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<< Headlines are listed according to date posted <-> Articles are organized by date published >>
March 31, 2004: Conversational
interface aids robot navigation. By Chappell Brown. EE Times. "Recognizing
the difficulty of fully autonomous navigation, a scientist at the University
of Missouri-Columbia is designing a semiautonomous approach that might
have a better chance of producing useful machines in the near term. March 31, 2004: Computers
to be 'oxygen of the future.' By Tracey Logan. BBC News. "By
the year 2010, scientists predict we will be immersed in a sea of miniature
computers. ... Those predictions came at the launch of the Cambridge-MIT
Institute's Pervasive Computing initiative (CMI). It is part of a transatlantic
collaboration between information scientists and engineers at Cambridge
University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. ...
The challenge for CMI researchers is to build immersive systems that automatically
reconfigure data or voice call connections between the full range of digital
devices, without getting cut off. Keeping such systems secure from unauthorised
use and attack, will be crucial, as will be the inclusion of intelligent
filters that prevent the system pestering us with trivia. ... Energy efficient
processors running on wireless devices with vastly increased battery time
will be essential to the CMI's pervasive computing vision, as will enhancements
in computer vision and speech processing." March 31, 2004: Paying
Homage to Science Fiction. By Mark Baard. Wired News. "If you
believe that Captain Kirk's command chair or the costumes from The Planet
of the Apes belong in a museum, to be revered by all for perpetuity, then
you may want to book a flight for Seattle in June. That's when a group
of science and science-fiction luminaries will open the Science Fiction
Museum and Hall of Fame (previously called the Experience Science Fiction
museum), in a futuristic building in the heart of Seattle. Many of those
famous figures, such as Harlan Ellison, Majel Barrett Roddenberry, Ray
Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke, are lending their names to the project.
Some will donate valuable editions of their books and manuscripts to the
museum. ... The museum will demonstrate the influence that science-fiction
literature has had on science and popular culture, an influence that is
often overlooked, said Sheila Williams, executive editor of the magazines
Asimov's Science Fiction and Analog Science Fiction and Fact. 'Everyone
knows about science-fiction movies, which are often about the action,'
she said. 'But many don't know about the stories behind them, which are
written by great authors. That's where the big ideas come from.'" March 30, 2004: The
Jobs of the Future Are a Thing of the Past. By Rick Perlstein. The
Village Voice. "You may have read about the outsourcing issue, the
great X-factor in American politics today, in cover articles in Time,
Wired, Business Week. ... In New Hampshire, John Kerry
was asked about the problem. His answer: 'We have to create the next wave
of those kinds of jobs that come from the fact that we're highly educated
and deeply committed to science and technology education.' He mentioned
artificial intelligence -- and drew a laugh from a computer science professor
who noted that artificial intelligence, the gleaming dream of the 1990s,
has hardly created a single job in the world." March 30, 2004: Conventional
behavior, pt. 2. March
30, 2004: Corvigo
MailGate Uses AI To Block Spam From Network. By W. David Gardner.
TechWeb News / available from Internet Week. " A Linux-based antispam
appliance that leverages artificial intelligence helped a Cox Communications
ISP stamp out 95 percent of its spam, the company said. ... It marks the
first implementation of an artificial intelligence anti-spam program by
an ISP, said Jeff Ready, CEO of the antispam appliance vendor. ... By
combining machine-learning techniques with natural language processing,
the AI program reads the text of the messages and then sorts them into
one of the three categories, Ready said. ... 'AI techniques are able to
recognize patterns of speech, even patterns of spam that haven't been
seen before,' Ready said." March
30, 2004: Seeing-Eye
Computer Guides Blind. By Louise Knapp. Wired News. "The portable
system, called iCare, consists of a tiny camera mounted on a pair of glasses,
a laptop carried in a backpack, a headset and a microphone. Designed by
researchers at Arizona State and Wright State universities, ICare converts
the images recorded by the camera to verbal messages conveyed to the user.
... So far, iCare's greatest talent is its ability to translate type into
spoken words. The iCare-Reader translates text into a synthesized voice
using optical character recognition software and other software that compensates
for different lighting conditions and orientations. ... The next component
of the system is the iCare-HumanRecognizer. 'It has a high probability
of recognizing people from its database -- it compares the color of their
hair, eyes, facial characteristics, and from this can know who it is,'
Bourbakis said. Currently, however, the system is only able to do this
when the lighting is just right and the person is directly facing the
camera." March 29, 2004: Listen
to NASA Astronomer Steven Squyres. Radio interview by Terry Gross.
Fresh Air, WHYY-FM & NPR. "He's the principal scientific investigator
for the twin rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, on Mars. The two landed on
the surface of Mars in January, and are helping astronomers to determine
whether or not there was life on the planet. Squyres will talk about the
many gadgets they created to work on Mars, and what it's like working
on "Mars time." Squyres is also a professor of astronomy at Cornell University.
... Q: Do you start to think of the rovers as being alive because
of the artificial intelligence you've designed into them? A:
That's only one of the reasons that we think of them as being alive. I
mean, you've got to realize some of us have been working on this concept
for more than a decade and working on these particular pieces of hardware
for better than four years now. And, you know, you endow these things
with your hopes, your dreams. You just pour all your hopes and efforts
into these things. And, yeah, they very much become alive for you, not
just because of the software that we've put into them and the artificial
intelligence and the fact that they get a little cantankerous from time
to time..." March 29, 2004: All
Eyes on Google. By Steven Levy. Newsweek / available from MSNBC. "Google
has made such eureka moments as common as sneezing. Who hasn't had such
a revelation on Google, whether the discovery was an old girlfriend's
whereabouts or a cutting-edge treatment for a rare disease? Amazing to
consider that less than a decade ago, search was a backwater, deemed not
very interesting and certainly not very profitable. ... 'Search is the
ultimate killer online app,' says Bob Davis, former CEO of Lycos. 'The
Internet without search is like a cruise missile without a guidance system.'
... 'Search is not a solved problem,' says Udi Manber, CEO of A9, a new
search company formed by Amazon.com that will focus on e-commerce. 'Ten
years from now, what we're doing now will look pretty primitive.' ...
Indeed, over the next few years search will evolve in a number of key
areas, and Google faces big competition in all of them. ... MULTIMEDIA.
Google has an Image Search function with almost a billion pictures. Microsoft
researchers in China are going full blast to create software that searches
through pictures -- possibly identifying faces and locations. Meanwhile,
a Washington, D.C., start-up called Streamsage has created breakthrough
technology that searches audio and video broadcasts by analyzing speech.
... ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. 'The ultimate goal is to have a computer
that has the kind of semantic knowledge that a reference librarian has,'
says Google's director of technology Craig Silverstein. But truly smart
search engines are probably decades away." March 27, 2004:
The
Isaac Newton of logic - It was 150 years ago that George Boole published
his classic The Laws of Thought, in which he outlined concepts that form
the underpinnings of the modern high-speed computer. By Siobhan Roberts.
The Globe and Mail (page F9). "It was 150 years ago that George Boole
published his literary classic The Laws of Thought, wherein he devised
a mathematical language for dealing with mental machinations of logic.
It was a symbolic language of thought -- an algebra of logic (algebra
is the branch of mathematics that uses letters and other general symbols
to represent numbers and quantities in formulas and equations). In doing
so, he provided the raw material needed for the design of the modern high-speed
computer. His concepts, developed over the past century by other mathematicians
but still known as 'Boolean algebra,' form the underpinnings of computer
hardware, driving the circuits on computer chips. And, at a much higher
level in the brain stem of computers, Boolean algebra operates the software
of search engines such as Google. ... The most basic and tangible example
is the machinations of Boolean searches, which operate on three logical
operators: and, or, not. Algebra gets factored in to this logical equation
when Boole designates a multiplication sign (x) to represent 'and,' an
addition sign (+) to represent 'or,' and a subtraction sign (-) to represent
'not.' ... The same 'and' gates and 'or' gates drive computer circuitry,
with streams of electrons performing Boole's algebraic operations -- a
computer's bits and bytes operate on the binary system, as does Boole's
algebra. He employs the number 1 to represent the universal class of everything
(or true) and 0 to represent the class of nothing (false). ... With his
PhD in artificial intelligence, it might appear that ['Geoffrey Hinton,
a computer-science professor at the University of Toronto and his great-great-grandson']
followed after Boole. But in fact, he says, 'I'm entirely on the other
side.' The field of artificial intelligence, in its early years circa
1950-60, was committed to the Boolean idea that symbols effectively represent
human reasoning. Since the eighties, however, artificial intelligence
has come to see human reasoning as not purely logical. Rather, it is more
about what is intuitively plausible. 'Boole thought the human brain worked
like a pocket calculator or a standard computer,' Prof. Hinton says. 'I
think we're more like rats.'" March 27, 2004: Creating
technology in pursuit of dreams - Robert Thomson and Leo Lewis meet
Nobuyuki Idei, chairman and group CEO of Sony, at its Tokyo headquarters.
