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December 31, 2004: Robots Are Learning, But No "Terminators" Are About To Appear. By David Isaac. Investor's Business Daily (subscription req'd.). "While we're not in danger of creating any Terminators soon, scientists are making robots more intelligent. They are teaching robots via a concept called machine learning. The specifics of machine learning are complex, but the basics are simple: Machines can 'learn' from their own experiences. Computers truly will learn, improve and become smarter with experience, says Tom Mitchell, director of the Center for Automated Learning and Discovery at Carnegie Mellon University. Robotics engineers have turned to machine learning because it's more effective and more practical than having to use computer programming to code every scenario a robot might encounter. ... Mitchell is using machine learning to find out what goes on in the human brain when a person reads. The research, he says, might offer insight into how the mind organizes conceptual categories, such as 'tools' and 'animals.' ... But, cautions Mitchell, machine learning is not creating human robots. The human mind is not like a computer, he says. 'It's a very different kind of machine. It's not so digital as it seems. We have a much more distributed network of neurons,' Mitchell said. His caution is well-grounded. There's a long tradition of comparing the human mind to the latest man-made technology. But the comparisons have proved inaccurate. ... On the other hand, it turns out aspects of machine-learning can be compared to the way the mind works. Take reinforcement learning, one approach that is part of machine learning and human learning. This approach involves giving the robot a reward, essentially pushing a green button for good and a red button for bad. ... It seems this is similar to how the mind functions. Mitchell says the chemical dopamine, which produces a sensation of pleasure, acts like the green button, as a reward signal." December 31, 2004: Analysis - The triumph of the robots. By Phil Berardelli. United Press International / available from The Washington Times. "NASA's robotic craft exploring Mars and the Saturnian system in 2004, however, have carried off feats that are unparalleled in human history -- and they promise to deliver more wonders in the new year. ... Cassini and Huygens, like the twin Mars rovers, represent perhaps the most sophisticated robotic craft built so far. They are designed to act largely independently because the rovers -- and the Saturn craft even more so -- are beyond the range of direct control from mission scientists. ... The situation is much more so for Cassini and Huygens, which currently are about 800 million miles away from Earth." December 31, 2004: The top 10 news stories of 2004 - 8. Photo recognition software gives location. By Sean O'Neill. NewScientist.com news. "The program matches the photograph to a database of three-dimensional images, meaning its accuracy is better than GPS or cellphone positioning." December 31, 2004: Roboshark to hunt tourists. By Julianna Kettlewell. BBC News. "The world's only robotic shark is going to make some electronic friends. The star of last year's BBC documentary, Smart Sharks, will retire to a watery heaven - complete with robotic tuna to feast on. ... The innovative leisure centre will contain a 40m diameter aquarium, which the designers hope will encourage interest in robotics, artificial intelligence and marine technologies. 'There is an education side to this,' explained Mr [Andrew] Sneath. 'In the Hydrodome we are going to have robot labs for kids and adults to learn about building and programming a robot.' Roboshark's companions will include a shoal of robotic tuna - dubbed Tintuna - and a collection of robotic sting rays." December 31, 2004: Simplicity sets tone for cell phones. Editorial by Nicholas Negroponte. The Straits Times (Singapore) Asia News Network / available from The Korea Times. "A scenario even more futuristic than the tooth telephone is a new class of device, one with reasoning and common sense. An example might be a mobile phone that neither rings nor vibrates: instead it answers itself or reads the message and takes appropriate action, like a well-trained butler who knows when and how to interrupt you. This level of intelligence, which probably will not be available for another 10 to 20 years, requires familiarity with you, your life and your moods, the kind you would expect to find in the world's best human secretary. But this artificial intelligence also requires a familiar understanding of the world around us and how we live in it. None of these advances will happen tomorrow. Instead we will evolve through a handful of smaller changes that can be expected with greater speed and certainty." December 30, 2004: Preparing for the Next 'DARPA Grand Challenge'- Designers developing autonomous robot vehicle for October competition. By Terry Persun. Automotive DesignLine. "Team Overbot is a group of enthusiasts, engineers, and partners building an autonomous robot vehicle for the October 8, 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge. We're talking a trek close to 150 miles through all kinds of terrain. And at the end of the road is a $2,000,000 prize." December 30, 2004: "TaskTracer" To Revolutionize Computers. By Dawn Marie Woodward. KVAL 13 News. "Computer scientists at Oregon State University have developed a new 'TaskTracer' system that could revolutionize the way people work with their computers - it automatically organizes all the materials needed on various projects, and should provide order, simplicity and convenience to a world that is too often paralyzed by information overload. The first version of the system, which taps into the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence, is currently being tested by other experts, and may be available for commercial use soon, the researchers say. ... 'Our whole idea is to create a list of tasks you are working on at any one time, organize everything around those tasks and let you reclaim your desktop computer,' said Jon Herlocker, an OSU assistant professor of computer science, who developed this new system along with professor Tom Dietterich, a pioneer in the development of 'intelligent' computing systems." December 30, 2004: These content apps were kings. By L. C. Wong. The Star Online TechCentral. "What does a virtual girlfriend, a navigation system, a celebrity look-alike service and a barcode solution have in common? They were the mobile applications that beat 200 others from around the world to bag the top prizes at this year’s Ericsson Mobile Application Awards. ... Hong Kong’s Artificial Life Inc (www.artificial-life.com) bagged the top prize in the Best Mobile Gaming category for its Virtual Girlfriend or V-Girl application, which uses an interactive 3D role-playing engine to simulate a 'real-life' relationship. ... With [Eberhard] Schoneburg’s background in artificial intelligence (AI) technology, Artificial Life started creating 'virtual people' applications for the Internet in 1993, but only recently discovered a niche for AI applications on the mobile platform. ... Artificial Life plans to penetrate other markets, and is also working on using the same AI technology on applications for other market segments. It has already developed a 'virtual assistant' application that can take over some of the functions of the mobile phone. 'These virtual assistants can filter and read e-mail, manage the calendar function and send messages,' Schoneburg claimed." December 30, 2004: Cabinet okays ban on use of child jockeys in camel races. QNA/AFP - available from The Peninsula. "Qatar said yesterday that it was banning the use of children as jockeys in camel races, a favourite sport in the Gulf region that has been widely criticised over the use of children brought from southern Asia. ... The move follows an announcement by Doha that it was preparing to substitute robots for jockeys from next year. ... Sheikh Hamad had told in October that the robot was being developed by a Swiss company and would be ready in 2005. Property rights for the robot have since been registered for Qatar. Sheikh Hamad announced last March that robot-jockeys had been used in a camel race for the first time." December 29, 2004: Fear and loathing -Some of the worries about nanotechnology are rational, some not. The Economist (access to some articles in the survey require a subscription). "Not long ago Ella Standage was woken by a bad dream about nanobots. She was terrified that nanoscale machines might replicate uncontrollably and turn the entire planet into grey goo. Ms Standage is not the only one to worry about such imaginary horrors, but at least she has an excuse: she is only four years old. The grey-goo idea goes back to a prediction by Eric Drexler, chairman of the Foresight Institute, a nanotechnology-policy group in Palo Alto, that one day all manufacturing would be done by very tiny robots. ... For this plan to work, though, these robots would have to be able to make more of their own kind, otherwise things would take far too long to build. Mr Drexler thought these hypothetical nanobots would have to be self-replicating, and gave warning that care would have to be taken to ensure they did not replicate out of control. This idea launched a wave of public concern. If these nanobots started making copies of themselves by scavenging materials from their environment, it was suggested, they would eventually become visible to humans as a seething mass of tiny robots, or grey goo --- and might ultimately consume the entire planet. ... James Wilsdon, head of strategy at Demos, a British-based think-tank, thinks that nanotechnology needs to be 'opened up for discussion', and questions should be asked such as, 'What is the technology for? Who controls it? Who will take responsibility if things go wrong?' And Britain's Cambridge University recently recruited a staff ethicist at its Nanoscience Centre. The head of the unit, Mark Welland, says this is an experiment, aimed partly at ensuring that their scientists take ethical concerns on board. But it also allows the unit to engage with groups such Demos and Greenpeace, and cleverly allows it to be part of the debate rather than its subject. ... [N]obody really knows what the public wants from nanotechnology. According to two recent surveys in America and Britain, most people do not even know what it is."
>>> Systems, Robots, Ethical & Social Implications December 29, 2004: Man Meets Machine. Hull Daily Mail & this is hull. "Highlighting technology as the source of mankind's greatest hopes and fears, organisers say they hope to prove the gap between man and machine 'is more fluid than you might think'. An HTBA [Hull Time Based Arts] spokesperson adds: "Artists, writers and thinkers have stepped into the space between the real and the technological, questioning Artificial Intelligence and attempting to occupy cyberspace physically." ... For further information about any of these events, visit www.timebase.org." December 29, 2004: The year in technology. By Will Knight. New Scientist.com news. "The year 2004 began with a war of the computer worms and ended with running robots as technology stories continually hit the news." December 29, 2004: Believe the Hype, or Be Left Behind - Carnegie Mellon's Frank Demmler says that older executives have a bias against technology, and it's up to CIOs to recognize this and adjust their messages to the board accordingly. Higher Learning report by Frank Demmler. CIO. "As I was preparing to write this article, I searched the CIO.com website to see if my topic had a name. Lo and behold, not only did it have a name, but Tom Davenport wrote an article about it. [Decision Evolution; October 1, 2004.] 