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May 31, 2006: A Know-It-All IM Buddy - A Kansas startup adds "social search" to instant messaging. By Eric W. Pfeiffer. Technology Review. "If you had a buddy who was all-knowing, infinitely patient, good at undlerstanding your questions, and always available through instant messaging, you'd probably turn to him rather than a traditional search engine for information. And that's what Kozoru, a startup based in Overland Park, KS, wants to train you to do -- except that the 'buddy' is a piece of software. Kozoru's technology, which launches June 5, turns instant messaging (IM) into a social search engine. ... As hope and capital coalesce around Web 2.0, one of the areas of greatest frenzy is social networking: media and merger-and-acquisition darlings such as Facebook, Flickr, and MySpace attract millions of visitors per month, who are eager to interact, share, and create content. Another area is second-generation search, in which heavyweights such as Autonomy, IBM, and Inxight are moving beyond simple key-word searches made ubiquitous by Google. Using sophisticated pattern-recognition software and natural-language processing, these companies are attempting to identify the meaning behind the words. Kozoru's technology is what Web 2.0 mavens call a 'mashup' of these two trends. The company started in July 2004 by attacking the problem of natural-language understanding." May 31, 2006: Outward Bound for Robots - A new approach teaches objects how to navigate unfamiliar territory as humans might. By Duncan Graham-Rowe. Technology Review. "A computer navigation system based on a part of the brain called the hippocampus has been tested on an autonomous robotic car. By enabling the robot to take what its creators call 'cognitive fingerprints' of its surroundings, the software allows the vehicle to explore and remember places in much the same way mammals do. ... Similarly, the system has been tested on an indoor robot by 'blindfolding' it, taking it to an unknown location, and getting it to find its way home, says Adriana Tapus, a roboticist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles who developed the system. This 'kidnapping task' is much more difficult than it might seem, she says. Yet this problem, known as simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), is becoming increasingly important for robots, autonomous vehicles, and military unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). The challenge is to create a map from which a robot can navigate while it is still exploring that same environment, says Chris Melhuish, director of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory at the University of the West of England and Bristol University in the U.K." May 31, 2006: The educational computer myth. Commentary by Thomas W. Hazlett. Financial Times. "Learning is mostly about growing an ability to think, and web surfing skills – or even championship agility in the point-and-click Olympics – scarcely pings the higher cerebral reaches. At best. At worst, the classroom PC sucks up valuable oxygen, diverting youngsters from frog dissections, multiplication tables, and the ABCs. ... The point is that modern systems - from networked communications to artificial intelligence - are not a boon to mankind, or that children should be barred from enjoying their fruits. It is that computers, which complement the sweaty mental work-outs that grow young minds into strong thinkers, do not substitute for exercise." May 31, 2006: Codes on Sites 'Captcha' Anger of Web Users. By David Kesmodel. The Wall Street Journal. "Dave Simmer is a computer-savvy graphic designer. Yet when he surfs the Internet, he often gets stumped by the distorted jumbles of letters and numbers that some Web sites ask users to retype to gain access. ... The visually impaired have long decried these codes, which protect sites such as Yahoo.com and Ticketmaster.com from computer programs that create scores of email accounts for spammers or buy hundreds of concert tickets for scalpers ... Captcha is an acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart. Computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University coined the term in 2000 to describe codes they created to help Internet giant Yahoo Inc. thwart a spam problem. 'Turing' refers to Alan Turing, a mathematician famous for his codebreaking work during World War II and, later, as a pioneer in artificial intelligence. In 1950, Turing wrote a paper that proposed a test in which a person in one room would ask questions of both a human and a computer in another to try to determine which of the respondents was human. If the judge couldn't tell which was which, the computer could be said to be able to think." May 31, 2006: High-Tech Sign Language Could Replace the Mouse. G-speak's technology allows users to interact with computers using hand gestures. By Dawn C. Chmielewski. Los Angeles Times. "John Underkoffler wants to build a better mouse. Working in a downtown Los Angeles loft, the co-founder of G-speak is developing technology to replace the ubiquitous computer mouse with a more natural interface: human hands. Riffs on Underkoffler's technology have featured prominently