August 30, 2004: Fuzzy Logic. Quickstudy by Russell Kay. Computerworld. "The digital computing world is built on a structure of Boolean logic applied to binary values -- one or zero, yes or no, in or out. But this powerful structure is a gross oversimplification of the real world, where many shades of gray exist between black and white. In everyday life, we use quasimetric notions that are clearly related to numerical concepts or values but lack precision or demarcation. ... The real world simply doesn't map well to binary distinctions, and numerical precision is often unhelpful in making qualitative statements. Fuzzy logic gives us a way to deal with such situations. In fuzzy systems, values are indicated by a number (called a truth value) in the range from 0 to 1, where 0.0 represents absolute falseness and 1.0 represents absolute truth. While this range evokes the idea of probability, fuzzy logic and fuzzy sets operate quite differently from probability."

August 23, 2004: Ideas from Thin Air - The golden era of pure industrial research is over everywhere, with one giant exception -- Microsoft. By Sarah Sennott. Newsweek International / available from MSNBC. "The camera tries to take a picture only when something's happening -- it has sensors that detect movement and changes in temperature and light. And Microsoft has developed software that makes it possible to catalog and search through all the data. This summer Williams plans trials with patients from a local hospital suffering from memory loss. Don't expect to see the gadget on sale any time soon, though. 'Microsoft has no plans to productize or launch the device in the near future,' says Williams. That kind of research for research's sake is typical; for years Microsoft has been bucking the trend toward smaller dreams and tighter budgets in R&D. Even now, in times of cost-cutting and slower growth, the company maintains a commitment to spending on new ideas and products that is rare, even spendthrift, by today's standards. Nowadays rivals turn to alliances with universities, start-up companies and the occasional acquisition in order to develop new products. Microsoft's annual research-and-development budget, on the other hand, is $6.8 billion. ... The Redmond giant, whose researchers are exploring more than 50 different areas of computer science -- from speech recognition and natural language processing to graphics -- and operating systems -- doesn't seem concerned. According to Microsoft managers, only 50 percent of the researchers' work in a two- to three-year period should make it into a product."
>>> Applications, Assisitive Technologies, Speech, Natural Language Processing, AI Overview
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August 22, 2004: The Making of an X Box Warrior - The military has quietly become an industry leader in video-game design, creating games to train and even recruit the soldiers of the PlayStation generation. Will virtual boot camp make combat more real or more surreal? By Clive Thompson. The New York Times Magazine (no fee reg. req'd.). "It was only a virtual Baghdad, baking under a virtual sun. As in real life, though, troops were dodging gunfire. I was at the Institute for Creative Technologies in Marina Del Rey, Calif., playing a new X box video game called Full Spectrum Warrior. ... For the past three years, the military has been entertaining the surprising idea that video games, even those that you play on a commerical system like Microsoft's Xbox, can be an effective way to train soldiers. In fact, the Army is now one of the industry's most innovative creators, hiring high-end programmers and designers from Silicon Valley and Hollywood to devise and refine its games. Some of these games are action-packed, like Full Spectrum Warrior. Others, like one that the military's Special Operations Command is currently designing to help recruits practice their Arabic, are less so. All the games, however, speak to the military's urgent need to train recruits for the new challenges of peacekeeping efforts in places like Iraq. ... Not everyone in the military is convinced that receiving training in a game is possible or even useful. ... One of the biggest concerns that skeptics voice is the danger of so-called negative training. If a game is programmed with unrealistic physics and behavior, it can teach soldiers incorrect techniques -- potentially deadly when they eventually enter combat. In a game like Full Spectrum Warrior, where the enemy is made up of computerized opponents with artificial intelligence, the obvious concern is that the preparation will not give a human-enough sense of how devious, or inept, a real enemy can be."
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Video Games, Military, Agents, Speech, Education, Natural Language Processing, Applications; also see this related article
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• Cover Story - Robots: "Kurt Andersen talks with Rodney Brooks, Director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, about the culture of robots. ... Rodney Brooks is a scientist, professor, and director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab. He is the inventor of many robots, including the Roomba, the intelligent vacuum cleaner. His latest book is Flesh and Machines."
• Robot Hut: "The toy collector John Rigg began wiring circuits in kindergarten. He was still little when he gave his mom a cardboard robot he built with motors, electric lights, and a little candy-filled drawer. Today, John Rigg displays thousands of "metal men" in a big barn near Spokane, Washington. Produced by Harriet Baskas."
• Fembot Factor: "Most of the robots you know from the movies are male. There's Robbie the Robot, C-3PO, Data the sensitive android on Star Trek, and the violent cyborgs of Terminator and Robocop. But what about the female robots? Writer Susie Bright has some thoughts on the ways they've been imagined on the big screen. Produced by Jocelyn Gonzales."
• Voyager: " The Voyager computer program is a powerful robot. It composes music--improvised, unpredictable music--using a virtual 64-piece orchestra. The Voyager's inventor, George Lewis, improvises with his robotic partner, and creates music that we'd like to think only humans could make. Produced by Ted Panken."

>>> Robots, Music, Science Fiction, Applications, Interviews
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August 20, 2004: Diverse Sciences Propel Bioinformatics. By Jessica D. Tenenbaum. eWeek. " At conferences in computational biology, speakers generally start with questions: 'How many people in the room are biologists? Computer scientists? Other?' It can be hard to predict what kinds of experts will show up in the audience. This year's Computational Systems Bioinformatics Conference, the third of its kind, was no exception. The CSB 2002 Web site described the conference's goal as bringing together 'biology and computer science' experts. This year, the conference organizers hope to 'promote a systems biology approach that links biology, computer science, mathematics, chemistry, physics, medicine and engineering.' That's five new disciplines in two years. Even so, we've left out statistics. ... One is struck both by how far the field has come in a relatively short period of time, and also by how far it has yet to go. In the past 10 years, the numbers of sequences stored in public databases such as GenBank, SwissProt and even the Protein Data Bank all have increased exponentially. ... The conference agenda itself highlighted how interdisciplinary this field is. ... Other presentations included methods from high-throughput microscopy, text processing, data mining, artificial intelligence and more. Fusions of fields are not just expected but required. Stephen Wong of Harvard University explained how to use robotic automation and digital microscopy to screen thousands of cells simultaneously for, among other tasks, high-throughput drug screening."
>>> Bioinformatics, Data Mining, Applications, Machine Learning, Robots
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August 20, 2004: Computers Can Argue, Researcher Claims. To resolve conflicts through negotiation, computers need artificial intelligence programs, researcher Nick Jennings says. 'To improve their performance, we need to ensure they have the ability to overcome real-world problems such as conflict.' By Mike Martin. NewsFactor Network - Innovation. "[Nick] Jennings -- a computer science professor at the University of Southampton -- assesses the effectiveness of so-called 'argumentation-based negotiation' (ABN) for computer agents in a recently published paper. Agents are computer systems to which an operator can delegate tasks. Considered autonomous in comparison to programs that depend on every keystroke, agents are increasingly used in a wide range of industrial and commercial domains, including robotics, e-commerce, computer games and information retrieval. In systems with more than one agent, where 'autonomous entities pursue their own goals, conflict is inevitable,' Jennings explained."
>>> Multi-Agent Systems, E-Commerce, Agents, Applications, Science Fiction
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August 20, 2004: Seiko Epson's autonomous robot takes flight. By Yoshiko Hara. EE Times. "Seiko Epson Corp. has developed a flying microrobot capable of autonomous flight. The prototype robot evolved from an initial version shown last November that was controlled from the ground. ... The prototype robot won't be sold. 'We still have a lot of challenges to realize a completely autonomous flying robot,' the spokesman acknowledged. Epson hopes its technology will evolve to the level that it can be used in entertainment applications and even disaster relief."
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Robots, Hazards & Disasters, Toys, Applications
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August 20, 2004: £3m is chipped in for computer unit. By Gareth Edwards. Edinburgh Evening News & scotsman. com. "The Wolfson Foundation, a charitable foundation which advances the sciences and the arts, has pledged £2m towards a Wolfson Centre for Informatics and the Life Sciences. The centre would be part of the Informatics Forum, a new £40m facility bringing together Edinburgh University's researchers in computer science, artificial intelligence and cognitive science. The foundation's award coincides with a separate pledge of £1m over six years from the Edinburgh-based chip developer Wolfson Microelectronics. ... Informatics school administrator Gordon Duckett believes bringing the three sciences together under one roof will prove highly beneficial. ... The School of Informatics, including the world's first artificial intelligence research centre, is currently one of the best in Europe and ranks with such world leaders as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon and Stanford University. It brings together cutting edge research in computer science, cognitive science, computational linguistics and artificial intelligence. ... The informatics school lost a large proportion of its working space in the Cowgate fire in 2002, although the building is not seen as a replacement."
>>> AI Courses & Academic Departments (@ Resources for Students), History
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August 20, 2004: The War Room. By Steve Silberman. Wired News (This article will appear in the September 2004 issue of Wired Magazine.) "The installation is the brainchild of the Institute for Creative Technologies, an Army-funded R&D group at the University of Southern California. ICT brings together videogame developers, f/x artists, research scientists, and Pentagon experts to create faster, cheaper, and more effective ways of preparing recruits for their jobs on the front lines. ... The backbone of military training for centuries was rote learning. The goal of the punishing routines and endless drills was to replace thinking with instinct so that at the sound of gunshots, a soldier would automatically return fire. But this kind of schooling, the Pentagon now believes, is inadequate to prepare soldiers for hot spots like the Sunni Triangle, where it's not enough to be a good marksman. These days, grunts fresh out of basic training must also be versed in the nuances of street-level diplomacy with an increasingly hostile citizenry in densely populated neighborhoods where allies can turn into opposing forces overnight. To teach recruits how to navigate complex situations, ICT's virtual training packages are built around the oldest form of immersive experience: storytelling. 'Instead of moving the classroom into the field, we're moving the field into the classroom,' says Randy Hill, the institute's deputy technology director. An ICT software package for desktop PCs called Think Like a Commander engages captains-in-training in conflict scenarios derived from interviews with senior officers who served in Bosnia or Afghanistan. In one story line, warlords descend on a food-distribution outpost, and the trainee must quickly determine who to trust and how to build alliances with the locals. The roles of the coalition soldiers, tribal leaders, and villagers are played by lifelike avatars programmed with megabytes of artificial intelligence, Army doctrine, and speech-and-text recognition software. ... Studies by academic researchers have shown that immersion in simulated environments increases learning speed and retention for a range of tasks, from making laparoscopic incisions to rescuing people from burning buildings. ... Virtual military training dates back to 1929, when Ed Link, the son of an organ manufacturer, invented the first flight simulator.... Impressed by Link's teaching tool, the Navy set about creating a simulator that relied on a computer instead of pumps and valves. The effort, dubbed Project Whirlwind and spearheaded at MIT, produced the first digital computer (manufactured by an upstart calculator maker called IBM) and many of the technical foundations of the modern networked age...."