'It' is what he called, 'automated decision systems.' In his article, Mr. Davenport observed that we have moved beyond decision support systems to something that is more powerful and more useful than has been realized in the past. The promise of artificial intelligence, and all of its successors, is beginning to be realized in real world applications. I found myself agreeing with his main points while experiencing keen a sense of déjà vu. Over the years, I've read similar comments about earlier generations of the next big thing in IT that did not live up to the hype, including artificial intelligence (AI), as Davenport notes. In his concluding paragraph, he states: 'This brave new world has been along time coming, but it is clearly upon us now. Businesses need to incorporate automated decision making into their strategies and processes or they won't be successful very long…' Is he accurately predicting the future, or will this be another case of over-promise, under-deliver? As CIO, you will need to make that call. Make the right decision and you're a hero. Guess wrong and you're not. For what it's worth, after much soul searching, I agree with Davenport. This time it's for real. His call for action is prudent, and CIOs need to act now." December 29, 2004: Fly-eating robot powers itself. CNN. "Scientists at the University of the West of England (UWE) have designed a robot that does not require batteries or electricity to power itself. Instead, it generates energy by catching and eating houseflies. Dr Chris Melhuish and his Bristol-based team hope the robot, called EcoBot II, will one day be sent into zones too dangerous for humans, potentially proving invaluable in military, security and industrial areas. Melhuish, who is director of the Intelligent Autonomous Systems Lab at the UWE, told CNN that the EcoBot II was a result of a quest for an intelligent robot that could function without human supervision. ... The EcoBot II powers itself in much the same way as animals feed themselves to get their energy, he said." December 29, 2004: Which generation decides how technology will advance? E-Legal column by Eric J. Sinrod. USA Today. "We now are at another year's end. Looking back, we see once again that while technological advances move forward at times at warp speed, the law struggles to catch up. The focus of this week's column is to raise a particular generational issue when it comes to the legal regulation of technological innovation." December 29, 2004: Math + software = learning. By Lynn Thompson. The Seattle Times. "A half-dozen high-school math students tell a remarkably similar story. Last year they didn't understand algebra. They came to class, listened to the teacher, tried to do the homework and failed. This year, using a computer-based program called Cognitive Tutor, these students are progressing steadily and staying engaged. ... Research indicates that Cognitive Tutor, an interactive program that analyzes students' strengths and weaknesses and allows them to work at their own pace, significantly increases math skills." December 29, 2004: Intelligent joint supports use wireless technology. E-Health Insider. "Joint supports for patients with arthritis or poor muscle strength could soon get an injection of artificial intelligence and wireless technology, thanks to the Instituto de Automácia Industrial (IAI) in Madrid. The device, called 'GAIT', incorporates electronic sensors into each support bandage (orthosis) that respond to the way the ankle, knee or elbow is moving, calculate the best way of responding, and then mechanically manipulate the bandage so it eases the flow of energy through the joint." December 27, 2004: Just How Old Can He Go? By Steve Lohr. The New York Times (reg. req'd.). "'Genes are sequential programs,' [Ray Kurzweil] said. 'We are learning how to manipulate the programs inside us, the software of life. And personally, I really believe that what I'm doing is reprogramming my biochemistry.' His new book shows a different side of Mr. Kurzweil's continuing fascination with the connection between humans and computers. In 'The Age of Spiritual Machines,' published in 1999, Mr. Kurzweil made the case for why computers will exceed human intelligence within a few decades. ... He has few qualms about technology, which he says is 'the continuation of evolution by other means.' Just as the boundaries of computing will soon seem limitless, Mr. Kurzweil insists that improving knowledge and technology will make death avoidable. The book describes three stages - the authors call them 'bridges' - over the next 20 to 25 years. By the late 2020's, Mr. Kurzweil predicts, the fruits of artificial intelligence and nanotechnology, a technology that permits changes to the body at the cellular level, will really kick in so that science will enable people to rebuild their bodies, any way they want to. In 15 to 20 years, he contends that advances in the understanding of gene processes will make it possible for biotechnology therapies to turn off and reverse disease and aging. ... In 1965, as a teenager, he appeared on the television program, 'I've Got a Secret,' hosted by Steve Allen, for having written a computer program that composed piano music." December 27, 2004: Brain Gain. By Fred Hapgood. Bio-IT World. "Look out in the distance, and you'll see three clear roads to neurotech. The first approach is smart interfaces. When artificial intelligence researchers finally solve the general learning problem, it will be possible to build machines that learn to give humans what they want even before they know they want it. This route is the least invasive, but it is not without its own security issues. A good illustration of the inherent problems was made forcefully by the classic science fiction movie Forbidden Planet. ... The second method involves building neurocomputers and neuronetworks.... The third path uses advances in nanotechnology...." December 27, 2004: Time Magazine publishes its Person of the Year issue. Do you know in what year the cover proclaimed: The Computer, Machine of the Year?
>>> AI Overview, History December 26, 2004: At I.B.M., That Google Thing Is So Yesterday. By James Fallows. The New York Times (reg. req'd.). "Suddenly, the computer world is interesting again. ... The most attractive offerings are free, and they are concentrated in the newly sexy field of 'search.' ... [T]oday's subject is the virtually unpublicized search strategy of another industry heavyweight: I.B.M. ... I.B.M. says that its tools will make possible a further search approach, that of 'discovery systems' that will extract the underlying meaning from stored material no matter how it is structured (databases, e-mail files, audio recordings, pictures or video files) or even what language it is in. The specific means for doing so involve steps that will raise suspicions among many computer veterans. These include 'natural language processing,' computerized translation of foreign languages and other efforts that have broken the hearts of artificial-intelligence researchers through the years. But the combination of ever-faster computers and ever-evolving programming allowed the systems I saw to succeed at tasks that have beaten their predecessors. ... ... Jennifer Chu-Carroll of I.B.M. demonstrated a system called Piquant, which analyzed the semantic structure of a passage and therefore exposed 'knowledge' that wasn't explicitly there. After scanning a news article about Canadian politics, the system responded correctly to the question, 'Who is Canada's prime minister?' even though those exact words didn't appear in the article. ... The Semantic Analysis Workbench, demonstrated by Eric Brown and Dave Ferrucci, showed another way of exposing latent meaning." December 25, 2004: ID System Gets in Face of Criminals - LAPD officers field-test a hand-held computer using facial recognition to identify suspects. Critics raise issues of privacy and reliability. By Richard Winton. Los Angeles Times (reg. req'd.) "The potential of the facial-recognition technology could be seen in a recent police stop on Alvarado Street just west of downtown Los Angeles, where police have been testing the cameras. ... As they questioned the pair, Rampart Division Senior Lead Officer Mike Wang pointed a hand-held computer with a camera attached toward the man on the bicycle seat. Facial-recognition software in the device compared the image with those in a database that includes photos of recent fugitives, as well as 78 members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang and 45 members of the 18th Street gang. ... Within seconds, the screen had displayed a gallery of nine faces with contours similar to the man's. The computer concluded that one of those images --- of Jose Hernandez, an 18th Street member subject to the civil injunction --- was the closest match, with a 94% probability of accuracy. ... The LAPD has been using two of the computers donated by their developer, Santa Monica-based Neven Vision. The firm, a pioneer in facial-recognition technology, was looking to have its products field-tested. ... Hartmut Neven, developer of the software the LAPD is trying out, says his system uses an algorithm to translate various parts of the face into complex mathematical patterns employed to develop unique numerical templates." December 24, 2004: Cryptic languages pronounced with a bit of a Lisp. By Tony Valsamidis. The Times Higher Education Supplement (Books, page 28; subscription req'd.). "Not many years ago, a review of artificial intelligence systems reported that the majority were coded in Lisp, a programming language that is particularly suited to their implementation. Lisp, which was devised in the earliest days of computers, survives in many systems today in various forms despite its clumsy syntax involving the extensive use of nested brackets. Thomas Dean, an AI specialist, is an aficionado of Lisp, and most of the examples in his book [Talking with Computers] are given in Scheme, a dialect of Lisp. That is not to say that he excludes more fashionable languages such as Java, indeed he points out that many programming languages vary only in minor syntactical ways from each other." December 23, 2004: Robocopters dodge obstacles. By Michael Kanellos. CNET News.com. "University of California researchers are tinkering with technology that will, ideally, let helicopters fly themselves. The Berkeley Aerial Robot (BEAR) project passed a significant milestone earlier this month, when a 130-pound model of a helicopter successfully guided itself through a course that included random obstacles that weren't on its internal map -- a first, according to the university. ... Last year, BEAR researchers flew two helicopters at each other in a game of chicken. 'They flew toward each other, sensed each other and adjusted their course,' said a UC Berkeley spokeswoman. ... While the obstacle avoidance system tested this month relies on lasers, researchers will start to dedicate more energy to computer vision systems. In these, sensors feed digital images to onboard computers, which then, through probability and artificial intelligence, try to chart a safe course." December 23, 2004: Christmas, AI and 'The Uplift Wars.' Commentary by Paul Murphy. LinuxInsider News. "I've been rereading David Brin's first Uplift series -- as astonishingly self-consistent a vision of galactic life as any science fiction writer has ever offered and quite appropriate to the Christmas season. In Brin's imaginary universe, a mysterious and long gone race known as the progenitors set in place a unity of life across five galaxies largely by focusing moral valuations around the development and protection of sentience. ... Tracy Kidder's book, The Soul of a New Machine, isn't about the soul of the machine at all, but about the commitment of the engineers developing it. Implicitly, however, there are assumptions of both value and transfer in the book: value in the sense that the human commitment, emotions and drives are assumed to be worthwhile, and transfer in the sense that the effect of these factors among the developers is presented as adding value to the machine. You don't see consideration of anything remotely like that in the writings credited as fundamental among the artificial intelligence community. ... There isn't, for example, a working definition of intelligence that can be used to unambiguously differentiate what is, and is not, intelligent." December 22, 2004: Birth of Korean Humanoid Robot Marks Brilliance Advance in Korea Robotics. By Yeo Shi-dong. Digital Chosunilbo. "HUBO, a Korean 'humanoid robot,' has been born. HUBO follows Japan's ASIMO as the second such robot in the world. HUBO, which waits its official unveiling on Jan. 6 following a year of work by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)...." December 22, 2004: True hipsters include gizmos of 2010 on their wish lists. Kevin Maney's Technology Column. USA Today. "To be truly hip, you need to start angling for the hot tech toys of Christmas 2010. Like, maybe a translating digital camera. Say you're hiking in the Costa Rican jungle, and you get bitten by a snake. While crumpling in pain, you notice a sign that says, ' ¡Peligro! Serpientes venenosas!' But you don't know Spanish. So you take a photo of the sign, click a 'translate' button on the camera, and the screen shows that the sign says, 'Danger! Poisonous snakes!' Wouldn't that be handy? There's actually a working prototype in Hewlett-Packard's labs." December 22, 2004: Robots Suffer for Art's Sake. By Daniel Terdiman. Wired News. "In Hollywood these days, post-modern technologies -- and in particular, robots -- are often portrayed as a threat to humanity. In films like Metropolis, I Robot, The Matrix and Minority Report, the audience faces endless scenes where people must fight or be scared of technology. ... [Fernando] Orellana recently won an honorable-mention prize at the Spanish art show, Vida 7.0, for his piece, Unending Closure, an installation aimed at showing that sometimes, common perceptions are far off base. ... Sabrina Raaf, who originally curated Unending Closure, thinks Orellana is making a wry observation about a pop-culture view of technology, especially in light of the way Hollywood has presented robots and other technology as embarked on a malicious path to eventually outsmart humans. 