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<< Headlines are listed according to date posted <-> Articles are organized by date published >>
MARCH 2005
March 31, 2005: The Evolution of Warfare - New robots take the battlefield in the miltary's bid to revolutionize the army despite fears from roboticists. By Michael Kan. The Michigan Daily. "[T]he military’s newest recruit comes not from the ordinary military training camp but off the technological assembly line. Originally slated for deployment in Iraq this month, but postponed to an unspecified later date, the remote-controlled SWORDS, or Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection, is set to become the first armed mobile robot to see offensive ground combat. The U.S. Army hopes that with the availability of an infantry robot to support ground forces and engage in the high-risk combat tasks, the military will yield fewer human casualties. 'Our soldiers are saying this device will keep (them) alive,' said Bob Quinn, spokesman for Foster-Miller, the technology company that designed SWORDS. Despite their potential of saving American lives, Rackham student and roboticist Steven Collins balks when he considers the long-term consequences of such technology. If robot soldiers like SWORDS do succeed in reducing the military’s casualty rate and increasingly take the stead of human troops in the future, Collins fears warfare will unfold into an even deadlier affair: without the cost of human lives weighed in America’s decision to engage in armed conflict, unnecessary wars become all too easy for the U.S. to wage. “There’s a lot of good uses for robots,” Collins said. 'Sticking a gun on them for battle may be one of them. But I don’t think we are ready for it. Psychologically we are not. … The potential for abuse is overwhelming.' In the last decade, robots have seen an increase in use by the military as U.S. forces have actively deployed non-combat robots to the battlefield like unmanned aerial vehicles outfitted for air reconnaissance to mine detecting seeker bots. ... History Prof. Nicholas Steneck and faculty associate of the Office of Vice President of Research at the University who specializes in ethics in science, said the scientific issues like the usage of military robots needs to be brought to the attention of the public. 'The issue of a making war easier or more difficult to pursue is an important one that has been and needs to be debated,' he added." March 31, 2005: Talking tech with Bill Joy. By Dawn Kawamoto. CNET News.com. "CNET News.com recently spoke to Joy about the use of technology in industrial societies and about venture capital prospects in the tech business. Q: Since your Wired piece in 2000, have you come to any firm conclusion about whether technology is going to wind up as a force for good or evil in the 21st century? Joy: It certainly seemed to have heightened an awareness of terrorism and also heightened the awareness of the possibility of the abuse of technology. Technology can also be a force for incredible good. We face a lot of problems that we'd like to address with technology, such as the threat of the flu endemic." March 30, 2005: Microsoft develops cybercrime-fighting tools. By Munir Kotadia. ZDNet Australia. "Microsoft is developing analytical tools to help international law enforcement agencies track and fight cybercrime. ... 'We are looking at making our internal tools available to law enforcement agencies,' [Greg] Stone said. 'I'm not talking about commercial shrink-wrapped products that we would put out onto the market. I am talking about very specialised bits of technology, like artificial intelligence and data mining, that would be safe in the hands of extremely competent individuals'. Stone said the tools were originally employed to help Microsoft programmers analyse code as their software was being developed. They are now being transformed into specialist tools to assist in the law enforcement effort." March 30, 2005: Building a robot -- and teamwork - After-school program challenges students to create machines that work. By Charlie Breitrose. MetroWest Daily News. "Sifting through a pile of tiny screws and nuts, gears and wheels, a group of boys at Westborough's Mill Pond School painstakingly work on what will become a working robot. The students get a helping hand from Ed Harrow, the after-school program's director and a former high-tech worker. The after-school program is considered an enrichment activity to give the students a challenge they wouldn't get in class. The fourth-graders in the program all want to know more about robots. ... While he wants them to learn how to assemble the robots, Harrow said one of the goals is actually just getting them to work in teams. He got the idea for trying to build good working relationships after seeing what can happen when people can't work together during his time in the high-tech industry. ... Not all of Harrow's classes are the same. In some towns, he uses the Lego robotics system, where students will build their machine out of Lego pieces, and can program them. ... Robotics fits in perfectly with the interests of students, Sholler said. 'I think it's definitely a hot topic now. I think it is interesting for the kids, who are really intrigued by things like robotics,' [Kim Sholler, director of Community Education] said. 'A lot of kids are tech savvy, so creating something and be able to program it intrigues them.' " March 30, 2005: Only the ethical need apply - In the heavily automated workplace of the future, a keen sense of right and wrong will become a highly valued job skill. By Susan Llewelyn Leach. The Christian Science Monitor. "The 'great global brain drain' is how futurist Richard Samson describes it. As the century progresses, he predicts, more and more jobs will be sucked up by technology and sophisticated computers, forcing humans to hone skills machines can't duplicate - at least not yet. Qualities such as ethical judgment, compassion, intuition, responsibility, and creativity will be what stand out in an automated world. ... [W]hile artificial intelligence can perform numerous job functions, it brings no ethical considerations to bear on the tasks performed - a skill that Samson predicts will actually become more crucial as the world increases its reliance on technology. It's still a big leap from where we are today to a world in which white-collar, know-how jobs are largely being performed by computers. But Samson proposes that this will happen by century's end and points out that history offers interesting precedent." March 29, 2005: Shape-Shifting Robot Nanotech Swarms on Mars. By Bill Steigerwald. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. "[T]he robot pyramid traveled across the floor of a lab at NASA Goddard. Robots of this type will eventually be miniaturized and joined together to form 'autonomous nanotechnology swarms' (ANTS) that alter their shape to flow over rocky terrain or to create useful structures like communications antennae and solar sails." Movies and related information can be accessed via a link at the end of the article.
>>> Space Exploration, Robots, Autonomous Vehicles, Multi-Agent Systems, Applications, Artificial Life, Systems March 29, 2005: How universities' intelligent web project unlocks the information that really counts. By John Kavanagh. ComputerWeekly.com. "Imagine clicking on a low point on an oil production graph to launch a web search that threw up only strictly relevant information, including news stories about the Iraq war and reports on everything from international economy to effects on wildlife. This is a far cry from searching for 'oil' and getting hits ranging from car engines to massage services, and it is a reality among researchers developing what is known as the semantic web. The prospects were described by a leading researcher in this area, Nigel Shadbolt, a professor in the School of Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton University, when he presented the BCS and the Royal Signals Institution annual lecture. Intelligent web searches would not just look for key words but would also understand what a page is about and its relevance to the user, he said." March 28, 2005: Gene Finding with Hidden Markov Models- The application of phylogeny to HMMs is improving gene annotation. By Karen Heyman. The Scientist (Volume 19, Issue 6). "HMMs are special instances of graphical models, which were originally developed by computer scientists studying machine learning and speech recognition. In technical parlance, says [Sean] Eddy, HMMs 'describe a probability distribution over an infinite number of sequences.' To the uninitiated, they resemble a cross between a flow chart and a doodle. In order to understand conceptually how HMMs work, consider their origin in speech recognition, says [David] Haussler. In that field, a computer is asked, given a speech wave, what are the phonemes (sounds) that it encodes. The wave is the measured signal; the phonemes are the 'hidden' signals that give the HMM its name. 'There is a probabilistic relationship between phonemes,' Haussler explains. 'After a 'th' sound can easily come an 'r' or an 'ah' or several other types of sounds, but not, for example, a 'k' sound. A hidden Markov model for speech incorporates all possible phonemes, and for each phoneme the probability that it's followed by any other phoneme.' Haussler says the HMM also 'models the stochastic relationship between each phoneme and the speech wave one might measure for it. In this way it can be used to infer the sequence of phonemes that best fits a given segment of recorded speech.' Translating that to molecular biology, he explains, the measured signal is the sequence of nucleotides, while the hidden signal is their function. 'Biology is trying to speak a language to us, and the HMM model is helping us to distinguish the phonemes of that language.'" March 28, 2005: A Word to the unwise -- program's grammar check isn't so smart. By Todd Bishop. Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "Microsoft says it has been making continuous improvements in the grammar-checking tool, and the company notes that the issue is more complex than it might seem. Experts in natural-language processing say the broader issue reflects a deep technological challenge beyond the current capabilities of computer science. 'It is tremendously difficult,' said Karen Jensen, a retired Microsoft researcher who led the company's Natural Language Processing research group as it developed the underlying technology for the grammar checker, which debuted in 1997. 'It gives you all kinds of respect for a human being's native ability to learn and understand in natural language.' ... In fact, there is room for Microsoft to make incremental improvements in Word's grammar checker, said Christopher Manning, assistant professor of linguistics and computer science at Stanford University. For example, he said, the Word grammar checker could benefit from greater use of advanced probabilistic and statistical methods to analyze sentences and flag problems." March 28, 2005: Pentagon Invests in Unmanned 'Trauma Pod.' By Paul Elias. Associated Press / available from The Washington Post. "The Pentagon is awarding $12 million in grants on Monday to develop an unmanned 'trauma pod' designed to use robots to perform full scalpel-and-stitch surgeries on wounded soldiers in battlefield conditions. ... SRI researchers caution that the project remains at least a decade away from appearing on any battlefields. Surgeons will need to manipulate the robot in real time, using technology that prevents any delays between their commands and the robot's actions."