The Saturday Profile by Leo Lewis and Robert Thomson. Times Online. "With
technological revolutions breaking out everywhere, it would be comforting
to think that the world's biggest consumer electronics company knows what
is coming next. But it does not, and Sony's chairman, Nobuyuki Idei, seems
strangely relaxed about that. ... 'Nanotechnology, genetics, broadband
communications, artificial intelligence -- in the next ten years anything
could happen,' he says in an exclusive interview with The Times.
It is that very uncertainty, he says from his modern, art-filled Tokyo
headquarters, which allows Sony to get back to what it has always done
best: dreaming up exciting new worlds, then building the gadgetry to make
them a reality. ... Idei perseveres in the belief that Sony, no matter
what the odds, will always come up with another Walkman or PlayStation.
Until that happens, however, he has to place his trust in the evangelical
powers of a walking, talking robot. ... 'It walks and pretends it understands,
but compared to the human brain it is nothing and that is the important
message. The robot gives you hope in technology and the idea that maybe
in 50 years it will be able to play football, rugby or baseball. Technology
is the language that inspires dreams.'" March 26, 2004: NannieBot
claims leave experts unconvinced - AI experts question effectiveness
of intelligent child protection software. By Dinah Greek. vnunet.com.
"New software claims it can protect children using chatrooms by spotting
suspicious adults - but experts are not convinced. ... AI experts have
questioned Wightman's claim that his software has passed the Turing Test,
created by Alan Turing in 1950 to determine if a computer program has
intelligence. 'If true, this would make the software 10 years ahead of
what is currently available,' said Henry Thompson, reader in AI at Edinburgh
University. 'We are sceptical about such claims because, although we don't
know the details of how the software works, AI isn't that well developed
for things such as this.'" March 26, 2004: Professor
predicts bleak future of war and machines. By Tyler Riggs. The Utah
Statesman. "Artificial intelligence will be a growing issue for humanity
in the 21st century, says a Utah State University computer science professor.
'Humanity will be forced to confront the question, do we decide to build
these God-like, massively intelligent machines?' asked Hugo de Garis Thursday
during a lunchbox lecture sponsored by the department of instructional
technology. In the future, there will be two groups of people: Cosmists,
who will support the building and development of artificial intellects
(artilects) and Terrans, who will be against artilects, de Garis said.
'Are we going to allow our machines to become smarter than us?' he asked.
'Should we stop it? Can we stop it?'" De Garis referred to Moore's
law, which says that technology will double every 18 months, as evidence
that advanced artificial intelligence is quickly turning from science
fiction to science fact." March 25, 2004: Robot
clash reveals cultural divide. By Clark Boyd. BBC News. "The
robo-athletes in San Francisco came in all shapes and sizes. And they
came from 11 different nations, including Japan, Germany and Canada. The
event, hosted by the Robotics Society of America (RSA), included robot
football, maze-solving and even sumo wrestling. 'One of the goals is to
cross-pollinate, so that a guy building a combat robot can meet a really
good programmer who builds autonomous sumo robots,' said David Calkins,
president of the RSA. Robot combat proved a popular draw and involved
two robots from the same weight class fighting for dominance in a boxing
ring. ... Other robot builders at the Robolympics were looking to creating
autonomous robots that function largely outside of human control. 'You'll
stand back and turn on a switch and you hope to god that your robot does
what it's designed to do,' said Canadian attendee David Hrynkiw. 'You
trust in the world of bit-gods and you're trusting the robot to do it
itself,' he added. ... This kind of autonomous robot technology is already
proving useful in the real world. For example, some robots can be trained
to search buildings for earthquake survivors." March 24, 2004: Eamon,
the ideas man. By Roz Pulley. The Cairns Sun (page 1) / available from
newstext.com.au (registration
req'd.) / also available from LexisNexis
(subscription req'd.). "There's nothing artificial about Eamon Hohn's
intelligence, but the subject of artificial intelligence is one that fascinates
him. ... 'For most people, it's a bit scary, but it's a fascinating concept,'
says the 16-year-old Smithfield High School student. ... That interest
in robotics, computers and artificial intelligence is one he'd like to
explore further by linking up with other like-minded people in Cairns.
Eamon's cerebral palsy keeps him pretty much bound to his motorised wheelchair,
but his head is full of ideas for the future. ... Anyone keen to talk
computers and robotics with Eamon can phone Sam Devine at ARC Disability
Services...." March 24, 2004: Joys
of science - Robotics offers fine lesson. Editorial in The Arizona
Republic / available from azcentral.com. "If ever an event captured
the pure joy of science - the uplifting sense of discovery and accomplishment
that science can bring - it is the national FIRST Robotics Competition,
a madcap, high-energy tour de force for young scientists created 12 years
ago by inventor Dean Kamen. For the second year in a row, Phoenix served
as the site of a regional competition. For three days earlier this month,
teams of high school students ran the remote-controlled robots they had
built through a maze of exercises. ... In the competition, which goes
to extraordinary lengths to emphasize teamwork and cooperation, the robots
climbed steps, pushed rubber balls across the floor and hung from a horizontal
bar. But even more entertaining than the exotic robots were the teams
of kids: exuberant, wacky and (yes) proudly, enthusiastically geeky young
people who squeezed gallons of joy from the slickly produced competition." March 24, 2004: Opera
Software announces voice-operated Internet browser. By Doug Mellgren.
Associated Press / available from The Detroit News. "Web surfers
may be able to talk to their computers one day using a browser announced
Tuesday by Opera Software. The new browser incorporates IBM's ViaVoice
technology, enabling the computer to ask what the user wants and 'listen'
to the request. ... 'Voice is the most natural and effective way we communicate,'
said Christen Krogh, head of Opera's software development. 'In the years
to come, it will greatly facilitate how we interact with technology.'" March 24, 2004: All
the news that's fit for searching. March 23, 2004: Asian
Investors Seek Profit in Neural `Karma'. Commentary by Andy Mukherjee.
Bloomberg News / also available from the International Herald Tribune
(Seeking real profit
from artificial intelligence) and Business Day Newspaper, Thailand
(Profit for the taking in
neural 'karma'). "Using Paradigm's Forex DayTrader, which predicts
movements in major currencies over a 24-hour time frame, the punter made
a $46,000 profit in two days. ... DayTrader is one of more than 100 trading
systems based on so-called neural networks that are supposed to mimic
the way billions of brain cells work together to recognize patterns in
complex data. Researchers have tried to replicate the human brain's neural
circuitry in activities such as predicting energy prices and measuring
creditworthiness. Unlike conventional software, systems based on neural
networks aren't limited by their programmers' abilities. They learn better
ways to analyze data as more information comes along. U.K.-based Retail
Decisions uses neural networks to help online retailers prevent payment
fraud. For two decades, researchers at universities in Britain and France
have tried to build the perfect 'neural nose' that can discern smells.
Such a system could alert the authorities to gas leaks, or warn retailers
about foodstuff turning stale. Neural networks started appearing in the
financial industry in the 1980s." March 23, 2004: Robots
Invade San Francisco. By Lore Sjöberg. Wired News. "Over 400
robots rolled, walked, climbed and strutted their stuff at the first Robolympics
this past weekend in San Francisco's Fort Mason. Engineers and school
kids, coming from as far away as Korea and Belgium, brought their creations
to compete in contests of strength, agility and intelligence. ... Another
event with real-world applications was the firefighting competition. In
this challenge, robots roamed through a miniature residential floor plan,
seeking out and extinguishing a candle flame. Joseph Miller and his son
Andrew of Santa Rosa, California, designed and built Zippo, the winning
firefighter. 'I chose the simplest algorithm, which is just to follow
a wall, and it paid off,' Joseph Miller said of his strategy. Miller said
he hopes robotic firefighting competitions will lead to technology that
will someday save lives." March 22, 2004: Questions
and Answers: OvaCheck T and NCI/FDA Ovarian Cancer Clinical Trials Using
Proteomics Technology. Press release from The National Cancer Institute.
"The NCI/FDA clinical proteomics program ties the study of all proteins
in living cells (or proteomics) to the clinical care of patients. Specific
technologies developed in this program are at an early stage of application
to diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients. The scientific goal of
proteomics is to capture the information flow within the cell and the
organism. ... The research, conducted under a Cooperative Research and
Development Agreement between the FDA/NCI Clinical Proteomics Program
and Correlogic Systems Inc., unites two exciting disciplines: proteomics
- the study of the proteins inside cells - and artificial intelligence
computer programs. Using blood from a finger stick in a test that is completed
in 30 minutes, researchers were able to differentiate between serum samples
taken from patients with ovarian cancer vs. normal individuals. The approach
relied on software that is able to detect patterns of key proteins in
the blood. Using a sophisticated artificial intelligence computer program
developed by Correlogic, scientists were able to 'train' the computer
to distinguish between patterns of small proteins found in the blood of
cancer patients vs. control samples. The artificial intelligence program
identified a pattern consisting of only a handful of proteins, among thousands,
that could be used to distinguish between women with ovarian cancer and
women with non-cancerous conditions." March 22, 2004: Sharp
unit to license IP from U.S. labs. By R. Colin Johnson. EE Times.