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Video Games, Military, Agents, Speech, Education, Natural Language Processing, History, Applications; also see this related article
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August 19, 2004: Future Route releases AI-based fraud detection product. finextra news. "UK-based Future Route is releasing a new card fraud detection system, iHex, based on artificial intelligence technology developed at Oxford University's computing laboratories for bio-informatics. The product has been designed for use by financial services firms, government agencies and corporations. IHex detects fraud using Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) techniques - an artificially intelligent method of identifying fraud patterns and anomalies. The vendor says unlike many other pattern detection products, the system automatically generates and continuously enhances underlying rules."
>>> Fraud Detection & Prevention, Banking, Pattern Recognition, Machine Learning, Expert Systems, Applications
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August 19, 2004: Gauging the Google Effect. By Keith Regan. E-Commerce Times. "As Google lurched into its new life as a public company, debuting Thursday as the newest member of the Nasdaq, the impact of the search engine's still-blockbuster IPO on the tech industry as a whole was already being debated. ... [Rob] Enderle said the impending fierce competition among the search heavyweights, as well as contributions from startups, could result in accelerated development of technology and tools that will make a difference in the business world. 'Finding things has become a problem for every industry and virtually ever person in it. A strong search technology has a huge potential impact on global productivity,' he added. 'We may actually see the first thing approaching a real artificial intelligence in search because of the money focused on the related problems and the tremendous need for search to be adoptive and intelligent.'"
>>> Web-Searching Agents, Information Retrieval, Applications, Agents
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August 19, 2004: Better times for techies? By Ed Frauenheim. CNET News. "The unemployment rate for computer and mathematical occupations--a category that includes computer programmers, computer software engineers and computer scientists and systems analysts--fell from 5.7 percent in the first half of 2003 to 5 percent in the first half of this year, according to the Labor Department. ... [T]here are sound reasons for growing optimism among tech professionals, said Kevin Knaul, executive vice president for the information technology and technology practice at staffing firm Hudson . The number of Hudson tech consultants on contract with North American clients jumped 19 percent from May to July, to a total of 980. Most of those tech professionals were given assignments in the United States, Knaul said. ... The National Science Board, an independent body that advises Congress and oversees the National Science Foundation, recently warned of a 'troubling decline' in the number of U.S. citizens studying to become scientists and engineers, even as the number of jobs requiring science and engineering training grows. Not everyone shares that assessment, though. A recent report from the Rand think tank found no evidence of shortages of scientific, technical, engineering and mathematics personnel in the U.S. work force since at least 1990. The report also said it did not find evidence that such shortages are on the horizon."
>>> Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Industry Statistics
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August 19, 2004: Have you thought about... ...A course in artificial intelligence? Or costume? And have you ever considered going to High Wycombe? Katie Shimmon talks to students who opted for something unexpected. The Guardian & EducationGuardian.co.uk. Peter Theopilus, 21, is studying artificial intelligence at the University of Derby ... "When I tell people I'm doing an artificial intelligence degree, they usually ask what it is. I point out something they've used that uses AI. It's often a computer game, and I tell them that when characters do things without being told to, that's AI. And they go: 'Hmmm, very interesting. Let's move on.' ... When I finish my degree, I'd like to be a computer games programmer."
>>> Video Games, Software Development, AI Courses & Academic Departments & Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students)
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August 19, 2004: Harrison studies Pensacola's success. By David Tortorano. The Sun Herald. "Harrison County supervisors traveled to Pensacola on Wednesday to see how a high-profile research facility has become a key player in the Florida city's economic development. ... In Pensacola they met with Ken Ford, the [Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition] director and a member of the National Science Board, who spoke to them about the institute and the role it has played in the development of downtown Pensacola. 'We talked about economic development and reaching a higher level of quality jobs that will bring people back,' said [Connie] Rockco. ... Established in 1990, IHMC is involved in artificial intelligence research. ... Ford is an advocate of the economic development approach of attracting the creative class, such as scientists, artists and entrepreneurs, in the belief that desirable businesses will go where the talented people live."
>>> Applications, Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students); also see this related article
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August 19, 2004: IT trends transform everyday activities. By Kim Sa-hyuk. The Korea Herald. "It could be said that information-technology is revolutionizing every existing structure and method of business and everyday life. With the rapid development in technology, it is becoming increasingly difficult to predict the future of Korea's information-technology industry and service market. However, analysts are pointing to a number of 'mega-trends' that could have a fundamental impact in the future. Digitalization, expansion of mobile and ubiquitous computing, expansion of broadband infrastructure, convergence of digital media, personalization of information-technology services and development of intelligent-agent technologies, are a few of the trends that garner attention."
>>> Agents, Systems, Applications, AI Overview, Robots
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August 18, 2004: Next-gen rover to practice searching for life - Researchers prepare Zoë for test in Chilean desert. By Alan BoyleMSNBC. "Robotics experts are getting a next-generation rover ready to hunt for life in the driest place on Earth. The two-month-long dry run in Chile's Atacama Desert could help set the stage for a similar search someday on Mars. The four-wheeled, solar-powered rover, named Zoë, was created at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. It's designed to cover up to 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) a day, at speeds of up to 2.2 mph (1 meter per second). That's 20 times as fast as the top speed for the twin rovers currently working on Mars. But raw speed isn't the point of this experiment. Rather, the researchers want to see whether highly mobile robots could do a better job of looking for life in alien environments. ... A big part of the test is just seeing whether Zoë can manage itself autonomously and roll through the desert as quickly and surely as robotics researchers hope."
>>> Space Exploration, Autonomous Vehicles, Robots, Applications
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August 18, 2004: Any questions? Holding out for a better university and the point of picking the right school. Column by John Clare. Telegraph Education & telegraph.co.uk. "My son, who is waiting for his A-level grades, wants to study computer science. He has accepted the offer of a place at Southampton, which requires an A and two Bs. ... What's your view? [Excerpt from the response ->] Your son is half right. Low-status universities do diminish their graduates' job prospects, but Southampton is not among them. League tables as currently constituted are, at best, an imprecise guide. ... "
>>> Computer Science
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August 18, 2004: The tale of Elektro, the amazing, original mechanical man. By Mike Harden. The Daily Camera & and the E.W. Scripps Company. "Elektro, the amazing mechanical man, earned his adjectives the hard way. He survived World War II, a big-screen debut in a forgettable movie titled 'Sex Kittens Go to College' and - ultimately - decapitation. Along the way, he likely endured barn mice, birds' nests and the covetous glances of more than one scrap-metal dealer. Three hundred pounds of whirring gears and clanking metal, he once was the pride of Westinghouse's Mansfield (Ohio) appliance plant, a working robot designed to wow guests at the 1939 New York World's Fair. ... In public appearances that spanned the last days of the Depression to the first attempt to put a man in space, Elektro became the archetypal mechanical man. 'He is of historical value,' [Jack] Weeks said, 'because he set the standard for all other robots. He was the guy who was going to mow your lawn, load your laundry, wash your dishes, care for your children, be your companion and thereby become the ultimate appliance.'"
>>> Robots, History, Applications
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August 18, 2004: Robovacs more amusing than thorough. Product review by Mark Jewell. Associated Press / available from Boston.com. "A new generation of robotic vacuums is ready to do battle with dirt, dust and dog hair with more cleaning power and cunning than their ancestors could muster. ... [T]heir artificial intelligence is impressive. The Discovery employs some of the technologies iRobot developed for military minesweeping. What limits these competing robovacs' performance isn't related to their artificial intelligence so much as to their small size and lightweight batteries."
>>> Household Appliances, Applications, Robots
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August 18, 2004: Summer Camps. The Los Angeles Times (no fee reg. req'd.) "Science Camps Newport Beach: Crazy Cyborg Tech lets kids build their own motorized, wheeled robot. Kids also learn about magnetic towers, radio waves, robotic sensor technology and even fiber-optics. Ages invited are 5 to 11."
>>> Summer Camps, Robots
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August 18, 2004: Popular stock market invt theories. By Richard J. Maturi. Sify.com. "There's a myriad of broad based investment theories within which numerous investment strategies can be implemented. Here we will look at the rationale behind these theories and how they work. ... Jerry Felson offers an alternative to the efficient market theory in his book, Cybernetic Approach to Stock Market Analysis (Exposition Press, 1975) in order to bypass its perceived limitations and deficiencies. ... Using cybernetics concepts (the science and control of communication, and mathematical analysis of the flow of information) and artificial intelligence (advanced cybernetics) techniques, Felson proposes developing judgmental decision-making processes by weighing evidence and formalizing investment analysis. In plain language, the cybernetics approach automates the investment decision-making process through the use of pattern recognition, learning system theory, and other methods, removing the imperfect human factor and theoretically improving investment returns"
>>> Finance & Investing, Pattern Recognition, Machine Learning, Applications
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August 17, 2004: Moving heads. Technology Chatroom article by Stan Beer. The Age. "Robotics expert, Dr Alex Zelinsky has started as full-time director of the CSIRO ICT Centre after a transitional period from his former role as chief executive of computer vision company Seeing Machines. Dr Zelinsky is a robotics and computer vision specialist and a globally recognised scientist in the field of human-machine interaction."