>>> Robots, Medicine, Systems, Applications March 26, 2005: Everest climber aims high with city software. By Fiona McGlynn. Edinburgh Evening News & Scotsman.com. "A mountaineer is set to conquer Mount Everest with the help of pioneering software created in a Capital lab. Dr Rob Milne will be the first climber to use the life-saving technology in his attempt to tackle the world’s highest peak next month. Designed by Edinburgh University engineers, the IM-PACs (intelligent messaging, planning and collaboration) system will help Dr Milne to make critical choices during his trek. The system is designed to help climbers adversely affected by altitude sickness to make life or death decisions about their journey. ... Professor Austin Tate, the technical director of Edinburgh University’s Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute and a friend of Dr Milne’s, devised the IM-PAC. He said: 'Any attempt on Everest requires a lot of co-ordination and planning before, during and after the expedition. This makes such extreme expeditions good examples of the kind of thing we wish to support with IM-PACs and AI planning technology.'" March 26, 2005: Introducing the glooper computer - How do you turn a blob of jelly into a thinking, feeling liquid brain? New Scientist investigates the development of chemical-based processors. By Duncan Graham-Rowe. New Scientist (Issue 2492; subscription req'd.). "Most of us find a shot of caffeine or a brisk walk does the trick. But when Andrew Adamatzky feels his brain needs a little extra stimulation, he gets a robot to dabble its metal fingers in it. Adamatzky is a computer scientist at the University of the West of England in Bristol, UK, and his prototype brain is a dish of chemicals sitting on a lab bench. Its 'thoughts' are waves of ions that form spontaneously and diffuse through the mix." March 25, 2005: Robots ready to rumble. By Richard Shim. CNET News.com. "Learning and sharing knowledge are the goals of the second annual robot competition called RoboGames, formerly Robolympics. That might sound hokey, but it's something that doesn't happen enough -- to the detriment of robotics, said David Calkins, president of the Robotics Society of America and organizer of the event. 'The participants never really talk to each other, and they have so much to learn from one another,' said Calkins, also a professor of robotics and computer engineering at San Francisco State University. "'At something like this, people can cross-pollinate in different disciplines, since they're all in the same place at the same time, when so many new things are going on.' At RoboGames, 650 participants compete in a number of categories, from combat to sumo. ... People from 15 countries have come here to take part, and the competition is growing--the number of entrants is up 20 percent." March 25, 2005: New Support-Center Tool Detects Emotion In Voice Of Disgruntled Callers - Software automatically alerts supervisors when customers voice frustration about company's goods and services. By Eric Chabrow. InformationWeek. "Keeping customers happy is crucial for most businesses, and knowing when they're disgruntled is important to the Madison, Wis., health insurer. Last year, WPS [Wisconsin Physician Services Insurance Corp.] began using new software that provides this insight. The software is called Perform and was created by call-center software provider Nice Systems Ltd., an Israeli company, which began widely marketing the product this month. ... What's next for emotion detection software? Artificial intelligence. Instead of users defining keywords and emotions, the software itself will figure things out, such as by analyzing voice pitch levels, a key determinant in emotion detection. By analyzing pitch, as well as tone, tempo, and inflection, the software in the not-too-distant future could be used to detect fraud. It already can differentiate between real anger and someone mimicking anger." March 25, 2005: Robo-pessimism - Hubble's last frontier. By Ryan McElveen, Science Columnist. The Cavalier Daily [the independent daily newspaper at the University of Virginia]. "We are entering an age of introspection that requires all scientists to ponder, 'Am I tomorrow's scrap metal? Will I be replaced by my creations? Is my university degree in quantum theory pointless?' The technological philosophy of Karl Marx deserves some reconsideration, as it relates directly to the conflict America is currently facing regarding robo-pessimism. Marx warned that Capitalists would increasingly invest more in new technologies and less in labor. The human race is on the verge of toppling into the chasm of human-humanoid separation, and the ridge on which we stand today may provide the last vista of human dominance. ... If we lose rationality in adapting artificial intelligence to complete human tasks, we may be digging our own graves." March 25, 2005: Sci-fi Hall of Fame inductees will be honored in Seattle. By Mark Rahner. The Seattle Times. "In the shadow of the Space Needle, four more legends are joining the ranks of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame." March 24 - April 1, 2005: Joseph Konstan on Human-Computer Interaction, Recommender Systems, Collaboration, and Social Good. Ubiquity (Volume 6, Issue 10). "UBIQUITY: How does your work fit you into the general field of human/computer interaction? KONSTAN: My work as a researcher spans several different parts of human/computer interaction. The biggest project I have been working on, and one that I have been working on now for nine years, is the GroupLens project which is about recommender systems-systems that do real-time personalization. It is very much like you see on Amazon.com when you are recommended books or movies that they think you might like. I joined that project a decade ago, and it had already been going for a couple of years. We've been exploring both the technology for how you create those recommendations and, what I think is more important, the understanding of what designs and what properties lead users to find them useful. So a chunk of this work is understanding, given what a computer can do, what is better to present to a person to be helpful to them. ... UBIQUITY: Talk about some of the other applications beyond movies and products for sale. KONSTAN: One of the ones we have been looking at is in the area of digital libraries. I've got a student who's working with a couple of other people that built a prototype of a research paper recommender. You can tell it which papers you've already read and it will recommend papers that you should read next? He's actually now working with data from the ACM digital library to see what types of recommenders we can build that would help you discover that an article just published is something you should know about. ... UBIQUITY: I assume that you see this as a growing field -- or is there a natural limit on how much work will be done in this? KONSTAN: I think that the field broadens so that it can grow. ... The people who are working in this area come from very different backgrounds. Some come from human/computer interaction, some come from artificial intelligence and machine learning, some of them are coming out of business schools and marketing and economics and psychology, not to mention other parts of computer science, data mining and different areas. As you bring all those different people together its not just that they're solving this problem better but they're solving related problems and broader problems. ... UBIQUITY: ...Computer scientists don't always try to change people's social behavior. KONSTAN: My takeaway message for the computer scientists here is there are some very interesting opportunities to collaborate with people solving big problems in the world, whether you're interested in AIDS and medical problems, or the kind of work that Negroponte was talking about with the hundred dollar computers for the developing world, or dozens of other things. There are a lot of opportunities there where you can make a difference." March 24, 2005: Hi-tech support helps Mt. Everest climber. Press release from British Information Services / available from Eureka Alert / also available from EverestNews.com (3/05). "Dr Milne, a leading software engineer and entrepreneur, hopes to climb Everest in May and so join the elite group of mountaineers to have climbed the highest peak on each of the seven continents. Dr Milne ... will be the first mountaineer to use the IM-PACs (intelligent messaging, planning and collaboration) system. The technology, developed at the Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute in the University of Edinburgh's School of Informatics, has been designed to provide computer support to people and teams performing a range of tasks -- not just expedition teams operating in extreme conditions, but also key personnel involved in planning and rescue services responding rapidly to emergencies. IM-PACs' foundations in artificial intelligence planning technologies supply a framework that encourages a methodological approach to any task and allows users to transmit and respond to information in ways that can adapt to the circumstances the expedition team finds itself in. ... Professor Austin Tate, Technical Director of AIAI, said: 'Any attempt on Everest requires a lot of coordination and planning before, during and after the expedition. This makes such 'extreme' expeditions good examples of the kind of thing we wish to support with IM-PACs and AI planning technology. ... '" March 24, 2005: UCSC adds new track for computer science majors - Game design. By Jondi Gumz. Santa Cruz Sentinel. "If you thought computer games were just a hobby, think again. Next fall, UC Santa Cruz will offer a track in game design for computer science majors, preparing graduates for jobs in a $7-billion industry. 'By the end of their four years, they will create a computer game,' said Ira Pohl, UCSC’s chairman of computer science. ... Senior Jeremy Hayes is part of a team creating a role-playing game involving the crew of a rocket ship. Designing such a game requires knowledge of 'distributed systems' so more than one person can play, Pohl said, adding that artificial intelligence comes into the picture when characters learn how to deal with new situations." March 24, 2005: If it only had a brain. By Dean Takahashi. Mercury News. "For the past several years, [Jeff] Hawkins has funded the Redwood Neuroscience Institute in Menlo Park, where 10 researchers are studying the brain. Hawkins notes that the brain takes about 100 steps to recognize something, like a face or a painting. 'With a computer, it takes hundreds of millions of steps, and even then it can't do the job at all,' he says. Artificial intelligence researchers long have known this, but they have yet to match the elegance of the brain's 30 billion cells in efforts to create 'neural networks' and other kinds of intelligent machines. Hawkins studied those efforts and concluded that they failed because they didn't start with a good understanding of how the brain works. So Hawkins wrote 'On Intelligence,' a book published last October that advances his theory on how the brain works. ... 'I started wondering if it would be possible to create intelligent machines with a brain-like memory system,' Hawkins says. 'And the answer is yes, you can.'" March 24, 2005: A New Company to Focus on Artificial Intelligence. By John Markoff. The New York Times (registration req'd.). "Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky ... plan to announce the creation of Numenta, a technology development firm that will conduct research in an effort to extend Mr. Hawkins's theories. ... Artificial intelligence, which first attracted computer scientists in the 1960's, was commercialized in the 1970's and 1980's in products like software that mimicked the thought process of a human expert in a particular field. But the initial excitement about machines that could see, hear and reason gave way to disappointment in the mid-1980's, when artificial intelligence technology became widely viewed as a failure in the real world. In recent years, vision and listening systems have made steady progress, and Mr. Hawkins said that while he was uncomfortable with the term artificial intelligence, he believed that a renaissance in intelligent systems was possible. He said that he believed there would soon be a new wave of software based on new theoretical understanding of the brain's operations. 'Once you know how the brain works, you can describe it with math,' he said." March 23, 2005: Profs study robotic soldiers of the future - Engineering School takes part in military research on behavioral tendencies of robots. By Ko Im. dailypennsylvanian.com. "As military technology continues to improve, more and more robots are being used for surveillance and search and rescue missions. This summer, computer scientists, biologists and engineers from Penn and other schools around the country will collaborate to study a relatively new technology known as biology-inspired swarming behavior in robots. Under the Defense Department's Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative program, the University's General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception Laboratory will receive $5 million from the federal government over the next five years. With Vijay Kumar, director of the GRASP Lab, as principal investigator, the Scalable Swarms of Autonomous Robots and Sensors project will study group coordination of small vehicles. ... 'We're not trying to mimic biology, but understand whether its principals can be formalized and manipulated,' [George] Pappas said." March 23, 2005: Robots Take Center Stage at World's Fair. By Audrey McAvoy. Associated Press / available from NYNewsday.com. "The prevalence of robots at the fair reflects how sincerely developers believe they will soon make inroads into daily lives. 'Until now, robots were used at factories, in assembly lines to make cars or semiconductors,' said Tetsuya Yamamoto, who as a manager at the government-funded NEDO research institute is responsible for bringing many of the robots to the exposition. 