'To portray machines, or to make a machine that is shy or reticent,' Raaf said, 'then you're flipping that notion on its head, that machines are these dark, insidious forces in our culture and that machines will eventually enslave us.'" December 21, 2004: The Iron Man Who Also Putts. Western Daily Press. "Is it a birdie? Is it a plane? No it's the world's most sophisticated humanoid - playing golf. Sony robot Qrio...." December 21, 2004: Television broadcast of The Charlie Rose Show: A Conversation About Artificial Intelligence, with Rodney Brooks (Director, MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory & Fujitsu Professor of Computer Science & Engineering, MIT), Eric Horvitz (Senior Researcher and Group Manager, Adaptive Systems & Interaction Group, Microsoft Research), and Ron Brachman (Director, Information Processing Technology Office, Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, and President, American Association for Artificial Intelligence). "Rose: What do you think has been the most important advance so far? Brachman: A lot of people will vary on that and I'm sure we all have different opinions. In some respects one of the - - - I think the elemental insights that was had at the very beginning of the field still holds up very strongly which is that you can take a computing machine that normally, you know, back in the old days we think of as crunching numbers, and put inside it a set of symbols that stand in representation for things out in the world, as if we were doing sort of mental images in our own heads, and actually with computation, starting with something that's very much like formal logic, you know, if-then-else kinds of things, but ultimately getting to be softer and fuzzier kinds of rules, and actually do computation inside, if you will, the mind of the machine, that begins to allow intelligent behavior. I think that crucial insight, which is pretty old in the field, is really in some respects one of the lynch pins to where we've gotten. ... Horvitz: I think many passionate researchers in artificial intelligence are fundamentally interested in the question of Who am I? Who are people? What are we? There's a sense of almost astonishment at the prospect that information processing or computation, if you take that perspective, could lead to this. Coupled with that is the possibility of the prospect of creating consciousnesses with computer programs, computing systems some day. It's not talked about very much at formal AI conferences, but it's something that drives some of us in terms of our curiosity and intrigue. I know personally speaking, this has been a core question in the back of my mind, if not the foreground, not on my lips typically, since I've been very young. This is this question about who am I. Rose: ... can we create it? Horvitz: Is it possible - - - is it possible that parts turning upon parts could generate this?" [Also available from Google Video: access the video and then fast forward to 26:10.] December 21, 2004: Dr Raj Reddy makes PCs talk the masses language. By V. Rishi Kumar. The Hindu Business Line. "Dr Raj Reddy, Head of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Lab, Carnegie Mellon University, is on a mission to bridge the digital divide but with a difference --- empowering illiterates to actually use computers! Having started with the design of a low-cost innovative entertainment-cum-communication device referred to as PCTV, that builds on open source software, Dr Reddy is now engaged in building artificial intelligence into speech recognition software and language process synthesis. These would enable even a person with language barrier actually access the benefits of a computer, while reaping the advantages of entertainment." December 21, 2004: Robotic squirrel part of trend to improve undergrad research. By Ryan Meehan. Associated Press / available from USA Today. "In 1998, a panel put together to examine the undergraduate experience called for significant change at America's research universities. Get more undergraduates involved in research, the Boyer Commission said. The reason: Students learn more from doing than they do from listening. Soon after, USF created an Office of Undergraduate Research. ... Last year, the two professors responded to USF's new interest in undergraduate research by proposing two research-based classes that focused on animal behavior, robotics, anatomy and graphic design. The classes are being financed by a $10,000 grant from the USF Center For Teaching Enhancement. ... 'Robots are sexy, [Deby] Cassill said. 'We are in a century where there will be a real serious interface between organic and inorganic technology.'" December 20, 2004: "If It Works, You Can Break It" - Since independence in 1991 little Estonia has used a knack for technology and a ravenous appetite for change to make itself a largely wired e-republic. By Joshua Levine. Forbes Global Magazine. "It proved to be a lucky break for Estonia that the Soviet Union took such pains to dampen any yearnings for freedom in the Baltic States. It meant that Estonian universities were not allowed to offer too many courses in philosophy and the social sciences. Philosophy is a dangerous thing among a patriotic people longing for the brief independence they lost. What did the Soviets want Estonians to study instead? Computer science, cybernetics, artificial intelligence and information technology. Estonians did much of the software programming and development for the Soviet space program, not to mention the KGB. The Soviets placed one of their most important centers of AI research near the capital city of Tallinn. ... [A] new generation of software designers is looking to turn Estonia into a kind of Silicon-Valley-with-herring. Within tech-savvy Scandinavia, however, the secret is already out." December 20, 2004: Wear a phone, send a kiss: let the future get under your skin. By Adam Luck and Alan Hamilton. Times Online. "Following in the footsteps of Nostradamus and Old Moore, a new breed of professional futurist is taking centre stage in government and big business. ... Ian Pearson, who leads BT’s futurist section, said: 'In the early 1990s we pretty much predicted the world wide web, text messaging, PDAs (personal digital assistants) and the growth in portable computers. Now we are looking forward to a world where a lot of that technology will disappear. It will be invisible and embedded. ... Mr Pearson added: 'The growth of artificial intelligence is inevitable, so you will have a DVD recorder that knows your own tastes and will record programmes to suit those tastes.' By 2010-15, he says, we will be able to build devices into our bodies using nanotechnology." December 19, 2004: Weapons detector could help soldiers see the unseen in Iraq. By Clay Holtzman. New Mexico Business Weekly / available from MSNBC. "A pair of New Mexico companies have developed a concealed weapons detection technology that, lately, has been raising as many eyebrows as it has alarms. he weapons detection system, developed by Electro Science Technologies LLC of Albuquerque, is capable of spotting hidden guns, bombs and even large knives secretly and from a distance. ... The system detects weapons or bombs by emitting low power radar waves that rebound off of a target and are interpreted by a sensor. Instead of looking for metal or forming an image of the target, the device looks for patterns that have been programmed into its artificial intelligence software." December 19, 2004: Thinking about the mind - Cal philosopher takes a stab at explaining why we have consciousness. Book review by Troy Jollimore. San Francisco Chronicle & SFGate.com. "'One agreeable feature of writing about the mind is that it is not necessary to explain why the subject is important,' John Searle writes in his new book, 'Mind: A Brief Introduction' [Oxford University]. ... [O]ne can happily say that the book is intelligent, learned and deeply interesting. Whether it is convincing is more difficult to say. Searle often comes across as a defender of common sense (though he admits that most ordinary people accept dualism, a theory he rejects).In particular, he argues against what he calls the strong program of artificial intelligence: the idea that the brain is quite literally a computer, and the mind is the program that it runs. Relative to the rather outlandish claims made by some proponents of this program -- particularly the various eliminativists, who have attempted to cast doubt on the very existence of beliefs (Paul Churchland), pain (Daniel Dennett) or even phenomenal consciousness itself (Georges Rey) -- Searle's position, which holds that consciousness is not only real but a very special phenomenon, not much like what goes on when a computer runs a program, does seem to have common sense on its side." December 19, 2004: Network Robot Project Gets Boost- Carnegie Mellon’s Raj Reddy Manifests Much-Touted 80/20 Rule. By Kim Tae-gyu. The Korea Times. "South Korea's scheme of launching network-based robots gained a boost after a world-famous artificial intelligence (AI) expert confirmed Korea is heading in the right direction. Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) professor Raj Reddy, one of the most respected scholars in the promising AI field, made the point in an e-mail interview with The Korea Times. ... On the development path of robots and AI, Reddy has provided an uncanny insight to the world, clearly manifest in the much-touted 80/20 rule. It refers to the concept of making the computer perform 80 percent of the task while leaving the other 20 percent to the human being. .... KT: In your own career, you started and continued emphasis on robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), even though many left these fields for greener pastures. Why did you maintain your emphasis on these fields? Reddy: I continue to work in AI and Robotics as my primary intellectual activity and scientific activity. In doing so, I followed examples of Carnegie Mellon's thought leaders, the intellectual giants such as Perlis, Newell and Simon. They encouraged young faculty to explore further development of the applications of computer science as a set of great challenges. Many other activities are related to societal issues and public policy. They are equally important and need to be pursued by scientists, engineers, executives, and everyone who can contribute to such endeavor. KT: What are the promises and challenges of artificial intelligence? Reddy: We will have super human capability to improve our capability. The challenge is to build systems that can learn from experience, and operate in human real time." December 17, 2004: Talon Today Is U.S. Military's Real-Life 'RoboCop'. By David Isaac. Investor's Business Daily (reg. req'd). "Science-fiction buffs seeing the military's armed Talon robot for the first time can't help but make comparisons to famous movie robots. Most say it looks like Number Johnny 5 from the 1986 film 'Short Circuit,' the story of a robot that becomes intelligent when struck by lightning, says Noah Shachtman, editor of the site Defensetech.org. The Talon reminds this reporter of one of the more menacing robots of the movies, ED-209, which goes berserk in the 1987 film 'RoboCop.' What makes the Talon important is that it's the first ground robot to carry arms. 'It's a bit of a turning point,' Shachtman said. 'It's a step everyone knew was coming at some point. It's still a little surprising when it finally hits.' ... The Department of Defense is pushing for more robots in all its branches. It's part of its Future Combat Systems program, a major overhaul of the military in which robots will play a central role. ... 