>>> Applications, Vision, Robots, Interfaces
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August 17, 2004: Can't attend? Try distance learning - Taking classes online offers new option for disciplined students. By Tara Ramroop. San Mateo County Times. "Some of Bryce Martens' best students haven't shown up in his Computer and Information Systems classes very often at the College of San Mateo. One pupil was stationed aboard an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf. ... In fact, online classes can be just as effective as traditional classes, or even more so, said CSM professor Melissa Green. In Green's experience, people taking these courses -- typically in business, accounting or computer science -- need to do so for the changing nature of their careers. Ron Bolts, a San Mateo resident, has been in the computer industry for the past 20 years, but took Martens' summer CIS course as a refresher on the latest in computer technology."
>>> Computer Science, AI Courses (@ Resources for Students)
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August 17, 2004: Robot in line for top job. By Sonia Verma. The Toronto Star. "Once upon a time, most of the people who wound up working here were little kids with big dreams. Those dreams usually involved distant, faraway things in outer space. So when they grew up they wanted to figure out a way to grab them. At least that's the story most of the aerospace engineers at Brampton's MD Robotics will tell you when you ask how they ended up here, inside a sun-starved room filled with working testaments to Canada's space program -- a program they helped build. Dressed in a regulation lab coat and itchy hairnet, company vice-president Paul Cooper breezes through the lab with the brisk purpose of a surgeon in an operating room. He talks about the robots that surround him as if they were past patients. Some are in need of a tune-up after coming back from a big mission. Others are still waiting for their turn in outer space. Strewn around the room like scattered toys are the disassembled parts from several enormous Canadarm robots, one of this country's most important contributions to the space program. Put together, they are shaped something like a hockey stick and have been used in the past to place satellites into orbit and rescue malfunctioning ones for repair. But what concerns Cooper these days is the future. And at the moment, its name is Dextre: a Canadian-engineered headless robot with 2-metre trunk with 3.5-metre arms, which has just been tapped for a very big job: fixing the aging Hubble Space Telescope."
>>> Astronomy & Space Exploration, Robots, Applications
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August 17, 2004: Funding for UCD-based Lightwave. Radio Telefís Éireann (RTÉ), the Irish Public Service Broadcasting Organisation. "Lightwave is close to developing its first product, called ICE (Intelligent Control of Energy), which uses artificial intelligence techniques to anticipate how a building will react to new conditions such as the outside temperature or the number of people occupying the building."

August 17, 2004: The 'Nose' Knows A Sweet Smell Of Success. SpaceDaily. "What about detecting chemical leaks in enclosed spaces, like the International Space Station or Space Shuttle? NASA built 'E-Nose' to come to the rescue. The Agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and the California Institute of Technology jointly developed a method for a machine to 'smell.' ... E-Nose technology has the ability to send a signal to an environmental control system where a central computer decides how to handle the problem, without human interaction. The device also can be 'trained' in one session to detect many specific contaminants. ... Commercial companies were quick to see E-Nose's potential. In March 1997, JPL licensed the technology to Cyrano Sciences, of Pasadena, Calif. The company renamed the device 'Cyranose 320' and put it to work in the food industry, testing for spoilage. The technology is also being tested to detect toxic materials, water pollutants and chemical leaks."
>>> Artificial Noses, Hazards & Disasters, Applications, Resources for Educators
-> back to headlines

August 16, 2004: National Instruments hosts tech conference, robot challenge. Austin Business Journal. "The RoboLab Challenge is scheduled for Wednesday from 5:30 to 7 p.m. and will have students, teachers and engineers compete to design, build and program a LEGO robot that can maneuver through an obstacle course. ... RoboLab is a joint initiative of NI, Tufts University and LEGO Educational Division, and is designed to help teachers demonstrate engineering concepts to students."
>>> Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Robots
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August 16, 2004: Kickboxing robots draw crowds in Japan. Associated Press / available from CNN.com (August 16, 2004): "The all-for-fun event is evidence not only of an infatuation with robots here but also of the widely accepted view of robots as entertaining friends. It's a contrast to other nations, where robotics are increasingly being used in warfare and robots often considered creepy threats. ... Robo-One, begun four years ago to stimulate public interest in robots, is loosely based on K-1, a popular sport that combines elements of kickboxing, karate and taekwondo. ... This year's winner, the 11 lb. Humanoid Project from Kyushu University, outmuscled rivals, collecting $9,000. The runner-up was awarded $1,800. 'It's exciting to see your own ideas take shape in an actual robot,' said Toshinobu Koga, 24, one of the students behind the winning robot. Another team member took a robot to an interview and landed himself a job at a major electronics maker, he added."

>>> Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Sports, Robots, Applications, Science Fiction
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August 16, 2004: Greatest computer-generated movie sequences - The Lord of the Rings. By Miya Knights. vnunet.com. "The Battle for Minas Tirith in The Return of the King uses advanced computer-generated imagery to recreate the battle scenes from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Pioneering work in artificial intelligence development by Weta Digital, the technology-based half of director Peter Jackson's production company, was used to create a simulation of every 'agent' in the scene. The software, called Massive, was originally developed by Weta Digital guru Steven Regelous for work on a remake of King Kong in 1997. It uses artificial intelligence engines to control the movements and behaviour of crowds or animated creatures. ... Jackson has said since that Regelous and his team knew they were on to something with the artificial intelligence when they pitted 1,000 randomly generated silver men against the same number in gold in the first battle simulation, and three or four on the edges simply turned and ran for the hills."
>>> Agents, Multi-Agent Systems, Drama, Applications
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August 16, 2004: Zoe the robot to look for life on Earth as practice for Mars. By Byron Spice. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "The three-year, $3 million Life in the Atacama project, which began last year, is sponsored by NASA to develop technologies for automated searches for life on Mars and other planets. Large stretches of the Atacama, where fog is the major source of precipitation, appear devoid of life; if machines can find life in the Atacama, the thinking goes, they might have a chance of finding life on Mars, if it exists there. ... The Robotics Institute is developing the robot and the robotic techniques for a search-for-life mission, while Carnegie Mellon's Molecular Biosensor and Imaging Center has developed a device that uses natural fluorescence and fluorescent dyes to find minute signs of life on rocks. ... Though the science team will direct Zoe to places of interest, the robot itself will make most of the detailed decisions, such as how to get from place to place, and will be able to travel a kilometer or more without human intervention."
>>> Space Exploration, Autonomous Vehicles, Robots, Applications
-> back to headlines

August 16, 2004: Declining computer-science enrollments should worry anyone interested in the future of the U.S. IT industry. By Eric Chabrow. Information Week. "Computer science often loses out to other fields of study, many of which depend on high-end computing. The type of student who once expressed interest in computer science now is lured by life sciences such as biology and chemistry, or even criminal justice, attracted to those fields by the popularity of criminal forensic shows such as CSI and Crossing Jordan. 'Things on TV guide their interests,' says Charles McCamant, head of Angelo State's computer-science department. Leaders of computer-science programs, having ridden a rising tide of employment and prominence for decades, concede they need to do a better job promoting their discipline and highlighting the great challenges ahead. [Mark] Stehlik notes that in real life, criminologists rely heavily on computers to solve crimes, something represented on TV shows by images of fingerprints quickly flashing by on a PC monitor. 'What's really happening here is pattern matching. That's computer science,' Stehlik says. 'On these shows, we see the test-tube side; there's a computer-science side, too, that's not played up. ... As a field, computer science has done a lot less PR than it needs to do.' ... There's growing pressure on schools to provide computer-science majors with an understanding of how information systems have an impact on an organization. It's not just business but how computers help researchers find new drugs, designers make sleeker cars, or police solve a crime. 'The one thing that's more important now than before is having an understanding of the application's domain,' says Gerald Engel, a University of Connecticut computer-science professor and president-elect of the IEEE Computer Society, an association of computer academics and professionals. ... This interdisciplinary approach might be the salvation for computer science and could eventually attract a different breed of student than from an earlier generation. 'The students who come in want to do more than just hack,' Stehlik says. 'Some students have political designs; they're interested in greater issues that confront society: security, privacy. We're seeing students who are extending the notion of computer science.'"
>>> Law Enforcement, Bioinformatics, Computer Science, Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Pattern Recognition, Machine Learning, Applications
-> back to headlines

August 16, 2004: Trying to Take Technology to the Masses. By John Markoff. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.) / also available from The International Herald Tribune (At $250, a PC that aims to connect world's poor). "Raj Reddy was fed up debating the problem of the digital divide between the rich and the poor and decided to do something about it. Reddy, a pioneering researcher in artificial intelligence and a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, plans to unveil his project this year. It is called the PCtvt, a $250 personal computer that is wirelessly networked for the four billion people around the world who live on less than $2,000 a year. . He says his combination PC can find a market in developing countries, particularly those with large populations of illiterate people, because it can be controlled by a simple television remote- control device and can function as a television, telephone and videophone. ... The philosophy behind the PCtvt grew from ideas first explored in the early 1980s by Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, the founder of the World Center for Computing and Human Resources, based in Paris. The center was built on the idea that developing countries could use biological and microelectronic technologies to leapfrog the industrial stage of economic development. Reddy was among dozens of leading international researchers working on design projects at the center, including Alan Kay, Nicholas Negroponte and Seymour Papert. Mr. Kay was the creator of the Xerox Alto, an early PC. Mr. Negroponte had designed a pioneering videodisc system at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Mr. Papert was the inventor of the LOGO programming language. ... 'We needed three decades,' Reddy said, for those technologies to help advance developing nations. ... With a small team of students and faculty at Carnegie Mellon's West Coast campus in Mountain View, Reddy has built a simple control screen that allows the PCtvt to be used for audio and video conferencing, electronic mail and viewing local newspapers on the Web through a TV remote control. ... Reddy's team is also working with social scientists to determine the effect that access to this technology has on communities."
