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<< Headlines are listed according to date posted <-> Articles are organized by date published >>
July 31, 2004: 'I,
Robot?' Not yet ... Research seeking ways to ease our workloads. By
Kimm Groshong. Pasadena Star-News. "Moving away from the notion of
robots that amount to a pile of metal boxes such as the Jetsons' maid
"Rosie,' robotics and artificial intelligence researchers at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory are working to develop robust yet flexible robots capable of
helping humans. And even though a fully capable mechanical nanny is not
likely to grace store shelves any time soon, researchers at the lab are
already beginning to consider which tasks robots should be used for and
which they should not. And for those 'robo-phobes' out there, they suggest
understanding the technology behind robots can help dispel worries of
movie-style global take-overs by artificial beings. Ayanna Howard, a senior
robotics researcher at JPL, said the technology in 'I, Robot' won't be
feasible for at least 30 or 40 years. However, in the future 'robots will
be a part of life,' she said. And the idea of robots completing tasks
that humans find too boring or too dangerous is certainly not far-fetched.
... Equipping robots with the fluidity and freedom of motion coupled with
the strength and durability desired of android helpers to complete the
prescribed duties is a goal Yoseph Bar-Cohen works toward in his lab at
JPL." July 31, 2004: Nuts,
Legos of robotics - UCLA sponsored program teaches youths math, science.
By Kevin Butler. Press-Telegram. "For most people, Lego pieces are
meant simply to be pressed together to form shapes. They aren't supposed
to, all by themselves, lift a soda can, follow a square pattern or pick
up animal pen. But Lynwood Middle School students, thanks to some mechanical
and computer know-how, built robots from Legos to do just that, as part
of an innovative program sponsored by UCLA. Forty-eight kids, including
elementary, middle and high-school pupils, spent three weeks at the school
learning how to construct and program Lego-made robots to perform specific
tasks. 'What it does is give them hands-on experience, and they are engaged
in learning,' said Principal Mark Newell." July 29, 2004: Tinkering
with their minds - Program aims to get students into scientific research
early. By Emily Anthes. The Boston Globe. "Kim Reinhold gave up a
summer of swimming and dancing in her home in Hawaii to hole up in a lab
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Over the past five weeks,
Reinhold, 16, has pursued her interest in artificial intelligence by spending
some 40 hours of daylight a week in front of a computer screen. ... 'I
love it,' said Reinhold, who developed a computer algorithm that scientists
in her lab hope will be useful in teaching machines common sense. ...
Reinhold is one of 53 rising high school seniors participating in a summer
program at MIT that allows them to work on research projects in Boston
labs. The Research Science Institute aims to sell some of the nation's
most talented science students on research careers at a time when there
is a shortage of US-trained scientists. ... The number of US jobs requiring
science and engineering skills is increasing almost 5 percent a year as
the number of Americans in those fields is declining, according to a report
released this year by the National Science Foundation's National Science
Board. The United States has been able to sustain its science and engineering
workforce by relying on foreign-born scientists. In 1990, 24 percent of
scientists and engineers working in the United States with doctorates
were foreign-born. By 2000, that proportion had increased to 38 percent,
the report says. But as other countries develop science programs that
compete with the United States for students and as tightened security
makes it more difficult to get US visas, the number of foreign scientists
in the United States is expected to drop. ''The nation's economic welfare
and security are at stake,' the report warns." July 29, 2004: Organic
PC goal of UK project. By Harry Yeates. Electronics Weekly. "In
the future, alongside the box of lifeless silicon you call your PC, you
might find a little tub of living tissue. For particular specialist tasks
involving complex, non-linear problems your inorganic circuits would find
daunting, you would turn to the box of organics. That's the ultimate aim
of a new £1.2m, four year research project involving the universities
of the West of England (UWE), Leeds and Sussex. 'For fifty years AI has
been trying to build systems that have got complicated behaviour, with
some success,' said Dr Larry Bull from UWE, who will lead the project.
'But given this complex behaviour seems to be easy in the natural world,
networks of neurons and chemical systems, why don't we try to build AI
systems out of that stuff, rather than try to write clever programmes?'" July 29, 2004: Mean
machines. By Dylan Evans. The Guardian. "Looking for a good domestic
robot? According to www.ns-5.com, the world's first fully automated domestic
assistant is about to go on sale. The Nestor Class 5 robot is six foot
tall, looks vaguely human, and can do all sorts of housework, from washing-up
to managing your finances. There's just one catch: the website promoting
this amazing gadget is just a tease, a clever bit of advertising from
20th Century Fox to promote its movie, I, Robot, which is released in
the UK next month. ... The sobering conclusion that emerges from these
stories is that preventing intelligent robots from harming humans will
require some thing much more complex than simply programming them. In
fact, programming a real robot to follow the three laws would itself be
very difficult. ... But what about conflict between multiple applications
of the same law? ... To enable robots to avoid getting caught on the horns
of such dilemmas, they would need some capacity for moral reasoning -
an 'ethics module', perhaps. That would be hideously complex compared
to Asimov's three laws. If these speculations seem far-fetched, the day
when they become pressing issues may be closer than you suspect. Computer
scientist Bill Joy is not the only expert who has urged the general public
to start thinking about the dangers posed by the rapidly advancing science
of robotics, and Greenpeace issued a special report last year urging people
to debate this matter as vigorously as they have debated the issues raised
by genetic engineering." July 28, 2004: Amplified
Intelligence - The AI Problem. Interview with Ken Ford. Astrobiology
Magazine. "Astrobiology Magazine (AM): The IMHC [Interdisciplinary
Study of Human & Machine Cognition] research agenda broadly seems to cover
robotics, cognition and simulations. Are there parts of machine intelligence
that your research institute doesn't cover today, but that you see as
growth areas? Ken Ford (KF): Don't forget that second letter
is 'H'. Although a lot of our research could be categorized as AI, and
five of our researchers are AAAI (American Association for Artificial
Intelligence) Fellows, IHMC is not a traditional machine intelligence
laboratory. The focus and theme of our research is what has become known
as human-centered computing which, in a nutshell, is about fitting technology
to people instead of fitting people to technology. The human is part of
the system, and it is the performance of the whole system, including the
human, that we are interested in. This requires that machines should be
designed to fit us physically, cognitively, and perhaps even socially.