"Artificial-intelligence technology that could change the way busy
sports fans get their fix will be among the licensable intellectual property
unveiled here Tuesday (March 23) by the newly formed Sharp Technology
Ventures. ... One technology that could find a wide audience is Sharp's
HiMpact Sports, which applies a set of algorithms that understand the
semantics of baseball, football and soccer (for starters) and can boil
down a three-hour game to 45 minutes without skipping a single play. ...
How can Sharp Labs teach a computer to recognize a base hit regardless
of whether it's a grounder, a line drive or a bunt? Traditional AI would
extract features from the video stream, then use handwritten rules to
infer the meaning (base hit) from the features. After extensive testing,
however, Sharp Labs concluded that its requirement that HiMpact provide
100 percent accuracy could only be met by probabilistic methods that directly
learn from experience. ... The best probabilistic method Sharp Labs has
tried thus far is the hidden Markov model (HMM), which has previously
been successful in learning how to recognize spoken voices. Just as HMM
is 'taught' words by training it with samples of different people speaking
the same word, Sharp Labs trained its HMM on video clips it categorized
into a training set." March 22, 2004: Europe
funds search engine research. By Dinah Greek. Vnunet.com. "European
researchers have already begun work on the development of more intelligent
search engines aimed at reducing the reams of irrelevant information people
have to sift through each time they type a topic into a search engine.
The European-funded project SEKT (Semantic Knowledge Technologies) is
made up of 12 partners.... SEKT hopes that it can be the first group to
develop a search engine capable of assessing the context of the text strings
which it uses as the basis of its searches. ... [Paul Warren] added that
each of the academic institutes in Sekt were leaders in their respective
research fields. Sheffield University, he said, has the technical knowledge
of syntax and semantics gained through linguistic studies, Karlsruhe University
in Germany is a leading centre for artificial intelligence while the Jozef
Stefan Institute in Slovenia was renowned for its mathematical technology
for understanding language. March 21, 2004: We've
Got Algorithm, but How About Soul? By Bill Werde. The New York Times
(no fee reg. req'd.). "What would art look like if it were to please
the greatest number of people? ... Two weeks ago, a similarly reductive
process appeared to creep into the music industry. A Barcelona-based artificial
intelligence company, PolyphonicHMI, claimed that its Hit Song Science
software, designed to identify the 'optimal mathematical patterns' of
hit songs, had helped produce one: the dance-pop diva Anastacia's 'Left
Outside Alone.' ... Whether the technology was used for this particular
single or not, sources at several labels, both major and indie, confirmed
that the product was being used. ... The promise of the technology is
that the hit potential of any new song can be determined by breaking it
down against this algorithmic array. The closer it lands to the center
of a hit cluster, the more likely it is to be a successful song." March 21, 2004: Talent
leak drains AT&T think tank - Once a bastion of cutting-edge research,
it's lost its star power. By Kevin Coughlin. The Star-Ledger / available
from NJ.com. "When AT&T Labs was carved from Bell Labs in the 1995
breakup of AT&T , the telecom giant set lofty goals for its new research
arm. ... Today, many of AT&T's top scientists still chase that dream --
somewhere else. They strive to invent the future in the shiniest ivory
towers and hottest tech companies, from MIT to Microsoft, from the Pentagon
to Google. ... Gone from AT&T Labs, or nearly so, are groups highly regarded
for their long-term studies in artificial intelligence and machine learning,
network security and cryptography, algorithms and theoretical computer
science, and statistics. AT&T research operations in Cambridge, England,
and at the University of California, Berkeley are gone, too. The National
Science Foundation says federal support for basic science has waned, as
well, since 1980. 'It's an open question where the next big ideas and
discoveries will come from,' said Paul Saffo of the Institute for the
Future. A former adviser to AT&T Labs, Saffo warned that corporate America's
'relentless race for short-term value is killing our future ... AT&T Labs
was a national crown jewel -- and it's been terribly devalued.' 'If you're
focusing on research that's short-term, to impact products in a year or
two, there are all kinds of world-changing discoveries that you simply
miss,' said Maria Klawe, president of the Association for Computing Machinery
and dean of engineering at Princeton University. For its part, AT&T says
fierce competition has forced a shift from basic science to business-driven
research." March 20, 2004: Robots
battle to be the best. By Clark Boyd. BBC News. "Thousands of
intelligent, powerful robots are descending on San Francisco this weekend.
... The two-day event is being organized by the Robotics Society of America,
(RSA), which has been hosting various robotic competitions since 1977.
With the Robolympics, the group hopes to bring together the various styles
of competition, and put them under one roof. ... In another event, robots
will teach themselves how to get out of mazes - the fastest one out, of
course, is the winner. The Line Slalom competition will see 'bots racing
each other down a 10-foot curved track. There will be no human remote
control though. These robotic athletes will have to negotiate the course
on their own, processing the information and data themselves. The RSA
says that these kinds of learn-as-you-go competitions will highlight the
kind of artificial intelligence that people will soon see in their day-to-day
lives." March 19, 2004: Classroom
Rambles - BHS problem solvers look to the future. The Barnstable Patriot.
"[Anna] Von Reden competes in two categories of Future Problem Solving.
Results from her team competition in the qualifying round held in February
are not yet available. ... The team competitions require a group of four
students to complete a formal 6-step process within a two-hour limit.
This qualifying problem related to advancements in artificial intelligence
that allow a microchips to be implanted into the brains of people providing
them with the capacity to access and analyze data at the speed of a computer.
Team results will determine if these teams will move on to the state competition
in April." March 19, 2004: Sketchy
Information - Will graphical search interfaces make a picture worth
a thousand links? By Erik Sherman. Technology Review. "Looking for
a book, CD, or movie recommendation? Type in the name of an author that
you like at Gnooks.com and up pops a screen of other writers. But what
makes the site different is that the authors don't appear as a scrollable
list. Instead, the name you provide sits in the middle of the browser
window while the suggested names are sprinkled about, quivering and dancing
as though trying to elbow each other out of the way to reach the center.
This is search visualization in action. The closer another writer is to
your choice, the more likely the system thinks that you will also enjoy
that author's work. ... To get to the point of considering the right graphical
representation, a system must know how data connects. There are various
algorithms and approaches; even text-based Google offers a measure of
the relevancy that a link has to a search term, and Yahoo! groups links
under headings. But what really helps cement relationships is metadata
-- that is, information about the nature and structure of data." March 19, 2004: S.F.
artist's robots give shape to visions of desert life. By Dave Ford.
San Francisco Chronicle / available from SFGate.com. "If life itself
could be said to be about the combination of chance and beauty, then the
paintings of San Francisco artist Max Chandler appear to be full of life.
Chandler creates canvases enhanced by the added brushstrokes of computer-
programmed robots -- which, machines being what they are, often act (and
paint) unpredictably. ... In the early 1980s, Chandler became interested
in robots, which were an outgrowth of the artificial intelligence movement.
AI, Chandler explains, is the science of using a computer to imitate the
human brain. 'The computer program can run and you can't distinguish from
the human doing the task,' he says. Chandler first worked with plotters,
machines used in mechanical drawings. But he found the lines created by
the robots thin and imprecise. His work really took off nearly 30 years
later, in 1998, when the Lego company released its robot-making kits.
'It made it possible for someone who lived in an apartment with not a
lot of money to put it together,' Chandler says." March 18, 2004: Precarn
hands out $1.8M for research projects. Ottawa Business Journal. "Precarn
Inc., an Ottawa-based not-for-profit technology group, handed out $1.8
million on Thursday to fund Canadian robotics and intelligent systems
projects. The funding was provided to three teams of researchers representing
14 organizations and universities across the country. Contributions in
kind will add another $3.3 million to the amount. Precarn is a national
consortium of corporations, research institutions and government partners
that support the development of robotics and intelligent systems. The
latter is defined as technologies that perceive, reason, and essentially
act like humans. The three groups to receive funding include: Intelligent
e-Health Portal ... Scheduling the Use of Imaging Satellites ... Acoustic
Monitoring for Transportation...." March 18, 2004: Multi-agent
technology: removing the 'artificial' from AI. By Fran Howarth. IT-Director.com.
"I don't want to spoil the book for you if you haven't read it, but
Michael Crichton's 2002 novel 'Prey' is an example of science fiction
meeting the latest technology. In the novel, Crichton explores the use
of a combination of nanotechnology, biotechnology and computer technology
to create a swarm of self-sustaining, self-reproducing micro-robots that
are capable of learning from experience. These micro-robots have been
programmed to prey on humans - and, through self-learning capabilities,
they keep getting more and more dangerous. ... Agents are small software
programs that communicate with each other, acting behaviorally to interact
and respond, matching available resources to demand. ... In a multi-agent
system, each agent communicates with the network of agents, considering
options for matching its capabilities with demand, negotiating on such
constraints as quality, price and time, and then making decisions for
committing resources to match demand. As such, multi-agent systems have
applications in a wide range of business environments, such as supplying
sophisticated decision-support capabilities for supply chain demand and
logistics scheduling. ... The software agents become intelligent because
they can make use of the knowledge contained in ontology to use in the
process of negotiation and decision-making." March 18, 2004: A
Grand plan for brainy robots. By Nick Dermody. BBC News. "On
a good day, Lucy can tell a banana apart from an apple. And that's handy
skill to have if you are an orang-utan. Even a robotic one. It might not
sound like much to a too-clever-to-know-it human like you or me, but it
represents pioneering work in the field of artificial intelligence. ...