>>> Systems & Languages, Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Interfaces, Ethical & Social Implications
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August 16, 2004: Profiling the suspect - A diagnostic blood test using software to recognize telltale proteins could spot ovarian cancer in its earliest, most treatable stage. By Linda Marsa. The Los Angeles Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "Ovarian cancer is uncommonly deadly. Tumors aren't usually detected until the disease has spread beyond the ovaries, at which point only a third of patients survive more than five years. A promising blood test could change this bleak picture, enabling doctors to identify ovarian cancer at its earliest, most treatable stage. 'This has the potential of being an important advance,' says Dr. Philip DiSaia, director of gynecological oncology at the UC Irvine School of Medicine. 'Ovarian cancer is extremely difficult to detect early on and is usually diagnosed at advanced stages, which is why the death rates are so high.' ... [T]he new diagnostic test, called OvaCheck, analyzes hundreds of thousands of proteins -- not just one -- floating in a drop of blood. Using pattern recognition technology (a computer technique borrowed from artificial intelligence), the test can spot the telltale fingerprint of ovarian cancer proteins."
>>> Medicine, Pattern Recognition, Machine Learning, Applications; also see this related article
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August 16, 2004: A few good women - Tech firms want more female computer whizzes. By Marci Mcdonald. U.S. News & World Report / USNews.com. "That sense of isolation and inadequacy is one reason the number of women earning computer science degrees in this country has plummeted over the past two decades -- with women dropping from 37 percent to 28 percent of graduates -- at the very moment their presence in other scientific and engineering disciplines has soared. 'You look at the national statistics,' says Rick Rashid, senior vice president of research at Microsoft, 'and you just have to be appalled.' Until recently, many in the high-tech industry shrugged off that female brain drain. They could fill top information-technology slots from abroad or American doctoral programs, where foreign nationals still snag half the Ph.D.'s. But suddenly homeland security issues and visa hurdles have clogged that foreign pipeline. And countries like India are luring their U.S.-educated citizens back home to their own burgeoning Silicon Valleys. ... Faced with forecasts of a looming brainpower shortage -- and the retirement of those baby boomers who are the industry's pioneers -- many leading U.S. players fear the country could lose its competitive edge. 'Over the next seven years, our hiring needs are going to be huge,' says Wayne Johnson, executive director of HP's university relations worldwide. 'If you don't have half the U.S. population participating, you have a tremendous gap in filling these needs. What we're doing here is creating a disadvantage for ourselves as a nation.' ... Now many in the industry are focusing on an earlier generation in grade school, where career dreams, and misperceptions, are spawned. According to the book Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher, girls -- unlike boys -- want jobs they believe can make a difference in society. But they don't view high tech as a key to that idealistic path. 'They think it's what you do if you want to develop games or become a hacker,' says [Sarah Revi] Sterling. 'They just don't feel it's relevant to helping solve the problems of the world.' To combat that perception, IBM has launched annual summer camps for seventh- and eighth-grade girls called EXITE (Exploring Interests in Technology and Engineering). Instead of pounding in tent pegs and building campfires, the girls learn to tear apart a PC and debunk the mysteries of a circuit board at IBM Labs."
>>> Computer Science, Summer Camps, Careers in AI & Academic Departments & Graduate Schools & Equality & Diversity (@ Resources for Students)
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August 14, 2004: Kids College Camp concludes. By Leona Liu. The Journal News. "The Kids College Camp, in its fourth season, was started by Emil Willis to complement the existing Sports Academy summer program, which has been running at SUNY Rockland Community College for over 30 years. 'I started Kids College Camp because the Sports Academy only appealed to those with an athletic interest and I wanted to provide an alternative for those with an academic interest,' said Willis. Kids College Camp consists of separate computer, math and science, and performing arts camps on the college's campus. Campers enroll in the one that most appeals to their interests and passion. ... The computer camp was headed by Josh Leigh. The children designed their own Web sites, stationary and cards on the computers. Those who attended the math and science camp dabbled in chemistry and made robots and model rockets as well as a six-legged soccer robot."
>>> Summer Camps, Robots
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August 14, 2004: Gadget of the week - Hearing aids with 'artificial intelligence.' The New York Times / available from The International Herald Tribune. "A new hearing aid from Oticon, the Syncro, goes a step further, incorporating artificial intelligence software. The hearing aid ... uses an algorithm to adapt to the wearer's environment by constantly adjusting its digital sound processor's signal-to-noise ratio. The software aims to mimic natural hearing, in which the brain is constantly scanning for meaningful sounds and screening out noise."
>>> Assistive Technologies, Speech, Applications
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August 13, 2004: Your CV has a fatal error. You haven't been rejected until you've been rejected by a computer. By Steve Dow. Fairfax Digital, smh.com.au & The Sydney Morning Herald. "If you've applied for a job in recent months - and been turned down - get ready for a shock. It's likely your resume never made it into human hands. Every day thousands of job applications are being automatically assessed and rejected by an artificial intelligence technology developed in Sydney. ... 'Ease of application has created an email bottleneck,' says the website of the Sydney firm Recruit Advantage. There are 'masses of unqualified job applicants' and there is 'no time to respond to job applicant emails'. So Recruit Advantage invented a software program that did it automatically. The program, TurboRecruit, 'automatically pre-screens job candidates to YOUR requirements'. The technology can spit out hundreds of 'thanks, but no thanks' letters every morning before employment agency consultants even switch on their computers. ... The technology is already being used by companies such as Coca-Cola Amatil and government departments, including Centrelink, Sydney Water and the Department of Defence. It is in place at many of the big recruitment agencies.... Some job seekers have wondered at the speed with which rejection letters are appearing in their inboxes."
>>> Business, Applications
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August 12, 2004: Amid the Cacophony, a Quiet Conversation. By Anne Eisenberg. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "Background noise gets in the way of many cellphone conversations. It can be hard to hear what the person on the other end is saying when there is competition from traffic or nearby people who are also talking. But several electrical engineers and other scientists are working to reduce or mask the distracting noises that can reach a cellphone and disrupt a conversation. At the University of Toronto, [Parham Aarabi] has devised a two-microphone system that can focus on the speaker's voice and filter out other noises, turning competing conversations into a mild hum. ... The device may also be useful in improving the accuracy of voice recognition interfaces used with computers and in cars, where voice commands are used to activate cellphones and navigation systems. Cars can be a difficult environment for speech recognition systems because of traffic and wind noise.Background sounds have long been a barrier to the widespread adoption of speech recognition systems, said Li Deng, an electrical engineer and senior researcher in the speech technology group at Microsoft in Redmond, Wash. Like Dr. Aarabi, Dr. Deng has developed software algorithms to improve speech recognition by reducing background noise."
>>> Telecommunications, Speech, Applications
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August 12, 2004: When machines breed - Evolvable hardware -- gadgets that design themselves -- can get the job done, even if humans have no idea how they do it. By Sam Williams. Salon.com (subscribe or watch a brief ad to get a free day pass). "Paul Layzell is a specialist in the budding field of evolvable hardware. Simply put, he helps machines design themselves, using principles borrowed directly from biological evolution. ... Using evolutionary processes to optimize machine performance is nothing new. Since the 1960s, artificial intelligence researchers have exploited the dynamics of Darwinian evolution to solve software problems in fields as diverse as financial investment, manufacturing and biochemistry. What is new, however, is the application of evolutionary processes in the hardware realm."
>>> Genetic Algorithms, Engineering, Machine Learning, Finance & Investing, Manufacturing, Bioinformatics, Applications
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August 12, 2004: Computer Graded Writing. Written by Nancy Steinbach and reported by Steve Ember. VOA News broadcast. "Educators know that teaching students to write well is not easy. One problem is the amount of time needed to read through large amounts of work. So some companies have developed computer programs. These can grade student writing much more quickly than a human can. Writing tests can also cost less to administer by computer than by paper-and-pencil. These computer systems are known as e-raters. They use artificial intelligence to think in a way like teachers. In the state of Indiana, computer grading of a statewide writing test began with a test of the system itself. For two years, both a computer and humans graded the student writing. Officials say there was almost no difference between the computer grades and those given by the human readers. ... How do teachers feel about all this? ..."
>>> Education, Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Applications
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August 11, 2004: Greece's 16-times Discus Champion Heads Olympics Drugs Lab. Agence France Presse / available from TurkishPress.com. "Costas Georgakopoulos, who was 16-times Greek discus champion and competed in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, will spearhead the Athens Olympics' drive against doping. Georgakopoulos, 41, is head of the anti-doping laboratory situated next to the main Olympic stadium.... In 1981, he went back to school and studied chemical engineering at Athens Technical University. For his doctor's thesis, he chose a subject that would allow him to combine sport and career: expert system computer programming on mass spectrometry analysis of polymers."
>>> Expert Systems, Sports, Bioinformatics, Applications
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August 11, 2004: Students saying no to computer science. By Ed Frauenheim. CNET News. "At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as in other schools across the country, computer science enrollments are dropping, raising questions about the country's future tech leadership. ... Saul Levy, chair of the [Rutgers University] undergraduate computer science program, said the ongoing decline stems from the way students perceive career prospects. 'They don't believe in the job market in computers anymore,' Levy said. ... Carnegie Mellon's [Peter] Lee said the recent decline in undergraduate enrollment is part of a larger trend of declining student interest in computer science over the past two decades -- a tendency temporarily interrupted by the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. To him, a fundamental cause is that computer science hasn't emphasized its grand challenges. Rather than tout the excitement of trying to magnify human intelligence through machines, the field has focused on more practical matters, which tend to be less attractive than big questions in disciplines like biology or chemistry, he said."