'In the future, they will be used in homes, offices, hospitals and amusement parks.' Japan is home to half of the world's 800,000 industrial robots. ... Not all of the expo's robots are humanoid. The SuiPPi ground sweeper robots from Matsushita Electric Works Ltd. look like steel boxes mounted on circular brooms, but they are intelligent enough to detect and avoid obstacles while they clean. ... NEDO, which stands for New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization, estimates Japan's market for service oriented robots like these will mushroom from to $17 billion in five years from nothing now, Yamamoto said." March 23 / 30, 2005: Common sense boosts speech software. By Eric Smalley. Technology Research News. "Speech recognition software matches strings of phonemes -- the sounds that make up words -- to words in a vocabulary database. The software finds close matches and presents the best one. The software does not understand word meaning, however. This makes it difficult to distinguish among words that sound the same or similar. The Open Mind Common Sense Project database contains more than 700,000 facts that MIT Media Lab researchers have been collecting from the public since the fall of 2000. These are based on common sense like the knowledge that a dog is a type of pet rather than the knowledge that a dog is a type of mammal. The researchers used the phrase database to reorder the close matches returned by speech recognition software." March 23 / 30, 2005: Tool turns English to code. By Kimberly Patch, Technology Research News. "Writing software has been relatively difficult since people began programming computers in the mid-1900s. Although programming a computer is eminently useful -- it gives you fine control of a powerful tool -- it requires learning a programming language. Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are aiming to remove this requirement. They have taken a step toward that goal with a language-to-code visualizer dubbed Metafor. The visualizer uses natural language instructions to sketch the outlines of a program. It can be used as a programming learning tool and to provide rough drafts of programming projects, and could lead to more complete programming-by-natural-language methods. ... While the logic of the researchers' interpreter tackles only about 20 percent of the problem of full natural language programming, it achieves about 80 percent of the perceived rewards, said [Hugo] Liu." March 23, 2005: New BITS for Old - Researchers working on next generation quantum computers. Editorial. The Times of India. "[S]ince the early 1980s, cybernetic scientists have been toying with the next logical step of building a new generation of machines called quantum computers. ... Earlier this month, a major glitch concerning the reliability of such computers was finally overcome, according to the journal Nature. This means that within most of our lifetimes we might witness the advent of computers whose processing power could be a staggering billion times faster than today's fastest supercomputers. ... Ultimately, if quantum computers are able to model every known process, they should be capable of simulating conscious rational thought also. They may hold the key to achieving true artificial intelligence." March 22, 2005: IBM computing algorithm thinks like an animal. By Michael Kanellos. CNET News.com. "IBM has devised a way to let computers think like vertebrates. Charles Peck and James Kozloski of IBM's Biometaphorical Computing team say they have created a mathematical model that mimics the behavior of neocortal minicolumns, thin strands of tissue that aggregate impulses from neurons. Further research could one day lead to robots that can 'see' like humans and/or make appropriate decisions when bombarded with sensory information. ... Over the past two years, researchers have increasingly looked toward nature as a model to emulate." March 22, 2005: Automated web-crawler harvests resume info. By Celeste Biever. NewScientist.com news service. "A new search engine focused on people can automatically identify online information on individuals and weave it into detailed summaries. Just like Google and Yahoo, ZoomInfo crawls and indexes the web. But instead of serving up the pages in response to a query, it attempts to identify and extract specific information on people. ... InfoZoom deploys algorithms that pick out verbs and proper nouns to home in on names, [Michel Décary] says. ... Privacy experts have criticised the technology for aggregating information about people without their consent. But Décary says that the information collected only relates to employment and education and is freely available online to a determined searcher anyway." March 22, 2005: Steamboy Rages Against Machines. By Jason Silverman. Wired News. "London in 1866 might seem a strange time and place for a Katsuhiro Otomo film. In 1988, this legend of manga and anime set a new standard for futuristic cinema with his Akira, a post-apocalyptic tale set in Tokyo in 2019. If Akira refined our notions of science fiction, Otomo's new film, Steamboy, expands them. Jumping back 140 years, Steamboy is a kind of sci-fi creation myth, imagining the moment when humans first came face to face with machinery's fearsome power. On one level, Otomo's film is the story of a boy in Victorian England who wants to be an inventor. But the central concern of Steamboy is the uses and misuses of science." March 21, 2005: Hawkins start-up takes brainy challenge. By Michael Kanellos. CNET News.com. "Jeff Hawkins is trying to monetize the brain. Hawkins, who created the Palm handheld, is forming a company that will specialize in systems able to recognize patterns, make predictions about familiar phenomena and in general function like human gray matter. An early software application he has helped create can recognize drawings, a challenge that has bedeviled scientists to date. ... Pattern recognition is based, in part, on probabilistic techniques, which have gained popularity in recent years among search engine specialists. Although probability was largely scoffed at 15 years ago, it is now widely considered the most promising solution for artificial intelligence." March 21, 2005: Robots
set to take over Wilkes. By Joe DeAngelis. The Beacon (registration
req'd.). "Although still in its infant stages, the robotics club
commenced at Wilkes University with its first meeting on Tuesday, March
8. ... The club aims to teach students how to build, operate, maintain
and program autonomous robots, which are robots that can be operated without
human interference. 'Our club primarily will focus on mobile robots that
are autonomous,' said Matt Zukoski, an assistant professor of mathematics
and computer science and a co-advisor for the club. ... 'There's a growing
interest across the country in robotics, partly due to the war in Iraq,'
said Zukoski. Because of this, along with an increasing demand for robots
in manufacturing industries, there will be more careers available in robotics.
... Both Zukoski and Abu-Nabaa plan for the club to participate in national
competitions such as RoboCup.... Since it involves a lot of disciplines,
the club is open to all majors." March 21, 2005: Artificial
intelligence - Solving problems for the real world. By Billy Defrain.
Daily Nebraskan (Editor's note: This is the second part in an occasional
series in which the fantastic realms of science fiction are compared to
those of real world science fact.). "For a typical American, the
mention of artificial intelligence may conjure up nasty images of a robot
wielding a plasma rifle atop a pyramid of human skulls. Mention artificial
intelligence to Berthe Choueiry, though, and she thinks of problems. Choueiry,
an associate professor of computer science and engineering, conducts artificial
intelligence research at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. And out of
the wide field of artificial intelligence, her research focuses on constraint
processing. This involves developing techniques to solve decision problems
and applying them to real world uses, Choueiry said. ... She works to
generate 'solutions that hopefully apply to real world problems like resource
allocation, airline times and natural language processing,' Choueiry said. ... Constraint propagation, which is Choueiry's speciality,
is just one method of reasoning for artificial intelligence. Constraint-based
reasoning is a deductive process in which the program looks at a group
of data by considering which responses are not acceptable. These unacceptable
responses are constraints.... Choueiry said one of the most difficult
aspects of constraint processing is the concept of combinatorial explosion."
March 21, 2005: Prepare
yourself for rise of the machines. By Kevin Hurley. The Scotsman."The
coming of a robot age, with mechanical helpers at our beck and call, moved
a step closer yesterday with news of a revolutionary British invention
that could soon change our lives. ... [E]ngineers are working on a device
capable of churning out a host of household items and gadgets, including
kitchenware, cameras and even small musical instruments. The invention,
named the 'self-replicating rapid prototyper' or 'RepRap', will one day
even reproduce itself by fabricating its own component parts. Scientists
behind the invention believe this capability will mean the machine will
cost a few hundred pounds or less within years. Dr Adrian Bowyer, who
is leading the project at the University of Bath's Centre for Biomimetrics,
hopes initially to use the computer controlled machines, which mass-produce
components for industry, such as vehicle parts, to make parts for the
RepRap. ... The RepRap invention will effectively be a form of Universal
Constructor - the theoretical self-replicating machine first proposed
by mathematician John von Neumann in the 1950s. Bath University engineers
have already built a simple demonstration robot." March 21, 2005: Are
We Ready for Robots? By Gregory Scoblete. Tech Central Station. "[A]s
robots make their way from the obscurity of the lab to the light of human
society, our minds, conditioned by years of sci-fi dystopias, sense danger.
We instinctively ask: are we on a collision course with our own creations?
... Much of the debate on the intersection of technology and politics
at the highest levels of government has focused on the impact of biotechnology.
There is, for instance, the President's Council on Bioethics that is formulating
policy guidelines in areas such as stem cell research, cloning and life
extension technology. Biotechnology naturally garners the most attention
because the science visibly intrudes onto some fundamental ethical terrain
regarding human life, its purpose and its protection. But research and
development into robots is prodding some of the same boundaries. ... As
advances in robot design continue, we'll be confronted with the same conundrum
we face in biotechnology: not how far can we go but how far should we
go? In this case, how much intelligence, creativity and most importantly,
independence, should we endow robots with? ... Where are the moral 'red
lines' -- if any -- that should not be crossed? ... The more troubling
aspects, for religious conservatives, are the ramifications of artificial
intelligence, which dovetails with robotics. ... If in their quest for
more advanced robots, scientists succeed in untangling some of the mysteries
of consciousness -- if they deduce that intelligence, creativity, and
emotion are simply a matter of chemicals and electricity and not a 'divine
spark' -- how will that influence our understanding of the uniqueness
and supremacy of human consciousness? ... I don't know the answers to
these questions. I do know that they need asking now, in the infancy of
robotics. ..." March 20, 2005: Q&A
with Mark Dean - director of IBM's Almaden Research Center spoke about
his research, his work on the original IBM personal computer and promoting
African-Americans' interest in science. By Therese Poletti. The Mercury
News. "Q What kind of research is IBM Almaden working
on right now that excites you? A We are starting down
the path of thinking about things like recording my day. ... The key is
not the recording of the information, but the key is being able to have
a vast store of this, where I can go back and reference it, and use it
for personal improvement on how I work, or just for reference. ... You
want software that automatically tags and creates what we call meta data
-- data that says what this data is -- so I can go back and find it. ...
Q You are a rare African-American very high up in the
engineering ranks in technology. Do you go out to try and get more blacks
interested in science? A It's a big part of my time,
spare and otherwise. IBM has a tremendous amount of effort in promoting
and recruiting minorities in engineering and the sciences. We believe
that the industry needs to mimic society. We need to mix, we need to match
the mix that exists in society, or we won't be able to produce products
that get to all of our constituency. We have a heavy push. I'm so serious
that I'm looking for every minority Ph.D. graduate that is coming out
of school, from computer science, electrical engineering, chemistry, physics,
and maybe a few others. But I need to find every under-represented minority.
We have blacks, Hispanics, American Indians. I want to hire every one
of them. The good and the bad is that it's possible because there aren't
that many. ..." March 20, 2005: Computers
gain power, but it's not what you think - Performing complex tasks
at lightning speed is the machine's greatest strength; thinking, intelligence
still in our heads. By Jon Van. Chicago Tribune. "[Donald] McLellan
uses software called Watson, developed at Northwestern University and
marketed by Chicago's Intellext Inc., which is part of a new wave of programs
that provide computers with something akin to human intelligence. But
these programs do not think for their users. Rather, after decades of
trying to create machines that can think, researchers now just want to
make computers that are less stupid. The results are impressive. ... Computers
have long been likened to human brains, sparking fears and hopes that
someday a collection of silicon and wires would think like a person. But
even today's most powerful units are not smart enough to tie a shoelace
or do anything most human 4-year-olds accomplish thoughtlessly. Even so,
escalating computing power enables machines to recognize patterns and
operate in ways that seem eerily intelligent. ... Northwestern professor
Kristian Hammond, a co-founder of Intellext, was active in the artificial
intelligence branch of computer science for years at Yale University and
the University of Chicago before joining Northwestern. He no longer embraces
the notion of intelligence commonly shared by artificial intelligence
researchers. 'That model is that people have a clear, crisp idea of what
they're thinking,' Hammond said. 'Our model is that there's never a clear
idea; often it's just a collection of ideas in a context. You change the
context and you change the intelligence.' A similar philosophy is at work
at NICE Systems Inc., a Rutherford, N.J., firm that records call center
conversations to monitor for quality. Its software can determine when
a caller becomes emotional and can recognize specific words." March
20, 2005: 'Dark
Hero of the Information Age' - The Original Computer Geek. By Clive
Thompson. The New York Times Sunday Book Review (registration req'd.).