'The day of fully autonomous large, unmanned ground vehicles is probably still six years away,' [Stephen DiAntonio of the the National Robotics Engineering Consortium] said." December 16, 2004: Technologies for the blind. Design Engineering. "Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, are developing new assistive technologies for the blind based on advances in computer vision that have emerged from research in robotics. A 'virtual white cane' is one of several prototype tools for the visually impaired developed by Roberto Manduchi, an assistant professor of computer engineering, and his students. ... Before coming to UC Santa Cruz in 2001, Manduchi worked for several years at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, applying computer vision technology to autonomous robotic systems. 'It is a natural evolution from helping a robot drive around to helping a blind person navigate their environment,' he said." December 16, 2004: Tomorrow's chips, naturally. IST Results. "Visionaries more than half a century ago imagined machines capable of growth, self-repair and self-replication. By digitally mimicking biological tissue’s properties, European researchers recently demonstrated a platform for autonomous computer systems. 'There are three ways to model hardware on self-organising biology,' says Juan-Manuel Moreno, coordinator of the IST POEtic project. 'They are development, learning and evolution – respectively known to biologists as ontogenesis, epigenesis and phylogenesis. All three models are based on a one-dimensional description of the organism, the genome.' In the early 1990s, computer scientists tested systems that mimic the development of an individual as directed by their genetic code. Then they started to use artificial intelligence to copy the processes of learning, as influenced by an individual’s genetic code and their environment. 'But until our project, nobody had succeeded in bringing together all three models in a single piece of hardware,' adds Moreno. In May 2004, the partners received the first POEtic chips. Each one included a specially developed microprocessor, designed to run evolutionary algorithms, and a basic programmable unit. ... The chips will be tested in early 2005, using applications such as autonomous robots and speech synthesis software." December 16, 2004: Why science needs a Great Communicator. By Jenny Rees. Western Mail / available from ic Wales. "Steve Grand, inventor of Lucy the robotic orangutan, has criticised academics in the field of artificial intelligence, likening them to people wanting to get to the Moon by learning how to jump really well rather than by researching rocket science. Current attempts to entice students into science degrees, by radically changing the curriculum, or offering financial incentives, may be just as misguided, when the real problem appears to be a deep-rooted misunderstanding of science caused by scientists' failure to communicate its cultural significance in society. Scientists feel that only their own should communicate science, but any that do are treated like the proverbial leper, cast out and forced to appear on bizarre TV shows.... Dissemination of good science is necessary - ignorance can prevent swaying of political support for or against a potentially hazardous application of technology; funding bodies need to be seen to be addressing issues of public concern and the social or cultural consequences of a scientific concept can only be realised by discussion in the community. Pseudo science may be informing the public at least as much, and possibly more than, any real science communication efforts of those interested in science." December 16, 2004: When Shots Ring Out, a Listening Device Acts as Witness. By Cyrus Farivar. The New York Times (reg. req'd.). "In an unusual application of neuroscience research, police agencies around the country may soon be able to equip street corners with microphones and video cameras to fight gun-related crime. The system [Setri: Smart Sensor Enabled Neural Threat Recognition and Identification], based on work by Dr. Theodore Berger, director of the Center for Neural Engineering at the University of Southern California, uses the equipment and a computer to recognize gunshots, pinpoint where they came from and transmit the coordinates to a command center. It relies on software that mimics the way the human brain receives, processes and analyzes sound. ... In the summer of 2002, Dr. Berger had been working on applying his research to voice recognition software, and discovered that it worked even in very noisy environments."
>>> Speech, Neural Networks, Machine Learning, Law Enforcement, Assisitve Technologies, Applications December 15, 2004: Building thinking robotics for the real world. IST Results. "Researchers at the Bayesian Inspired Brain and Artefacts (BIBA) project are using a novel application of Bayesian reasoning to design artefacts (objects produced or shaped by human craft) that can learn to act rationally with incomplete information. ... BIBA project researchers use Bayesian reasoning to understand the behaviour of animals and then apply this same logic to create artefacts for the 'real world'. Pierre Bessière, Scientific Manager of the IST programme-funded BIBA project at INRIA’s GRAVIR laboratory in France explains: 'Both living organisms and robotic systems face the difficulty of how to use an incomplete model of their environment to perceive, infer, decide and act efficiently.' ... BIBA researchers developed probabilistic programming methods for the Cycab that use biologically plausible techniques to define the obstacle avoidance system as a survival instinct. The goal is to create a completely automatic car that doesn’t need a human driver and can safely navigate streets that are beset with unpredictable occurrences." December 15, 2004: Making books readable on computer proves trying task. By Michelle Kessler. USA Today. "It's not very easy to teach a computer to read. Turning paper books into searchable digital files requires artificial intelligence. It's tough for computers to pick up on visual clues that humans use when they read a book. Think about it: In many type fonts, the number '1' and lower-case letter 'l' are identical. How can a computer figure out the difference? Scientists have worked on the problem for more than 20 years. They're making big strides, but the results are imperfect. ... Special software, called optical character recognition (OCR), allows computers to look at a picture and pick out words. ... Carnegie Mellon University's 'Million Book Project' aims to put a million books online in partnership with 18 universities in India and China. Although the project will promote the schools' libraries, it's mainly a research problem for its computer science department, says Gloriana St. Clair, Carnegie Mellon's dean of libraries." December 15, 2004: Who Wants To Talk Like A Computer? By Courtland Milloy, Metro Columnist. The Washington Post (reg. req'd.). "Julie and other 'virtual characters' are designed to assist and, perhaps someday, replace telephone operators and customer service representatives. They are a product of the latest in speech-recognition technology, but they annoy me -- and not just because my slightly southern accent seems to baffle them. When I hear a voice on the telephone, I instinctively expect it to be human, of a certain sex and age range and with a personality. I don't like some machine trying to fake out my primal brain. ... I called David Israel, director of the natural language program at the Artificial Intelligence Center in Menlo Park, Calif., and told him about my difficulty being understood by Julie and her ilk. I try to sound midwestern, I explained, and to sharpen my enunciation. 'That makes it worse,' Israel said. 'Don't change your voice or speak slowly or get loud, like you're talking to a foreigner. No hyper-articulation, either. The machines are trained for normal speech patterns.' Apparently, I'd been trained for something else -- like how to talk to people." December 15, 2004: Next generation of Honda's walking 'bot learns to jog. By Yuri Kageyama. Associated Press / available from USA Today. "The walking, talking child-size robot from Honda now manages an easy, although comical, jog --- the latest in the Japanese automaker's quest to imitate human movement. ... Although Asimo has already climbed up and down stairs and carried on simple conversations with voice-recognition capability, it still can't step over things in its way or run up and down slopes, Honda officials said.... Honda is hoping Asimo will be running errands, delivering relatively light things such as in-office mail, working side by side with Honda employees perhaps by 2010, said Takanobu Ito, a managing director." December 15, 2004: Ecobot Eats Dead Flies for Fuel. By Lakshmi Sandhana. Wired News. "Robots walk, robots talk and, soon, robots will eat, too. Researchers at the University of the West of England, Bristol, are working on creating autonomous robots that power themselves using substances found in the environment. Professors Chris Melhuish and John Greenman plan to give robots their very own guts -- artificial digestive systems and the corresponding metabolisms that will allow robots to digest food. ... 'People have built these things before but this is the first robot that actually uses unrefined food,' said Melhuish. ... Given the complex behaviors involved with luring and trapping prey, though, the first generation of such robots is more likely to consist of natural vegetarians, eventually developing in such a way as to eat any organic matter. ... 'It's like the very first petrol engine that was ever invented,' Greenman said. 'If you compare the power output from the first petrol engine compared to the Formula One racing engine that they have nowadays....'" December 14, 2004: Robotic maze mission. Herald & Review. "A robot rumbles through a darkened labyrinth as 'Mission Impossible' theme music rises from the cavernous maze. No, this isn't a scene from a far-fetched futuristic action movie. It's part of a semester-end project in James Rauff's artificial intelligence class at Millikin University. ... The project is a small-scale simulation of the search-and-rescue machines used to find people buried in earthquakes or rubble from a collapsed building, Rauff said. Students learn engineering, design, programming and teamwork with the project." December 14, 2004: A land of wasted web opportunity. By Adam Turner. The Sydney Morning Herald. "[Ivan] Herman says a common misconception is that the semantic web requires building artificial intelligence into the internet, but it only requires that data be better structured to provide more context about what is being referred to. Such 'data about data' is called 'metadata'. 'It is basically adding metadata to various resources on the web in an intelligent manner so it can be used by all kinds of programs and (software) agents. ...' Herman says." December 14, 2004: Grant to help out PNNL cancer project. By John Trumbo. Tri-City Herald. "A $9.7 million research grant for the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle to fight cancer will draw on emerging research efforts at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland. ... The aim of the grants is to fund research that will identify proteins in the blood that by themselves or in combination with other biomarkers will indicate people with cancer or at high risk of developing cancer. ... The field of proteomics, which involves identifying proteins and their role in biology, has become a major area of interest at the Richland lab in recent years. The work involves extracting proteins from blood, urine or body tissues, then using mass spectrometry to analyze the protein fragments. By using an artificial-intelligence computer program to compare the fragments, called protein signatures, researchers hope to find the biomarkers that point to cancer." December 14, 2004: Robot, go forth and multiply. Stuff. "Korean scientists have created the world's first 'artificial species' - a robot with genes that it can pass on to other robots. Professor Kim Jong-Hwan, already known as the creator of 'robot football', has developed 14 artificial chromosomes that he says will determine robots' 'personality'. He said he believed that within 20 years lonely people will use their personal robots to keep them company, replacing cats and dogs. ... Dr Kim is in New Zealand as the keynote speaker at the second international conference on 'autonomous robots and agents'. ... 