We think of AI as meaning 'Amplified Intelligence.' The interesting thing
is that many traditional AI technologies in fact are being used in just
this way. We like to refer to it as building cognitive prostheses, computational
systems that leverage and extend human intellectual capacities, just as
eyeglasses are a kind of ocular prosthesis. Building cognitive prostheses
is fundamentally different from AI's traditional Turing Test ambitions
-- it doesn't set out to imitate human abilities, but to extend them.
... AM: In your opinion, how well do the machine intelligence
problems (like navigation, data-mining, or simulations with agents) map
to the basic computer science [CS] problem of efficient 'search'? KF:
Wow, efficient search is a 'basic computer science problem'? Not long
ago, search was being suggested as a defining characteristic of AI to
distinguish it from 'mainstream' CS. But to return to the question: search
is certainly a central technique in AI, but the search spaces arising
in AI are often impossibly huge, and a more interesting aspect is not
so much how to search them efficiently as how to re-cast problems so that
the search space itself is reduced in size. Searching is what you do when
you can't think of anything smarter." July 27, 2004: 5
new funds for your watch list. By Russel Kinnel. Morningstar.com /
available from The Sun News & MyrtleBeachOnline.com. "American
Century EmVee ... is American Century's latest quantitative mutual fund.
It uses an artificial intelligence model developed by James Stowers III
to identify stocks with price momentum." July 27, 2004: Oticon
hearing aid thinks before it acts. By Linda A. Johnson. Associated
Press / available from nj.com and The Star-Ledger. "Since George
Pankey began using his new hearing aids, he can understand his 4-year-old
grandson, he gets involved in conversations at family gatherings and he's
resumed taking his wife to the noisy pizza restaurant she likes. ... Pankey,
who lost 85 percent of his hearing from a nearby explosion while serving
in the Korean War, is among the first customers to get Oticon's new Synchro
hearing aids. Hailed as the first-ever hearing device powered by artificial
intelligence, it 'listens' to the area around the user 20,000 times each
second, continually making adjustments to produce the optimum sound --
much like the way the brain works in someone with good hearing. ... The
system's two tiny microphones automatically and continuously pick up nearby
sounds, evaluate them and apply settings to boost the volume of speech
and reduce background noise...." July 26, 2004: Mind
Over Matter. July 26, 2004: University
lab researches advanced fields of video game development. Workers
from varied backgrounds all aid in lab research. By Matt Wright. The Daily
Texan. "It sounds like a kid's dream come true: a college lab devoted
solely to researching video games. But at the University's Digital Media
Collaboratory, the work is hardly child's play. At the lab tucked away
in West Campus, professors, graduate students and undergraduate volunteers
from an assortment of disciplines work together on research in the most
advanced fields of game development. Many projects at the DMC are rigorously
academic, such as computer sciences Ph.D. candidate Ken Stanley's work
on the NeuroEvolution of Augmenting Topologies. His project applies the
latest developments in artificial intelligence to 'evolve' simple networks
into adaptive and ever more complex networks." July 26, 2004: Fighter
pilots could command drone 'swarms.' By Will Knight. New Scientist
News. "Jet fighter pilots could command a whole swarm of planes from
the air, using a system developed by a British aerospace company. QinetiQ
- formerly the UK government's Defence Evaluation and Research Agency
- has developed technology that would allow a pilot to control up to five
aircraft during a mission, without needing to constantly keep a check
on them. ... The unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) under the pilot's control
use software 'agents' to carry out their mission. These agents are given
a goal - to find enemy targets, for example - and can independently deal
with the various variables involved." July 25, 2004: Scientists
develop socially skilled robots. Asian News International / available
from Kerala News & newkerala.com. "Researchers from the Carnegie
Mellon University, the Naval Research Laboratory and Swarthmore College
have developed a pair of interactive robots that will participate as a
team in the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) annual
Mobile Robot Competition and Exhibition at the San Jose Convention Center
in San Jose, Calif from July 27-29. The robots named Grace and George
will complete AAAI's Open Interaction Task, which involves interacting
with conference attendees in an unstructured environment." July 24, 2004: I,
Pool Shark - Real science still lags behind the sci-fi fantasies of
I, Robot, but android power is on the rise. By Anne McIlroy.
The Globe and Mail. "In a hot, stuffy lab at Queen's University,
half a dozen engineering students hunch over their computers, seemingly
oblivious to the distraction offered by the pool table in the corner.