"To be a truly famous scientist, you need to have a hit single. Einstein
had E = mc2. ... But there's another kind of scientist who never breaks
through, usually because while his discovery is revolutionary it's also
maddeningly hard to summarize in a simple sentence or two. He never produces
a catchy hit single. He's more like a back-room influencer: his work inspires
dozens of other innovators who absorb the idea, produce more easily comprehensible
innovations and become more famous than their mentor could have dreamed.
Find an influencer, and you'll find a deeply bitter man. Norbert Wiener
-- the inventor of 'cybernetics' -- is precisely this type of scientist.
Odds are that you are only dimly aware of cybernetics, if at all. ...
Cybernetics is the science of feedback -- how information can help self-regulate
a system. ... Wiener created the idea that scientists could measure information
in a system and tweak it for optimal efficiency. The idea resonated in
every field. The anthropologist Margaret Mead began studying cultural
taboos as flows of self-regulating information inside a society. Wiener
used his feedback theory to create an antiaircraft gun that tracked a
plane in the air as if it were alive. ... Like Einstein, he issued dark
social warnings about the misuse of science and technology, including
his own. In his two most popular books -- 'Cybernetics' and 'The Human
Use of Human Beings' -- Wiener warned that mass media were concentrated
in too few hands, and were losing their power as a feedback device for
society. Appalled by the atom bomb, he defiantly refused to accept any
government money for research." March 18, 2005: Robots
By Land, Sea, Air. Based on MIT release. Astrobiology Magazine. "There's
still a long way to go before today's robots evolve into practical, everyday
technologies, but even now, autonomous robotic vehicles are exploring
uncharted or hazardous places, assisting troops in combat and performing
household tasks. ... 'In 20 years, we've gone from robots that can hardly
maneuver around objects to ones that can navigate in unstructured environments,'
said Brooks, director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory (CSAIL). He also pointed to the many applications for labor-saving
robots, from autonomous lawnmowers to mobile 'assistants' for the elderly.
... Professor Chryssostomos Chryssostomidis, director of the MIT Autonomous
Underwater Vehicles Laboratory (AUV Lab), envisions 'robots filling the
vast void of oceans, roaming around, observing, communicating, and reporting
back.' ... Eric Feron and his research group in the Laboratory for Information
and Decision Systems are working on several projects that may lead to
more airborne robots. Those projects include intelligent aircraft, communication
among multiple air vehicles, and automated takeoff and landing." March 17, 2005: Getting Girls to Excel - GEMS conference provides ways to encourage girls to take math and science courses. By Mirza Kurspahi. Reston Connection - Connection Newspapers. " The enrollment in computer science classes and programs in Fairfax County Public Schools between 1997 and 2003 was 76 percent boys, 24 percent girls. In 1984, women constituted 37 percent of those who received computer science degrees from universities and colleges, while today the percentage is down to 27. Dogwood Elementary School, in cooperation with Lockheed Martin, its corporate sponsor, and the American Association of University Women (AAUW) sponsored a conference for fifth- and sixth-grade girls to encourage them to take math and science classes. Girls Excelling in Math and Science (GEMS) started in 1991 through the AAUW. ... The conference, held on Saturday, March 12, hosted 27 hands-on workshops for the fifth- and sixth-grade girls. They were taught by professional women in fields of math and science, including employees of NASA and Lockheed Martin, among others. ... Elizabeth Vandenburg, the co-presenter of the workshop and the co-director of AAUW's Tech Savvy Girls Project, said it is important to show the girls the math and science jobs are not boring. 'You don't just sit behind computers the whole day -- you work on teams,' she said. ... Vandenburg's co-presenter, Laura Jones, urged the parents to change their daughters' outlook on computer scientists." March 17, 2005: Complex
instincts. The Engineer Online. "Robots already play a vital
role in defence and security, space exploration and on the production
line. They are also becoming increasingly important for entertainment
applications and as human companions. But their usefulness doesn't end
there. According to Dr. Tony Prescott of the Department of Psychology
at Sheffield University, robots can also play an important role in the
search for answers to one of the most fundamental mysteries of life: The
workings of the vertebrate brain. 'Robots are a kind of physical model,'
explains Dr. Prescott. 'We are simulating and building robots as a tool
to gain a better understanding of what the brain is doing and how it is
operating.' ... By working to develop a robust control system for these
multitasking robots, Dr. Prescott and his Sheffield-based colleagues -
neuroscientist Professor Peter Redgrave, computational modellers Dr. Kevin
Gurney and Dr Mark Humphries - make up one of the few groups internationally
whose activities straddle neurobiological research, computational modelling
and robot modelling. ... The group are also drawing inspiration for their
work from the pioneering studies of artificial neural networks carried
out in 1969 by Warren McCulloch at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
a neuroscientist who was also interested in reverse engineering the brain
to understand how it operates. ... [T]he Group's work with robots is providing
useful insights for applications such as computer games and the development
of intelligent agents...." March 16, 2005: Robotic
rover detects life in the driest desert. By David L Chandler. NewScientist.com
news service. "Researchers have proven that a robotic rover can be
used to detect living organisms, even in a desert with barely any to find.
The team led by Nathalie Cabrol of NASA's Ames Research Center is planning
an even more ambitious, more automated attempt later in 2005. The ultimate
goal is to develop a system that can be used to hunt for signs of life
on Mars." March 16, 2005: New
face of mining. By Kristy Dorsey. The Herald. "ITI Life Sciences
is backing the launch of a £5.3m research and development programme that
will spend the next three years creating a software system that specialises
in digging out relevant information from the large and growing body of
scientific data available from journals, online systems, databases and
so forth. This process, known as text mining, is expected to lead to quicker
and less expensive discovery and development of new drugs. ... Cognia,
which specialises in the curation of biomedical data, will work along
with the University of Edinburgh's School of Informatics to create a new
software platform capable of extracting specific data relevant to a particular
project. It will do this using natural language processing techniques
developed within the university. The market for text mining in life sciences
is currently worth between £5m and £10m annually, but is expected to grow
to more than £200m by 2014." March 16, 2005: Researchers
Able to Predict Death Penalty Outcomes. Newswise. "Following
a Supreme Court decision prohibiting the execution of minors which could
have ramifications for the future of the death penalty, researchers at
Loyola University New Orleans have found further evidence questioning
the fairness of the capital punishment process. The researchers have developed,
trained and tested an artificial neural network that is more than 90 percent
accurate at predicting whether a convicted capital offender will be executed
or not." March 16, 2005: Hitachi
unveils 'fastest robot'- Hitachi's Emiew, the fastest humanoid robot.
BBC News. "Hitachi said the 1.3m (4.2ft) Emiew was the world's quickest-moving
robot yet at 6km/h (3.7 miles per hour). ... Explaining why Hitachi's
Emiew used wheels instead of feet, Toshihiko Horiuchi, from Hitachi's
Mechanical Engineering Research Laboratory, said: 'We aimed to create
a robot that could live and co-exist with people. We want to make the
robots useful for people ... If the robots moved slower than people, users
would be frustrated.' ... Hitachi said Pal and Chum, which have a vocabulary
of about 100 words, could be 'trained' for practical office and factory
use in as little as five to six years. ... By 2007, it is predicted that
there will be almost 2.5 million 'entertainment and leisure' robots in
homes, compared to about 137,000 currently, according to the United Nations
(UN)." March 15, 2005: Sentient
machines will raise human questions. Opinion by Tyson Durst. The Gateway
(Volume XCIV, Issue 39). "To make this assumption and rule out the
possibility that sentient machines will ever be created would be foolish
and narrow-minded; so many of the technologies that we take for granted
were once thought impossible. The race to build machines that possess
consciousness is already underway -- one could argue that it's been underway
since people first imagined artificial life. But today's scientists are
looking at the data and theories that are available, re-examining the
logic and flaws of this information and thinking about how we, as humans,
think. For example, take the famous Turing test, proposed by Alan Turing
in 1950. ... Scientists who are serious about research and development
of true artificial intelligence, though, are very much interested in the
internal processes going on in a computer. An example would be the simple
action of walking.... For now, though, the days of computers that attain
consciousness are still far off, although far from impossible. Before
we will be able to finally build machines that think as we do, we will
first have to figure out just how we think. ... A new field of science
will likely be born -- 'artificial neuroscience' -- that will deal with
the application of human consciousness within the construct of a computer,
a 'ghost in the shell,' if you will." March 15, 2005: CMU
Robot finds life 'all by itself' - Practice run by device may lead
to Mars trip. By Byron Spice. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "A Carnegie
Mellon University rover called Zoe is the first robot to remotely detect
life, finding fluorescent signals from both visible lichens and microscopic
bacteria in Chile's barren Atacama Desert. The NASA-sponsored field test
last fall thus demonstrated that scientists can use robots to identify
life in harsh regions, a critical technology as automated exploration
on Mars shifts from a search for water to a search for life. 'The rover
found 'em all by itself,' said Alan Waggoner, director of CMU's Molecular
Biosensor and Imaging Center, which developed the robot's life-detection
instrument." March 14, 2005: This
net is child's play for elite high schoolers. By Carolyn Duffy Marsan.
Network World. "Meet the upperclassmen at Thomas Jefferson High School
for Science and Technology, the nation's premier technical high school,
which is affectionately known as TJ. The 30 students who hang out in TJ's
Computer Systems Lab are likely to be the next generation of computer
masterminds. ... 'In my opinion, it's the best public high school in the
nation,' says Marilee Jones, admissions director at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT), which accepts as many as 20 TJ students
each year. 'All their programs are strong . . . but they have such excellent,
excellent teachers there in computer science.' TJ's four-year computer
science program includes courses in artificial intelligence and supercomputer
applications. ... What's special about TJ's computer science program is
its hands-on approach." March 14, 2005: Sign
Language. By Tod Newcombe. Government Technology. "At Pennsylvania
State University, researchers are working on something similar, combining
GIS [Geographic Information Systems], natural language technology, cognitive
engineering and the relatively new field of gestural science to create
their version of the computer used by Cruise in Minority Report. The difference
is the technology will help governments better manage crises such as hurricanes,
terrorist attacks, disease outbreaks and forest fires. ... The solution
is called Dialogue Assisted Visual Environment for GeoInformation (DAVE_G).