>>> Computer Science, Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students)
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August 10, 2004: NASA Develops Robust Artificial Intelligence for Planetary Rovers. By John Bluck. NASA.gov. "NASA is planning to add a strong dose of artificial intelligence (AI) to planetary rovers to make them much more self-reliant, capable of making basic decisions during a mission. Scientists at NASA Ames Research Center, in the heart of California's Silicon Valley, are developing very complex AI software that enables a higher level of robotic intelligence. n the past, very simple artificial intelligence systems on board rovers allowed them to make some simple decisions, but much smarter AI will enable these mobile robots to make many decisions now made by mission controllers. ... 'State-of-the-art artificial intelligence software will deliberate on board the rovers. One such state-of-the-art, complex, AI-based agent software is based on an ambitious architecture called Intelligent Deployable Execution Agents, or IDEA, developed at NASA Ames over the last 4 years,' [Kanna] Rajan explained. An agent is software that mimics the human thought process to do things a human being wants to be done. ... 'Creating strong AI software is a very exciting and challenging problem, and it inspires us and our students to work on this bold effort,' said noted artificial intelligence expert professor Milind Tambe of the University of California, Los Angeles, who has worked with Rajan."
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Space Exploration, Agents, Robots, Applications
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August 10, 2004: Robotic Soccer Moms also do Windows (CE). By Suzanne Ross. WindowsForDevices.com. "The 'soccer moms' at Cornell University don't drive mini-vans or call out "that was off-sides" while the kids kick the ball around on the field. Instead, they communicate with their soccer playing robots over a wireless connection. Cornell University students have entered their robot prototypes in the RoboCup competition every year since 1999. They won the world championship four times. The competition helps the student team learn about artificial intelligence, distributed computing, program verification, and this year, embedded systems that allow the robots to be autonomous. ... Aided by an Innovation in Excellence award from Microsoft Research, the team put more intelligence into the robots rather than depending on a workstation off the field. This puts them in a better position for future events, when local vision will become mandatory. Robots with local vision have the camera mounted on the robot, those with global vision 'see' from a camera mounted on top of the field. The on-board intelligence also allows them to improve motion control accuracy, decrease system latency, and explore distributed decision-making strategies.
>>> Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Multi-Agent Systems, Robots, Vision, Systems
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August 10, 2004: 'Please Don't Make Me Read It, Baba!' Book review by Molouk Y. Ba-Isa. Arab News. "Last month a group contacted me by e-mail asking if I would be interested in reviewing their new children's books about computers. With few good youth-oriented publications about computers available, particularly in Arabic, I was delighted to take a look. ... I really felt miserable and wanted to cry over these books. The Arab World is in desperate need of adequate IT titles for individuals new to computers. ... By now, readers of this column who haven't had a chance to preview 'Computers for Kids' might be wondering if the books could really be so bad. To clarify things, let me share with you a bit of the glossary, called the 'Computer Dictionary' which is at the end of 'Computers for Kids.' ... The 'Computers for Kids' definition of artificial intelligence reads: 'Often referred to as AI, involves trying to get machines including computers and robots to replicate human intelligence.' The Wordsmyth Children's Dictionary definition of artificial intelligence reads: 'An area of computer science that explores the ability of computers to think or have intelligence. Artificial intelligence is concerned with developing computer programs or computers that seem to use reason and make decisions.' Are further examples necessary? I think not. If 'Computers for Kids' is for beginners, probably young children ten years old or younger, then how many of them would understand the meaning of words such as integrate and replicate? ... It worries me too that well-meaning parents will probably buy these badly written, poorly presented, error filled books and force their children to read them."
>>> Reference Shelf, AI Overview
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August 9, 2004: Emerging field shifts perceptions of human, machine limits. By Nicolas Mokhoff. EE Times. "Recently, the first workshop devoted to electronic perception technology attracted more than 100 scientists from around the globe. Held in Washington as part of the IEEE Computer Society's Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, the workshop explored key enabling hardware and software advances and sought to raise awareness of the applications that become possible when everyday devices can 'see.' ... [Canesta Inc.] believes potential applications of the technology are as broad as the imagination and may include intelligent automobile airbag systems, which would sense the size and position of an occupant to control deployment and avoid injury; security systems that could distinguish between an intrusion and normal household activity; and robotic tools that could operate in dynamic as well as static environments. At Siggraph, Canesta will unveil a development platform for its Equinox 3-D sensor perception chip. ... The Equinox chip resolves a scene into pixels, as does an ordinary camera chip; but instead of simply providing the brightness of each pixel, Equinox also provides the distance from each picture element to the sensor chip. In effect, this renders the scene into three-dimensional objects that are easily processed by computing chips in devices such as cell phones or PDAs. 'We call this primary 3-D data,' said [Jim] Spare. 'It eliminates the need for massive calculations of one or more 2-D images to accomplish the same tasks.'"
>>> Vision, Systems, Applications, Conferences (@ Resources for Students)
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August 8, 2004: Fewer college students choose computer majors. By Michelle Kessler. USA Today. "Tech firms might be rebounding from the dot-com bust, but enrollment in college computer programs keeps falling. ... Peter Lee, an associate dean at Carnegie Mellon. His elite undergraduate program received 2,000 applicants this year, compared with 3,200 at the height of the boom. But the students are often of higher quality, motivated more by love of technology than dreams of stock options, he says. Still, many educators worry there won't be enough workers when the industry rebounds, crimping growth. Matthew Szulik, CEO of software firm Red Hat, says he's having trouble finding some highly skilled programmers. ... Graduate programs haven't seen the same decline yet. 'One place you go when you can't get a job is back to school,' says computer science professor Warren Hunt at the University of Texas."
>>> Computer Science, Graduate Schools & Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students)
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August 8, 2004: Man and machine, between two worlds. Book review by Frank Perley. The Washington Times. "Human consciousness can't be saved and stored electronically like a Microsoft product -- yet. But Ken MacLeod envisions just such a time in his latest novel, Newton's Wake (Tor, $24.95, 322 pages). Billed as a 'space opera,' the new book is more of a space opus -- a weighty work on the coming nexus of man and machine. The story unfolds in the 24th century, 300 years after 'the Hard Rapture,' when machines powered by artificial intelligence (A.I.) turned on their human creators in a nuclear war for control of Earth. The machines were victorious. The winners scanned the brains of the human dead and stored the contents electronically for possible reconstitution in the future. ... Mr. MacLeod isn't the first science fiction writer to explore the characteristics of consciousness and notice that the boundaries delineating human and artificial intelligence are narrowing."
>>> Science Fiction, Philosophy, Robots
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August 7, 2004: Alert to alarmed robots. By Luke Slattery. The Weekend Australian (subscription req'd.). "[I, Robot] may be loosely indebted to Isaac Asimov's short story cycle of the same name, with a few obvious bows and scrapes to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, but it is primarily skirting around a very lively contemporary controversy in the philosophy of the mind. Can consciousness be simulated through artificial intelligence or is it a distinctively biological process? The two most vocal antagonists in the debate are the director of the Centre for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, Daniel C. Dennett, author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea and Consciousness Explained; and John R.Searle, professor of philosophy at the University of California, author of The Rediscovery of the Mind and The Construction of Social Reality.Dennett believes, in essence, that in the foreseeable future computer engineers will fashion robots able to feel pain and experience emotions. They might legitimately claim the same civic rights as those of us with a mortal casing. What's more, in essence we are sophisticated robots, or zombies. ... Searle has attacked Dennett vigorously, describing his view as a form of 'intellectual pathology' because it denies the existence of consciousness; consciousness for Searle is a state of sentience and awareness resulting from neurobiological process -- it cannot be artificially engineered. ... I, Robot groans somewhat under the load but it ultimately delivers a timely and relevant pop cultural expression of an argument that occupies some of the best minds in science and philosophy. The I, Robot story, briefly, concerns a new generation of household super-robots that run amok; they not only refuse to yield to human authority, they covet power. They give all the appearance, in other words, of exercising free will. ... Unanticipated, these free radicals engender questions of free will, creativity and even the nature of what we might call the soul."
>>> Philosophy, Robots, Science Fiction, Ethical & Social Implications
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August 7, 2004: I, Robot - you scared? By Jim Gilchrist. Scotsman.com News. "'One man saw it coming' yells the slogan advertising the latest summer blockbuster, I, Robot, the film poster showing a brooding Will Smith against a backdrop of relentlessly marching androids. Kevin Warwick reckons he's seen it coming for quite some time, although colleagues in the field of cybernetics and artificial intelligence may roll their eyes at the very mention of his name. It was Warwick, professor of cybernetics at Reading University, who attracted much publicity and no small controversy by 'enhancing' his nervous system by having microchip transponders surgically implanted in his body, letting him 'communicate' directly, if in a basic manner, with computers, negotiate obstacles blind, operate a robotic hand thousands of miles away, even tweak his wife's nervous system, which had also had an electrode makeover. ,,, Warwick is widely quoted as warning that, if we don't keep our wits about us, we risk being superseded by highly intelligent machines. Sensational? Perhaps, he admits, 'but there are many aspects of the film which, given the time scale, are very likely, such as robots doing all our fetching and carrying for us by 2035, although whether or not they look like humans, as in the film, is another question. But then it's a matter of one or a number of robots making decisions for themselves, and deciding they'll run things from here, whether there is a bad human behind it, or the machines themselves.' To avoid a humans vs machines scenario, Warwick recommends 'a symbiosis' - 'upgrading' ourselves with nervous system implants so we can interact directly with machines."
>>> Robots, Science Fiction
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August 7, 2004: AI vital in charting direction. Daily Express, Sabah, Malaysia. "Artificial intelligence (AI) and its applications are inevitable components in mapping a direction very much in line with the Government's objectives to advance in science and technology, said Chief Minister Datuk Seri Musa Aman. 'It provides fundamental benefits to our society,' he said. ... Musa said this while launching the 2nd International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Applications in Engineering and Technology (ICAIET) 2004 at Pacific Sutera Resort & Spa, here, Wednesday. ... 'It is clear that the development in AI had grown exponentially. This indicates the AI applications are unlimited,' he said. He pointed out that several products, equipment and processes using AI had attained a high degree of success in daily life such as the washing machine, rice cooker, video games as well as advanced vehicle brake system."