Their ability to resist temptation may have something to do with the cue-wielding
contraption that hangs over the table. A metal frame suspended from the
ceiling supports a mechanized arm, which is guided by a camera that helps
it to 'see.' With a satisfying whir, the arm pulls back and then crisply
whacks a billiard ball into a pocket. Meet Deep Green, the brainchild
of Queen's robotics expert Michael Greenspan. ... Dr. Greenspan and his
students are determined to turn the computer-driven mechanism into the
world's best pool shark -- a machine capable of humbling the greatest
human player. ... Deep Green may lead to advances in artificial vision
systems, including ways to help robots better interpret colour, but the
project itself is part of a trend toward making robots that entertain
humans. ... Canada already has a good reputation when it comes to man-versus-machine
encounters. Three years before Deep Blue's triumph, Chinook -- a computer
program for playing checkers written by Jonathan Schaeffer and a team
at the University of Alberta became the first 'machine' to beat a human
at a world championship in any game. The feat attracted a lot of attention
outside North America, and Dr. Schaeffer says he is now looking for a
chance to prove that a poker program he has produced can also beat a world
champion player. According to Dr. Schaeffer, the artificial intelligence
work that he and Dr. Greenspan do involves fun and games, but other researchers
take it seriously. 'I could have chosen something that was more academically
correct, like a medical diagnosis system, but games are fun, and if you
can't solve these problems in the simple domain of a game than you can't
hope to solve them in the more complicated real world.'" July 23, 2004: The
essence of a science career - July 21, 2004: Robots
get bookish in libraries. By Jo Twist. BBC News. "Robots have
disappointed humans so far in their ability to mix and help people in
their everyday lives. Other than industry and research, they have mostly
been for entertainment. But a group of robotics researchers at University
Jaume I in Spain is working on a robot librarian which could deliver the
promise of a helpful bot. The prototype has cameras, sensors and grippers
so it can locate and collect a book. The hope is that one day teams of
service robots could work in libraries. ... Because the database will
only give an approximate location, the robot will navigate its way to
the bookshelf, using its infrared and laser guidance system, and scan
books within a four-metre radius. 'Once it is in there, it starts using
its cameras. By moving the arm with the cameras, it takes an image of
the bookshelf,' said Professor [Angel del] Pobil. 'It can read the labels
and the position of the book using its image processing and optical character
recognition software,' the professor said." July 21, 2004: A
long way from science fiction. By July 21, 2004: Software
program helps track terrorists. By Kristi Heim. Mercury News / available
from SiliconValley.com. "Like a super search engine, the technology
behind TimeWall filters vast amounts of unstructured information from
a variety of sources -- such as e-mail or Internet reports -- in two dozen
languages. It also uses natural language processing to find phone numbers,
names and other data to identify relationships, patterns and trends. 'Rather
than an intelligence analyst reading all this stuff to decide what is
interesting, the software pulls it out automatically and puts it on the
wall,' says Ramana Rao, Inxight's founder and chief technology officer." July 21, 2004: Company
confident in growth of robots - Devices expected to take on more complex
jobs. By Julie Dunn. The Denver Post. "In last weekend's $52 million
box-office smash 'I, Robot,' robots are employed to do all sorts of menial
jobs, including walking dogs and picking up garbage. Bernd Liepert, chief
executive of Kuka Roboter, Europe's largest manufacturer of industrial
robots, envisions a higher calling for robots - from protecting America's
borders to performing emergency surgery. ... This fall, DU will become
the first U.S. university to offer undergraduate and master's-level degrees
in mechatronics, which integrates mechanical, electric and computer software
engineering, according to dean Rahmat A. Shoureshi." July 20, 2004: Trinity
Professor's Book Wins National Award. By Melissa Pionzio. The Hartford
Courant / ctnow.com. "Dan Lloyd, a professor of philosophy at Trinity
College in Hartford, has won a national award for his book 'Radiant Cool:
A Novel Theory of Consciousness,' which is billed as a metaphysical thriller
that centers on a new interpretation of functional brain imaging. ...
MIT Press recommends 'Radiant Cool' 'for anyone who works in artificial
intelligence, stays up too late in the library, or just wants to give
their gray matter a very unusual experience.'" July 19, 2004: The
evolution of movie robots. By Chris Heard. BBC News. "I, Robot,
starring Will Smith, has gone to the top of the US box office. Based on
Isaac Asimov's classic robot novel, it joins a proud tradition of androids
in the movies. The granddaddy of them all was Fritz Lang's 1927 sci-fi
masterpiece Metropolis, in which a robot in the shape of beautiful female
union leader Maria (Brigitte Helm) leads a revolt against their oppressors
in a future dystopia." July 19, 2004: Robots
have a lot to learn - "Mechatronics" field is making big strides,
but it'll be a while before Hollywood's techno-futuristic visions become
reality. By Jack Cox. The Denver Post. "The participants in the five-day
Robocamp at the School of Mines, one of many offered across the country
each summer, don't get into anything [as adventurous as the Pentagon's
Grand Challenge]. But as they prepare to map a Mars- like landscape that
only their robots will actually explore, they get a feel for the many
roadblocks strewn across this particular path of progress. Despite the
formidable challenges, the field of 'mechatronics,' as some call it, is
developing so quickly that some researchers believe robots could well
become household fixtures within a generation - or by roughly 2035, when
the action in 'I, Robot' takes place. 'A lot of what we see in the movies
are things roboticists are working on. It's not like they've invented
some huge leap in technology,' says Reid Simmons, an expert on social
robots at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, a center of robotics
research. ... Steve Richards, founder and president of Acroname Robotics,
a 10-year-old Boulder firm that promotes such technology, says Americans
already make use of many systems that could be defined as robotic. 'Your
cellphone, your ABS brakes, your bread maker are all highly automated,
and many people would say they are examples of robotics - they are small,
they operate autonomously, and they adapt to their environment,' he says." July 19, 2004 [issue
date]: Ready To Buy A Home Robot? -- C-3PO they're not -- yet -- but more
smart devices are available than you might think. By Ian Rowley, Andrew
Petty, Ariane Sains and Adam Aston. Business
Week Magazine (subscription req'd.). "Can you run to the store
and buy a robot? Chances are, you already have. By the definitions of
many engineers, your TiVo digital video recorder and microwave oven are
robotic simply because they contain sensors, microprocessors, and rudimentary
artificial intelligence that allow them to do repeated tasks without human
intervention. ... For a glimpse into the future, BusinessWeek checked
out some of the most intriguing robotic developments -- things your digital
home could grow to love. Many are still laboratory fantasies costing millions
of dollars to make. But researchers say costs will come down rapidly over
the next decade or so as engineers perfect and mass-market the devices." July 18, 2004: Face
of the future? Some scientists think robots will do domestic tasks
and be as common as TVs. By Robin McKie and David Smith. The Observer.
"Among those who enthusiastically endorse the imminence of the robot
age is the industry analyst, Future Horizons, which has noted that applications
currently under discussion include the development of baby robots for
mother training, robots for house cleaning, support for the old, disaster
rescue, fast-food serving staff, nursing, opponents in board games, security,
and window cleaning. The report predicts that total robot revenue will
grow from $4.4 billion (£2.3bn) in 2003 to $59.3bn in 2010. 'A robot will
be like a TV or a washing machine - almost every home will have one,'
said Malcolm Penn, chairman of Future Horizons. 'They are clumsy now but
it won't be long before the technology marches on. In five to 10 years
you'll have a robot doing chores like dispensing medicine, feeding the
cat, making cups of tea, taking food out of the freezer and cooking it
in a microwave. We could see the first humanoid robot football match in
five years' time'. Jonathan Elvidge, founder of The Gadget Shop chain,
agrees. He travels the world to sample cutting-edge technology for consumers.
