software research group at market
analysis firm IDC." |
|||||