>>> Household Appliances, Fuzzy Logic, Transportation, Applications, Conferences (@ Resources for Students)
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August 6, 2004: Italy's Sky-X Demonstrator Explores Artificial Intelligence. By Tom Kington. ISR Journal. "The unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) technology demonstrator Sky-X, being developed by Alenia Aeronautica, is evolving into a stealthier, more silent aircraft as it nears its planned spring 2005 debut flight. Planners decided to delay the flight -- originally set for June this year -- to create a longer, more angular form and to investigate stealthier materials. Meanwhile they are seeking ideas on artificial intelligence that would allow a UCAV to make more decisions in flight, thus reducing communications in enemy territory that can be spotted, jammed or break down. 'Our interest in ways to allow the aircraft to decide to change plans in flight stems from the new frontiers in [network-centric] operations,' said Carmelo Cosentino, executive vice president and general manager for military programs at Alenia Aeronautica, a Finmeccanica unit. 'Net-centric operations is all about making decisions without needing to go up the chain of command every time, and artificial intelligence can assist this.'"
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Military, Applications
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August 6, 2004: American Century changes EmVee's name to Newton. The Business Journal of Kansas City. "American Century Investments has changed the name of its EmVee Fund (AEVIX) to American Century Newton Fund. ... 'Movement or motion is a key driver in the fund's stock selection process,' American Century said in the release. 'With the assistance of artificial intelligence provided by a neural network, Newton's managers look for companies whose share price patterns suggest that they may either rise or fall in price.'"
>>> Finance & Investing, Applications
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August 6, 2004: Brain drain in tech's future? By Ed Frauenheim, CNET News. "Discussion about technology's future in the United States often centers on problems that eighth graders have in algebra. But there also are concerns that the country's universities are churning out fewer tech-related doctorates, and that the numbers may decline further thanks to fewer foreign doctoral degree candidates -- who earn a large portion of science and engineering doctorates at U.S. schools. ... The National Science Board, an independent body that advises Congress and oversees the NSF, recently warned of a 'troubling decline' in the number of U.S. citizens studying to become scientists and engineers, even as the number of jobs requiring science and engineering training grows. ... James Foley, chairman of the Computing Research Association and a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology's College of Computing, sees the drop in doctorates as one of several red flags in the U.S. research system. 'We have potentially big problems ahead of us if we don't pay attention,' he said. ... According to the National Science Board, other countries are doing more to attract the best brains to their universities. The board also said increased security restrictions are partly behind a slower pace of visas given to students and science and engineering workers since Sept. 11, 2001. ... Not everyone agrees that Americans are turning away from science to snag more dough. People 'don't go into science and engineering to make a lot of money,' said Eleanor Babco, executive director of the Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology. 'They go in because they love science and engineering.' Another school of thought holds that overall U.S. doctoratal production is related to swings in the economy. ... There's also debate about how important those credentials are to the country's future. Breakthroughs in computing lead to economic growth, said Georgia Tech's Foley. He noted that doctoratal students at Georgia Tech are working on problems in information security and the interface between humans and computers. 'If we're not leading the charge or at least creating innovation here, we're going to really be up the creek,' Foley said. Industry leaders also proclaim the importance of the doctoratal degree. Computer maker Hewlett-Packard, for example, runs a summer intern program that includes about 50 doctorates and doctoral students. The company continues to hire doctorates, especially in its HP Labs research division, said Wayne Johnson, the company's executive director of university relations. ... Not surprisingly, what to do about the declining doctoratal numbers depends on who's talking. ..."
>>> Graduate Schools & Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students)
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August 6, 2004: Jack of one trade, master of all. By Shahar Smooha. Haaretz. "Computers did all the work at the World Computer Chess Championship, held for the first time in Israel, while the contestants sat around and chewed the fat. But the tension between the reigning German champion and the local Israeli contenders was very human indeed. ... 'During the competition itself we are the computer's robots. We do what it tells us,' says Shay Bushinsky with a smile. Deep Junior - the chess program he created with his partner, Amir Ban - was beginning its battle to retrieve the title of world champion, which it lost last year to the German program Shredder. ... Scientists in the fields of exact sciences have always considered the creation of a machine that would succeed in playing chess at a human level the ultimate challenge. ... [Prof. Nathan] Netanyahu adds that 'this field of experimentation is also very attractive to researchers of artificial intelligence, because through chess one can develop ideas that derive from the game, such as searches through a large tree of possibilities, or in databases and systems of rules.' The breakthrough in human attempts to teach machines to play chess came in the 1950s, with the invention of the first computers. Even earlier, the great British mathematician Alan Turing (who headed the group that cracked the Wehrmacht 'Enigma' code during World War II) invented the first true chess machine, which was later called the 'paper machine.' ... At more or less the same time, another great mathematician, Claude Shannon, understood that in order to deal with the huge number of possibilities that each chess move produces, they had to be divided into two strategies: one that examines all the possible moves, and one that analyzes certain probability tracks, thereby making the process of calculation easier. As in the case of many other technological inventions of the 20th century, one of the first great leaps forward in the field of computer chess was made possible thanks to the U.S. Army. Scientists there used the supercomputer Eniac-1, which had been built for the nuclear labs in Los Alamos, Texas, to run the first computerized chess program in history. In order to make it easier for the huge computer (which required about 12 minutes to produce each move), the game was played on a smaller board and without bishops."
>>> Chess, History, Military, Games & Puzzles, Turing (@ Namesakes)
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August 5, 2004: CVCC Camp is Cool for Middle School Kids. Reported by Amanda Cruickshank and posted by Jeff Taylor. ABC 13 / WSET.com. "[T]he 'Nuclear Technologies' Summer Academy for middle schoolers going on this week at Areva in Lynchburg. Students get a chance to see what it's like to be an engineer working in nuclear decontamination or robotics. Organizers say it's about career development. Kids just say it's fun. Joey Donovan, Summer Academy Student - 'Oh it's very cool. I really like working with the robot and checking the pipes.'"
>>> Summer Camps, Resources for Students
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August 5, 2004: Advancing R&D work in tech areas. By Ferina Manecksha. The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia). "A conducive environment is necessary if research and development (R&D) work in information and communications technology areas is to advance in Malaysia. The environment includes good R&D facilities, well-planned projects, focus on niche areas and good remuneration for researchers, according to industry observers. Universiti Tun Abdul Razak (Unitar)'s dean of information technology faculty, Professor Dr Khairuddin Abdullah, said the proposed ICT R&D centre would be a good place for researchers and technology developers to engage in collaborative work or for upgrading of domain and research skills. 'We require synergistic research collaboration and a conducive environment to do R&D. The brain gain is a good effort to entice those in overseas to come back. However, what most scientists and technologists need is the assurance that they will be part of and be useful in well-planned projects,' he said. According to Khairuddin, niche strategic areas that can be looked into for ICT R&D in the very near future include ICT security, intelligent agents, automated software engineering, photonics, natural language processing, knowledge management and advanced robotics."
>>> Academic Departments & Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students)
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August 4, 2004: Robot guard will smoke out villains. By John Boyd. New Scientist Magazine. "Robocop it is not, but a security company in Tokyo is hoping that a cross between a dodgem car and the robot R2D2 will soon be helping Japanese companies scare off, or help apprehend, intruders. Secom, a company better known for supplying human security guards, has developed a six-wheeled surveillance robot which can be either remotely controlled or pre-programmed. It can chase intruders, take high definition video pictures of them, issue loud warnings and release a dense, billowing cloud of smoke to frighten them off."
>>> Robots, Law Enforcement, Applications
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August 4, 2004: New degree course combats fear of the 'I-Robots.' News Wales. "On the verge of the UK release of summer sci-fi blockbuster 'I-Robot', the University of Glamorgan has unveiled plans for an innovative robotics course, building on its expertise in communicating science using science fiction. The BSc Science (Robotics) degree, as it will be called, will start in October 2005 but, says course developer Dr Mike Reddy, it is 'more about the 'science of appliance' than the appliance of science'. ... 'Films like 'I Robot' and 'Artificial Intelligence' have raised the issues of how we treat robots, but, more importantly, how they might treat us,' he added. 'There is a great deal of interest and ignorance of what robotics is and will become in the future.' The emphasis of the course will be on problem solving and challenge-based learning, with a collaborative, 'hands-on feel' to the robotics elements of the course, which will make up between a third and half of each academic year. However, the proposed degree is part of a range of courses that attempt to bring to the fore the social and ethical concerns of scientists and the need for effective communication of scientific concepts with the public."
>>> AI Courses (@ Resources for Students), Science Fiction, Ethical & Social Implications; also see this related article
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August 3, 2004: Neural network mimics human thought process. HP interested in technology invented at U of I. By Julie Howard. The Idaho Statesman. "Creation of a machine that thinks like a person is a step closer to reality with a discovery from a team of researchers at the University of Idaho in Moscow. The new technology, with a patent pending, 'opens the door' for computers or robots to do rapid computations in a much more complex way than scientists had thought possible, said inventor Richard Wells. ... The technology is called a neural network, and it operates much as the human brain does, Wells said. Instead of a microprocessor, which performs computation after computation, a neural network can do several computations simultaneously. In addition, a 'neurocomputer' uses what's called 'neuro-fuzzy logic,' meaning it deals with uncertainty, the missing function of traditional programmed integrated circuitry. ... Having a neural network formed on a computer chip could revolutionize the way computers function, said Gene Merrell, acting director of the Idaho Research Foundation Inc., based at the university."