'DAVE_G can recognize gestures in conjunction with dialog and interpret
the meaning,' [Michael] McNeese explained. ... The computer can interpret
the combination of voice and gesture commands, zoom in the area and act
on the next series of queries." March 14, 2005: Robotic
Bid to Answer Question. Aberdeen Evening Express & this is north
scotland. "A Top expert is taking his pet robot to Aberdeen to answer
the question that has long troubled science-fiction enthusiasts. ... Tom
[Sgouros] and Judy [the robot] use music, games and other interaction
to explore the concept of artificial intelligence. ... Professor Susan
Craw, Head of the School of Computing said, 'Tom Sgouros's witty play,
co-starring the charming robot Judy, is an imagination-stretcher that
delights while it exercises your mind. ... The show cleverly explores
deep and quirky philosophical questions of consciousness in relation to
Artificial Intelligence. The show will suit everyone.'" March 14, 2005: History
Is Going, Going, Gone - We risk losing the thrill of viewing and touching
the actual papers handled by geniuses. By Steven Levy. Newsweek / available
from MSNBC. "Almost 30 years ago I came to possess a little piece
of computer history. At the time, it seemed to me a fairly straightforward
handwritten letter acknowledging my request to terminate an apartment
lease, with instructions on how I could recover my security deposit. What
I did not know then was that my landlord, a fellow with the unforgettable
name of J. Presper Eckert, was a pioneer of the digital era, a co-inventor
of one of the first operational electronic computers. The idea that this
note might qualify as a historical artifact dawned on me a couple of weeks
ago as I examined the 254 lots in the 'History of Cyberspace' collection
auctioned at Christie's on Feb. 23." PR Sampler - some recent releases:
March 13, 2005: Q&A with CEO of SpikeSource. Kim Polese, chief executive of SpikeSource, spoke recently with staff writer Matt Marshall. The Mercury News. "Q: What would you say to high school girls and students? A: I'd say this stuff is fun, and that you can't have a more exciting career than in the technology industry. It's dynamic, it's changing all the time, you're exploring new ground, you're creating new inventions...I got turned on to technology because I was fortunate enough to live in Berkeley and go the Lawrence Hall of Science when I was a little girl, and started playing on computers, and just got hooked, because it was a mystery. There was a program called Eliza, one of the early artificial intelligence programs, which was a psychiatrist, with whom you could have a conversation online. At a certain point she would screw up and go into an infinite loop. I loved making her do that, and trying to figure out what's behind this. That was my first exposure to computers."
>>> Careers
in AI (@ Resources for Students), Chatbots (@ Natural Language Processing), Interviews March 12, 2005 [issue date]: United we find. The Economist Technology Quarterly (pages 26 - 30; posted online March 10, 2005). "Collaborative filtering software is changing the way people choose music, books and other things, by helping them find things they like, but did not know about. ... But while this might sound like a job for an internet search engine, keyword-based search engines (such as Google) have a fundamental constraint: they can only help you find something if you already have an idea of what it is. Two people's idea of 'good music' may differ substantially, but Google would return the same results to both of them. To find things you might like, but are not already familiar with, requires a different technology, known as 'collaborative filtering'. This increasingly pervasive technology looks for patterns in people's likes and dislikes, and uses those patterns to help people find things they did not know they were looking for. Computer scientists term this task, in a welcome respite from jargon, 'find good things'. Collaborative filtering also has the power to do the converse, 'keep bad things away', for instance by filtering unsolicited commercial e-mail messages, or spam. ... Dave Goldberg and his colleagues at Xerox PARC, who also coined the term 'collaborative filtering'.... Where the user of a search engine is on a solitary quest, the user of a collaborative-filtering system is part of a crowd." March 12, 2005 [issue date]: Humanoids on the march. The Economist Technology Quarterly (pages 3 - 4; posted online March 10, 2005). "First came Asimo, Honda's childlike robot, which was introduced to the world in 2000. Sony responded with QRIO (pronounced curio) in 2003. Now a competition has broken out between Japan's industrial firms to see which of them can produce the most advanced humanoid robot -- and South Korean firms are getting involved, too. … Despite their sudden proliferation, however, humanoids are still a mechanical minority. Most of the world's robots are faceless, footless and mute. They are bolted to the floors of factories, stamping out car parts or welding pieces of metal, machines making more machines. According to the United Nations, business orders for industrial robots jumped 18% in the first half of 2004. They may soon be outnumbered by domestic robots, such as self-navigating vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers and window washers, which are selling fast. But neither industrial nor domestic robots are humanoid. ... [W]hile the humanoid form may not be perfect, there are some good reasons to emulate it. " March 12, 2005 [issue date]: AI am the law. The Economist Technology Quarterly (pages 34 - 46; posted online March 10, 2005). "Given the choice, who would you rather trust to safeguard your future: a bloodsucking lawyer or a cold, calculating computer? Granted, it's not much of a choice, since neither lawyers nor computers are renowned for their compassion. But it is a choice that you may well encounter in the not-too-distant future, as software based on 'artificial intelligence' (AI) starts to dispense legal advice. Instead of paying a lawyer by the hour, you will have the option of consulting intelligent legal services via the web. While this might sound outlandish, experts believe that the advent of smart software capable of giving good, solid legal advice could revolutionise the legal profession. ... What makes both these programs so smart is that they do more than just follow legal rules. Both tasks involve looking back through past cases and drawing inferences from them about how the courts are likely to view a new case. To do this, the programs use a combination of two common AI techniques: expert systems and machine learning. ... [S]mart software has the potential to make legal advice more readily available, unnecessary court battles less frequent, and rulings more consistent." March 12, 2005: Review
of Electronic
Brains by Mike Hally. Reviewed by Barry Fox. New Scientist Magazine
(subscription req'd.). "Alan Turing may have been the godfather of
the computer, but his instruction manual for an early computer built at
the University of Manchester, UK, was not a good legacy. According to
Mike Hally, Turing's 'help file' was so complicated and full of errors
that 'anyone without Turing's mathematical brain would struggle to follow
it'. Just like some modern manuals, in fact. Hally has travelled the world
recording interviews with people who knew first-hand how the first electronic
computers were built in the 1940s and 1950s." March 11, 2005: Why
Pay to be an Identity Thief? Experimental Software Makes It Free.
By Steven Cherry. IEEE Spectrum Online. "The U.S. database industry
is under a legal microscope following the pilfering of information that
could allow thieves to steal the identities of hundreds of thousands of
people. ... But why should an identity thief bother with an expensive
charade? Carnegie-Mellon University associate professor of computer science,
Latanya Sweeney, has found an even simpler way than paying a company in
the personal database industry, which critics say is underregulated. She's
found a way to extract all the data she wants for free from the World
Wide Web. For over a decade, Sweeney has been exploring the intersection
of technology and privacy. Her latest work builds on earlier Web-searching
tools that create software agents to extract names, address, birth dates,
and Social Security numbers from résumés posted online --
everything you need to apply for a new credit card in someone else's name.
Sweeney will report her findings at a symposium devoted to national security
sponsored by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence and
held at Stanford Univeristy, in California, 21 - 23 March. ... Obviously,
if people are posting their Social Security numbers to the Web, and if
doing so leaves them highly vulnerable to identity theft, then they ought
to stop. Sweeney's work addressed that issue. The Identity Angel project,
which she launched earlier this year, looks for e-mail addresses in those
résumés, and sends individuals automated notices that their
identity information was found online. She says a follow-up study showed
that more than 90 percent of the people subsequently removed the information
from the Web." March 11, 2005: Where
do i begin? By Stephen Pincock. The Financial Times. "Cyborgs
are all around us. ... The dictionary definition of a cyborg is 'an integrated
man-machine system'. They turn up in movies as flesh and metal characters
such as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator, Darth Vader from Star
Wars or, for those of an older vintage, Steve Austin, the Six Million
Dollar Man. The term emerged in the 1960s, coined by researchers interested
in how humans could adapt to space travel. ... Instead, I want to focus
on a definition of cyborg that relates to our use of technology in a more
general way. It is a definition that has sprung from a scientific view
of the way our mind works and how its functions extend beyond our brains.
... The man I most wanted to contact was a philosopher of cognitive science,
Andy Clark, professor of logic and metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh,
and a leading proponent of the idea of the extended mind. Two years ago,
Clark published a book entitled Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies
and the Future of Human Intelligence, which explored the way that human
minds interact with technology - from the pencil to web-enabled mobile
phones. ... Clark argues that there is little significant conceptual difference
between a highly accessible computer outside our body, and one implanted
into our body. ... He urges us to give up the idea that the only things
that matter about our minds are what goes on inside 'the ancient fortress
of skin and skull'. Instead, technologies such as the internet should
be seen as integral parts of the systems that constitute human intelligence." March 11, 2005: Droid
rage - Society's fascination with robots pops up in movies, TV and
elsewhere. By James Hebert. The Union-Tribune & SignOnSanDiego.com.
"As a society, we may not know exactly what we think about robots.
But if the recent wave of robot-related creative works is any indication,
we've been thinking about them plenty. ... Fear and fascination about
our creations and their consequences date back way before the time of
Frankenstein. What's maybe different now is that science is so much closer
to realizing the prospect of artificial intelligence. Just in recent weeks,
NASA scientists working on Mars projects have unveiled robots that can
rappel down cliffs, take pictures, slip through cracks and detect danger.
Even in our daily lives, as TiVos choose shows for their owners and laptops
and iPods act as auxiliary brains for people on the move, the lines between
humans and their tech tools seem to be getting blurred. 'I think there's
a real preoccupation now with the borders of the human,' says Priscilla
Wald, an English professor at Duke University who studies pop-culture
depictions of science. ... In films such as 'Bicentennial Man' and Steven
Spielberg's 'A.I.,' the robots 'all want to become human,' Wald notes.
'I think that's our fantasy -- that there is something really special
about being human, and everything wants to become human.' On the flip
side, she argues, robots make us uncomfortable by suggesting 'how mechanistic
we actually are. A lot of the work in artificial intelligence is making
that really clear.'" March 11, 2005: Humanoids
With Attitude - Japan Embraces New Generation of Robots. By Anthony
Faiola, with Akiko Yamamoto. Washington Post (registration req'd.) / also
available from The Detroit News (Japan
embraces new generation of robots; March 12, 2005) and from The Sydney
Morning Herald (We,
robot: the future is here; March 14, 2005). "'I almost feel like
she's a real person,' said Kobayashi, an associate professor at the Tokyo
University of Science and [Saya,the cyber-receptionist's] inventor. Having
worked at the university for almost two years now, she's an old hand at
her job. 'She has a temper . . . and she sometimes makes mistakes, especially
when she has low energy,' the professor said. Saya's wrath is the latest
sign of the rise of the robot. Analysts say Japan is leading the world
in rolling out a new generation of consumer robots. Some scientists are
calling the wave a technological force poised to change human lifestyles
more radically than the advent of the computer or the cell phone. ...
In the quest for artificial intelligence, the United States is perhaps
just as advanced as Japan. But analysts stress that the focus in the United
States has been largely on military applications. By contrast, the Japanese
government, academic institutions and major corporations are investing
billions of dollars on consumer robots aimed at altering everyday life,
leading to an earlier dawn of what many here call the 'age of the robot.'