By going back to first principles, this self-taught scientist [Steve Grand]
has created one of the most advanced robot 'brains' in the world. His
baby, Lucy, may not be much to look at, but she represents perhaps the
best example yet of how far we can get computers to 'think' for themselves
- one of the most advanced artificial life-forms in existence. ... [H]e
is still waiting for the key breakthrough, the one sentence or 'formula'
for describing what the brain - and its intelligence - is actually for.
'Until we've got that, we will never be able to make artificial intelligence,'
he said." March 18, 2004: Robolympics
contestants shoot for gold - First all-round robotics competition
kicks off in San Francisco. By Helen Pearson. Nature Science Update. "Like
the human version, the Robolympics will put its contestants through a
variety of gruelling events, from robot sumo to robot soccer. There is
even a robo-triathlon, in which automatons scramble to be first on legs,
on wheels and across water. Artificial intelligence researchers and robotics
buffs already have regular competitions, but these often feature just
one sport. The Robolympics will be the first mega-competition for those
in the game, explains David Calkins, games founder and president of the
Robotics Society of America. The international, multidisciplinary line-up
means that competition is intense. But robotics experts from different
fields will get to meet, talk and share ideas. 'It is nice to let them
cross-pollinate,' Calkins says. ... Robotics researchers say that such
competitions fuel the development of other robots, such as search and
rescue machines that pick through earthquake rubble for survivors." March 18, 2004: Dial
'em for Mumbai. By Garry Barker. LiveWire / The Sydney Morning Herald.
"Increasingly, companies in Australia, the US, Europe and Britain
are cutting costs by moving customer contact to countries where English
is good and wages low. It is called outsourcing and, because it is costing
jobs in Western countries, it is now a political football, here and overseas.
... But the outsourcers now face a challenge from fast-developing artificial
intelligence and speech-synthesis technologies. Mobile phones, which now
outnumber fixed-lines in Australia, do not suit call centres that ask
customers to push keypad buttons. If you call ScanSoft, a speech-synthesis
company in Sydney, you will be greeted by an Australian voice that is
rich, tutored and welcoming. ... Few callers realise they have been holding
a conversation with a computer. ... That, some say, is the future for
call centres - perhaps the ultimate future of human jobs of many kinds." March 17, 2004: 'Science
and the citizen' workshop, France. Event announcement from Cordis
News. "A workshop aimed at promoting sciences to the general public
will be held in Bobigny, Drancy, France, from 2 to 4 April. Organised
in collaboration with the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS),
the meeting will encourage debate between citizens and the scientific
community. The major themes for the event will be: - ... artificial intelligence
[l'intelligence artificielle] ..." March 17, 2004: Software
agent targets chatroom paedophiles. By Duncan Graham-Rowe. New Scientist
Magazine (p. 23).[Updated April
8, 2004: "Serious doubts have been brought to our attention about
this story. Consequently, we have removed it while we investigate its
veracity." Jeremy Webb, Editor. New Scientist.] "Paedophiles
attempting to 'groom' children in internet chatrooms can now be detected
by a computer program. The program works by putting on a convincing impression
of a young person taking part in a chatroom conversation. At the same
time it analyses the behaviour of the person it is chatting with, looking
for classic signs of grooming: paedophiles pose as children as they attempt
to arrange meetings with the children they befriend. Called ChatNannies,
the software was developed in the UK by Jim Wightman, an IT consultant
from Wolverhampton in the West Midlands. It creates thousands of sub-programs,
called nanniebots, which log on to different chatrooms and strike up conversations
with users and groups of users. ... Chatbots scarcely distinguishable
from people were predicted by computer pioneer Alan Turing as long ago
as 1950, says Aaron Sloman, an artificial intelligence expert at the University
of Birmingham in the UK. So he is not surprised the bots are so convincing,
especially as their conversation is restricted to a limited topic - like
youth culture, say - and is kept relatively short. ... ChatNannies includes
a neural network program that continually builds up knowledge about how
people use language, and employs this information to generate more realistic
and plausible patterns of responses. ... Can you tell the difference?
In this chatroom dialogue, which is the bot and which is the human? ..." March 17, 2004: RFID
chips watch Grandma brush teeth. By Celeste Biever. New Scientist
News. "Tiny computer chips that emit unique radio-frequency IDs could
be slapped on to toothbrushes, chairs and even toilet seats to monitor
elderly people in their own homes. Data harvested from the RFID chips
would reassure family and care-givers that an elderly person was taking
care of themselves, for example taking their medication. Unusual data
patterns would provide an early warning that something was wrong. A group
of Intel researchers demonstrated the technology to US government officials
in Washington DC on Tuesday. ... Algorithms on the PC use 'probabilistic'
reasoning to infer what the person is doing. For some tasks, merely picking
up an object such as a toothbrush is enough. But to determine that someone
is making a cup of tea, a series of objects and their order must also
be known. Concerned relatives can then check on their loved one over the
internet. The computer could even be programmed to pick up on unusual
patterns automatically and alert relatives through an email or SMS message.
... Other companies and universities also showcased wireless healthcare
technologies including a bed that monitors a person's weight and movements.
Larson's team at MIT demonstrated embedded systems that rely on a network
of embedded cameras and temperature sensors to make inferences about behaviour." March 16, 2004: Congress
let privacy programs be cut. By Michael J. Sniffen. The Associated
Press / available from The Boston Globe & Boston.com. "When Congress
curtailed Pentagon research it feared would ensnare innocent Americans
in the terrorism fight, it also allowed the Bush administration to eliminate
two projects to protect citizens' privacy from futuristic tools. As a
result, the government is quietly pressing ahead with research into high-powered
computer data-mining technology without the two most advanced privacy
protections developed for those terror-fighting tools. ... One privacy
project worked with Poindexter's Genisys program, which scanned government
and commercial records for terrorist planning. The other was part of his
Bio-ALIRT program, which scanned private health records for evidence of
attacks. ... In reviewing the rise and fall of [retired Admiral John]
Poindexter's project, the Pentagon's inspector general concluded the failure
to address privacy problems from the outset of future data-mining research
risks developing 'systems that may not be either deployable or used to
their fullest potential without costly revision.' Professor LaTanya Sweeney
of Carnegie Mellon University was the principal researcher developing
privacy protections for the Bio-ALIRT project. An early version of Bio-ALIRT
was used to help protect President Bush's 2001 inauguration and the 2002
Olympics. ... The biosurveillance system monitors symptoms of patients
at emergency rooms and doctors' offices and less-obvious sources such
as increases in grocery store orange juice sales and in school absenteeism
in hopes of detecting a biological attack. Names are concealed until evidence
suggests victims need to be treated. Sweeney said DARPA paid to develop
the privacy software but did not pay for a public field test. 'The tool
just sits there unused,' she said. 'People think they have to sacrifice
privacy to get safety. And it doesn't have to be that way.'" March 16, 2004: Robot
for the elderly at Future of Aging Services Conference. Press Release
available from Space Daily. "Professor Martha Pollack, University
of Michigan Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science,
and University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon collaborators, will demonstrate
'Pearl,' an artificial-intelligence robot designed to assist the elderly,
and a handheld reminder device, during the Future of Aging Services Conference
on Tuesday, March 16, 2004, 3:30 p.m., at the Dirksen Senate Office Building
in Washington, D.C. As baby boomers become senior citizens and health
care costs continue to escalate, assistive technologies that enable greater
self regulation are likely to become more prevalent. Pearl, is capable
of various caregiver tasks, such as escorting an elderly person to an
appointment or reminding her of her daily schedule. Pearl is intended
to assist caregivers not replace them. By taking on more mundane responsibilities
of the caregiver and health professionals, those individuals have more
time to focus on the tasks that require their high-level of training." March 16, 2004: CBS
drama courts viewers with legal battles of tomorrow. By Bernard Weinraub.
New York Times / available from HoustonChronicle.com.
"Century City (8 tonight, CBS/Channel 11) is clearly an
attempt to break through the clutter of law shows. Instead of the quirkiness
of The Practice or the 'ripped from the headlines' histrionics
of Law & Order, the new series seeks to deal with issues such
as genetic profiling, cloning, mind-altering antibiotics and even virtual
rape. The risk of the show is finding the right balance between human
drama and futuristic science. ... [Paul] Attanasio said that the pace
of technological change was so rapid it was sometimes difficult for the
show's writers to make hypothetical leaps into the future. 'Just today
there was a story about cloning human embryos in Korea,' he said. 'There's
been this explosion of surveillance technology since 9/11. There are constant
articles about artificial intelligence or cancer cures. We're trying to
keep up.'" March 16, 2004 [date
of premier episode]: Century
City. CBS. "Future
Mythology: The world has passed through some harrowing experiences,
like the Brentwood Quake and the war in Iran, but in 2030 things look
pretty bright. The world is more interconnected than ever before, thanks
to high-resolution holographic projections beamed across the fiberoptic
net and scramjets that make weekend trips to other continents commonplace.