>>> Neural Networks, Fuzzy Logic, Machine Learning, Systems
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August 3, 2004: DARPA figures out how to run a $2m robot race. By Ashlee Vance. The Register. "Hoping to make the $2m Grand Challenge live up to its name, DARPA officials have proposed a much more thorough set of qualification procedures and rules for the second running of the race. DARPA on Monday released its outline for the Grand Challenge II robot race to be held in October of next year. Prospective contestants have been asked to provide their feedback on the rules, which is just one of the welcome changes to DARPA's methods this time around."
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Competitions (@ Resources for Students)
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August 3, 2004: Virtual twin always happy to chat. By Rob O'Neill. The Sydney Morning Herald. "When accountancy students at the University of Wollongong need help from lecturer George Mickhail, George is always willing to help. Any query is greeted with a smile and a ready response. ... Meet Virtual George, a web-based, artificial-intelligence version of the real George Mickhail, based on a chat engine program that draws on a database of linguistic terms to interact with users. From his launch late last year as a simple text interface, Virtual George's responses have been refined through studying real chat sessions and their outcomes. ... Mickhail has presented the system at education conferences, describing it as a 'private tutor for students and a personal assistant for academics'."
>>> Chatbots, Natural Language Processing, Customer Relations
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August 3, 2004: Mapping the Physical And Mental Universes. Editorial by Narayani Ganesh. The Times of India. "If the manual of life is encoded in our DNA, where do we look to find the blueprint of consciousness? This was a subject that fascinated Francis Crick, who, along with James Watson, discovered the double-helix structure of DNA 50 years ago. ... This is the information age, thanks to the giant leaps we've made in computer chip technology. David Chalmers, of the department of philosophy, University of Arizona, raises a complex futuristic question: If the precise interactions between our neurons could be duplicated with silicon chips, would it give rise to the same conscious experience? Can consciousness arise in a complex, synthetic system? In other words, can consciousness some day be achieved in machines?"
>>> Philosophy, Cognitive Science
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August 3, 2004: The Human Element - Robots, Robots Everywhere. One-task robots are already here, and the race is on to come up with "substitute humans." Eric Butterfield, PC World. "If you're hankering for a robot to make your life easier, you've got plenty of company. The demand for helpful household robots is booming. Dan Kara, president of Robotics Trends, estimates that 4 million personal robots will be sold in 2006. ... Mass production is needed to bring the price of complex robots within the reach of the average consumer. Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst of the Enderle Group, thinks the interest is certainly there. 'I think this is all being driven by the popularity of the I, Robot movie,' says Enderle. 'And once you demonstrate demand, it typically isn't very long before somebody figures out a way to deliver it.' ...Before you can afford a robot that accurately mimics your behavior, there will likely be inexpensive software that exceeds your intelligence and can converse fluently. Even though software can't pick up your socks, it'd be nice to have a program that can converse with you in between humiliating bouts of chess. 'An efficient personal assistant doesn't really need a body,' says Yaki Dunietz, president of Artificial Intelligence Research in Savyon, Israel. 'The [artificial intelligence] technology will be very affordable because it is pure software.'"
>>> Robots, Agents, Assisitive Technologies, Robotic Pets & Toys, Household Appliances, Applications, Industry Statistics
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August 2, 2004: Voice and language recognition yields city information. IST Results. "New in town and don't know a soul! An evening free, but no idea where to go. What do you do? According to CATCH-2004, you consult one of their interactive systems for the information you need in your native language, and go straight to your preferred venue! ... To achieve their ends, the project participants developed a multilingual interface that could handle both direct and spoken-language interrogation, a unified architecture that could handle input from a variety of client devices, and voice-enabled access to the Web databases connected to this architecture."
>>> Customer Relations, Information Retrieval, Speech, Natural Language Processing, Machine Translation, Applications
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August 2, 2004: Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature . Book review by Edward Rothstein. The New York Times / available from The International Herald Tribune. "For [William R. Newman], alchemy, from its ancient origins as a servant to the decorative arts to its 17th-century transmutation into modern chemistry, provided the crucible in which many contemporary ideas about nature and artifice were first examined. Today, he writes, 'we live in the era of 'Frankenfoods,' cloning, in vitro fertilization, synthetic polymers, Artificial Intelligence, and computer generated 'Artificial Life,'' an era in which Pope John Paul II has warned of the 'Promethean ambitions' of biomedical science, and the President's Council on Bioethics has studied Hawthorne's alchemical story, 'The Birth-Mark.' But Newman argues that most current debates about boundaries between nature and artifice, or boundaries between proper and improper scientific exploration, echo debates that run through the history of alchemy. Critics of alchemy argued that the natural world could not be replicated or improved and that such goals should not be pursued. Advocates found porous boundaries between nature and artifice that could be explored and tested."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Robots, Artificial Life
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August 2, 2004: Feds launch bioinformatics centers - Institute contracts for databases and portals to compile info on diseases. By Michael Hardy. FCW.com. "Officials at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) are enlisting private companies and universities to help make data available about disease-causing organisms. ... Officials at NIAID, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, have awarded seven Bioinformatics Resource Center (BRC) contracts, and one more is in negotiations, [Valentina Di Francesco, bioinformatics program director] said. ... The study of how an organism's genes are arranged and interact is called genomics. Genes order the body's cells to produce proteins, which affect the body's processes. The study of the proteins is called proteomics. The BRCs will support both disciplines and related fields. The other component of the BRC project is to develop and distribute open-source software for researchers to use in viewing and managing data, Di Francesco said. This includes developing a set of standards for systems to freely exchange genomic data. Bioinformatics is a difficult field to work in because it requires collaboration between biologists and computer scientists to develop systems that address the data's complexity and are useful to researchers, she said."
>>> Bioinformatics, Applications
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August 2, 2004: Welsh uni to turn science fiction into fact. By David Williamson. The Western Mail / available from i c Wales. "Students at a Welsh university are to begin preparing for a world shared with intelligent robots. A new degree in robotics will teach students how to apply science fiction in science. The release of the big-screen adaptation of Isaac Asimov's I, Robot has fuelled speculation about whether robots designed as servants could attempt to become our masters. Dr Mike Reddy at the University of Glamorgan is determined to take these questions from the realm of science fiction and explore them in the new BSc Science (Robotics) degree. ... The science fiction of the 20th century, he argues, not only created the concept of the robot but demonstrated the complexity of the threats, opportunities and moral dilemmas their arrival would spark. ... The degree will be launched next year, but the areas involving the social and ethical concerns of scientists and the need for effective communication of scientific concepts with the public, can currently be studied in BSc (Hons) Science and Science Fiction. ... He believes the use of 'software robots' could revolutionise our interaction with the web. These would study our surfing habits and search the vast expanses of cyberspace for sites of interest. 'If you draw an analogy to books in libraries, there is an almost infinite number I will never read unless someone says, 'Hey, Mike! Here's a book you'll love', and I'll go, 'Wow!'"
>>> AI Courses (@ Resources for Students), Science Fiction, Ethical & Social Implications, Web-Searching Agents, Agents; also see this related article
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August 2, 2004: Animated face helps deaf with phone chat. By Will Knight. New Scientist News. "Software that creates an animated face to match someone talking on the other end of a phone line can help people with hearing difficulties converse, suggests a new study. The animated face provides a realistic impersonation of a person speaking, enabling lip-readers to follow the conversation visually as well as audibly. ... The neural network used by SimFace identifies particular sounds, or 'phonemes', rather than entire words. This has been shown to be a particularly fast way of matching words to animation. By concentrating on sounds the system can also represent words that it has not encountered previously. ... The system was developed by researchers at Royal Institute of Technology, in Stockholm, Sweden, University College London, UK as well as Dutch software company Viataal and Belgian voice analysis firm Babletech."
>>> Assisitive Technologies, Speech, Machine Translation, Natural Language Processing, Neural Networks, Applications
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August 2, 2004: Tiny Robots To The Rescue - Special Machines Going Where Humans Can't. By Therese Poletti. Mercury News / available from SiliconValley.com. "The San Jose McEnery Convention Center looked like a bomb had hit it. Amid collapsed walls and debris, arms and legs of survivors waved through the rubble. The body parts were artificial. But they were the most important component of a mock disaster area set up at an artificial intelligence conference last week. Groups of small robots, some only about a foot high, rumbled over the wreckage on a mission to learn how to save lives. The robots had to negotiate the debris, find bodies that generated heat and communicate their location. Some robots were equipped with microphones to record sound, digital cameras and sensors to map the site and wireless gear to communicate with each other. ... Robin Murphy, who heads the Center for Robot Assisted Search and Rescue at the University of South Florida, took robots to the World Trade Center disaster area after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. ... Murphy's robots, which look like mini-tanks on tracks, searched for victims as well as for paths through the rubble. Rescue workers also deployed the bots to determine the structural integrity of damaged buildings."
>>> Hazards & Disasters, Robots, Applications, Competitions (@ Resources for Students)
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August 2, 2004: Defense Dept. hopes to enlist AI in war against terrorism. By Therese Poletti. Mercury News / available from SiliconValley.com. "The world's most popular search engine, Google, uses artificial intelligence to respond to millions of queries a day. Banks now depend on artificial intelligence to alert customers to odd patterns of credit card use. And many video game developers rely on AI to develop life-like characters. After its own boom-and-bust cycle in the 1980s, the esoteric field of artificial intelligence gradually has developed some real-life uses of software that teach machines to think. And now the war on terrorism is boosting AI research with an infusion of cash. The Defense Department hopes an elite group of AI scientists will develop more tools to help intelligence analysts find terrorists before they strike. At an artificial intelligence conference in San Jose last week, several groups of university researchers presented papers on work they have done in the area of counter-terrorism."
>>> Law Enforcement, Applications, AI Overview
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August 2, 2004: Some Sophisticated Bidding by Jack, a Dutch Computer Program. By Alan Truscott. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "[Jack] is the name of the Dutch computer program that has won the world computer bridge championship for four straight years. It is the brainchild of Hans Kuijf, with input from Wim Heemskerk, Martin Pattenier and a former world champion, Berry Westra. In the 2004 contest, staged at the Summer Nationals in Manhattan two weeks ago, Jack defeated an American program, Bridge Baron, in the final by 60 imps. ... The best computer programs are improving constantly and can now play against midlevel humans on equal terms."