But the robotic rush in Japan is also being driven by unique societal
needs. ... It is perhaps no surprise that robots would find their first
major foothold in Japan. ... 'In Western countries, humanoid robots are
still not very accepted, but they are in Japan,' said Norihiro Hagita,
director of the ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories
in Keihanna Science City near Kyoto. 'One reason is religion. In Japanese
[Shinto] religion, we believe that all things have gods within them. But
in Western countries, most people believe in only one God. For us, however,
a robot can have an energy all its own.'" March 11, 2005: Chessmaster
Garry Kasparov retires at 41. By Judith Ingram. Associated Press /
available from USA Today.com. "Shay Bushinsky, who programmed Deep
Junior, one of Kasparov's famous computer opponents, said Friday that
the grandmaster is 'the closest thing to a computer that I know as a man.
Sometimes I think he has silicon running in his veins.'" March 10, 2005: Search
Engines Build a Better Mousetrap. By Tim Gnatek. The New York Times
(registration req'd.). "Google's success has forced competitors like
Yahoo, MSN Search and Ask Jeeves to hustle with releasing new product
features, search controls and improved behind-the-scenes programming.
The resulting bonanza of tools brings more search capabilities, presented
more intuitively than the Web has ever seen." March 10, 2005: New
System Enhances Images in Crime Investigation. By Aaron Ricadela.
The New York Times (registration req'd.). "Now, a Canadian company
is demonstrating prototype software, based on advances in computer vision,
that can stitch together a few seconds of video from a hand-held stereo
camera into a detailed 3-D model of a room, including the people and the
objects in it. ... Based in Richmond, British Columbia, the company is
best known for designing the robotic arms used on the space shuttles and
the International Space Station. It originally developed its Instant Scene
Modeler software to help Mars rover missions negotiate obstacles, then
adapted it for new markets. The company, which has been testing the system
with police departments in Canada and the United States, hopes to release
products within a year that can also be sold to mining companies for mapping
excavations, museums for constructing virtual tours and the military for
guiding unmanned vehicles, said Frank Teti, product development manager.
The software is based on a new technique, called local invariant features,
for comparing computer images." March 9, 2005: Improving
the efficiency of electronic patient records. IST Results. "Transcribing
dictated notes from clinicians is a hugely expensive and time-consuming
process. One possible cure could be a new solution under validation that
offers speech recognition and secure wireless communication for electronic-patient-record
systems. ... The IST project DICTATe (finishing June 2005) aims to both
increase the efficacy of such patient records, and at the same time reduce
the costs incurred in preparing them. ... The project partners believe
that DICTATe will pave the way for much wider deployment of speech-processing
technologies into electronic-patient-record systems. Speech recognition
is now poised to overcome the previous obstacles of natural language and
categorisation, and become a cost-effective means of clinical reporting
and integration into the medical record." March 9/16, 2005. Software
organizes email by task. By Kimberly Patch, Technology Research News.
"There's a lot of structure to a person's email. Rather than random
isolated documents, individual email messages are often portions of a
larger activity. Despite the inherent structure, and despite organizational
tools such as folders, much of the world's email remains relatively unorganized.
Researchers from the University College Dublin in Ireland and IBM Research
have developed a way to use the inherent structure of related email messages
to automatically organize the messages by task. ... The researchers used
text classification, text clustering and automata induction algorithms
to carry out the process, said [Nicholas] Kushmerick. ... Each of these
pieces has been developed independently for decades, but no one had previously
thought to apply them to this particular problem or integrate them in
this manner, he said." March 9, 2005: Next
big step for the Web--or a detour? By Paul Festa. CNET News.com. "Is
the 'Semantic Web' the new Internet, or a complex technology in search
of a problem to solve? That's a question that advocates attending the
Semantic Technology Conference here this week hope to put to rest. ...
Just as the Web encompassed existing Internet technologies while adding
its revolutionary system of hyperlinks, so, they claim, will the Semantic
Web give birth to vastly more powerful ways of gleaning information from
the world's computer network. Such claims are being measured against concerns
about personal privacy and technological complexity, and against perceptions
that the Semantic Web activity is pie-in-the-sky artificial intelligence
research that's distracting the consortium from its mission of maintaining
fundamental 'good enough' Web protocols. What's more, some analysts and
technologists who follow the W3C's work closely say that even after years
of work and the publication of several foundational documents, they still
have no idea what the Semantic Web is. ... The Semantic Web protocols
aim to let computers distinguish different kinds of data. Armed with those
distinctions, applications could more automatically trade information,
for example between an online address book and a cell phone. A Web site
could automatically reconfigure itself on the fly based on the needs of
a particular visitor. Search engines could narrow down results with greater
precision. ... They hope that by letting computers digest and exchange
information about context and meaning--a word that raises the hackles
of artificial intelligence critics--they will allow data to survive the
systems where it originated and traverse different applications as easily
as browsers traverse the Web's billions of pages today. As that data takes
on a virtual life of its own, it could be exploited and combined in unexpected
and unexpectedly profitable ways." March 9, 2005: Mars
rover goes its own way despite concerns. By David L. Chandler. NewScientist.com
news service. "The Mars rover Opportunity reached the rim of a small
crater called Vostok, early on Wednesday morning, having completed a series
of record-breaking autonomous drives over the last month. Of the 3400-plus
metres it has covered since landing in January 2004, it 'sprinted' across
more than 1000 m in the last month alone. For the engineering team, the
most significant part of this speedy trek was a three sol - Martian day
- drive by the rover under its own control, using newly-upgraded mobility
software which improves its ability to make autonomous decisions when
navigating around obstacles." March 9, 2005: Machines
Not Lost in Translation. By Ann Harrison. Wired News. "Faced
with daunting translation problems in war and disaster zones around the
world, the U.S. military is refining a handheld voice-translation device
that will soon be used by police and emergency-room doctors back home.
The palm sized PDA-like Phraselator lets users speak or select from a
screen of English phrases and matches them to equivalent pre-recorded
phrases in other languages. The device then broadcasts the foreign-language
MP3 file and records reply dialog for later translation. ... According
to Phraselator software developer Jack Buchanan, the accuracy of translating
voice into text is above 70 percent. But the middle step of translating
that text into a foreign language text before outputting the data again
as voice is technically difficult. 'Taking into account cultural differences
and context issues is an extremely hard problem,' says Buchanan, who believes
that developing something close to Star Trek's 'universal translator'
will be harder than building the Enterprise. 'When you are coming in and
giving food to a village, how you would say 'hello' is totally different
than if you are a military person at a checkpoint holding a gun pointed
in their direction.' ... In 2003, DARPA estimated that open-domain, multi-task
and unconstrained dialog translation was still five to 10 years away.
But the research group developing IBM's MASTOR, or multilingual automatic
speech-to-speech translator system, says its DARPA-funded bidirectional
voice translator is a year or two from deployment." March 9, 2005: Thinking
robots - not quite yet. Professor Noel Sharkey left school at the
age of 15 but is now one of our leading robotics experts. Chris Bond talked
to him about the future of artificial intelligence. Yorkshire Post Today.
"Noel Sharkey is in the mood to debunk a few myths. The 56-year-old
professor of computer science at Sheffield University is at the forefront
of robotic technology in this country and there's a few things he wants
to get off his chest. 'Everybody wants to hear that robots are going to
take over the world but it's not going to happen,' he says. 'You get a
lot of scientists, particularly American scientists, saying that robotics
is about at the level of the rat at the moment, I would say it's not anywhere
near even a simple bacteria.' ... Put simply, Prof Sharkey's job is to
'raise awareness of engineering and science' but he is worried by the
apparent apathy in this country. 'The number of engineers is dropping
dramatically, it seems dull and boring to people, whereas if you go to
India or China everybody there wants to be an engineer and we need to
do something about this,' he says. ... 'Robotics, or automatons,' he says,
'goes back to around 3000BC and has always been associated with a kind
of trickery and magic. Some Egyptian temples had talking statues, they
had people inside but it was the same kind of fascination.' The first
time a robot was seen in a film was in Fritz Lang's masterpiece Metropolis,
but Prof Sharkey argues in reality we haven't come close to re-creating
that. But he believes today's films can have a bearing on the future.
'The good thing about movies like Robots is that youngsters will
look at what robots can do in it and that will be their creative aim.
I continually meet children who come up with solutions to things that
engineers couldn't come up with because they haven't learned constraints.'" March 8, 2005: Voice-Technology
Startup Aims To Get Doctors Using E-Records. By Marianne Kolbasuk
McGee. InformationWeek. "For some doctors, the prospect of trading
in their paper-based patient files for electronic-medical-record systems
means big changes in their work, and they and their staffs can't afford
the initial slowdown as they learn to enter and deal with digitized patient
information. But what if speech-recognition technology was good enough
to actually understand and digitize not just a doctor's words to include
in medical records, but the medical lingo held in them? ... 'The secret
sauce of this is the ontology of the industry,' or the ability for the
system to recognize and handle medical industry vernacular, says [George]
Newstrom, president and CEO of Wisper." March 8, 2005: Wearable
Computers You Can Slip Into. By Olga Kharif. BusinessWeek Online.
"Gauri Nanda sees a wearable computer as a...handbag -- one that's
built out of four-inch squares and triangles of fabric, with tiny computer
chips embedded in it. ... This bag can wirelessly keep tabs on your belongings
and remind you, just as you're about to leave the house, to take your
wallet. It can review the weather report and suggest that you grab an
umbrella -- or your sunshades. ... Sure, a computing purse and scarf set
may seem like the stuff of science fiction. But these devices, part of
next generation of wearable computers, could become commonplace within
a few years. Unit shipments of such wearable computers -- purses, watches,
shirts -- should rise from 261,000 last year to 1.39 million in 2008,
according to the tech research firm IDC. ... Powering this market are
advancements in design and in fabric-embedded electronics." March 7, 2005: MusicStrands
Uses Artificial Intelligence For Music Recommendations. Adapted by
ScienceDaily from a news release issued by Universitat Autonoma De Barcelona.
"On 9 February, MusicStrands, a spin-off from the Higher Council
for Scientific Research and the Esfera UAB, will be presented in public.
Created by the Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence and directed
by Francisco J. Martin, a specialist researcher, MusicStrands uses artificial
intelligence techniques to provide internet users with music recommendations.
... The artificial intelligence techniques used for the recommender systems
are based on statistical learning, Bayesian estimation, probabilistic
reasoning and visualisation techniques." March 7, 2005: CMU's
Red Team preparing for Grand Challenge, Part II- Whitaker's group
preparing two vehicles to go against tougher field in desert race. By
Byron Spice. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "'The game is on,' said William
'Red' Whittaker, the famed CMU robotocist and Red Team namesake. Last
year, 'you could win just by finishing,' he said, but the size and strength
of this year's competition suggests several teams likely will finish the
175-mile race within the 10-hour limit set by DARPA. So that means Whittaker,
a former Marine, is keeping the pressure on his team of roughly 50 people
-- ranging from student volunteers to full-time professional engineers
-- as it attempts to field two vehicles for the Oct. 8 race. ... DARPA
has received applications from 195 teams for this year's event, which
once again will be in the southwestern United States. ... 'Of the new
teams that weren't around last year, Stanford [headed by former CMU computer
scientist Sebastian Thrun] is probably the one to watch,' added [Richard]
Mason, whose [Golem Group] team this year is allied with UCLA. ... DARPA,
the research and development arm of the Pentagon, is sponsoring the Grand
Challenge to spur innovation in autonomous vehicles, which military officials
expect will play increasingly large roles both on and off the battlefield.