... Virtual Assistants with low level artificial intelligence are gradually
replacing human secretaries. ... Lawyers now benefit from the assistance
of virtual jurors programmed to react like members of actual jurors'
demographic groups, and they no longer have to do much legal grunt work,
such as hunting down evidence and legal precedents, because the tasks
are done by virtual assistants that do not need food, sleep, office
space, emotional support, or extra pay for overtime, and never sue for
harassment, sexual or otherwise. ... Many of the crimes that have troubled
human societies for millennia are becoming obsolete, thanks to near-omnipresent
surveillance, made possible by the proliferation of small, cheap cameras
with high resolution, coupled with sophisticated search algorithms and
cheap digital storage." March 15, 2004:
Web
site faces battle for users in market for local news. March 15, 2004:
The
European steel sector gets a makeover. Cordis News. "The European
Commission and the European steel industry have launched a EU Steel
technology platform to develop a roadmap for the industry up to 2030.
... The goal is to support the transformation of the European steel
industry towards a more knowledge based and value added industry with
improved competitiveness and sustainability. Emphasis will be on innovation
in new production technologies such as advanced computers systems, measurement
sensors, physical models and methods of artificial intelligence." March 15, 2004:
Robots
to Get Boss Upgrades. By Mark Baard. Wired News. If you want to
glimpse the future of robotics, look no further than Roomba, Segway
and PackBot. The machines that can best navigate our homes and city
streets will be the chassis for tomorrow's home, service and mobile
robots, said roboticists this week at the Emerging Robotic Technologies
and Applications Conference in Cambridge, Massachussets. ... 'The big
future applications will be for the aging populations of the United
States, Europe and Japan,' said [Rodney] Brooks. Such applications could
come in handy for baby boomers in the United States, who are growing
older. By 2023 the United States as a whole will have one in five Americans
over age 65. That's the same percentage of seniors living today in Florida.
Robots will substitute for low-cost, imported elder-care workers in
developed countries where help is becoming scarce, said Brooks. March 15, 2004:
All
Robots Break Down in Pentagon Race. By Andrew Bridges. Herald &
Review. "Looks like we won't be seeing any robot driver's licenses
issued anytime soon. All 15 self-navigating vehicles in a 150-mile race
across the Mojave Desert were knocked out within a few miles of the
starting gate Saturday, victims of technical glitches, barbed-wire fences
and rugged terrain. None could claim the $1 million prize offered by
a military agency seeking to develop autonomous vehicles that could
be used in combat. One of the early favorites, a military Humvee converted
by Carnegie Mellon University students, managed to travel 7.4 miles
before veering off course and snapping an axle during the race. 'It
was supposed to be challenging. We knew it would be challenging,' said
Jan Walker, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon agency that sponsored the
race. 'We're involved because it's a technology we really need to push
forward.'"
March 13, 2003:
Early
problems end $1M robot race. The Associated Press / available from
USA Today. "A $1 million race across the Mojave Desert by driverless
robots ended Saturday after all 15 entries either broke down or withdrew,
a race official said. March 12, 2004:
Robot racers
almost ready to roll. BBC News. "Some 20 robotic vehicles will
be steering themselves across the Mojave desert this weekend. The robot
racers are taking part in a Grand Challenge organised by the US Defence
Advanced Research Projects Agency to drive work on robot vehicles. ...
Each robot traveller must complete the course without aid from its creators.
It will be accompanied by a Darpa vehicle, driven by humans, who will
hit a kill switch if a racer runs amok. ... The distance to be travelled
by the robot racers is a fraction of that travelled by an autonomous
flying robot. In April 2001 the Global Hawk Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
flew 13,840km (8,600 miles) in 22 hours across the Pacific from California
to Australia." March 1 1, 2004:
The
gentle rise of the machines. Robotics - The science-fiction dream
that robots would one day become a part of everyday life was absurd.
Or was it? The Economist Technology Quarterly. "Since 1939, when
Westinghouse Electric introduced Electro, a mechanical man, at the World's
Fair in New York, robot fans have imagined a world filled with tireless
robotic helpers, always on hand to wash dishes, do the laundry and handle
the drudgery of everyday tasks. So far, however, such robots have proliferated
in science fiction, but have proved rather more elusive in the real
world. But optimists are now arguing that the success of the Roomba
and of toys such as Aibo, Sony's robot dog, combined with the plunging
cost of computer power, could mean that the long-awaited mass market
for robots is finally within reach. 'Household robots are starting to
take off,' declared a recent report from the United Nations Economic
Commission for Europe (UNECE). Are they really? ... [R]obots have had
their greatest impact in factories. Industrial robots go back over 40
years, when they first began to be used by carmakers. Unimate, the first
industrial robot, went to work for General Motors in 1961. ... Industrial
robotics is a $5.6 billion industry, growing by around 7% a year. But
the UNECE report predicts that the biggest growth over the next three
years will be in domestic rather than industrial robots. ... While prices
drop and hardware improves, research into robotic vision, control systems
and communications have jumped ahead as well." March 11, 2004:
Drivers
wanted. Motoring - It is already possible to build driverless cars,
trucks and buses. But practical problems and safety concerns mean they
may never be allowed on the roads. The Economist Technology Quarterly.
"The teams competing in DARPA's Grand Challenge (see
article) have it easy. The driverless vehicles racing off-road in
the Mojave desert merely have to avoid boulders, dunes and the occasional
cactus. That is nothing compared with the hazards of the open road.
Put those same autonomous vehicles on Interstate 15 -- the busy road
that links Los Angeles and Las Vegas -- and they would also have to
contend with bleary-eyed weekenders, huge trucks and octogenarians puttering
along in mobile homes. Even so, engineers and scientists at a handful
of academic and industrial research centres are valiantly grappling
with the problem of designing autonomous passenger vehicles, buses and
trucks. They imagine a future in which convoys of cars would communicate
with each other and with roadside sensors to navigate congested freeways,
ensure smooth traffic flow and virtually eliminate accidents." March 11, 2004:
Robots,
start your engines. Innovation - Could a robot race funded by a
military-research organisation help to advance the development of autonomous
fighting vehicles? The Economist Technology Quarterly. "DARPA's
congressional paymasters decided that, in addition to the normal procurement
process for developing technological breakthroughs, it might make sense
to devise special prizes to enable DARPA to reach out to a range of
researchers wider than the usual suspects. ... Teams of every stripe
have been formed, from Alaska to Lafayette, Louisiana. One group from
Palos Verdes, California, consists mostly of high-school students, but
is not to be underestimated, because many of the students' parents work
in the aerospace industry. Another group, Team Phantasm, is based in
St Louis and consists of an inveterate tinkerer and a semi-retired computer
programmer who have big plans but shallow pockets. ... Who will win?
Probably no one this time around, although the agency is more optimistic
than it was a year ago that one of the teams might manage to claim the
prize, according to Ms [Jan] Walker. But even without an outright winner,
there may be rewards of other kinds for those who compete. There are
plenty of people in industry and the military who want to solve the
autonomous-vehicle problem, says Ms Walker, and they will be watching
the race closely. Besides, says Dr [William 'Red'] Whittaker, the race
is not really about the money. It is about doing something that's never
been done before. 'In the end, the best technology will win out, but
this is really about the triumph of the human spirit,' he says. Which
is somewhat ironic, when you consider that the race is for robots only." March 11, 2004:
BOOM
explodes with student invention. By Rachel Einschlag. Cornell Chronicle.
"With soccer-playing robots downstairs and computers that can play
chess upstairs, this year's eighth annual BOOM (Bits On Our Minds) exhibition
looked like something out of 'The Jetsons.' ... 'We have this expo every
year for two reasons,' said Emin Gun Sirer, assistant professor of computer
science and faculty coordinator for BOOM. 'We want to reach out to undecided
majors and to people who are not in college yet to show them the opportunities
computer science holds. We also do it as a teach-in, to show colleagues
what the cutting-edge research is.' ... The RoboCup team drew a big
crowd. The team's soccer-playing robots operate on artificial intelligence
programs that team members write. ... The theme of robotics was common
to many projects, including a robot built by Ithaca High School students
for the FIRST Robotics competition. Cornell undergraduates work as mentors
to the Ithaca High students. This year's team will compete in the second
round competition in Toronto in April." March 11, 2004:
Encyclopedias
gather dust as research moves online. By May Wong. Associated Press
/ available from CNN.com. "In the age of the Internet, encyclopedias
are gathering dust, and most families with young children don't even
consider buying the space-hogging printed sets anymore. ... [Michael
Gray, a seventh grader] prefers doing research online, where information
from a vast array of sources comes quickly, and for the most part, for
free. ... 'I find information really fast,' Gray says, smiling proudly.