'The artificial chromosome is a software system. It means that the information - their 'genes' - can be easily sent to other robots,' he said. ... Dr Kim said there was no danger that such self-reproducing robots would take over the world as portrayed in movies such as this year's blockbuster I, Robot." December 14, 2004: Chess Conspiracy Unconvincing. Movie review by Jason Silverman. Wired News. "When Garry Kasparov, considered the greatest chess player of all time, sat down to play a high-stakes tournament on May 3, 1997, most of humanity seemed to be rooting for him. His opponent that day? Deep Blue, a computer designed by IBM. By the time the six-game match was finished, it was clear that Kasparov was no longer the best chess player on the planet. That honor now belonged to a machine. This battle between man and computer is the subject of a new documentary, Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine. ... Deep Blue isn't the first chess-playing machine to shock the world. The Turk, an automaton designed in the 1770s, defeated Napoleon, Benjamin Franklin and Catherine the Great, and is said to have inspired Charles Babbage to begin working on the first computer. How did the Turk do it? Could its mechanical processes be sophisticated enough to beat a grandmaster at chess? Or did the machine rely (as Edgar Allan Poe suggested) on human intervention? Those same questions resurface 200 years later in Game Over." December 13, 2004: Consequences of technology not always desirable. By Gerard Voland. Journal Gazette & FortWayne.com. "Will we live happier, healthier, safer and more satisfying lives because of scientific advancements in robotics, nanotechnology, genetic engineering and other areas? Or will we drift into a future with ever-increasing dangers and frustrations because of these advancements?" December 13, 2004: WebMed dispenses advice to students. By Robyn Shelton. Orlando Sentinel. "The site -- 24/7 WebMed -- takes students through questions, judges the severity of their symptoms and offers guidance for what to do next. ... 'It's decision-support systems, or artificial intelligence in a way,' said Dr. Scott Gettings, DSHI medical director. 'The system learns about you as you flow through and answer questions and determines how ill you are.' It makes no attempt to go further and diagnose the patient's illness -- but gauges the seriousness of the symptoms. 'This is not intended to take the place of human interaction, but to augment it,' said Dr. Michael Deichen, associate director of clinical services at the UCF Student Health Center. 'It really just helps the students know with what urgency they should be evaluated.'" December 13, 2004: M.I.T. Technology Review Adopts More Serious Tone. By Victoria Shannon. The New York Times (reg. req'd.). "Technology Review at M.I.T., like many similar magazines, was born during a technology boom. In The Review's case, that boom took place in the late 1800's, which may help explain why it has outlived so many of its recent imitators, like Red Herring and The Industry Standard. Now Technology Review, which was introduced in 1899 with such titillating headlines as 'The Function of the Laboratory' and 'Applied Science and the University,' is getting a makeover with help from a refugee of the latest tech bubble. Jason Pontin, the former editor of Red Herring before that magazine's collapse in 2002, has remade The Review for more sober times. 'We want to levelly and intelligently analyze today's and tomorrow's technology,' Mr. Pontin said. ... Like Scientific American and Popular Science, Technology Review is trying to take advantage of a new interest in the discovery of technology, some media experts believe. 'We believe it's a very strong sector,' said Eric McClure, media director of DCA Advertising in New York. 'We look at the readers of a Technology Review or a Scientific American as intelligent, well-educated, generally influential people.'" December 13, 2004: No End To His Imagination. By Ken Spencer Brown. Investor's Business Daily (reg. req'd.). "Imagination should have no limits. And for Alan Turing, it didn't. By refusing to envision only what was strictly practical, he expanded the bounds of what was possible. ... Turing's most advanced ideas became a foundation for computer science with the dawning of the digital age he'd envisioned. If things like software code, cryptography and artificial intelligence leave you scratching your head, just imagine wrestling with those concepts decades before the invention of the computer. ... Normally gentle in speech, Turing would defend his friends' views intensely when they were challenged. They often inspired him, too. The death of a close schoolmate in February 1930 sparked Turing's first published thoughts in metaphysics. In letters to the friend's mother, Turing pondered the connection between the human mind and the brain. These ideas sparked his thinking on artificial intelligence, which tries to model the human brain and the thought process. ... Turing described the functions of a machine that could solve any problem stated as a mathematical algorithm. Now known as a Turing machine, the theoretical device was the first to conceive of a general-use device that could store data and instructions and be programmed for lots of different math problems. ... Despite his work in artificial intelligence, Turing was no robot. He had a deep concern for other people." December 13, 2004: Providence team seeks high-tech solutions for amputee vets. Providence Business News. "A Providence-based research team has launched $7.2-million project financed by the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs to develop better ways to restore arm and leg function to amputees, including many returning from the war in Iraq. ... The scientists’ ultimate goal is to create 'biohybrid' limbs that will use regenerated tissue, lengthened bone, titanium prosthetics and implantable sensors that allow an amputee to use nerves and brain signals to move the arm or leg. ... [Dr. Roy] Aaron will oversee nine investigators at Brown and one at MIT. All have research appointments at the Providence VA. Together, the team has expertise in orthopaedic surgery, physical rehabilitation, community health, tissue engineering, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, robotics and materials science." December 12, 2004: An Adventurous Thinker. Interview with Ray Kurzweil. DevSource. "DevSource: In your writing, you've mentioned that the human tendency to pervasively accept innovations --- such as AI and machine intelligence --- causes it to become invisible. And, as a result, AI has become 'the pursuit of difficult computer science problems that have not yet been solved.' That's surely true for my 85-year-old Mom, who isn't quite sure how e-mail works and simply accepts the magic as delivered. Are developers (the people creating tomorrow's innovative solutions, or at least tomorrow's payroll processing) equally blind? Should they be? Ray: As we master and understand a technique, we think in terms of that technique --- Markov models, genetic algorithms, search techniques, signal processing methods --- and not generally about 'AI.' As we progress through the reverse-engineering of the human brain, we will expand our AI tool kit to incorporate the brain's methods for learning, pattern recognition, and decision making. Brain reverse engineering has not contributed that much to AI to date because we have not until recently had the tools to see the brain in action at sufficient temporal and spatial resolution. ... Most mainstream applications in a wide range of fields incorporate techniques that were AI research projects only a decade ago. Examples include search engines, automated investing, credit card fraud detection, automated analysis of electrocardiograms and blood cell images, monitoring intensive care units, flying and landing airplanes, guiding weapon systems, and many others." December 10, 2004: Flying eyes. By Helen Knight. The Engineer. "A fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles will co-operate with a ground robot on surveillance tasks in the Australian Outback, in trials to be held next year by BAE Systems. The series of trials are being organised by researchers at the company's Advanced Technology Centre (ATC), to demonstrate its autonomous systems, data fusion and artificial intelligence technologies. ... 'We hope to deploy a land vehicle in some preliminary experiments, where we would have air vehicles gathering information, and we will look at how they would interact with something on the ground, perhaps by giving it information it can use to decide where it should move to, to participate in the sensing task,' [Dr Phil Greenway] said. ... To allow the system to deal with uncertainties such as incomplete observations, problems with sensors or deliberate attempts to fool it by enemy forces, the team is using Bayesian network technology. These networks, based on statistical pattern recognition, use probability theory to cope with such uncertainties." December 10, 2004: Where Science, Fiction Meet - A Seattle museum is Paul Allen's homage to a genre that evolved from 'pulp' into literature, and influenced real discovery along the way. By Tomas Alex Tizon. Los Angeles Times (reg. req'd.). "Touted as the only one of its kind on the planet, the Science Fiction Museum is 13,000 square feet of history, schlock, interactive gadgets and paraphernalia, from Frankenstein to 'The Matrix.' ... For many people, science fiction, in the words of sci-fi writer Octavia Butler, was 'kid stuff.' But then something happened: Science fiction became not just respectable but respected, according to Eric Rabkin, professor of English at the University of Michigan. Science fiction is now a mainstream genre, spanning the range of artistic endeavor from the cartoonish to the prophetic. 'As recently as 10 years ago, people [in academia] thought of science fiction as beneath consideration,' Rabkin said. Today, major universities such as Rabkin's offer courses in sci-fi literature. Science fiction writers, such as Butler, now win MacArthur fellowships, the so-called 'genius grants,' and some have their works turned into blockbuster movies. ... The final seal of respectability has come from the group with the reputation as being the hardest to convince: scientists." December 10, 2004: Robotic pods take on car design. By Lakshmi Sandhana. BBC News. "A new breed of wearable robotic vehicles that envelop drivers are being developed by Japanese car giant Toyota. The company's vision for the single passenger in the 21st Century involves the driver cruising by in a four-wheeled leaf-like device or strolling along encased in an egg-shaped cocoon that walks upright on two feet. ... Built using environmentally friendly plant-based materials, the single passenger unit is equipped with intelligent transport system technologies that allow for safe autopilot driving in specially equipped lanes." December 9, 2004: Vatican film festival fosters debate about spirituality. By Sarah Delaney. Catholic News Service / available from The Catholic Spirit. "The Vatican’s eighth International Festival of Spiritual Cinema was to explore people’s relationship with the technology they have created. The theme was 'Man-Machine Hybridization, Identity and Conscience in Post-Modern Cinema.' Fifteen films -- from 'I, Robot' to 'Men in Black' to '2001: A Space Odyssey' -- will be shown at a Rome movie theater Dec. 14 to 19. In opening remarks of the debate Dec. 1, Archbishop John Foley, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, said that cinema 'has effectively represented the anxieties and fears tied to a future in which man must face the consequences of a hybridization with the machine that has been pushed to the extreme and that he himself has put into motion.' But what do 'Alien' and 'The Matrix' have to do with spiritual cinema? Archbishop Foley said that 'eternal doubts about artificial intelligence and sentiments, technology and respect for universal values' are represented in many films that force people to ask themselves difficult ethical questions." December 8, 2004: Remember Roomba? Holiday shoppers do. By Margaret Kane. CNET News.com. "The vacuums, which launched a few years ago, are now making a comeback, said Michael Trebony, general manager at Best Buy in West Patterson, N.J. 'It came out, and we did a lot of displays had some interest, then it waned,' he said. 