>>> Bridge, Games & Puzzles, Competitions (@ Resources for Students)
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August 2004: 30 Years Ago in The Atlantic - Computers Aren't So Smart, After All. August 1974 (subscription req'd.). "'Every culture has its misdirected enthusiasms which fail dramatically. The great computer craze of the late fifties and the sixties is such a case.' In 1974 [Volume 234, No. 2; 37-45] Fred Hapgood dismissed artificial intelligence as a passing fad." From The Atlantic's This Month in The Atlantic's History.
>>> History
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August 2004: Is Science Fiction About to Go Blind? Awed at the pace of technological advances, a faction of geeky writers believes our world is about to change so radically that envisioning what comes next is nearly impossible. By Gregory Mone. Popular Science. "[T]he Singularity. A very real term, although the scene above is taken from a soon-to-be-published novel, Accelerando, by British writer Charles Stross. The idea was conceived by Vernor Vinge, a computer scientist and science-fiction writer who's now a professor emeritus at San Diego State University. We're living through a period of unprecedented technological and scientific advances, Vinge says, and sometime soon the convergence of fields such as artificial intelligence and biotechnology will push humanity past a tipping point, ushering in a period of wrenching change. ... The golden age of science fiction (SF, to those in the know), which spanned the 1940s and '50s, inspired generations of kids to become astronauts, physicists and engineers, to try to make at least some of the stories real. (And those kids remember their imaginative roots: NASA, for example, sometimes calls in SF writers as consultants.) ... Whatever happened to envisioning the future? Anthropologist Judith Berman, who recently surveyed a crop of science fiction published in 1999, has a grim answer: Many modern stories are nostalgic, wary of new technologies rather than enthusiastic about them. Yet there's plenty to get excited about: Vinge's vision of the Singularity springs from his own field, computer science, but change is afoot throughout science and technology. ... Although [Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow] have been out of programming for a few years, it continues to influence -- even infect -- their thinking. In the Chequers, Doctorow mentions the original title for one of the novels he's working on, a story about a spam filter that becomes artificially intelligent and tries to eat the universe. ... One plot device that turns up frequently in Stross and Doctorow's stories is mind uploading, in which characters create electronic copies of their brains on silicon. A technique first proposed by Carnegie Mellon computer scientist Hans Moravec, mind uploading is not to be confused with elaborate virtual reality headsets that allow your mind to exist in a simulated environment while your body remains in the real world. Mind uploading creates an entirely separate version of you. ... This new brand of science fiction, I realize, like all the best SF before it, is not just about predicting the future or pushing an agenda or even plain old entertaining techno-fun. It is all that, but it's also about expanding the boundaries of the possible, building far-out worlds and then populating them with characters who bring the big ideas down to Earth."
>>> Science Fiction
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August 2004: A Machine With a Mind of Its Own - Ross King wanted a research assistant who would work 24/7 without sleep or food. So he built one. By Oliver Morton. Wired Magazine (Issue 12.08). "For a machine that's changing the world, the device on the lab bench in front of me doesn't look very impressive - it just goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. ... [Ross] King's humble robot is based on a Biomek 2000, a low-rent fluid-handling device that goes for only $37,900. But it can do something its more nimble cousins can't. Its components - the tireless robot arm, an incubator in which cells cultured on the platter either wither or thrive, and a plate reader that examines the little depressions to see whether anything is growing there - are linked up to a much more exceptional brain. The artificial intelligence routines in that brain can look at the results of an experiment, draw a conclusion about what the results might mean, and then set off to test that conclusion. The 'robot scientist' (King has resisted the temptation of a jazzy acronym) may look like a mere labor-saving gizmo, shuttling back and forth ad nauseam, but it's much more than that. Biology is full of tools with which to make discoveries. Here's a tool that can make discoveries on its own. ... Studying AI at the Turing Institute in Glasgow, [King] set about using machine-learning techniques to predict the shapes of proteins, one of the fundamental challenges of bioinformatics. King, though, found a twist. With his friend Colin Angus, whom he'd met at Aberdeen, he developed software that translated protein structures into musical chord sequences.... Stephen Muggleton argues that the life sciences are peculiarly well suited to machine learning. 'There's an inherent structure in biological problems that lends itself to computational approaches,' he says. In other words, biology reveals the machinelike substructure of the living world; it's not surprising that machines are showing an aptitude for it."
>>> Bioinformatics, Machine Learning, Robots, Scientific Discovery, Applications, Music
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August 2004: From Finish to Start - Was the Grand Challenge robot race in March the fiasco it appeared to be? Hardly, argues William "Red" Whittaker. The annual event is pushing mobile robotics to get real. By W. Wayt Gibbs. Scientific American. "The 56-year-old Whittaker sees the Grand Challenge as worthwhile mainly because it is helping to push robots out of the lab and into the real world. That has been a theme in his career. 'I was tempered early by a culture around robotics that bordered on the irresponsible,' he says. 'Our field was strongly influenced by science fiction. There was a tremendous amount of speculation and extrapolation that lacked the integrity of implementation.' Most robotics experiments were limited to individual sensors, computer-simulated robots, or machines that only worked in tightly controlled situations. Whittaker focused on bigger pictures."
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Robots, Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Science Fiction
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July 28 - August 4, 2004: Summarizer gets the idea. By Kimberly Patch. Technology Research News. "The flow of a document, including the topics covered and the ways those topics relate to each other, is clear to people. It would be useful if computer systems that process documents -- like search engines and programs that generate summaries of news articles -- could also learn to consider topic information. Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cornell University have developed a system that does the equivalent of putting pieces that show parts of a mountain and pieces that show parts of the sky into separate groups, and putting the sky pieces above the mountain pieces, said Lillian Lee, an associate professor of computer science at Cornell University. The researchers' automatic classification algorithm, or content model, is trained on subject-specific sets of documents and document summaries. It can then extract the topic structure of a group of related topics. The system selects and orders topics to generate a summary. ... The researchers' content model algorithm is based on the hidden Markov model, a method commonly used to delineate words in speech recognition programs and genes in computational biology."
>>> Natural Language Understanding & Generation, Information Retrieval & Extraction, Natural Language Processing, Applications, Markov (@ Namesakes)
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July / August 2004: AI in Australia and New Zealand. By the Australian Computer Society National Committee for AI. IEEE Intelligent Systems. "To provide an overview of AI in Australia and New Zealand, we offer snapshots of AI research throughout the region’s institutes and universities and review its industry and conference activities."
>>> AI Overview, Academic Departments, Associations & Conferences (@ Resources for Students), Applications
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July / August 2004: Spotting Cancer Sooner - Blood tests that detect cancer in its early stages would save countless lives. The first could arrive within a year. By Ken Garber. Technology Review. "The individual fates of the 1.3 million Americans diagnosed with cancer this year will be largely decided by one simple factor: at what stage was the disease spotted? ... The problem, of course, is that cancers, which begin with just a few deviant cells, are by their very nature hard to diagnose early. In the last few years, though, a new method has emerged that promises to deliver simple blood tests that identify the telltale molecular profiles of various cancers easily and accurately. ... Like [George] Wright, [Emanuel] Petricoin and [Lance] Liotta used a Ciphergen system to generate protein profiles from blood samples. Their early attempts to find cancer patterns failed, though, because they were simply trying to juggle too much information. Then, in June 1999, a solution appeared. Petricoin and his friend Peter Levine, a Maryland lawyer with a background in data analysis, were chatting about the problem over brunch; Levine suggested using pattern recognition algorithms to make sense of the massive amount of data. Levine, who had considered using such algorithms to analyze stock market trends and commodities trading, sketched out the cancer idea on a napkin. 'In about five minutes, we both realized this would be a really fascinating approach,' Petricoin recalls. So they tested it, together with Ben Hitt, a software engineer who borrowed the necessary algorithms from artificial-intelligence theory. In fact, cancer patterns did emerge, and in 2000 Levine and Hitt founded Correlogic Systems to develop blood tests for cancers. In early 2002, the researchers published results in the British medical journal Lancet , showing they could use a specific protein pattern to spot ovarian cancer."
>>> Medicine, Pattern Recognition, Finance & Investing, Machine Learning, Applications; also see this related article
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July / August 2004: Rethinking the Computer - Project Oxygen is turning out prototype computer systems. By Lisa Scanlon. Technology Review. "[Howie] Shrobe's computerized office is just one of dozens of pervasive-computing technologies being developed as part of Project Oxygen, the lab's five-year, $50 million effort to design computer systems that are as ubiquitous as the air we breathe and as easy to communicate with as other people. The end result, as originally envisioned by Michael Dertouzos, PhD '64, the late director of the Laboratory for Computer Science, is expected to be a collection of technologies embedded in workplaces and homes working together seamlessly-and often behind the scenes-to help us go about our daily lives. ... Now in its fourth year, the project is turning out working prototypes, including workspaces that adjust themselves according to their inhabitants' habits, location-aware sensors that help people find their way around buildings, and computer chips that configure themselves to best suit different applications. In the process, the project has brought together researchers from many disciplines who may not have otherwise collaborated, often with unexpected results. When Project Oxygen began in 2000, one of its first undertakings was to further Shrobe's prior work on an intelligent conference room that helps people run more efficient meetings. The latest version of the room can, when prompted by spoken commands, show agenda items on a wall display, transcribe and save participants' comments, or find pertinent video clips from previous meetings. ... 'One of the things about Oxygen is that it's not trying to develop [stand-alone] technologies in networking, speech, and vision,' says [Victor] Zue. 'Increasingly, it's the integration of these technologies.'"
>>> Systems, Smart Rooms, Speech, Vision, Natural Language Processing, Applications
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