in movies and television shows. The 2002 sci-fi film 'Minority Report,' for example, included a dramatic scene in which Tom Cruise gestures with gloved hands to navigate and manipulate crime scene information on translucent screens. That scene was the product of movie industry special effects. But it marked the birth of G-speak. Underkoffler moved to Los Angeles to serve as a science and technology advisor on the Steven Spielberg movie. He came from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, where he was a doctoral candidate researching new ways for people to interact with computers." May 30, 2006: Cal lab gets corporate support. Sacramento Business Journal. "The University of California-Berkeley Tuesday announced new corporate support for its Reliable, Adaptive and Distributed systems laboratory. ... Software created in the lab will be freely available to the public, with source codes distributed using the Berkeley software distribution license. ... The new corporate support reflects a shift in how long-term university research is funded, David Patterson, a UC-Berkeley professor and the RAD Lab's founding director, said in a statement. ... Launched in December 2005, the RAD Lab is adapting statistical machine learning - a form of artificial intelligence - to maintain large distributed computing systems used by data-intensive Internet businesses." May 30, 2006: Family of Tragic Everest Climber Hail RGU Tribute. By Sean Bate. The Press and Journal & this is north scotland. "A Memorial to an Aberdeen graduate who died near Mount Everest's summit has been unveiled. Dr Robert Milne, who perished just 400m from the peak last year, was honoured at The Robert Gordon University. ... Dr Milne, 49, worked closely with the RGU computing department and was an expert in artificial intelligence."
>>> Tributes, Sports May 30, 2006: World’s Largest Sporting Event Supported by Avaya Developer Community. By Susan J. Campbell. TMCnet & IPCommunications.com. "Next week, the sporting world’s largest converged voice and data network will be turned over to the Federation Internationale de Football (FIFA) for the lunch of the FIFA World Cup 2006. ... Intelligent video software linked to 80 security cameras at strategic locations across the World Cup venue is being provided by Aimetis. In order for a computer to understand the video the way a human does, the software uses artificial intelligence. The software can review of up to eight hours of video in just 30 minutes and automatically alert World Cup security personnel of unusual activity." May 30, 2006: Intelligent Machines. By Jocelyn Kim. New Univesity Paper (UC Irvine). "According to Marvin Minsky, intelligent machines will preserve maps of human cognitive processes for all eternity. Minsky, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, spoke on the future of intelligent machines on May 25 at the Beckman Center Auditorium as part of the Chancellor’s Distinguished Fellows Series. 'Ultimately, we should be able to loan entire cognitive processes into one of these machines the size of a cubic centimeter and live forever,' Minsky said. Intelligent machines would also help prevent human mortality by performing dangerous missions, an idea proposed in many science fiction stories. 'I grew up in the world of science fiction and someone had a set of stories when it was possible to duplicate people and send them to do risky jobs,' Minsky said. Artificial intelligence can not only perform many tasks but also solve problems regarding immigration. 'In Japan, there are fewer young people so they have guest workers,' Minsky said. 'Older people think it’s ruining the culture. If we had robots, that problem might go away unless the robots developed cultures that you didn’t like.' Although robots can improve the quality of human life, Minsky argued that only robots that perform trivial tasks are being made, instead of more useful robots." May 30, 2006: Intelligent Beings in Space! By Kenneth Chang. The New York Times. "Until recently, interplanetary robotic explorers have largely been marionettes of mission controllers back on Earth. The controllers sent instructions, and the spacecraft diligently executed them. But as missions go farther and become more ambitious, long-distance puppetry becomes less and less practical. If dumb spacecraft will not work, the answer is to make them smarter. Artificial intelligence will increasingly give spacecraft the ability to think for themselves. 'These technologies are already in operation on specific missions,' said Steve Chien, a computer scientist who heads the artificial intelligence group at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Scientists discussed some of the recent progress last week at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Baltimore. ... Dr. Chien's group wrote the software that manages the schedule of Earth Observing-1, a satellite that looks for natural disasters like volcanic eruptions, wildfires and floods. ... NASA's two rovers now on Mars -- the Spirit and the Opportunity -- also possess a measure of thinking ability."