'Now it's making a comeback. That's what usually happens with new tech items, people get nervous. But now people are giving it a second shot, saying, 'Is this going to change my life?''" December 8, 2004: Firm's robot arm braves crowded field. By John Dorschner. The Miami Herald & Herald.com. "Entering what is becoming a booming but crowded field, a young medical technology firm in Hollywood called Z-KAT is hoping to build a billion-dollar business by developing a robotic arm for surgeons. ... The new firm is using technology licensed from Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Artificial Intelligence Lab. ''This is what they call haptic robotics,'' says Ferre. ... Robots have become a hot topic in the operating room. Arnon Krongrad, an Aventura urologist specializing in prostate surgery, uses a robotic device ''as a third arm.'' It has a tiny camera that shows him where he's working, magnified to a computer screen, and it responds to his voice commands. But he still holds the knife in his hand." December 8, 2004: Financing New Ideas in the Travel Industry Proves Difficult. Eye for Travel. "'The travel industry is usually accepting of change,' states Ophir Ben-Yitschak of Scopia LLC. 'However, the marketplace is so saturated by new entities, and a misunderstanding, that venture capitalists are hesitant to involve themselves in new business ideas.' This is a phenomenon with which Ben-Yitschak is quite familiar. In the past eleven months, he has been searching for financial backing for his new venture; a travel web site that uses the principles of artificial intelligence to find the most advantageous arrangements for individual and business travelers. The service, currently known as Scopia, LLC, uses specially-designed algorithms to customize travel arrangements and seek out the best solutions based on the client's individual needs." December 7, 2004: In Kingdom of Cockroaches, Leaders Are Made, Not Born. By John Schwartz. The New York Times (reg. req'd). "It might seem counterintuitive - or, let's face it, silly - for scientists to create an artificial cockroach. Nature has, after all, given us so many of them, and considerable energies of humankind have been focused on exterminating them. But an international team of scientists has done just that. The purpose of the matchbox-size robo-roach is to study 'collective intelligence,' said José Halloy, senior research scientist at the Free University of Brussels, one of the institutions collaborating on the project. Roaches, ants, bees and many other creatures are gregarious and share a kind of mob intellect, he said. ... Ultimately, he said, the technologies could be used to make smarter computers and robots. 'We want machines to perform independently without human intervention,' Dr. Halloy said." December 7, 2004: College meeting needs of Berkshires. By Nicole Sequino. Berkshire Eagle Online. "Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts has been shaping its degree and internship offerings over the past few years to boost Berkshire County's economy and address the region's employment needs, said college President Mary K. Grant. ... Meanwhile, other academic departments also are expanding their programs, she said. For starters, the physics department received $20,000 in private donations toward developing a robotics program with local artist Eric Rudd, said professor William Seeley, department chairman. Physics and computer science students are using technical designs to build 20-foot robots, while drama students are preparing a theatrical production with the robots, he said. 'It's proof that science, together with technology and art, can produce some interesting things,' Seeley said. 'Interest in robots also has blossomed since we started working on this last year. Students are always asking if they can participate.' As a result, he said he has expanded the program into a summer camp for middle school students to encourage them to consider careers in physics. Grant said that the program could bring about a new generation of workers, skilled in technology, science and critical thinking. 'It's an exciting way to learn science, to bring it to life for students,' she said." December 7, 2004: Second Career for Old Robot: Art. By David Cohn. Wired News. "Robotlab acquires industrial robots -- the metal arms on factory floors that wield welding torches and other manufacturing tools -- and reprograms them to become performers in public spaces. Some of the reprogrammed beasts spin tunes, others paint, and still others perform intricate dances to music. The group, based in Karlsruhe, Germany, sees the project as part of an artistic and educational movement to prepare us for when similar machines are part of our daily lives." December 7, 2004: Breakfast with Santa. By Katherine Higgins. Smithfield Herald. "'I want to ask him who's on the naughty list,' said 7-year-old Ashley Johnson. 'I hope I'm not.'... Assuming she would find herself on the nice list, for such acts as sharing with her cousin, Ashley said she knew what she would say to Santa. 'I'm going to ask him for a baby puppy, baby puppy clothes and baby puppy shoes,' she said. 'I want a robot who will listen to me and do what I want.'" December 7, 2004: Bill Clinton helps launch search engine. By Desmond Butler. Associated Press / available from The Modesto Bee & Modbee.com. "Former president Bill Clinton on Monday helped launch a new Internet search company backed by the Chinese government which says its technology uses artificial intelligence to produce better results than Google Inc. ... Accoona takes its name from the Swahili phrase, 'accoona matata,' for 'no worries,' popularized by Disney's film, 'The Lion King.' The company seeks to distinguish itself from Google, Yahoo Inc. and growing list of other search engine players by using artificial intelligence to make the results more relevant, said [Eckhard] Pfeiffer." December 6, 2004: Engineering intelligence. The Times of India. "Is robotics' engineering all about designing robots, maintaining them, developing new applications and conducting research? If that's the case, then you need a re-thinking on the whole concept behind developing robots. ... In the Indian system, 'robotics' is quite often considered as the synonym for 'unemployment'. This is supposedly because of the fear that robots will replace human workers. However, surveys conducted by the government and private agencies reveal that the fear is unreal. ... A specialisation in robotics' engineering will lead to potential career opportunities in manufacturing, research and engineering, agriculture, mining, nuclear power-plant maintenance and a variety of other areas. 'If you consider a robot as a machine, which can perform numerous tasks, it could act as a catalyst for a change in our everyday life,' [associate professor Subir Kumar] Saha said. One of the great ways to learn about robotics is to take part in robotics' competitions. ... Institutes running programme in robotics' engineering: ...." December 6, 2004: Beyond Human - Genetics, eugenics and the moral challenge of the 21st century By Jeremy Kuhar. RT Image (Vol. 17, No. 49). "Recent strides in biotechnology raise the hope for technological progress, but they also raise fundamental moral questions about our humanity. As radiologists employ cutting-edge genetic research to detect, diagnose and treat a wide variety of diseases, suddenly we're faced with a perilous scenario. What if this genetic information was somehow used to discriminate the 'genetically inferior' like the children of Fernald? ... And that's just the tip of the ethics iceberg. As if the bioethical decisions facing radiology aren't complicated enough, they're just the first phase of what [Nigel Cameron, PhD, president of the Institute on Biotechnology and the Human Future, a bioethics think tank at Chicago-Kent College of Law] calls the moral challenge of the 21st century. As genetic technology proliferates and combines with nanotechnology, information technology and a whole host of other 'ologies,' many experts believe that this convergence of hi-tech sciences will eventually be used to bioengineer a 'superior' human species or several species, known as techno sapiens or posthumans. ... So what exactly is a posthuman? 'In the posthuman, there are no essential differences, or absolute demarcations, between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot technology and human goals,' writes Katherine Hayles, PhD, professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles in her book How We Became Posthuman (University of Chicago, 1999). She concludes her book with a clear description of what's at stake. 'Humans can either go gently into that good night, joining the dinosaurs as a species that once ruled the earth but is now obsolete, or hang on for a while longer by becoming machines themselves. In either case the age of the human is drawing to a close.' The question remains: Which direction will we go? 'There are groups of very smart philosophers and researchers who truly believe that blending artificial intelligence with bioengineered human intelligence is the logical and irrevocable future of mankind,' says Cameron. ... 'By historical standards, things are now happening fast, and it seems fairly probable that molecular manufacturing and superintelligent machines will be developed in this century,' [Nick Bostrom, PhD, professor of philosophy at Oxford University in the United Kingdom and founder of the non-profit think tank the World Transhumanist Foundation] says. ... Despite the often-heated arguments over how we should use this technology to enhance our lives, one important point both sides can agree on is that the discussion of the future of the human race must move to the forefront of American conversation. And as members of the scientific and medical communities, all radiology professionals owe it to themselves to become informed." December 6, 2004: 'Thinking Cap' Controls Computer in New Experiment. Reuters. "'The results show that people can learn to use scalp-recorded electroencephalogram rhythms to control rapid and accurate movement of a cursor in two dimensions,' Jonathan Wolpaw and Dennis McFarland of the New York State Department of Health and State University of New York in Albany wrote. They tested their device on four people -- two partly paralyzed men who used wheelchairs and a healthy man and woman. During the experiments, the four volunteers faced a video screen wearing a cap that held 64 electrodes against the scalp to record brain activity. The key was a special computer algorithm -- a program that translated the brain signals into a meaningful directive of what the users wanted the computer to do." December 6, 2004: Contrarian finding - Computers are a drag on learning. By G. Jeffrey MacDonald. The Christian Science Monitor. "From a sample of 175,000 15-year-old students in 31 countries, researchers at the University of Munich announced in November that performance in math and reading had suffered significantly among students who have more than one computer at home. And while students seemed to benefit from limited use of computers at school, those who used them several times per week at school saw their academic performance decline significantly as well. ... For some in education, these results indicate how thoroughly this field of research has come to resemble that of the conventional wisdom about weight loss, which seems to shift with the tide. Yet others see hopeful signs of a maturing debate, where blind faith in the educational benefits of technology is giving way to greater appreciation for an understanding when computers are useful and when they're not. ... Still, there were a few exceptions: Academic performance rose among those who routinely engaged in writing e-mail or running educational software." December 6, 2004: Robots making good on futuristic promise. By Gerard Voland. Journal Gazette & FortWayne.com. "Once upon a time, there was a world in which robots did so much for people, from mowing lawns and exploring other worlds to fighting wars and helping surgeons perform life-saving operations. And the people wondered what could be next for robots to do in this world. Of course, this time is now, and the world is our own. Robots no longer exist only in science fiction stories, and their roles in society are significant and varied. ... Although robots are gradually becoming more popular machines around the home, they have been vital to the industrial world since the introduction in 1961 of the 4,000-pound Unimate robotic arm at General Motors’ manufacturing operations. ... But what of tomorrow’s world of robots? Some people might imagine that future robots will resemble humans, with two arms, two legs, eyes and articulated body movements. ... Future robots also can be expected to evolve into new forms and behaviors." December 6, 2004: Travelin' shoes - Technologies for road, rail and port security get new attention. By Brian Robinson. FCW.com. "The skies may still be unfriendly, but officials and experts concerned with transportation security are starting to turn their