'Next year we can expect miniature robots that wander around your desk,
or a robot head you can talk to and which talks back to you. 'In the future
you might have a robot that can follow you around and you can ask it to
pay bills or ask what time a film is on and get it to order your tickets.'
... Household chores are the domain of domestic appliance robots such
as self-navigating lawnmowers or vacuum cleaners. Sales reached 39,000
units in 2003 and are forecast to hit 20 million by 2008." July 17, 2004: Polite
computers win users' hearts and minds. By Celeste Biever. New Scientist
Magazine (People prefer computers that say sorry; page 20). "Computer
glitches would be a lot less annoying if the machines were programmed
to acknowledge errors gracefully when something goes wrong, instead of
merely flashing up a brusque 'you goofed' message. ... But Jonathan Klein,
who builds robotic toys at iRobot in Sommerville, Massachusetts, warns
that any apology will eventually cease to sound sincere if it is repeated
too often. He believes the answer is software that will ask users to vent
their frustration by typing a message, to which the computer provides
empathetic feedback, using artificial intelligence to come up with the
appropriate response. [Jeng-Yi] Tzeng argues that until AI can accurately
detect users' emotions, Klein's approach will fail." July 16, 2004: I.T.
May Help Clean a Polluted Sea, Say Researchers. By Mike Martin. NewsFactor
Network. "If an article in this week's journal Science is on target,
air pollution fouls not only our skies but our oceans as well. ... But
software and information technology may play an equally important role,
claim the authors of a study published in a recent special issue of the
journal Management of Environmental Quality, which is devoted to 'information
technologies in environmental engineering.' 'Rapid environmental changes
call for continuous surveillance and online decision-making -- two areas
where I.T. can be valuable,' say study authors Ioannis Athanasiadis and
Pericles Mitkas. Both are computer science researchers at the Informatics
and Telematics Institute Center for Research and Technology in Thessaloniki,
Greece. In their study, entitled 'An Agent-Based Intelligent Environmental
Monitoring System,' the researchers 'present a multi-agent system for
monitoring and assessing air-quality attributes, which uses data coming
from a meteorological station.' Their system, the study explains, uses
a 'community of software agents to monitor and validate measurements coming
from several sensors to assess air-quality.' Software agents are computer
systems to which an operator can delegate tasks. Like the robots in the
new movie 'I, Robot,' software agents are more autonomous, proactive and
adaptive than the everyday software we normally use. ... Using agents
to monitor the environment is a branch of 'enviromatics -- the research
initiative examining the application of information technology in environmental
research, monitoring, assessment, management and policy,' Athanasiadis
explains. ... 'In O3RTAA, several software agents operate in a distributed-agent
society in order to monitor both meteorological and air pollutants, to
evaluate air quality and, ultimately, to trigger alarms' about environmental
damage, Mitkas explains, adding that the system uses machine-learning
algorithms and data-mining methodologies for 'extracting knowledge.'" July 16, 2004: Robots
a pervasive presence in film history. By James Verniere. The Boston
Herald. "Everybody loves robots - until they run amok and sometimes
we love them even then, if not more. Now the subject of the summer movie
'I, Robot,'' robots and their kith and kin have fascinated adults and
children alike for hundreds of years. However limited, clockwork dummies
or puppets, also known as 'automata'' and 'simulacra,' could appear human
and ape human movement. The medieval alchemists had their fabled 'homunculi'
- ickily created humanoid miniatures - and the Cabbalists their Golem,
a legendary clay giant brought to unnatural life using magical signs and
rituals." July 16, 2004: Movie
tests Asimov's moral code for robots. By Will Knight. New Scientist
News. "The possibility of developing truly intelligent machines,
and their potential to be friend or foe to humanity, gets the Hollywood
treatment in a new blockbuster film I, Robot, which opens in the US on
Friday. At the heart of the movie are Isaac Asimov's 'Three Laws of Robotics',
invented as a simple, but immutable moral code for robots. ... [R]obotics
and artificial intelligence experts admit they are a long way from having
to worry about such rules yet. 'The difficulty is building something that
would understand them,' says Alan Bundy, at Edinburgh University's Artificial
Intelligence Institute in the UK. 'That is well beyond the state of the
art at the moment.' Bundy notes that simple safety measures are already
a crucial part of the design of industrial robots, which have in rare
cases caused the death of people. ... 'Asimov's laws are about as relevant
to robotics as leeches are to modern medicine,' says Steve Grand, who
founded the UK company Cyberlife Research and is working on developing
artificial intelligence through learning. 'They stem from an innocent
bygone age, when people seriously thought that intelligence was something
that could be 'programmed in' as a series of logical propositions.'" July 15, 2004: All eyes on Blinkx - Victor Keegan spoke to the woman taking on Google. The Guardian. "Less than a month ago, Kathy Rittweger went to the office of the technology magazine Business 2.0 in San Francisco to demonstrate Blinkx, a late entrant to the search engine market. ... This week, the site - which is only launched today - has been recording 6m links or hits a day solely from word-of-mouth publicity. ... Blinkx (http://www.blinkx.com) has two selling points. First, it doesn't only search the web but simultaneously scours news sites, emails, attachments and your own hard disk. ... The second selling point is that, unlike Google, it uses artificial intelligence to rate stories, not page rankings. 'What it is trying to say,' she explains, 'is that all words are not equal in a sentence... Quite critically, if you are looking at a document and trying to figure out what it means, Blinkx reads everything you are reading and sorts out what are the key ideas.'"
>>> Information
Retrieval, Applications July 15, 2004:
For
Asimov, Robots Were Friends. Not So for Will Smith. By Edward
Rothstein. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "But in
his book, Asimov also declared war on those who think about robots
with fear and trembling, dreading the dangers of technological change.