>>> Space Exploration, Autonomous Vehicles, Planning & Scheduling, Robots, Applications May 29, 2006: Military getting high-tech help from SRI lab - New system can recognize words, understand simple foreign phrases. By Tom Abate. San Francisco Chronicle & SFGate.com. "During a recent product demonstration at SRI headquarters in Menlo Park, computer scientist Harry Bratt spoke into the microphone of his lab's new translation computer: 'Did you hear the explosion this morning?' Several seconds later, software written by SRI International scientists piped the question through the computer's speaker -- this time in the Iraqi dialect of Arabic. Saad Alabbodi, an Iraqi immigrant posing as a civilian being questioned by a U.S. soldier, answered in his native tongue. There was another pause as the computer translated Alabbodi's reply into English in a mock interrogation that provided another example of how technology is slowly mimicking complex human capabilities such as speech. [Go to the related podcast to hear the actual conversation.] ... 'One of the crying needs in Iraq is overcoming the language barrier,' said Kristin Precoda, director the SRI lab that developed the two-way translation system called IraqComm." May 29, 2006: The robot turns 85. By Brian Sabin. Radio Prague [audio available]. "From R2D2 to the Terminator, robots are a common theme in modern fiction, but not many people realize that the robot was born in Prague exactly 85 years ago. To celebrate its birthday a project last week at the University of Cambridge in England examined the life of robots and their Czech creator. Karel Capek was one of the great writers of inter-war Czechoslovakia. His play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) coined the term to describe human-like androids that perform mundane, repetitive labor. In 1921 the play opened right here in Prague and introduced robots to the world. Now Cambridge University's Robot Project explores their life, their history and what they say about us. Social Anthropologist Kathleen Richardson, who organized the project, says the themes of Capek's seminal play can be used to explore larger issues."
>>> Events (@ Resources for Students), Robots, History, Science Fiction; also see this related article May 29, 2006: Ahoy there, solution. By Doug Beizer. Washington Technology (Volume 21, Number 10). "It’s not uncommon for a family preparing for a long road trip to use pad and pencil to tick off items on a checklist as they load the minivan. And until recently, the Navy used much the same method when loading a vessel for an ocean voyage. The difference is more than one of size. Intricate planning is needed to store hundreds of pieces of cargo on a ship’s multiple decks. Even more complex planning and precise loading is necessary to safely load and store hazardous materials. But now the armed forces have upgraded their loading arsenal to include specialized software running on rugged handhelds, said Boone Pendergrast, a customer support representative for CDM Technologies Inc., a San Luis Obispo, Calif., company that developed the software. The Integrated Computerized Deployment System (Icodes) is a ship stow-planning application that uses artificial-intelligence principles and techniques that CDM developed in association with California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. ... 'Under the old scenario, if you don’t notice the mistake until two or three hours later, there could be 30 to 50 pieces that might have to be moved to get that one piece out,' Pendergrast said. The system also has slashed the planning time, he said. Where once it took five people five days to plan a load, now one skilled user can do a stow plan in half a day." May 29, 2006: Data mining - The new weapon in the war on terrorism? Use of the technology to probe vast amounts of phone data could be costly and invade privacy. By Aliya Sternstein. FCW.com. "Although it is unknown if the government is probing phone records for national security purposes, the possibility shines a spotlight on the potential benefits and drawbacks of a sophisticated technology that few people fully understand. That technology is data mining, or extracting knowledge from a vast amount of data. The technique requires super fast computers and software capable of performing complex algorithms, experts say." May 29, 2006: Caught up in the 'Net - How the Internet has quietly changed our lives. CNN.com. "'Without question the ability to communicate, share data, develop projects jointly, network has magnified the human mind has changed everything,' says Peter Diamandis. 'The Internet is the nervous system of a new developing "meta-intelligence".' ... However we teach our children and however our society evolves, many scientists already have a clear vision of the way technology is leading us. 'Singularity,' the fusion of human, machine and the communication capacity of the web may enable a spectacular and fundamental shift in our understanding of human consciousness. 'I am still a big believer in Artificial Intelligence; new software 'shells' that surround us as individuals and becomes our interface with the outside world,' says Diamandi. 