attention to other modes of transport. Although the Transportation Security Administration has spent more than 90 percent of its funding so far on airports and airlines, members of the 9-11 Commission also see land and sea transportation as soft spots. ... Not all the solutions have to be brand-new. The Automated Commercial Environment (ACE), for example, is a recast version of a software system Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials have used for years to receive trade data from industry and for industry to settle trade accounts. ACE's goal is to help streamline and speed the U.S. trade system, but it's also used to detect signs of trouble. Previously, it was a rules-based system that required significant input from intelligence officers to make sense of the data and find any anomalies in suspicious shipments that warranted a closer look. The new ACE, which is being tested now, will use artificial intelligence technology so the system will learn for itself and, presumably, be less fallible to missing potential terrorist activity." December 6, 2004: Technies look to make computers smart. By Tracey Drury. Buffalo Business First. "An Amherst company has a solution for all those people out there who damn their computer and become frustrated with the thousands of irrelevant responses that come back during an online search. As It Is Inc., better known as Ai3, has been quietly working from offices at the University at Buffalo Incubator - and from home offices around the country - to develop what they call the world's first 'intelligent' search site. What's so 'smart' about this site? It uses artificial intelligence technology to teach computers how to think like their users." December 6, 2004: Software is king even in space business. Kanna Rajan in conversation with Nivedita Mookerji of FE. Financial Express' eFE. "With few exceptions however, the space business is less about the plumes and the noise, and more about what payloads the launch vehicles carry. And I don’t necessarily mean the actual hardware device the launch vehicle carries, the spacecraft (or ‘satellite’), but the instruments and the complex control system and the software of the spacecraft that are the guts of the spacecraft. ... Spacecraft are essentially complex pieces of software 'doing' incredible things, but harnessing the power of the hardware devices (mostly off the shelf and commercially available) and performing complex functions in software. That brings up the issue of software complexity and how it is currently being managed. ... In 1999, a revolutionary piece of software, the remote agent, took complete control of a NASA spacecraft (the Deep Space One) for one week to demonstrate advanced Artificial Intelligence based techniques to autonomously take over the duties of the command and control functions onboard." December 5, 2004: Nanotechnology: Small wonders. By Mike Toner. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "Nanotechnology has been touted as the second industrial revolution --- a brave new world of atomic-scale engineering in which the ability to assemble individual atoms like Lego blocks will transform science, medicine and even our golf game. ... The National Science Foundation predicts that within a decade nanotechnology will be a $1 trillion market --- and provide as many as 2 million new jobs. An estimated 15.4 million people currently work in all U.S. industries that perform some research and development. To spur things along, the National Nanotechnology Initiative, with roots in 18 federal agencies, is providing one of the largest infusions of research money, $3.7 billion over four years, since the heyday of the space program. More than 30 states have spending initiatives to spur nanotech development. ... A survey this year by North Carolina State University found that 40 percent expect nanotechnology to produce more benefits than risks. Alas, 80 percent admitted they knew little about the subject, and most could not answer a single factual question about it. Nano comes from the Greek for dwarf. Nanotechnology is the manipulation of materials, devices or processes that are 100 nanometers or less in at least one dimension. One nanometer is a billionth of a meter, about 80,000 times less than the width of a human hair. ... In his oft-cited 'Engines of Creation,' nanotech pioneer K. Eric Drexler --- formerly a researcher at MIT's artificial intelligence lab --- warned that 'replicating assemblers and thinking machines pose basic threats to people and life on Earth' --- threatening to turn everything on the planet into an amorphous 'gray goo.' Michael Crichton breathed new life into the notion a few years ago with 'Prey,' a sci-fi thriller about the escape of microscopic, self-replicating assemblers from a secret desert research lab. ... Drexler, who now heads the nonprofit educational Foresight Institute, has recanted much of his original claim, but he insists that the industry should have a policy prohibiting 'the construction of anything resembling a dangerous self-replicating nanomachine.'" December 4, 2004: IBM in talks to sell its PC business. By James Doran. Times Online. "IBM is in talks to sell its personal computer manufacturing business which, if successful, would mark the end of an era in the brief history of the PC, a machine the company helped to invent. ... IBM became so synonymous with the advancement of artificial intelligence that Arthur C Clarke, the science fiction writer, adapted its name for the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey. The rogue computer that tries to kill its operators in the tale of machinery gone mad is called HAL, each letter being one away from IBM in the alphabet." December 3, 2004: Nanoscience and nanotechnologies: opportunities and uncertainties. Royal Academy of Engineering / reported by EurActiv.com. "Although many people believe that nanotechnologies will have an impact across a wide range of sectors, a survey of experts in nanotechnologies across the world identified hype (‘misguided promises that nanotechnology can fix everything’) as the factor most likely to result in a backlash against it. Against this background of increased research funding and interest from industry, several nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and some nanotechnologists have expressed concerns about current and potential future developments of nanotechnology. These include uncertainties about the impact of new nanomaterials on human health, questions about the type of applications that could arise from the expected convergence, in the longer term, of nanotechnologies with technologies such as biotechnology, information technology (IT) and artificial intelligence, and suggestions that future developments might bring self-replicating nano-robots that might devastate the world. ... In January 2003 the Better Regulation Task Force (BRTF) published its report Scientific Research: Innovation with Controls (Better Regulation Task Force 2003), which included a consideration of nanotechnologies. Its first recommendation was that the UK Government should enable the public, through debate, to consider the risks of nanotechnologies for themselves. ... In June 2003, following its response to the BRTF, the UK Government commissioned the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering (the UK’s national academies of science and of engineering, respectively) to conduct an independent study on nanotechnology." A link to the report is provided. December 3, 2004: Disney by the Numbers. By Denny Lee. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "Whenever Len Testa goes to Disney World, he takes along his homework. ... Afterward, the data would be fed into an artificial-intelligence program that would spit out the magic circuit. 'The software will tell you the most efficient tour plan for any particular day, in any of the Disney theme parks, for any particular arrival time and for any particular set of attractions,' explained Mr. Testa, who was on his 12th reconnaissance trip to Disney World. His unpaid pursuit might sound anal-retentive, pointy-headed and, not least of all, geeky. But it is anything but trivial. At its core is a question that has dogged computer scientists for decades: What is the most efficient way to dispatch a person to multiple destinations, taking into account fleeting factors like travel delays and weather. As any truck driver knows, the quickest delivery route may not be the shortest distance between points, but a circuitous path that bypasses rush-hour traffic. In a sense, Disney visitors face the same challenge. ... Computer scientists call it 'the time-dependent traveling salesman problem.' Or, as Mr. Testa would put it: How to visit Space Mountain, Mickey's Country House and Pirates of the Caribbean without wasting hours in lines?" December 2, 2004: Rover data makes return a must. BBC News. "Data from Nasa's Mars rover Opportunity shows its unique landing site is a prime spot for a return mission to look for life, scientists say. ... A raft of Mars missions are currently in the pipeline. The next one to reach the surface will probably be a low-cost "scout" mission called Phoenix in 2007. Future landing missions could speed up the process of selecting interesting targets in the landscape by using artificial intelligence (AI). 'The rovers used quite advanced technology to explore Mars. But there is only a small amount of AI in the robots. Most of the geology is done by a large team of people,' said Dr Patrick McGuire of the Centre for Astrobiology in Madrid, Spain. Dr McGuire and colleague Jens Ormö have devised a wearable computer system which uses intelligent software to select interesting rocks. They have named the system the cyborg astrobiologist." December 2, 2004: Robots to make soccer debut at Championships. By Kuben Chetty. Independent Online. "University of KwaZulu-Natal students are busy putting the final touches on the robot players that will represent them at this weekend's South African Robot Championships. In fact, when it comes to the actual game, students Rohland Lablache de Charmoy and Andre Berg, won't even be controlling the robots. ... Apart from robot soccer, there will be other displays from students around the country. These include a piano playing computer and an electronically controlled go-cart." December 2, 2004: The laboratory shaping our future. CNN. "It is codenamed 'Oxygen' and its achievements are likely to affect the way we live and work for decades to come. That at least is the intention of researchers working on some of almost 400 separate projects that make up the Computer Sciences and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory's (CSAIL) grand research project into 'pervasive computing.' 'Project Oxygen is about pervasive human-centered computing -- that's our buzz phrase,' explains CSAIL director Rodney Brooks. 'How -- with so many computers, so many embedded systems, so many speech-based systems, so many tablets and computers -- are we going to interact with them? How are we not going to be overwhelmed by them? How is it going to be easy enough to use them without adding more and more complexity?'" December 2, 2004: Street Smarts: A Device to Help the Blind Find Crosswalks. By Ian Austen. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "[R]esearchers in Japan have developed a software system for detecting crosswalks that may help the blind when crossing streets. The system, developed by Tadayoshi Shioyama and Mohammad Shorif Uddin at the Kyoto Institute of Technology, takes images of the street with a camera; the software then determines if there is a painted crosswalk in the image. A fixed camera is used now, but Dr. Shioyama said that eventually, a miniature digital camera and processor could be fitted into a pair of eyeglasses. When a blind person wearing the glasses came upon a crosswalk, the system would alert the user through a synthesized voice piped through a small speaker. For now, the software can recognize and measure only a style of crosswalks not commonly used in North America. Known as zebra crossings in Britain, they feature a series of thick white bands that run in the same direction as the vehicle traffic." December 1, 2004: Film Fest Focuses on Man and Machine - A Spiritual Take on High Technology. ZENIT News Agency. "The Third-Millennium Spiritual Film Festival is focusing on the relationship between man and machines. The initiative, which will be complemented by a study congress sponsored by the pontifical councils for Social Communications and for Culture, will reflect on the ethical questions posed by this phenomenon. ... At a press conference Monday, Archbishop John Foley, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, said, 'The cinema … creates futuristic scenes, in which one often sees possible harmful consequences for the human person. The evolution of technology has certainly allowed a revolution which has changed our way of living, and will change it even more, with undeniable advantages, but also with dangerous aspects,' he warned. ... 