The new movie [I, Robot], though, often seems to oppose Asimov's
view. Spooner hates robots, and he may have good reason. ... In
1956 Asimov explained that before beginning his robot stories he
had tired of the typical robot plot about 'the creature that turned
against its creator, the robot that became a threat to humanity.'
That plot was there with the very invention of the word in Karel
Capek's 1921 Czech play, 'R.U.R.' and became disturbingly perverse
in Fritz Lang's 1927 film, 'Metropolis.' 'I didn't see robots that
way,' Asimov wrote. 'After all, all devices have their dangers.'
For him robots were 'machines, not metaphors.' So the Frankenstein
question was irrelevant for Asimov. In his stories fear of robots
is irrational; it impedes understanding and leads to robotics researchers
being called 'blasphemers and demon creators.' The robot, for Asimov,
was humanly designed and had built-in safeguards. ... Asimov kept
exploring how complex these [Three Laws of Robotics] were, how much
they depended upon interpretation, and how unpredictable robotic
intelligence could become." July 15, 2004:
Sizing
up robots. By Julie Moran Alyerio. The Journal News.com. "In
the new movie 'I, Robot,' thinking machines are a part of everyday
life -- watching the kids, walking the dog and cleaning the house.
... Science fiction writers have created dozens of intelligent robots,
from Robby the Robot to R2-D2 to Data on 'Star Trek: The Next Generation,'
but scientists haven't mastered the art of building human-like mechanical
beings to do our bidding. But to a degree that would surprise many
people, robots are part of our lives in ways that aren't always
visible. ... What do these fantasy robots have that real robots
don't? ... Robot scientists call [intelligence] the missing element,
the juice, the spark, said Jonathan Connell, an IBM researcher and
graduate of the famous artificial intelligence program at Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. 'The question is, 'What is this magic juice
that's missing?' 'he said. 'Once we understand what human-like thought
is, we'll be able to make it.' Intelligence isn't just number crunching,
which computers can easily do today. The first tasks A.I. researchers
tackled were highly cerebral, such as chess and taking the SATs.
'They solved those. Those were easy. It's the stuff like tying a
shoe or understanding a newspaper article that turned out to be
so much more difficult,' Connell said. ... 'Asimov always said he
was really tired of reading stories about robots where they turn
into Frankenstein's monster. He wanted to write different stories
about robots that were more logical puzzles,' said Connell, who
worries the new movie will stray from Asimov's view of robots. Robotics
pioneer Joseph Engelberger, a friend of the late Asimov and founder
of the first company to make industrial robots, is more concerned
that scientists are adrift from the author's vision of robots playing
a positive role in people's lives." July 14, 2004:
Computer
brains. e4engineering.com. "A team of computer scientists
and mathematicians at Palo Alto, CA-based Artificial Development
are developing software to simulate the human brain's cortex and
peripheral systems. As a first step along the way, the company recently
disclosed that it has completed the development a realistic representation
of the workflow of a functioning human cortex. Dubbed the CCortex-based
Autonomous Cognitive Model ('ACM'), the software may have immediate
applications for data mining, network security, search engine technologies
and natural language processing." July 14, 2004:
Films
Such as 'I, Robot' Affirm Human Superiority. Duke News &
Communications. "'I, Robot,' which opens Friday, revisits one
of science fiction's common themes: A creation that develops a will
of its own and turns against its creator. But why is that idea so
appealing? It speaks to our society's deep fears that, as robots
become more apparently human, we discover how machinelike we are,
said Priscilla Wald, a Duke University English professor who studies
how science is represented in popular culture. ... People feel anxious
when they learn how easy it is to program a computer to appear to
have emotions. This is possible because we follow predictable patterns,
she said. 'Our sense of our uniqueness is threatened by the idea
that we are predictable,' she said. 'The farther we go with artificial
intelligence and the more human our machines become, the more we
understand how machinelike we are. Many people find that deeply
disturbing.'" July 14, 2004:
Robots
(Probably) Won't Turn Against Humanity, Experts Say in Their Defense.
By Eric Wolff. The New York Sun. "The trailer for 'I, Robot'
shows a tidal wave of superior mechanical androids attacking
humanity en masse. It's a sinister vision of the future, but
that doesn't
seem to concern the world's leading robot makers. ... Only movie
critics have seen the film so far,but some robotics experts feel
the trailer alone could be a public relations fiasco for their
mechanized friends. ... 'It puts things in a fairly bad light,'
said a Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor who
specializes in artificial intelligence, Reid Simmons. ... People
ultimately learn,Mr.Simmons said, that this is not a realistic
fear. ... [A]ll of the experts interviewed for this article agreed
that robots with intelligence levels found in 'I, Robot' aren't
just possible -- they're inevitable.
'Robots today are at about the same place computers were 40 years
ago,' Mr. Simmons said. The movie takes place in 2038 -- just
34 years away." July 14, 2004:
Attack
of the killer vacuum cleaners. By Charles Arthur. The Belfast
Telegraph Digital. "Things are about to happen with robots,
because the element they need to make them truly useful - the software,
which needs to be able to adapt to a wide range of situations -
is getting cheaper all the time. Future Horizons, a semiconductor
analyst based in Kent, forecasts that by 2010 there will be 55.5
million robots, in a world market worth £30bn - up from £2.4bn last
year. 'The electronics industry is on the cusp of a robotics wave,
a period in which applications are aimed at labour-saving and extending
human skills,' it reports. Of those, it says that 39 million will
be domestic robots, and 10.5 million 'domestic intelligent service'
robots. That is because there's a growing need for robots to help
the elderly and handicapped. ... But the real explosion in robotics
is coming among the 'immobots' - or, more simply, just 'bots'. These
are bits of software that are incorporated into larger objects,
and that remove a lot of the strain of having to decide what to
do next. We're getting glimpses of how good these could be at present:
the tiny number of Britons with a TiVo personal video recorder have
something that decides, based on the programmes they choose to record,
what other programmes they might like to see, and records those,
too. ... The reason why we can't yet declare 'The Year of the Robot',
however, is that researchers are still fundamentally split about
how robots should behave and learn. One group favours the 'top-down'
approach, in which all the behaviour of the robot is mapped out,
and its software is written to fill out that behaviour. The Roomba
vacuum cleaner is a classic example.... The alternative is something
assembled from smaller, self-contained units, which creates a gestalt
of behaviour based on that. Thus the system that controls the legs
learns to 'walk' independently.... Sony's Aibo draws on a form of
this.... " July 14, 2004:
I, robot psychiatrist. By
Rachel Sauer. PalmBeachPost.com. "Aibo accidentally lurched
into Roomba and didn't know what to do. The circuits in his small
robo-canine brain fired. Stumble on? Turn back? Weave around? ...