'These interfaces will allow us to communicate with individuals and machines more efficiently. The Internet will merge into these software shells, serving as a global nervous system interconnecting people to people in the way single cell life-forms grouped into multi-cellular organisms and eventually into an organism as complex as the human body.'" May 29, 2006: UTech, Worthy Park to engineer 'smart system' for sugar production. By Martin Henry. Jamaica Gleaner News. "The Worthy Park Estate is collaborating with the School of Engineering at the University of Technology (UTech) to further develop applications for an artificial intelligence system to optimise the yield of sugar in its factory operations. Worthy Park's engineer, Romaindra Mohabir, has just completed one year of an M.Phil. research programme in electrical engineering. His research is aimed at optimising the crystal-lisation of sugar from cane syrup during the boiling process to minimise losses and increase the yield of crystallised sugar. ... What the research aims to do, he explains, is to encode all the knowledge available about the sugar boiling process into a computer neural network, mimicking how the human brain processes information and make decisions. The system can then automatically control the sugar crystallisation process with great precision. Dr. Darmand says he intends to patent the finalised process." May 29, 2006: The next big bang - Man meets machine. TheDeal.com / available from CNet News.com. "In science-fiction fantasies, the melding of organic matter and digital technology usually takes human form, from Steve Austin's six-million-dollar bionics to the replicants running amok in 'Blade Runner' to the Terminator. Yet research on multiple fronts in digital technology, biotechnology and nanotechnology may, over the next half century, alter the way we think about computers and information, and our relationship to them. With these changes, bionic body parts won't seem so far-fetched as we increasingly develop ways to integrate high-tech materials into our mortal flesh. And the reverse is true as well. Researchers are now looking to biological materials such as bacteria, viruses, proteins and DNA to replace mechanical parts in computers." May 29, 2006: Software tells users where to file documents. By Vivian Yeo. ZDNet Asia. "A government agency is trying out a new electronic filing system, which uses built-in artificial intelligence to help users categorize documents more quickly. Starting this week, the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) will conduct a six-month trial of the KRIS (Knowledge Repository Information System) Intelligent Filer, which was built by Singapore-based SQL View. First developed in 1999, the software is able to predict user behavior and offer an opinion--suggesting which folder to place a document, for example--based on how the user filed previous document entries, explained Stephen Lim, CEO of SQL View." May 28, 2006: Mars robots to get smart upgrade. By Jonathan Amos. BBC News. "The US space agency's rovers will get a software upgrade to allow them to make 'intelligent' decisions in the study of Martian clouds and dust devils. The new algorithms will give the robots' computers the onboard ability to search through their images to find pictures that feature these phenomena. Only the most significant data will then be sent to Earth, maximising the scientific return from the missions. Nasa says its robotic craft will become increasingly autonomous in the future. ... Leaving the robots to 'get on with it' -- to do the decision-making -- is the way ahead, Nasa believes. The agency's Mars Odyssey orbiter, which has been mapping the Red Planet since 2001, will get new autonomous flight software later this year. ... [Ralph Lorenz] said self-reliant spacecraft would open up new science opportunities on far-distant missions, where probes might be out of contact with Earth for hours or even days at a time." May 28, 2006: Even computers have soccer fever. Reuters Video. "Argentina's technology experts prepare for robot World Cup. In a Buenos Aires laboratory, technology students and professors are working furiously as they get ready for the upcoming world championships in Germany. But, unlike the rest of the country, these Argentines have a very different event in mind: the Robot World Cup championships, with two different tournaments taking place in June in Germany set to rival their human counterparts. Robots are already being put through their paces, as their 'masters' in the technology faculty of the Interamerican Open University (UAI) feverishly program them in time for the first challenge, the RoboCup. ... Argentina has particularly high hopes for the FIRA RoboWorld Cup. Held yearly, the event boasts several categories, with Argentina focusing on the Micro-robot tournament and the Simulated Robot soccer tournament." May 28, 2006: Science Fiction and Fantasy - India's apocalyptic future, satirical short stories and a nasty case of zombie flu. By Martin Morse Wooster. The Washington Post. "Today's sf writers have largely stopped trying to use what we know now to predict what will happen soon. Some writers have preferred to write in less research-heavy genres. Others believe in the 'singularity,' a semi-mystical notion that, in about 20 years, advances in technology will be so marvelous that the future is impossible even to imagine. Either way, readers