'God has given man intelligence, which has enabled him to produce ever-more sophisticated machines, and has left him free to make his choices,' [Cardinal Paul Poupard] noted. 'We are the ones who create our technological reality.'" December 1 - 7, 2004: Reflections on the Limits of Artificial Intelligence - Nature is very simple and efficient in everything she makes. We, humans, complicate things. View by Alexandru Tugui. Ubiquity (Volume 5, Issue 38). "We believe that we will make considerable progress in the applicative and theoretical fields of artificial intelligence. The limits we synthetized are and will be felt for a long time, yet they will decrease as new materials and new technologies are discovered. At the same time, bio-techno-systems will be solution with a particular technological impact on the evolution of artificial intelligence" December 1 - 8, 2004: Conversational engagement tracked. By Kimberly Patch. Technology Research News. "It would be useful if a computer could sense ebbs and flows in conversation in order to automatically adjust remote communications systems. It would be useful, for instance if a system automatically switched from a walkie-talkie-type push-to-talk system to a telephone-like full duplex audio connection when the participants become highly engaged in a conversation. ... Researchers from the University of Rochester and Palo Alto Research Center are aiming to allow computers to automatically assess peoples' engagement in a conversation by analyzing the way they speak rather than what they say. ... The system could also make it possible for computers to adjust to users in other ways, said [Paul] Aoki. 'If your computer can detect that you are deeply engaged in conversation with another person, whether on the telephone or the same room... it might defer a loud announcement that you have new email, or it might set your instant messaging status to busy,' he said." December 1, 2004: Cyber detective links up crimes. By Duncan Graham-Rowe. New Scientist News. (This article also appears on page 25 in the December 4, 2004 issue of New Scientist Magazine as: Neural networks to catch serial killers.) "Many more crimes might be solved if detectives were able to compare the records for cases with all the files on past crimes. Now an artificial intelligence system has been designed to do precisely that. Working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it could look for telltale similarities in crime records and alert detectives when it finds them. Developed by computer scientists Tom Muscarello and Kamal Dahbur at DePaul University in Chicago, the system uses pattern-recognition software to link related crimes that may have taken place in widely separated areas whose police forces may rarely be in close contact. Called the Classification System for Serial Criminal Patterns (CSSCP).... The neural network the DePaul team uses, called a Kohonen network, is particularly good at finding patterns in a set of input data without any human intervention, Muscarello says. Some neural networks require an operator to 'train' them to find patterns in data sets -- but this requires foreknowledge of the pattern." December 1, 2004: More Robot Grunts Ready for Duty. By Noah Shachtman. Wired News. "Hunting for guerillas, handling roadside bombs, crawling across the caves and crumbling towns of Afghanistan and Iraq -- all of that was just a start. Now, the Army is prepping its squad of robotic vehicles for a new set of assignments. ... In a warren of hangar-sized hotel ballrooms in Orlando, military engineers this week showed off their next generation of robots, as they got the machines ready for the war zone. ... The Robotic Extraction Vehicle, or REV, is a 10-foot-long, 3,500-pound robot that can tuck a pair of stretchers -- and life-support systems -- beneath its armored skin. The idea is for battlefield medics to stabilize injured soldiers, and then send them back to a field hospital in the REV. ... But this early version will be limited, [Patrick] Howe said. Ideally, the REV would drive around on its own, with no help from human operators. In practice, the robot would either be driven by a person with a joystick, or it would get around by itself by sticking to carefully preplanned routes. As the limited performances in the Pentagon's robot off-road rally in March showed, unmanned drivers are still pretty lousy at handling open, unknown terrain. ... GlobalSecurity.org's [John] Pike isn't worried about the Talon going haywire. He's concerned about what the armed UGV represents for the future. 'This opens up great vistas, some quite pleasant, others quite nightmarish. ...'" December 1, 2004: New technology to strengthen flight safety. By Cao Desheng. China Daily. "The nation's civil aviation sector is stepping up an informatization project and security to strengthen air transport controls to ensure flight safety and security. 'By adopting biological sensing technology, chemical analysis and artificial intelligence, we are developing a type of security detector to be used in airports,' said Huang Rongshun, vice-director of the Second Research Institute of the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China (CAAC)." December 1, 2004: Mohave County law enforcement link to be mulled. By Jim Seckler. Mohave Valley News. "A new computer program would allow the county's three city police departments and the Mohave County Sheriff's Office to share information with each other in an effort to fight crime. ... Coplink was developed by Knowledge Computing Corp. along with the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Arizona with input from the Tucson Police Department. ... Even though each agency has different computer programs, the Coplink software would allow the agencies to interface with each other." December 2004: AI Revisited
- Pieces of the AI Puzzle are Already Deployed, but Much Remains to be Done. Bart Eisenberg's Pacific Connection series in Software Design Magazine. "'There's a joke in the AI community that as soon as AI works, it is no longer called AI,' says Sara Hedberg, a spokeswoman for the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. Hedberg, who has written about AI for the past 20 years or so, has done her share of trying to enlighten reporters who are ready to declare AI dead. 'Once a technology leaves the research labs and gets proven, it becomes ubiquitous to the point where it is almost invisible,' she says. ... The American Association for Artificial Intelligence serves as a kind of crossroads for AI researchers. Ahead of its 2004 conference, the organization identified a slew of emerging fields where AI research is going strong, starting with counter-terrorism, crisis management and defense. One big project funder is DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the same U.S. government agency that first funded the Internet. Other research areas include space exploration, robotics, Web search engines and agents, healthcare, and manufacturing.
And what do all of these areas have in common? AI applications have grown so diverse that the shared term 'artificial intelligence' may be the only thing these applications share. If you declare that your research is AI-related-then, ipso facto, it is. 'AI has splintered into various isolated sub-fields,' says Bill Havens, the chief technology officer for Actenum, a Vancouver-based startup tackling difficult scheduling problems. ... To get a sense of what AI looks like in the year 2004, I spoke with researchers in a variety of fields. ..." December 2004: Smarter Software - The First Line of Defense Intelligent video can greatly increase perimeter security for U.S. airports. By Melchior Baltazar. Security Products. "Recognizing this, [the Transportation Security Administration] is helping airports address their vulnerabilities by providing funds earmarked to purchase, deploy and test new technologies to enhance airport perimeter and terminal security. One of these technologies is intelligent video surveillance. ... Intelligent video surveillance software magnifies the security that traditional surveillance provides. ... It's based on a form of artificial intelligence called 'computer vision,' which runs all objects in a camera's field of view against threat-specific, preprogrammed rules. When an object violates a rule -- for example, when a person enters an off-limits area or a suspicious bag is left unattended -- the software alerts security personnel by phone, pager or e-mail, or by a display on an alert console. ... [I]ntelligent video surveillance also is a cost-effective technology." December 2004: Man vs. Machine. By Andrew Chaikin. Wired (Issue 12.12). "Of course, the costs and risks of sending humans to the moon, Mars, or nearby asteroids will outweigh the benefits for at least the next decade. Until that balance is tilted by the development of new spacecraft and protective measures that reduce danger and expense, we'll have to live by the watchword of engineer Gentry Lee, a 30-year veteran of NASA's Mars missions: 'Never send a human to do a robot's job.' But the balance will tilt, and when it does, humans will follow in the footsteps of our robotic creations. That doesn't mean machines will act only as a kind of advance team for people; even after astronauts have begun exploring alien worlds, they will need robotic assistants to handle repetitive or especially dangerous tasks. But only human explorers can raise the pace of discovery a quantum leap. And only they will tell us what it is like to be there." December 2004: To Hell and Back. By Jeffrey M. O'Brien. Wired (Issue 12.12). "Over the course of two summer evenings, we sit at a card table and discuss invention, risk, NASA, and [Bill] Stone's latest quest: to develop an intelligent autonomous hydrobot. ... These days, he's absorbed by two projects. The first: Stone is chief architect of a next-generation ladar (laser radar) system at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, helping craft a beer can-sized guidance system for unmanned military vehicles. And then there's DepthX, an audacious NASA-funded project formally known as the Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer. It's a robot that will map an ocean 6 miles beneath the frozen surface of Jupiter's moon Europa and sniff out microbiological life. A team of researchers - roboticists, astrobiologists, and electromechanical engineers - from six universities are working on the project. But it's Stone's baby. Even though DepthX is about robotically exploring a moon 400 million miles away, it's a direct result of Stone's life as this world's preeminent cave explorer. ... If DepthX works, it'll represent not only a huge boost to NASA's quest to find extraterrestrial life, but also a significant advancement in robotic intelligence." November - December 2004: Creating a More Intelligent Future - The World Future Society's 2004 meeting focused on improving our foresight, enhancing our intelligence, and developing partnerships with each other and with our rapidly advancing technologies. By Cynthia G. Wagner. The Futurist (Volume 38, No. 6). "Some futurists have asked whether the explosive development of new technologies should be curbed, since their impacts may yet be unknown and are potentially dangerous. but award-winning inventor Ray Kurzweil argued that 'to relinquish technologies because they could be used for ill means giving up their good uses --- and it also means totalitarian control.' ... Ian Pearson forecast that by 2010 or 2015, an artificial life-form will have been created, Robotus primus, that will have its own set of beliefs that have nothing to do with humans or their beliefs. 'We won't be in control,' Pearson warned. 'The supersmart robots will tell us what to do. It would be futile to try to program Asimov's three laws of robotics. The first words won't be 'Take me to your leader.' They'll be 'I am your leader, and here's what I want you to do." Ray Kurzweil expressed more optimism about the risks of robotic intelligence: 'The main solution to the perils of strong AI is supporting our values of liberty, openness, democracy, respect for diversity, and knowledge.' Partnering with machine intelligence might be an answer." |
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