So here's the thing to know about the Boca Raton home that Joanne
Pransky shares with her husband and 7-year-old daughter: It is a
nest for robots.... In her home -- unlike in the movie I, Robot,
which opens Friday -- robots are not feared. They are beloved. They
serve a purpose, whether it's work or entertainment. They are physically
and mentally healthy. This is because Pransky is the world's first
robotic psychiatrist. Yes. It is a term she coined for herself,
tongue firmly in cheek (see her Web site at www.robot.md), when
she began working with robots more than 20 years ago, having gotten
into electronics through computer sales and training. ... So she
has a thing or two to say about robots and our relationship with
them. ... Q: Why do we need or want robots? ... Q: Then why are
robots so often villains in movies? ... Q: But is it OK to treat
them like humans? ... Q: Could robots evolve and take over, like
in the movies? ... " July 13, 2004:
The rise of 'Digital People.'-
Tales about artificial beings have sparked fascination and fear
for centuries; now the tales are turning into reality. Excerpt from
"Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids" by Sidney Perkowitz,
the Charles Howard Candler professor of physics at Emory University.
MSNBC Science News. "There is, however, considerable debate
about the possibility of achieving the centerpiece of a complete
artificial being, artificial intelligence arising from a humanly
constructed brain that functions like a natural human one. Could
such a creation operate intelligently in the real world? Could it
be truly self-directed? And could it be consciously aware of its
own internal state, as we are? These deep questions might never
be entirely settled. We hardly know ourselves if we are creatures
of free will, and consciousness remains a complex phenomenon, remarkably
resistant to scientific definition and analysis. One attraction
of the study of artificial creatures is the light it focuses on
us: To create artificial minds and bodies, we must first better
understand ourselves. While consciousness in a robot is intriguing
to discuss, many researchers believe it is not a prerequisite for
an effective artificial being. In his 'Behavior-Based Robotics,'
roboticist Ronald Arkin of the Georgia Institute of Technology argues
that 'consciousness may be overrated,' and notes that 'most roboticists
are more than happy to leave these debates on consciousness to those
with more philosophical leanings.' For many applications, it is
enough that the being seems alive or seems human, and irrelevant
whether it feels so. ... And yet ... there is the dream and the
breathtaking possibility that humanity can actually develop the
technology to create qualitatively new kinds of beings. These might
take the form of fully artificial, yet fully living, intelligent,
and conscious creatures -- perhaps humanlike, perhaps not. Or they
might take the form of a race of 'new humans'; that is, bionic or
cyborgian people who have been enormously augmented and extended
physically, mentally, and emotionally." July 13, 2004:
Is
I, Robot Our Future? Opinion by Lance Ulanoff. PC Magazine.
"I'll admit it, I'm a robot snob. This has little to do with
knowledge and virtually everything to do with my insistence that
I think I know what makes a true robot. At least I thought I did,
until recent conversations with robotics experts -- the people in
the trenches building, developing, and programming robotics technologies.
Some new robot developments and a glimpse of this summer's anticipated
blockbuster I, Robot got me thinking that I may need to broaden
my definition, or better yet, step back and reconsider the whole
thing. ... I was beginning to come to terms with the fact that a
robot is less a concrete set of characteristics than an 'I know
it when I see it' kind of thing. Why? Movies. Television. Books.
Robots were a part of our fantasy world long before we had the technology
to actually produce them. ... But here's the really exciting thing
I learned during my panel discussion: The dream and the reality
are beginning to converge. This became evident when MIT's Cynthia
Breazeal opened her brief introduction with a handful of remarkable
videos, featuring her social-robot project, Leonardo. Developed
in conjunction with movie special-effects impresario Stan Winston,
Leonardo is one of the most remarkable robots I've ever seen. ...
[The movie I Robot is] the future we've always dreams of
-- sort of: robots everywhere, helping us do everything we never
wanted to do (or could do). But does it have any relation to reality?
Are we actually on a trajectory that will take us from Sony's QRIO
and Honda's Asimo straight to I, Robot's stunning central robotic
character, Sonny? Again, I turned to our experts. Will robots like
Sonny exist in roughly 30 years? ... Our robotic destinies will
be as varied as the world's many tongues. I will continue to try
to set expectations by examining and discussing all robotics developments.
I will also embrace all forms of robots and accept the small (Robosapien)
and large (Leonardo) advances with equal enthusiasm and prepare
for the day when I, Robot's Sonny is as real as the iRobot
Roomba." July
13, 2004: Children
learn how to program robots using Lego pieces. By Simon Capstick-Dale.
Cape Times. "A robotics expert is using the basic building
blocks of many childhood games - Lego - to teach Cape Town youngsters
about computer programming and mechanical engineering. Rand Afrikaans
University graduate Johan Benade has taught children in Denmark,
Britain, America and South Africa and is hosting holiday workshops
at the MTN Scien Centre for the fifth time. ... The Advanced Lego-Robolab
workshop takes place today and Thursday and lasts all day. ... [T]he
workshops ... are aimed at children aged 11 and older...." July 13, 2004:
Robotic
space endeavors lack creativity of humans. Opinion by Mark R.