who like sf books based on deep study of social trends have been gravely disappointed. Ian MacDonald, however, has not heard the news that no one wants to read about the near future any more. ... In River of Gods, the lives of nine characters ... intertwine as India veers toward an apocalypse caused by a reckless search for cheap power. MacDonald predicts that India will be divided into several warring states, each with sophisticated robot armies. ... Artificial intelligence will be advanced enough so that machines will pass for humans most of the time." May 26, 2006: Asimov's First Law - Japan Sets Rules for Robots. By Bill Christensen. Technovelgy.com / available from Yahoo! News. "Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is working on a new set of safety guidelines for next-generation robots. This set of regulations would constitute a first attempt at a formal version of the first of Asimov's science-fictional Laws of Robotics, or at least the portion that states that humans shall not be harmed by robots." May 26, 2006: Scholar applies mathematics to everyday problems. By Martha Thorn. Trident / dcmilitary.com. "As a Gates Scholar at Cambridge University in England, [Midn. 1/C Peter Barkley] plans to pursue another project involving computer speech, text and Internet technology. One part of the project could be used for intelligence purposes. In this part of the project, computer algorithms would be used to identify certain phrases that reoccur in documents. This process could be used on computers captured in Afghanistan, according to Barkley. He's also interested in the 'natural language processing' and wants to work on a machine that would translate one language into another. 'The potential for this is enormous,' Barkley says. 'It would allow the Marines in Iraq and helo pilots delivering humanitarian aid to understand the language.'" May 26, 2006: The next wave of the web. By Declan Butler. news @ nature. "Web gurus and geeks descended on Edinburgh, UK, this week for www2006. Chairing the panel 'The Next Wave of the Web' was Nigel Shadbolt, an artificial intelligence researcher at the University of Southampton, UK, and deputy president of the British Computer Society. Declan Butler asks him about the Web's progress. ... [Q:] Your background is in artificial intelligence. How is AI fitting into the Web? [A:] I did my PhD here in Edinburgh in the late 1970s. We had interesting problems in trying to emulate human expertise and knowledge acquisition. But we couldn't get network effects going like what is happening on the Web. One of the problems of AI is that we've often been trying to do too good a job of emulating classic inductive reasoning; we've picked problems that are too hard. So AI hasn't really delivered on providing sentience in a box. But, though most people don't realize it, the Web is already full of knowledge-intensive [AI] components. The Web is a brilliant place to get AI out there. Take Bayesian methods.... [Q:] The idea of a 'semantic web' -- this notion of adding machine-readable tags to web pages so that a computer can read and 'understand' the text and data -- has been around for years. But, like nuclear fusion, it always seems to be 'just around the corner'. Is it ever going to happen?" May 26, 2006: Samsung Chip Chief Predicts Fusion Tech Era. Digital Chosun Ilbo. "The head of Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor business, Hwang Chang-gyu, on Friday predicted an era of 'fusion technology' will supersede the information age. ... Leaps in semiconductor technology, meanwhile, will see memory cards with the capacity to store all the books in the U.S. Library of Congress by 2015, and artificial intelligence by 2030, he predicted." May 26, 2006: UNR students creating high-tech war games. By Don Cox. Reno Gazette-Journal. "Advanced computer science and engineering students at the University of Nevada, Reno are creating high-tech war games for use by the Navy to train ship captains and officers. ... 'The Navy uses simulations for training,' said Sushil Louis, computer science and engineering professor. 'A lot of good simulations are very much like a big video game.' But the simulations are serious. ... 'What we are designing for them is artificial intelligence to control a large number of (ships),' Louis said of the computer programs."
>>> Education, Video Games, Military, Applications May 25, 2006: Playing the Game. By Alex Platt. Reporter (Imperial College London). "A career in the computer games industry may beckon for Imperial's computer science graduates following a games and media event held last week. Senior figures from companies including Sony and Lionhead Studios converged on the College to persuade students from taking a job in the City. The day of talks, presentations and demos put together by the Department of Computing explored the role of computer science and software engineering, and the opportunities open to students, in the computer entertainment industries. Focusing on topics such as artificial intelligence, robotics and building virtual environments, the event brought together a range of speakers working within the industry." May 25, 2006: Frederic Chiu, After Many Lessons Learned, Has Much to Teach. By