This year's event boasts a $2 million prize for the winner...." March 7, 2005: Smarter
robots of tomorrow - NASA Ames scientists are advancing the technology
of remote exploration. By Benjamin Pimentel. San Francisco Chronicle &
SFGate.com. "Buoyed by the success of two robotic rovers exploring
the surface of Mars, NASA scientists are building smarter and more- agile
robots that can rappel down cliffs, slither between cracks and even have
the sense to detect trouble. ... And the NASA folks have high hopes the
new machines could speed up research. ... With the K9, which is equipped
with nine cameras, a scientist could simply point to a specific rock and
the robot would figure out a way to do the task. 'We're putting in a lot
of the smarts,' [Maria] Bualat said. Mike Deliman, an engineering specialist
with Wind River Systems, the Alameda company that developed the two Mars
rovers' operating system, noted that scientists had to give Spirit and
Opportunity 'step-by-step instructions' including 'exact degrees of turn
for each step.' 'Now we can just tell it, 'Go to the rock,' and it will
make the determination if it is there,' he said. ... James Crawford, a
NASA Ames computer scientist, said the more sophisticated software is
part of the growing field of artificial intelligence." March 7, 2005: Intelligent
software aims to give users peace of mind. Microsoft Notebook feature
by Todd Bishop. Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "Most people wouldn't
want a message from work disrupting their day at the beach. But Eric Horvitz
was so happy when it happened to him that he took out a camera and captured
the moment in a photo. The e-mail message had been singled out and sent
to the Microsoft senior researcher's mobile phone by a special program
that he and others in his group developed. The program examined the message's
contents, determined its importance and decided it warranted interrupting
him during a family outing on Whidbey Island. The moment perfectly illustrated
Horvitz's long-term vision for technology in the information age -- as
something to augment and assist people, not overwhelm them. ... The prototype
is one of the ongoing projects in Microsoft Research's Adaptive Systems
and Interaction group, which Horvitz manages. The 14-person group is working
on software that senses the world around it and learns from experience
to adjust to situations and to reason in real time. The projects are examples
of artificial intelligence -- using technology to perform tasks that would
otherwise require human perception and reasoning. 'I see something very
big happening to humanity in terms of a new relationship with technology
over the next 100 years,' Horvitz said, predicting a future when 'companion
software' works in conjunction with human life in a way that could be
considered 'intelligent or humanlike.'" March 7, 2005: Ants
- learning from the collective. By Peter Everett. BBC News. "The
question that continues to fascinate myrmecologists (ant experts) is how
ants manage to achieve such complicated results - elaborate nests, efficient
food-supply, waste-disposal and so on - without having anyone in charge.
... When our present technology-driven society considers the ant, the
aim is not to find moral guidance or to admire a perfect political system,
but to gather clues that will help us to solve technical problems. In
the Intelligent Autonomous Systems Laboratory at the University of the
West of England, Dr Chris Melhuish presides over a fleet of 'U-bots'.
A U-bot is a foot-high robot which glides around an arena on castors,
carrying a U-shaped scoop in front of it. It is a very stupid robot, because
it carries only three instructions:.... Following only those instructions,
Dr Melhuish's robots, given enough time, can gather together a randomly
distributed collection of frisbees and assemble them in a pile in the
centre of their arena. ... Why would anyone want to design stupid robots
that can do clever things? Dr Melhuish explains: 'If we want to build
very small robots, there will be problems in getting computation on board,
and sensing and communication. ... It would be nice to think that we could
use nano-robots to carry out repair work inside the human body, but it's
early days.' ... Myrmecologist Professor Nigel Franks, of the University
of Bristol, has introduced the phrase 'collective intelligence' to describe
ant behaviour. March 6, 2005: QCS
gets patent for robot camel jockeys. The Peninsula. "Robots are
likely to soon replace child jockeys in camel racing, a sport native to
Qatar and the rest of the Middle East and considered a dangerous pastime
of the rich and the famous. The credit of inventing a robot jockey goes
to Qatar Scientific Club (QSC) that has recently patented the invention."
March 5, 2005: Microsoft
aims for video game heights. Wanted: Programmer 'with severe god-complex.'
By Dina Bass. Bloomberg News / available from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
"Microsoft Corp., already the biggest software company, is looking
for a video-game programmer to help 'in our quest for world domination.'
The ideal candidate: a 'megalomaniac genius with severe god-complex,'
the company says on its Bungie Studios Web site. The artificial-intelligence
engineer Microsoft seeks is one of about 60 people the Redmond company
is hiring to create the next generation of 'Halo'.... Companies such as
Microsoft, Electronic Arts Inc. and Sony Corp. are boosting payrolls to
sharpen animation, music and story lines to capture a bigger share of
the more than $20 billion a year spent on video games. ... The video-game
industry now employs about 100,000 people in North America, according
to the International Game Developers Association in San Francisco. Experienced
programmers can make $86,000 a year; artists and animators can receive
$64,000, and game designers get $64,000, according to a Game Developer
magazine survey." March 4, 2005: Camera
phones recognise their owner. By Will Knight. NewScientist.com news
service. "Software that lets a camera phone recognise its owner's
face could provide a handy new security measure, according to a Japanese
company." March 4, 2005: The
Bleeding Edge of Computing. By Pam Baker NewsFactor Network. "Just
when you think computing is an established industry where at least some
things will remain the same, the earth starts moving. Here’s a peek
at tomorrow’s computing landscape: ... A mini-helicopter that thinks
for itself is ready for action in Iraq. GT Max, the first rotary wing
unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), is able to learn as it flies, maneuver
aggressively, and automatically plan a route through obstacles using an
Open Control Platform (OCP) system. ... For artificial intelligence, or
AI, to be of maximum assistance to everyday people, computers must learn
from human environments. 'Suddenly, for the first time, our computers
have the ability to see and hear the world from our perspective through
microphones and cameras on wearable eyepieces and headsets. Soon, our
computers might be able to observe what we do all day, understand what
is important to us, and act as a virtual assistant who helps us on a second-by-second
basis,' says Starner." March 4, 2005: AI expert calls for e-defence for the UK. University of Southampton Press Release. "The need for the UK military to develop e-defence so that it can compete with the rest of the world will be highlighted by Professor Nigel Shadbolt next week. His call will be made when he delivers the British Computer Society (BCS)/Royal Signals Institution (RSI) annual lecture 2005 on Web Intelligence at the National Army Museum, London on Wednesday 9 March. Professor Shadbolt, who is Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton, will focus on how Artificial Intelligence is being woven into the World Wide Web and he will review how these developments are likely to shape future military capabilities."
>>> Military,
Ontologies, Web-Searching
Agents, Machine Translation, Natural
Language Processing, Representation, Agents,
Applications March 4, 2005:
It
really is rocket science- A group headed by Professor Bart Massey
wants to blast PSU into outer space. By Sue Pesznecker. The Daily Vanguard.
"When computer science professor Bart Massey came to Portland State,
he saw a sign that read, 'Do you want to build rockets?' 'I thought to
myself that either those guys were real dorks or they were doing something
really cool,' Massey said. ... When asked how his involvement with PSAS
[Portland State Aerospace Society] began, Massey has background in programming,
artificial intelligence and engineering, 'all that stuff that predisposes
you to get into trouble,' he said. ... The IBM Corporation has awarded
Massey a 2005 Innovation Grant worth $21,000. The award recognizes his
groundbreaking research in on-board rocket control systems. ... And a
2005, $68,000 NASA Small Business Initiative Research (SBIR) grant will
allow Massey and his team to create and test artificial intelligence-based
vehicle health maintenance software. 'Tim Menzies is really in charge
of the AI work. It's a simulator-based machine-learning software. We're
trying to teach machines to do vehicle repair in real-time, in-flight,'
Massey said." March 3, 2005: With
Terror in Mind, a Formulaic Way to Parse Sentences. By Noah Shactman.
The New York Times (registration req'd.). "[W]ith financing from
the Central Intelligence Agency, a California firm is using the technique
to comb through e-mail messages and chat room talks, which can be a rich
lode of corporate and government information, and a tough one to mine.
Figuring out the connections among people, places and things is something
computer algorithms do pretty well, as long as that information is structured,
or categorized and put into a database. Looking through a company's customer
file for a person named Bonds, for example, is fairly simple. But if the
data is unstructured - if the word 'bonds' hasn't been classified as the
name of a ballplayer or as an investment option - searching becomes much
more difficult. For people in business or in public service, only 20 percent
or so of their information is kept in formal databases, noted Nick Patience,
an analyst with the 451 Group, a technology research firm. The rest is
unstructured, tucked away in e-mail messages, call logs, memos and instant
messages. Attensity, based in Palo Alto, Calif., and financed in part
by In-Q-Tel, the C.I.A.'s investment arm, has developed a method to parse
electronic documents almost instantly, and diagram all of the sentences
inside. ('Moby-Dick,' for instance, took all of nine and a half seconds.)" March 3, 3005: Robot
leads way into fiery eastern Kentucky coal mine. By Roger Alford.
Associated Press / available from Jacksonville.com. "A robot led
the way into an eastern Kentucky coal mine that had been belching acrid
smoke and heat, making the underground passage uninhabitable for several
days. The robot maneuvered through the dark portals, which had been deprived
of oxygen in an effort to smother the fire, aiming onboard lights and
cameras in all directions, scanning for flames, monitoring for explosive
methane gas, and looking for rocks cracked and loosened by the heat. The
exercise marked the first time a robot was ever sent into a coal mine
ahead of humans to make sure conditions were safe, said John Correll,
assistant director of the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration.
'The conditions could have been very, very hazardous,' Correll said. 'We
didn't have to send humans in there, because we had the robot.' ... Could
the robot, dubbed V-2, be the first of a long line of such machines working
in underground coal mines? ..." March 3, 2005: An
unforgettable play about memory loss. By Kamal Al-Solaylee. The Globe
and Mail. "In writing Half Life, a play that champions memory
loss as an evolutionary necessity, playwright and mathematician John Mighton
may have reached for the exact opposite: an unforgettable experience that
is a gain, in every sense of the word, for the Canadian dramatic canon.