Whittington. USA Today.com. "While human beings remain stuck
in low-Earth orbit, Cassini-Huygens has become the latest robotic
explorer to examine another world. ... The mission is an example
of both the strengths and weaknesses of robotic endeavors. Robotic
space missions are cheap, relative to those with human explorers,
and do not place human beings at risk. They are useful for the remote
observation of other worlds and for measuring phenomena such as
radiation levels. Nevertheless, robotic probes, for all of their
technological sophistication, can give us only a hint of what conditions
really are like on other worlds. Human explorers must, sooner or
later, follow their robotic precursors if we are to fully understand
the unknown places beyond the Earth." July 13, 2004:
New
world computer chess champ crowned. By Will Knight. New Scientist
News. "A new world computer chess champion was crowned at the
2004 finals in Israel on Monday. The new champ is the latest version
of a particularly aggressive and human-like software program called
Junior. ... The contest ended in a thrilling finale. Junior and
the defending champion, a program called Shredder, both stood a
chance of winning with just one game to play. But the title was
handed to Junior when Shredder could only draw with a lower ranked
program called Falcon while Junior demolished the program ParSOS.
[Frederic] Freidel says each competing program has its own character.
He recounts a recent telephone call from Gary Kasparov, considered
by many the greatest chess player of all time, who wondered why
Junior was unable to predict the outcome of a particular end game
move, while another popular program, Fritz, could. Freidel says
emphasis on different factors in the program's algorithms result
in these diverse 'personalities'. ... Chess programs have grown
increasingly sophisticated in recent years. Older programs used
to perform exhaustive analysis of potential moves, while today's
leading software uses smarter algorithms to reduce the amount of
positional searching needed." July 13, 2004 [issue date]: Pushing The Limits. By Carol Levin. PC Magazine (Volume 23, Number 12). "As PC Magazine editors and analysts, we spend our days staying ahead of the curve so our readers can be the first to learn about the latest technology products for their homes and offices. But once a year, we turn our attention not to products you can buy today but to those technologies that are gathering momentum, poised to make an impact on the future. The past twelve months have delivered an ample assortment of candidates. For our first story, 'Top Ten Tech Trends,' we take you on a tour of what we think are the most promising technologies. ... Technological advancement and cultural change go hand in hand, so this year we explore the intersection of technology and society in four essays. ... In 'The New Geek,' Steve Lohr, a technology writer at The New York Times, speaks with several of the new-generation high-tech workers about computer science as the new liberal-arts degree. Along the way, he shows how technology's impact on productivity is changing. In 'Nowhere to Hide,' business reporter Alan Cohen takes on the emerging collision between privacy and security."
>>> AI
Overview, Computer Science, Assisitive
Technologies, Machine Translation,
Natural Language Understanding, Resources
for Students, Ethical & Social Implications,
Natural Language Processing, Applications July 12, 2004:
Mini-robot
helps surgeons operate on spine. By Charles Choi. United Press
International / available from MedlinePlus / also
available from SpaceDaily. "A miniature robot designed
to help surgeons operate more precisely and successfully on the
spine is expected to enter the market sometime near the end of this
year, researchers told United Press International. SpineAssist,
as the soda-can-sized machine is called, attaches directly to the
patient's body. Surgeons insert surgical instruments such as drills
or needles through the arm of the robot, and the device helps position
the surgeon's hand. The hope is to minimize the risk of nerve damage,
blood loss and infection. 'Another advantage of the robot is that
it helps make such surgery minimally invasive,' Moshe Shoham, creator
of the device and director of the robotics lab at Technion-Israel
Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel, told UPI. 'You don't have
to perform an operation along the entire back. With the robot guiding
a surgeon, you can just perform through a keyhole lesion.' Robot-assisted
surgery is a steadily growing field, with a few dozen surgical robot
prototypes developed since the early 1990s. The most prominent is
ROBODOC, from Integrated Surgical Systems in Davis, Calif., as well
as Da Vinci and Zeus, from Intuitive Surgical in Sunnyvale, Calif." July 12, 2004:
Computer,
heal thyself - Why should humans have to do all the work? It's
high time machines learned how to take care of themselves. By Sam
Williams. Salon.com (no fee reg. req'd.). "For at least three
decades now, programmers have joked of 'heisenbugs' -- software
errors that surface at seemingly random intervals and whose root
causes consistently evade detection. The name is a takeoff on Werner
Heisenberg, the German physicist whose famous uncertainty principle
posited that no amount of observation or experimentation could pinpoint
both the position and momentum of an electron. 'A lot of the bugs
we're seeing in modern systems have been plaguing programmers from
the beginning of time,' says [Armando] Fox, the head of Stanford's
Software Infrastructures Group. 'The only difference now is machines
just crash faster.' ... 'Today's systems have too many dials to
watch; people can spend their whole lives figuring out how to make
a database run well,' [Steve] White says. 'We want to stand this
notion of systems management on its head. The system has to be able
to set itself up. It has to optimize itself. It has to repair itself,
and if something goes wrong, it has to know how to respond to external
threats. If I can think about the system at that level, I'm using
humans for what they're good at, and I'm using the machines for
what they're good at. That's the idea here.'" July 12, 2004:
We,
Robots July 12, 2004:
The
Coming Robot Revolution - They could fight wars, drive cars
and patrol data centers. Future Watch by Lucas Mearian. Computerworld.
"Robots, from mechanical dogs that can learn new tricks to
automated vacuum cleaners that avoid furniture, are steadily becoming
a part of everyday life. But the real robot boom lies just ahead,
experts say. In the future, robots could help determine the outcome
of wars and identify problems in data centers. Office buildings
may come to life as they use Wi-Fi to dispatch robots to control
human access, test heating and cooling systems, and fetch tools
for workers. Computerworld recently spoke about the future of robots
with three experts: Chuck Thorpe, director of Carnegie Mellon University's
Robotics Institute; Jeanne Dietsch, CEO of MobileRobots.com in Nashua,
N.H.; and Vijay Kumar , a professor in the Department of Mechanical
Engineering and Applied Mechanics at the University of Pennsylvania.
Here's what they said: ... " July 12, 2004: New Roomba Vacuum Finds Its Way Home - IRobot updates its high-tech tool for cleaning your house. By Tom Krazit. IDG News Service / PC World. "The newest generation of the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner has learned how to charge itself at a docking station, detect the best cleaning pattern for a given room, and seek out dirt particles the size of finely ground pepper. If only it could take out the trash and wash the windows."