Allan Kozinn. The New York Times. "Sitting in his quiet living room and discussing the Bach and Brahms recital he will play at the Metropolitan Museum this evening and some of the twists his career has taken in the last 15 years, the pianist Frederic Chiu could almost be mistaken for a computer geek with a tenured university post. ... Mr. Chiu, 41, might easily have taken the academic route. As a teenager in Indianapolis he was fascinated with 'Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid,' Douglas R. Hofstadter's 1979 treatise on symbols, patterns and creativity. When he discovered that Mr. Hofstadter was teaching a first-year computer science class at Indiana University, he enrolled and went on to earn a degree in the field. Aspects of computer science still interest him, particularly artificial intelligence and the question, as he puts it, 'How does creativity come about through these very basic functions of signals being transmitted from one thing to another?'" May 25, 2006: Let a chatbot help you quit. New Scientist (Issue 2553: page 27). "Betsy van Dijk and colleagues from the University of Twente in Enschede, the Netherlands, and the Dutch anti-smoking organisation Stivoro are developing a female chatbot to provide free, round-the-clock advice and exercises for people trying to give up. ... Virtual coaches have a good track record. Frequent conversations with the chatbot Laura, the brainchild of Timothy Bickmore at Northeastern University in Boston, helped to persuade a group of elderly people to exercise more (New Scientist, 3 December 2005, p 42)." May 25, 2006: Science fiction coming to gaming. By Ed Willett. The Leader-Post & canada.com. "Computer games are designed to present the player with the illusion that he or she is interacting with actual, thinking, human (or alien) beings. In reality, of course, the beings one meets within such games are more akin to actors in a play: perhaps allowed to improvise a little, but still bound by the script. But European scientists are now attempting to create millions of software beings that will 'live,' interact, evolve and reproduce within a computer. The project is called NEW TIES, an acronym for 'New and Emergent World models Through Individual, Evolutionary, and Social learning.' ... According to [Gusz] Eiben, although there's been a lot of research into artificial intelligence, that research hasn't focused on how artificial beings interact. The research could prove useful in the development of robot collectives to accomplish certain tasks, in computer games (of course) and even in fields like sociology, anthropology and political science, to simulate and thus predict and prepare for reactions to certain events. One could envision, for example, a Saskatchewan political party running a simulation of the province in a computer and only calling an election when the software beings within are prepared to elect them. ... If this all sounds like science fiction, so it should: The scientists note that their ideas were partly inspired by the short story Non Serviam by the late Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem." May 24, 2006: Robot madness? It can only be Daft Punk. By Andrew Pulver. Guardian Unlimited. "A Daft Punk movie is bit of an event at Cannes. France doesn't have too many music acts who command international admiration, so there's a sense of quiet self-satisfaction in the massed ranks of French teens who pack out the first screening of Daft Punk's new film Electroma in the Director's Fortnight. ... It has to be said that the Punks have an eye for an arresting image: their simple tale of two robots who make themselves human faces out of wax is beautifully filmed, and occasionally very funny." May 24, 2006: Brain Waves Make Robot Move. The Associated Press / available from Wired News. "Japanese automaker Honda has developed technology that uses brain signals to control a robot's moves, hoping to someday link a person's thoughts with machines in everyday life. In the future, the technology that Honda Motor researched with ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories may substitute for a keyboard or cell phone or help people with spinal injuries move their limbs, researchers said Wednesday."
>>> Robots, Systems, Interfaces May 24, 2006: Smart sites to power semantic web. By Jonathan Fildes. BBC News. "According to Professor Wendy Hall, head of a research team at the University of Southampton looking into the semantic web, part of the problem is that the term means so many things to different people. However, she believes it can be summed up as 'creating a web that can be interpreted by machines'. Clever codes The idea was articulated in an article in Scientific American five years ago by web creator Tim Berners-Lee, Professor Jim Hendler of the University of Maryland, and Professor Ora Lassila of phone giant Nokia. It was their idea to try to start to make sense of the tangle of data on the World Wide Web. Until now, almost all of the information on webpages is produced by humans for humans. ... 