'Within five to 10 minutes, I find a good [Web] site to work from.'
... There's also an ongoing debate about the reliability of data found
on the Internet; kids need to be taught how to evaluate it."
March 11, 2004:
Teams
Await Final Trials for Robot Race. By Elliot Spagat. Associated
Press / available from baltimoresun.com. "Twenty teams seeking
a bid in a $1 million race of self-navigating robots across the Mojave
Desert rushed to fix mechanical and software problems as they awaited
the final trials. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the
Pentagon's research and development arm, will tell teams Friday morning
whether or not they passed muster at trials this week at the California
Speedway in Fontana, east of Los Angeles. ... Three vehicles on Wednesday
made their way around bricks, metal rods and a gravel patch scattered
over a flat course a little more than a mile long: Bob, a modified 1996
Chevrolet pickup put together by the California Institute of Technology;
Cliff, an off-road vehicle from Virginia Polytechnic Institute; and
SciAutonics II, an Israeli-made dune buggy created by a Thousand Oaks,
Calif., team. Only one other vehicle among 25 entered in the final qualifying
round finished the course. Sandstorm, a red Humvee from Carnegie Mellon
University, did it Tuesday." March 11, 2004:
Robot trumpets
Toyota's know-how. BBC News. "A trumpet-playing robot has been
developed by Japanese car maker Toyota. It showed off its musical creation
at a Tokyo hotel, where the robot played When You Wish Upon a Star on
a trumpet. ... For its part, Sony has the all-singing and all-dancing
Qrio, which can jog at a top speed of 14 metres per minute. It seems
to have musical bent, having recently appeared for a photo opportunity
conducting the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra." March 10, 2004:
Invasion of the
Robots - From medicine to military, machines finally arrive. By
Michael Kanellos. CNET News.com. "The robots are coming. And when
they get here, they will take out the trash. Mobile, intelligent robots
that can perform tasks usually reserved for humans are starting to creep
into mainstream society and could become a multibillion-dollar market
in a few years. ... The surge in robot activity is at least partly the
result of steady improvements in performance and steadily dropping costs
for processors, sensors, navigation software and the other technologies
required to put a mobile robot together. ... Just as important as performance
and costs, from a sales perspective, is customer satisfaction. Robot
developers have adjusted their products to meet practical customer needs
rather than simply using the machines to showcase a company's technological
abilities or as entertainment devices. ... The idea of automatons that
can perform various tasks has been around since ancient Egypt. The word
'robot,' however, is of relatively recent vintage, coined by Czech playwright
Karel Capek in the 1921 play 'R.U.R.' ... In all, North American robotics
manufacturers ship about $1 billion worth of products a year, according
to Robotic Industries Association spokesman Jeff Burnstein. Other statistics
show that the international market approaches $5 billion. ... The market
for personal and mobile robots could grow to $5.4 billion this year
and become larger than the industrial, nonmobile robot market, according
to Dan Kara, president of Robotics Trends, which holds conferences and
promotes the industry. By 2010, that figure will approach $17 billion,
Kara said." March 9, 2004: Talking
Up a Good Game - Computer Simulation to Stimulate Soldiers to Speak
in Tongues. By Paul Eng. ABCNEWS.com. "Computer science professors
at the University of Southern California, with funding from DARPA, have
been working on a simulation program designed to help military personnel
perform a more prevalent -- and difficult -- task in the international
war on terrorism: communicating peacefully and correctly with foreigners
in their own native tongues. ... And the idea, says Lewis Johnson, director
of the Center for Advanced Research in Technology for Education (CARTE)
at USC, was that computer games, programmed with artificially intelligent
'agents' could help soldiers develop those much needed linguistic abilities.
... The result: The Tactical Language Training System. ... The program
is based on the graphics capabilities of Unreal Tournament, a consumer
computer game that has been popular with game players for its team-based
approach to virtual combat. But, Johnson and his team of researchers
have tweaked the game by adding a 'speech recognition' engine and their
own 'intelligent agents,' software code that 'reacts' to how a user
speaks and what he says. ... The first part of the game, says Johnson,
acts as basically an 'intelligent tutoring' program.' ... But what makes
the program really 'intelligent' are the computer-generated and -controlled
characters, such as a virtual village leader and a virtual 'team member'
that acts as an in-game guide. These game characters are programmed
to react in ways that are unique to each individual user." March 9, 2004: When
Space Invaders Ruled Earth. By Michelle Delio. Wired News. "Carl
Goodman, curator of digital media and director of new media projects
at New York's American Museum of the Moving Image ... wants everyone
to come hang out with him and play the originals at the museum's latest
exhibition, Blip. Blips, bloops and beeps emit from the room that houses
the exhibit, where a dozen video-arcade games from the late 1970s and
'80s are lovingly arranged in chronological order, each lit with a single
spotlight. Three free tokens, good for one game play each, are included
with museum admission. ... The games on display include ... Galaxian
(1979), which debuted a very rudimentary form of artificial intelligence....
'And there are deeper reasons why these games endure,' Goodman added.
'Arcade games familiarized an entire generation with computers and screen-based
interaction.'" March 9, 2004: Sunderland
robot wins BCS AI prize. By John Kavanagh. ComputerWeekly.com. "A
robot that can recognise and pick up an object has won the annual prize
for progress towards machine intelligence from the BCS Artificial Intelligence
Specialist Group. The Mira robot, built by a team at Sunderland University,
combines voice recognition, visual recognition and navigation. March 8, 2004: No
Riders - Desert Crossing Is for the Robots Only. By John Markoff.
The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "Anthony S. Levandowski
is working feverishly with a team of students from the University of
California at Berkeley to build an ambitious robot motorcycle to race
without a driver across the Mojave Desert. They are part of a crowd
that has been attracted by a Pentagon promise to pay $1 million to the
creators of the first self-guided vehicle to find its way this Saturday
along a programmed course from Barstow, Calif., to near Las Vegas. ...
Once the stuff of science fiction, autonomous vehicles have become relatively
commonplace. Airplanes take off and land under computer control, iRobot's
$199 Roomba vacuum cleaner trundles itself through living rooms, and
Sony sells a $1,599 pet robot. Yet the challenge of designing ground-hugging,
path-finding automated vehicles remains one of the thorniest tasks facing
those who work on artificial intelligence. ... Just as promising as
any useful military technologies that might emerge, said John Nagle,
Team Overbot's leader, are the potential commercial applications. 'The
killer app for this thing is automatic rental car return at the airport,'
he said." March 8, 2004: City
pushes computer tutor for struggling algebra students. By Maggi
Newhouse. Tribune-Review / available from PittsburghLIVE.com. "About
40 percent of the city's ninth graders fail first-year algebra every
year, and Pittsburgh Public Schools officials say it's time to expand
an innovative math program used by some schools to the rest of the district.
... The centerpiece of the Carnegie Learning method, developed by Carnegie
Mellon University researchers, is a computer program that combines traditional
algebra problems with technology that can assess a student's progress
and skill level. The Cognitive Tutor program can then use the student
information to offer individualized instruction and provide instant
feedback for a student and teacher. 'What you're seeing here is artificial
intelligence,' said Jackie Smith, an instructional support director
for mathematics. 'The computer is learning and building a profile of
every single student as it diagnoses their strengths and weaknesses.'" March 7, 2004: Canada
listens to world as partner in spy system. By Lynda Hurst. The Toronto
Star. "The public may not be so blasé about the fact that 'good'
countries, not just 'bad,' practice espionage -- routine, all-pervasive,
electronic espionage. But it's naive to think otherwise. All nations
spy on friends as well as enemies. ... Every day, billions of telephone
calls, e-mails, faxes, radio transmissions, even Internet downloads
are captured by orbiting satellites monitoring signals on Earth, then
processed by high-powered computers. ... 'Echelon is an electronic vacuum
cleaner, but it is finely tuned,' says Canadian intelligence specialist
Wesley Wark. ... Though it all may sound like Big Brother, there is
no need for the public to 'get paranoid that the government is listening
to them,' says [John] Thompson. 'That's not the case. They can't 'read'
a fraction of what they pick up.' In fact, less than 2 per cent of the
transmissions are ever seen by human eyes. Artificial intelligence does
the bulk of the listening and reading. ... Each alliance partner has
its own dictionary of key names, phrases, people, places and words (bomb,
for example), but all five are used at each country's listening posts.
The computer scans all messages for these words, flags those that contain
them, and eliminates the vast majority that don't. ... Echelon has also
devised an advanced voice-recognition system." March 7, 2004: Robotic
race could lead to robots packing weapons. By Byron Spice. Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette. "A prize of $1 million awaits the winning team in Saturday's
Grand Challenge, a 200-mile race across the Mojave Desert. Related article:
The nuts and bolts of the Grand Challenge But the race is no more about
the money than Charles Lindbergh's 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic
was about claiming the $25,000 Orteig Prize. This wild scramble by a motley
group of robotic vehicles is all about stretching the limits of technology.