>>> Household
Appliances, Robots, Applications,
Military, Hazards & Disasters, Assistive Technologies July 11, 2004:
Sunday
Profile - Seymour Papert. Presented by Geraldine Doogue. ABC
Online. "Seymour Papert, a mathematician and pioneer in artificial
intelligence, has radical ideas about how the education system should
be overhauled. ... Geraldine Doogue: You were involved
in the cutting edge of artificial intelligence in the 1960s, what
were your ideas then about how far computers could go in replicating
human intelligence? Seymour Papert: There's a huge difference
between the way people thought about artificial intelligence then
and now. In those sixties, people in AI really thought in sort of
galactic cosmic terms. We were interested in the possibility of
some kind of artificial entity that would be as intelligent as a
person and/or more intelligent. It was obvious, it still is obvious
to me though, if you could make something as intelligent as a human
it would be much more intelligent because there are many limitations
that we have that a machine wouldn't have. And if it could have
all the things that we have it would have much more. ... Geraldine
Doogue: Well, do you now think that as an elder of the tribe?
Do you look back now and think 'goodness that was the folly of youth'?
Seymour Papert: Oh, I don't think it's the folly of youth;
I think it will come. What I think has become clearer is that we
need some great new insights. Geraldine Doogue: Into artificial
intelligence? Seymour Papert: John McCarthy, who is one of the other
people involved in this, proposed a measure of greatness of idea,
like one Einstein, is one of these ideas that happens once or twice
a century. And the idea that you could use computers to do some
things that the brain does -- that the mind does -- is maybe an
Einstein's worth of insight. And McCarthy guessed we need, at least,
maybe one Einstein's worth or maybe two Einstein's. . Seymour
Papert: Here's a little curious thing that I've recently become
intrigued by. I worked during the 80s developing a way of children
doing robotics using LEGO and eventually LEGO made this thing that
they marketed under the name of my book Mindstorms which is build
LEGO but instead of LEGO just being an architectural passive thing
you make things it can do that can act to have behaviour. So you've
got motors and gears and sensors and a little computer in it, so
you can program it to do things. LEGO marketed this for a pre-teen
boys which annoyed me a lot. ... Interesting thing that we stumbled
on was whenever we get a group of these kids working with this technology,
there’s always some, a kid or two who drifts up as the expert.
The one that everybody looks to for more knowledge -- it’s
always a girl." July 11, 2004:
New
Hires Give Virtual Edge to Two Lakeland Businesses - Computer-generated
employees interact with consumers via company Web sites. By Adrian
Zawada. The Ledger Online. "Abby and Gigi recently found jobs
in Lakeland, and they don't ever call in sick, take breaks or need
health insurance. They work for two prominent Lakeland entities
that have taken their Web sites to the cutting edge by hiring computer-generated
virtual employees. ... Hired as the virtual customer service representative
for www.michaelholleychevrolet.com, [Abby] relies on a sophisticated
natural language processing program and learns by artificial intelligence.
'If there is a question not known or off-the-wall, and if artificial
intelligence and natural language doesn't cover it, the administrator
can enter it into the knowledge base,' said Wayne Scholar, co-founder
of Pittsburgh based Eidoserve, which created Abby for Michael Holley
Chevrolet. Abby and Gigi provide more than just amusement for visitors
to their respective Web sites. A virtual employee has the ability
to turn a casual Web surfer browsing for cars into a bona fide customer,
Scholar said. After all, he estimates 82 percent of automobile customers
research the Web before they come in to buy." July 11, 2004:
Robots on film.
By Craig Outhier. East Valley Tribune Online. "Educator and
science fiction author Gregory Benford is all man -- except for
the titanium and steel joint that surgeons recently implanted in
his left shoulder. While this hardly puts the University of California
at Irvine physics professor in the same league as Darth Vader, famously
described as 'more machine than man' by arch-nemesis Obi-Wan Kenobi,
it does give Benford pause. 'I think it's inevitable that human
beings will start to incorporate more robot technologies into their
bodies,' Benford predicts, citing recent advances in prosthetic
limbs and artificial retinas. 'Even the current technology is pretty
amazing, like something out of a movie.' Frequently, it is. Since
the days of Fritz Lang and his landmark science fiction opus, 'Metropolis'
(1926), filmmakers have been fascinated with the idea of shaping
machines into artificial people, and vice versa. Ranging from visionary
('Blade Runner') to the downright laughable ('Heartbeeps'), these
specimens of cybernetic cinema often function as social mirrors,
reflecting mankind's anxieties, aspirations and feelings about itself.
... With many so-called 'smart' homes equipped with programmable
vacuum cleaners and centralized security systems, even the middling
Tom Selleck vehicle 'Runaway' (1984) -- involving deadly accidents
caused by malfunctioning domestic robots -- seems eerily prescient." July 10, 2004:
All
too human. By Martin Levin. The Globe and Mail. "Felipe
Fernández-Armesto is a worried man. He's worried about the future
of humanity. More particularly, he's worried about how, in this
brave new world, we are to continue to think of ourselves as human.
... Humankind: A Brief History (Oxford, 190 pages, $29.95). This
is a deceptive book, with implications that are disturbing, if stimulating.
It is not a history of humanity, but one of how we have over the
centuries conceived of being human. ... He sees six distinct sources
of threat, although several clearly overlap: ... the development
of robotics and artificial intelligence calls into question traits
we take to be fundamentally human, such as consciousness and imagination;
..." July 8, 2004: Embedding With A Lisp. By William Wong. ED Online (Volume 2004, Number 5). "Lisp stands for List Processing, but there have been many other descriptions provided such as Lots of Irritating Superfluous Parentheses. Experienced programmers without Lisp exposure normally go into shock when looking at a Lisp program for the first time, but after a little work Lisp coding becomes natural to the point where other languages now start to look arcane. Trust me. Lisp code is not really totally foreign. Take this little snippet for example.... Assuming you have made it this far, you might be wondering why Lisp has not taken the world by storm. Lisp is actually very old. It is only preceded by Fortran in terms of age for high-level languages. Along the way, Lisp has seen a number of myths built up around it. For example, many consi | |||