... Mighton sets his play in a nursing home... Children who do visit include
Donald (Diego Matamoros) and Anna (Laura de Carteret), respectively a
scientist working on artificial intelligence and an artist. ... The intellectual
content of the play is similarly spread over several conversations between
Donald and Anna, Donald and Rev. Hill and, in a thrilling sequence, Donald
and -- let's just say another creation to avoid spoiling the scene. Yet
despite this 'senior citizen, interrupted' structure, there's a continuous
emotional thread to Daniel Brooks's spare, graceful and typically intelligent
production. The thread has been developed by Mighton in the writing, but
its full impact on the production is felt in the performances of Peterson,
Hetherington and Matamoros. Maybe one day in the future machines will
replicate human thoughts and feelings...." March 3, 2005: Robots
to watch your kid among technology at TechFest. By Allison Linn. Associated
Press / available from The Daytona Beach News-Journal / also available
from ABC News (Microsoft
Showcases Robots to Watch Kids). "The teddy bear sitting in the
corner of the child's room might look normal, until his head starts following
the kid around using a face recognition program, perhaps also allowing
a parent talk to the child through a special phone, or monitor the child
via a camera and wireless Internet connection. The plush prototype, on
display at Microsoft Corp.'s annual gadget showcase Wednesday, is one
of several ideas researchers have for robots. The idea is to create a
virtual being that can visit the neighboring cubicle for a live telephone
chat even as its owner is traveling thousands of miles away, or let the
plumber into the house while its owner enjoys a pleasant afternoon in
the sun." March 3, 2005:
New research
opens a window on the minds of plants. By Patrik Jonsson. The Christian
Science Monitor. "As trowel-wielding scientists dig up a trove of
new findings, even those skeptical of the evolving paradigm of 'plant
intelligence' acknowledge that, down to the simplest magnolia or fern,
flora have the smarts of the forest. Some scientists say they carefully
consider their environment, speculate on the future, conquer territory
and enemies, and are often capable of forethought — revelations
that could affect everyone from gardeners to philosophers. Indeed, extraordinary
new findings on how plants investigate and respond to their environments
are part of a sprouting debate over the nature of intelligence itself.
'The attitude of people is changing quite substantially,' says Anthony
Trewavas, a plant biochemist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland
and a prominent scholar of plant intelligence. 'The idea of intelligence
is going from the very narrow view that it's just human to something that's
much more generally found in life.' To be sure, there are no signs of
Socratic logic or Shakespearean thought, and the subject of plant 'brains'
has sparked heated exchanges at botany conferences. ... 'If intelligence
is the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge, then, absolutely, plants
are intelligent,' agrees Leslie Sieburth, a biologist at the University
of Utah in Salt Lake City. ... The new field of plant neurobiology holds
its first conference - The First Symposium on Plant Neurobiology - in
May in Florence, Italy." March 2, 2005: Meet
the First Robot in Costa Rica. Inside Costa Rica. "The Museo
de los Niños is giving Costa Ricans the first opportunity to meet
a robot pet. The robot AIBO by Sony costs ¢1.6 million colones (approx.
us$3.500 dollars) was brought in directly from Japan by microprocessor
firm, Intel, and dontated to the museum. The robot is an autonomous artificial
intelligence that is capable of completing multiple tasks that surprises
visitors. The robot does not have fur, nor does it bark or bite, it can
however dance, walk, greet it's visitors and sit at attention." March 2, 2005: Robot
students set for global trip. Evening Star. "A talented group
of robot-building students are today looking forward to taking their prize-winning
creations to competitions in America and Japan. The six girls from Amberfield
School in Ipswich recently picked up the title of Lego League Robotics
UK Champions. And the same brainy group of 12 and 13-year-olds also scooped
the UK Robocup Junior Robotic Dance award at the recent finals held at
Cranfield University in Bedfordshire. The team was required to choreograph,
design and build the robot as well as programming its dance routine. ...
The girls have already secured the funding for the trip to America, but
are keen to hear from businesses willing to give them financial backing
for the competition in Japan." March 2, 2005: Botball
team just misses nationals. By Gale Rose. The Pratt Tribune. "The
Pratt High School Botball team came within less than one point of going
to the national competition at the conclusion of the Botball district
competition held in Oklahoma City on Saturday, Feb. 26. ... The team constructed
a robot out of Legos, including a small computer, that had to work on
it's own and complete tasks without any outside help." March 2, 2005: Cornell
Robotics Team Drives for the Gold. By David Andrade.The Cornell Daily
Sun. "The Cornell DARPA Grand Challenge team will participate in
a vehicle race across rough desert terrain in Fontana, Calif. early next
fall. Each team's vehicle will be given 10 hours to traverse approximately
170 miles of a yet unknown race course abundant with bumpy terrain, rocks
and other obstacles. ... The difficulty stems from the requirement that
each vehicle be completely self-navigating, that is, possessing its own
mechanism of interpreting the environment and deciding upon the most favorable
path to pursue. ... The Cornell team has registered two vehicles in the
competition -- a compact dune buggy type vehicle nicknamed the 'Titan'
and a much larger vehicle nicknamed the 'Code Red.' ... Both vehicles
will possess a series of sensors and powerful computers that together
will interpret the environment around the vehicle and pass that information
to a decision-making computer responsible for steering." March 1 - 8, 2005: Microsoft's
Hong-Jiang Zhang - The Process of Product Innovation. Ubiquity (Volume
6, Issue 7). "ZHANG: I'm Managing Director of Microsoft Research
Asia Advanced Technology Center (ATC) here in Beijing. Previously I was
the Assistant Managing Director, and managed all the research activities
around multimedia, Web search, data mining, etc. I'm still involved with
research but with my new job I'm more focused on putting research into
actual products, which is what the ATC was created for: to basically transfer
research innovations into product. UBIQUITY: Give us some examples. ZHANG:
Well, for instance, one thing we did involves video content summarization
and editing, where the problem is to look at the video content and decide
automatically which parts are most important and interesting, so that
you can keep those parts and delete the less interesting parts. But of
course all those decisions are made by a computer instead of by people
looking at the content and deciding what's interesting and what is not
UBIQUITY: How do you decide what's interesting? ZHANG: ... UBIQUITY: And
what are your biggest challenges? ZHANG: I think number one is simply
that it's never been easy to transfer research innovation into product,
so that's really been a challenge. ... ZHANG: When I show people the computer
program in which I automatically edit 10 hours of raw video footage down
to a 10-minute highlight synchronized with them with the music, people
don't believe me. They say, 'How could you do that?'" March 1, 2005: Do
Robots Dream? Eat? Sleep? Sci Fi Wire. "Chris Wedge, director
of the upcoming computer-animated Robots, told SCI FI Wire that
the project challenged his production team to be clever in their conception
of the characters' world. ... Robots deals with a world of sentient
machines. Wedge said that some ideas proved difficult." March 1, 2005: ACM
Awards Honor Advances in Internet, Programming, Software Technology.
ACM press release available from PR Newswire. "This year's winners
represent innovative research teams and new luminaries as well as renaissance
thinkers in the computing field. ACM will present these and other awards
at the annual ACM Awards Banquet on June 11, 2005, in San Francisco, CA.
The 2004 ACM awards winners include: ... Richard Gabriel of Sun Microsystems
-- the ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award for his role in shaping the growth
and impact of object technology, and his influence in developing a software
design community that cares about clear communication of ideas. A published
poet and musician, Gabriel conceived of java.net as a self-creating and
self-governed web place where communities join to build a city of diverse
interests engaged in using the Java language and technology in routine
and innovative ways. The Newell Award recognizes career contributions
that have breadth within computer science, or that bridge computer science
and other disciplines. 'These awards highlight the essential role of computing
in today's technology-driven world,' said ACM President David Patterson." March 1, 2005: A
Brilliant Mind and an Anguished Life. Cornelia Dean's review of "Dark
Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Norbert Wiener, the Father of
Cybernetics," by Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman. The New York Times (registration
req'd.). "It is hardly the greatest scientific mystery of the 20th
century, but it is a riddle just the same: why did Norbert Wiener - gray
eminence of gray matter, inventor of cybernetics, founding theorist of
the information age - abandon his closest young colleagues just as they
were about to embark on an exciting new collaboration on the workings
of the brain? ... He pioneered the study of the ways mechanical, biological
and electronic systems communicate and interact. His groundbreaking research
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology defined the parameters of
what we know today as computer science. His book 'Cybernetics' is widely
regarded as a major work of 20th century science." March 2005: News
Scan Briefs. By Charles Q. Choi, JR Minkel, Gary Stix. Scientific
American. "Camel racing, a favorite pastime in the Middle East, has
taken flack from human rights advocates for the young boys imported to
jockey the humpbacked desert beasts. Accordingly, the government of Qatar
announced right before year's end that it was banning child jockeys. Their
replacements? Why, robots, of course. ... But exactly how they work is
being kept secret for now. 'They won't let me near the robot,' says Chuck
Thorpe, a member of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University's
Qatar campus." March 2005: Cycorp
- The Cost of Common Sense. By Lamont Wood. Technology Review. "The
10-year-old company cares about the services it sells -- but mainly because
they bankroll its true quest: creating a 'knowledge base' called Cyc that
can endow computers with something approaching common sense. This quest
has been so time-consuming that most venture capitalists would long ago
have written off their investments -- or demanded the CEO’s head
on a platter. That Doug Lenat and his 54 employees have avoided this fate
is a lesson in managing long-term, visionary R&D projects. ... After reaching
a certain level of sophistication, Cyc began to help direct its own education
by asking questions based on what it already knew. (Lenat hopes that Cyc
will eventually be able to read unassisted.) The result: a computer that
doesn’t have to be told that parents are older than their children
and that people stop subscribing to magazines after they die. ... [I]t
licenses Cyc for use in third-party software packages. A slimmed-down
Cyc is available free to research organizations, and OpenCyc, an even
smaller version suitable for desktop computers, is available as a free
download." March 2005:
The
Ascent of the Robotic Attack Jet. By David Talbot. Technology Review.
"Compared to many aeronautical curiosities that have taken wing at
NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at California’s Edwards
Air Force Base over the years, the latest military test stunts did not
appear very remarkable. Last April, a low-slung aircraft, about the size
of a sport utility vehicle but with batlike wings similar to those of
the B-2 stealth bomber, took off, flew at 10,500 meters and then dropped
a 110-kilogram inert precision bomb while zipping along at 700 kilometers
per hour. Four months later, a pair of the aircraft took off and flew
together. These were modest stunts, to be sure, except for this fact:
the jets have no pilots. They are the future of warfare, the first working
models of networked autonomous attack jets, and the U.S. Department of
Defense would like to start building them by 2010. ... Realizing this
vision will require the creation of new airborne communications networks
and a host of control systems that will make these jets more autonomous
(though always under the ultimate control of a person) than anything built
to date. These are the goals of a $4-billion, five-year program at the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon’s
advanced research arm." |
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