It's about proving to a skeptical public that machines can 'see' and 'think'
well enough to rapidly traverse a varied terrain. ... The race sponsor,
the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has always been clear about
why it is prepared to give away $1 million in taxpayer money. The Defense
Department, looking to repeat the success of its unmanned aircraft such
as the Predator, is heavily investing in unmanned ground vehicles that
will keep human soldiers out of harm's way. 'This is an attempt to accelerate
that technology development,' said Air Force Col. Jose Negron, who is
running the race for DARPA.,,, Though it is possible to operate some unmanned
vehicles by remote control, the amount of bandwidth necessary to control
a fleet of vehicles simply will not be available on the battlefield, Rand's
[John] Matsumura said. So unmanned military vehicles will need to operate
largely autonomously, even though humans would continue to maintain control
over firing the weapons they carry, he added." March 7, 2004: Research
raises more than one debate. By Stacey Singer. PalmBeachPost.com.
"Beyond the debate on stem cells, [Xu] Wu's discovery also touches
a lesser-known controversy. Its implications may prove equally profound.
It concerns a major shift in the way drugs have been discovered and made.
Wu's way, and Scripps' [Research Institute] way, represents a future that
some scientists fear -- one where robots quickly draw from vast libraries
of man-made molecules, then test them, mixing and matching with the same
sort of equipment that transformed the Detroit automotive industry. Indeed,
Scripps has relied on engineers from the auto industry to design its robots.
... The robot combines chemical solutions, then drips them into hundreds
of test tubes containing reactive animal proteins or cells. If a sought-after
reaction develops, the robot identifies the substance as a 'hit.' Wu's
screen identified 80 potentially useful molecules. Four proved to be most
potent. Wu then tested them in gelatin-coated plates, laced with embryonic
mouse cells. Then he waited. After one week, about half the cells tested
positive for proteins essential to heart muscle contraction. Had he tested
those chemicals himself, one at a time, the research would have used up
the better part of his career. 'It would have taken 10 years or something
without the robot,' he said." March 7, 2004: Warrenville,
Ill.-Based Navistar Cut Indianapolis Plant Jobs by Automating. By
James P. Miller. Chicago Tribune
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News / available from The Miami Herald.com.
"'The automation of factory production is just as significant as
globalization for explaining the loss of manufacturing jobs,' says Robert
Reich, a professor at Brandeis University and former Labor secretary in
the Clinton administration. Indeed, although it is a wrenching process,
many experts argue that sacrificing some jobs to automation may be the
best way to prevent millions more U.S. jobs from migrating offshore. ...
American manufacturers have been automating plants--replacing workers
with 'smart' equipment like industrial robots and computerized factory
machines--since the early 1980s. But the automation trend has been accelerating
in recent years, as U.S. companies face intense price competition from
abroad at the same time that soaring health-care and pension costs have
been making U.S. workers ever more expensive. ... Humans have long been
slower than machines, and less capable in performing repetitive tasks.
The human advantage used to be that, in contrast to robots, they were
flexible enough to jiggle a dashboard to make it fit properly, or to notice
that somebody up the line had used the wrong screw. 'When General Motors
first started trying to make cars using robots, the robots would smash
windshields, or grow confused if things were slightly out of alignment,'
[David] Autor said. But a series of technical improvements, particularly
advances in robots' visual acuity, has in recent years made machines superior
to humans for many industrial tasks." March 7, 2004: Olympiad
sets stage for battle of the brains. By Tan Vinh. The Seattle Times.
"They painted their faces, dyed their hair in school colors and sported
'Science Rules' T-shirts. For these participants, yesterday's 19th annual
Regional Science Olympiad isn't so much a science fair as an athletic
competition.... 'The people that know what this is about, they don't think
it's nerdy or dorky. They treat this as a sport. It's really competitive,'
said Kristian Adair, a 17-year-old senior at Stanwood High School, which
has qualified for five national competitions. Robots were the showcase
this year. Many middle-schoolers built buglike contraptions with tentacles
that dragged billiard balls across a makeshift pool table and dropped
them into side pockets. But as the students are often reminded, scientists
who think outside the box usually stand out." March 7, 2004: Mitchell
could find little help in insanity law. By Stephen Hunt. The Salt
Lake Tribune. "Utah's insanity law -- the strictest in the nation
-- cuts little slack for people with brain disorders or delusions. At
trial, mentally ill defendants are deemed to be on equal footing with
mentally healthy defendants. Their intent to commit a crime may be the
only issue considered by a jury, unless the defendant believed he or she
was harming a non-human entity, such as a robot, alien or inanimate object." March 5, 2004: Robots
rule at Waikato Univiersity's science block. By Ann Graham. Waikato
Times / available from s from Stuff. "Marvin the robot, who is worth
about $10,000 and has been a work in progress since 2000, is one of the
many robotic creations by engineering lecturer Dale Carnegie and his students.
... Now the challenge for Mr Carnegie and his students is to further develop
the artificial intelligence of their robots so they can be used commercially.
'We want to let Marvin learn. Let him make the mistakes and programme
him so he won't make them again. We want all our robots to operate autonomously,
but we also want people to be comfortable with them. Washing machines
and DVDs, they're robots - but people take them for granted because they
are so easy to use.' ... The department is the only one in New Zealand
which develops such robots." March 5, 2004: First
Annual Youth Technology Fair To Be Held. Atlanta Daily World. "Nearly
300 youth between the ages of 12-18 submitted entries to the Mayor's Office
of Community Technology's First Annual Technology Fair for Atlanta Youth
scheduled for Wednesday, March 10 through Friday, March 12. ... Youth
at various public and private Atlanta schools have entered innovative
projects that include the future of artificial intelligence, a 3D image
of Megatron, a robotic book bag, a wireless network using 802.11 Standard,
and a multimedia video of the newly renovated Pink Pig ride at Lenox Mall.
'Technology can be fun as well as informative,' says Jabari Simama, Director
of the Mayor's Office of Community Technology." March 5, 2004: Japan
Seeks Robotic Help in Caring for the Aged. By James Brooke. The New
York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "Then there is the Wakamaru, a mobile,
three-foot-high speaking robot equipped with two camera eyes. It is used
largely by working people to keep an eye on their elderly parents at home.
These devices and others in the works will push Japanese sales of domestic
robots to $14 billion in 2010 and $40 billion in 2025 from nearly $4 billion
currently, according to the Japan Robot Association." March 5, 2004: Robo
doc. By Jon Excell. The Engineer / e4engineering.com. "It is
tempting to view the robot simply as a clever marketing tool, and as a
sophisticated showcase for Honda's technical skill its impact is undeniable.
But the diminutive android is much more than an impressive branding exercise.
Prof Edgar Korner, the company's robotics and artificial intelligence
(AI) supremo, insists that Asimo represents a key step towards the era
of the domestic robot. ... In the longer term, Korner claimed, it is the
technologies that we broadly define as AI that require the most work.
'Asimo is a marvellous walking machine, a masterpiece of engineering,'
he said. 'But the next stage is to enable it to develop the ability to
'think' for itself, to an extent where it can get on with its chores without
bothering its owner.' ... The further development of AI will, claimed
Korner, be made possible by ongoing advances in the understanding of human
and animal brains. ... In the shorter term, technology developed for Asimo
is already having some interesting spin-off applications. ... Honda's
work on machine intelligence is now being used to develop an accident-prevention
system for cars. ... Some have claimed that there is a sense in which
humanoid robot development - and more specifically AI - occupies a similarly
ambiguous moral space to genetic engineering or nanotechnology, with scientists
developing technology that has the potential to completely change the
way we think about the world. Korner does not agree. 'From the point of
ethics Honda was very careful to stress from the beginning that this is
a machine. This is not intended to copy a human. The message is that we
don't want to copy humans, we want to create a useful machine for serving
humans.'" March 4, 2004: Walking
'signature.' March 4, 2004: Red
Planet reignites interest in space race. By Mark Samuels. Computing
/ vnunet.com. "'Space appears to have become fashionable again,'
says Dr Colin Hicks, director general of the British National Space Centre
(BNSC). ... The ability of rovers to move on Mars is currently limited
by the time it takes to transmit information to and from Earth. The next
stage of robotic explorations to Mars will reduce communication time through
the use of artificial intelligence and vision systems that allow a craft
to move autonomously. Sending robots to Mars requires specialist skills.
'It's difficult to say the UK has the expertise - but we have people who
see this as a leading-edge area where they'd like to be involved,' says
Hicks." March 4, 2004: Gates
looks into the future - Microsoft chairman relaxed in talk as he encourages
students. By Alvin Powell. Harvard Gazette. "Microsoft Chairman William
H. Gates III delivered a relaxed, sometimes humorous talk to about 350
students, faculty, and administrators at Lowell Lecture Hall Thursday
evening (Feb. 26), outlining a software future that features smarter,
more secure machines and encouraging students to develop computing's next
big idea. ... He also pointed to artificial intelligence as an area awaiting
a big breakthrough. Ironically, he said, fewer people are working in artificial
intelligence today than 20 years ago and urged students to enter computer
science, which he said needs new energy and ideas. ... He pegged speech
recognition and wireless networking as two technologies that will have
a big impact in the future. Speech recognition, he said, is still imperfect,
but may have a big impact in rapidly modernizing China, where the large
number of characters in the language make a keyboard cumbersome." March 4, 2004: Robo-talk
helps pocket translator. By Jo Twist. BBC News. "Visitors landing
at Tokyo's Narita Airport will be able to hire a device which can translate
the local lingo. The speech-to-speech technology was developed by NEC,
tested in Papero robots and then put in PDAs. ... As well as being able
to understand and imitate human behaviour, Papero (Partner-Type Personal
Robot), is the first robot to translate verbally between two languages
in colloquial tongue. It can cope, in other words, with slang and local
chatter, and has a vocabulary of 50,000 Japanese and 25,000 English travel
and tourism related words." March 4, 2004: New
research field focuses on videogames. By Anne Joling. The Michigan
Daily. "[Prof. Dmitri William] said videogame research is a growing
field studying all aspects of games, from their effects on people in the
form of causing violence and aggression -- as well as their possible beneficial
effects on society -- to their economic and cultural impact. ... John
Laird, a professor in electrical engineering and computer science, said
he is interested in research that would aid in the creation of the games.
'The research my group does on computer games is to use computer games
as an environment for testing out ideas on building artificial intelligence
characters, as well as exploring new types of games. By adding artificial
intelligence characters, it might be possible to make computer games that
are more of a synthesis of interaction and plot-driven stories,' Laird
said. ... Schools throughout the United States, including the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology as well as Purdue, Ohio State and Princeton universities,
all have classes and programs dealing in videogame research." March 3, 2004: Listen
to 'Robot Stories' Director Greg Pak. [Radio interview.] Pak is an
award-winning writer and director who has made his first feature film,
Robot Stories. It tells four stories of love between humans and robots.
The film has been received warmly by critics, winning more than 23 awards.
Fresh Air. WHYY-FM. March 2, 2004: UNC-C
Prof Turns Ancient Game into Olympiad-Winning Program. By Worth Civils.
LocalTechWire.com. "Now at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte,
where he goes by the name Ken and serves as director of graduate studies
in the College of Information Technology, Chen has not forgotten his childhood
days. He has developed a computer program of the 4,000-year-old game called
Go Intellect. Chen's program matched artificial intelligence (AI) with
computers from throughout the world in at the 8th Computer Olympiad held
last fall in Graz, Austria. Go Intellect was the only program to win a
medal in both the 19x19 and 9x9 categories. ... 'Go is the hardest popular
board game to program, because the positional evaluation is usually extremely
hard for the machine,' explains Chen. 'Plus, it has very high branching
factor -- over 200 on average -- making the computer chess-type, full-board
search approach powerless. Go is an excellent test bed for new techniques
and approaches in artificial intelligence.'" March 2, 2004: Virtual
robots patrol chatrooms. By Richard Warburton. Birmingham Post / available
from ic Birmingham. "A software programmer from Wolverhampton has
developed an army of 100,000 virtual robots to search internet chatrooms
to track down paedophiles. ... The artificial intelligence programmes,
known as 'bots', act exactly like humans in the way they communicate,
and have the power to locate suspect users to within about 50 metres.
The bots target internet users who are acting suspiciously or ask suspicious
questions. Every time they discover something suspicious they report back
to Mr [Jim] Wightman with the location of the internet user. ... 'I do
a lot of programming for insurance companies and banks but I wanted to
do something that would benefit the world socially,' Mr Wightman added." March 2, 2004: Robot
future looks bananas. By Tryst Williams. The Western Mail / available
from ic Wales. "The future's not only bright and orange, but it could
be an extremely bright homemade orange robot orangutan, according to one
of the UK's leading scientists. A public lecture in Cardiff University
later this month will reveal the inside story of a quest to build the
first robot with a true mind of its own. This is where three-year-old
mechanical primate Lucy comes in. The brainchild of Cardiff University
honorary research fellow Steve Grand, Lucy is said to be one of the most
advanced artificial lifeforms in existence. According to Mr Grand, the
most intelligent thing Lucy can do is recognise bananas. ... 'Artificial
intelligence in science fiction is always shown as a grown-up that whirrs
into existence after a mad scientist has thrown a switch. But real living
things need a very long time to learn how to stand up and how to say words.
... We don't know how long creating artificial intelligence might take
- it's taken four billion years for human intelligence to evolve. And
anyway, I don't see what's so scary about intelligence - I like intelligent
people.'" March 1, 2004: At
the technology sharp end - In these days of constraint and focus,
do carriers still have room for research laboratories? Hugh Bradlow thinks
so, but then he runs one. Telstra's CTO speaks to Robert Clark about how
research groups today pay their way. Telecom Asia. "[Q]Is speech
recognition the one that works for the Telstra's directory inquiries IVR?
[A] Now, the expectation is that these natural language speech systems
will become increasingly deployed because they offer some really significant
advantages, both from the point of view of productivity and from the customer
perspective. ... It's a hell of a lot easier than punching your way through
an IVR system. But the grammar development is time-consuming, and at the
moment it requires specialized expertise and that complicates the deployment.
What we've developed is a very interesting tool, developed by one of our
staff members who's actually doing a PhD on the topic. He's come up with
a way of actually doing grammar inference. Instead of having to have someone
program the grammar in it, he's developed a tool where you can give it
examples of the grammar and it will start to learn the grammar. ...
[Q]You've got a very broad range of research topics artificial
intelligence, Internet systems and architecture. Are any of these bigger
or given more resources or priority than others? ... [A] No, my joke
is: you name it, we do it...." March 1, 2004: Extra!
Extra! Read All About You. By Joanna Glasner. Wired News. "While
a few years ago only a handful of newspaper websites required user registration,
industry analysts say the practice has now become commonplace. The bulk
of the most widely circulated American papers, including The New York
Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times,
require users to complete an online form to read articles. In recent weeks,
The Washington Post joined the crowd, replacing a pop-up reader-questionnaire
feature with a registration form requiring an e-mail address and password.
... To get access to articles, readers are increasingly required to provide
such data as age, ZIP code, gender and, in many cases, information about
income and personal interests. The motive is a basic one. Newspapers want
to make money from their websites. And since most readers are unwilling
to pay for content in a world where online news is widely available for
free, making money requires selling advertising. To convince advertisers
to spend online, newspapers say they need to get enough data about their
users to tailor ads to the most receptive possible audience. ... Privacy
was also a concern, particularly given the potential for newspapers to
cross-reference information provided by readers with other commercial
databases. The NAA report notes that on average, about eight people with
the same birthday live in each ZIP code, giving a media company a reasonable
chance of uniquely identifying an individual registrant. Of course, sites
are required to reveal what they plan to do with readers' information
in their online privacy policies." March 1, 2004: Microsoft,
Amid Dwindling Interest, Talks Up Computing as a Career. By Steve
Lohr. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "Bill Gates went on
a campaign tour last week, trying to reinvigorate his base, as they say
in politics. The number of students majoring in computer science is falling,
even at the elite universities. So Mr. Gates went stumping at the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, M.I.T. and
Harvard, telling students that they could still make a good living in
America, even as the nation's industry is sending some jobs, like software
programming, abroad. ... The Computing Research Association's annual survey
of more than 200 universities in the United States and Canada found that
undergraduate enrollments in computer science and computer engineering
programs were down 23 percent this year. M.I.T., like other universities,
is seeking to counter the trend by emphasizing that computer science is
increasingly a collaborative discipline, involving work with experts in
other fields of business and science to solve all kinds of economic and
social problems. 'What we have to emphasize is that a good computer science
education is a great preparation for almost anything you want to do,'
Professor [John V.] Guttag said. 'It's a terrific time to be a computer
scientist.' ... With each lecture, [Bill Gates'] message was that because
of ever-faster machines, improved software and the accumulated wisdom
of decades of research, computer science was on the cusp of genuine breakthroughs
in areas like speech recognition, artificial intelligence and machine-to-machine
communication. These advances may take five years, 10 years or more, but
they are not so far off now, he said." March 2004: March 2004: Terror
Games - March
2004: The
Great Robot Race - Unmanned aerial vehicles are for wimps. 20 driverless
bots are about to get down and dirty in the Pentagon's million-dollar
rumble from L.A. to Las Vegas. Start your engines. By Douglas McGray.
Wired Magazine ( March 2004: A
New Race of Robots - This month a grueling off-road race through the
Mojave Desert may crown the most capable robotic vehicles ever. But for
the engineers behind the machines, the race started long ago. By W. Wayt
Gibbs. Scientific American (the complete article is available to subscribers
and also available for purchase online). "[Chris Urms] and his teammates
had vowed months ago that by midnight tonight Sandstorm would complete
a 150-mile journey on its own. It seemed a reasonable goal at the time:
after all, 150 miles on relatively smooth, level ground would be but a
baby step toward the 200-mile, high-speed desert crossing that the robot
must be ready for on March 13, 2004, if it is to win the U.S. Department
of Defense's Grand Challenge race, as well as the $1-million prize and
the prestige that accompanies an extraordinary leap in mobile robotics...." |
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