'Once you have all of that data on the web in a form that a machine can understand, then you can start having services like a personal agent that picks a holiday for you or even negotiates the price on your behalf,' explains Professor Hall. ... The semantic web could allow epidemiologists to pick up on disease patterns by comparing geographical data with prescription records." May 24, 2006: Privacy worries over web's future. By Jonathan Fildes. BBC News. "The next phase of the web could face 'big privacy' issues, a senior UK academic has warned. Hugh Glaser of the University of Southampton made the comments at the WWW2006 conference in Edinburgh. He was describing the semantic web, an attempt to make the web more intelligent. Privacy problems could occur, he said, because the semantic web deliberately combines multiple sources of information about people and places." May 24, 2006: Newsmaker - My friend, the robot. By Tom Krazit. CNET News.com. "Future robots might not look like C-3PO of 'Star Wars' fame or Rosie on 'The Jetsons,' but they are becoming more personal than even their creators might have realized. iRobot Chief Executive Officer Colin Angle often fields questions about the Roomba robot vacuum, which is probably one of the more widely used consumer robots, with over 2 million units sold. But Angle is just as proud of his company's PackBots, which U.S. soldiers are using in Iraq to detonate roadside improvised explosive devices. ... Q: I wanted to ask you a little bit more about this notion of robots and companionship. How much of that is people projecting things onto robots, and how much of that is robot designers building in cues that will allow people to do that? Angle: With the iRobot Roomba, we explicitly tried not to make it cute. The idea was, this is a serious appliance, we want people to take it seriously, and yet the personification happens anyway. ... [Q:] Do you think people would buy a robot that was created for that purpose, though? Do you think people buy them because they want a friend or they want a pet? Angle: Do you mean, would they admit to themselves they're buying it because they want a friend? I actually have heard people say 'yes,' older people saying, 'I wanted a Furby because they give me something to talk to.' They are often careful not to suggest that this would be a replacement for human friends, but this is a nice thing, and the way they describe it is interesting. ..." May 24, 2006: Interview with a Gaming God. By Jason Hill. The Sydney Morning Herald Blogs. "Brian Reynolds is a gaming god that has created empires and entire civilizations. He's also let millions of computer players worldwide share in his omnipotent powers. ... [Q:] The artificial intelligence of opponents is crucial in strategy games. Obviously it's easy to make an opponent that can crush you every time, but how do you go about creating a more realistic, human-like opponent? [A:] I come from a background where I programmed a lot of AI, including some in Rise of Nations. I find the key is doing a lot of iteration. You make some code that you think might work, then you have to play it, see what it does by watching it. Then you make some tweaks and it gets a bit better, then you tweak it some more. ..." May 23, 2006: Soldiers bond with iRobot machine; CEO dreams big. By Joel Rothstein. Reuters / available from The Washington Post / also available from MSNBC.com (Soldiers bond with battlefield robots). "U.S. soldiers in Iraq are giving nicknames and forming emotional bonds with bomb-defusing robots they have come to regard as teammates, according to the founder of the company that invented the machines. IRobot Inc. Chief Executive Colin Angle said one group of soldiers even named its robot 'Scooby Doo' and grieved when it was blown up after completing 35 successful missions defusing improvised explosive devices. ... 'I think it's very rational,' he said. '(Scooby Doo) was someone, something, that was doing a great service for them and thus when they brought it back, it was viewed not just as a loss of a machine gun or a piece of body armor or a helmet. It was a loss of a contributing member of the team.'" May 23, 2006: U.K. police to develop national video ID system. By Andy McCue. CNET News.com. "Police are looking at developing a national system that will use facial recognition technology to automatically identify individuals caught on video cameras. The plans are part of the Police IT Organisation's (Pito) final business plan before it becomes part of the newly created National Police Improvement Agency next year. The video recognition system will link into a national police database, called Find, for storing and transmitting facial images of criminals and their history." May 23, 2006: Robotics startup AssistWare bought out by Mass. firm. By Corilyn Shropshire. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "A Carnegie Mellon University robotics spinoff, AssistWare Technology, was scooped up by a Massachusetts company for an undisclosed sum yesterday. Both firms make computers with 'eyes.' These 'machine vision systems' combine cameras with software that can speed up manufacturing processes and even alert drowsy drivers when they are veering off the road. Launched 11 years ago by CMU roboticist Dean Pomerleau, Hampton-based AssistWare is one of a few local robotics startups whose maiden customers weren't in the military." May 23, 2006: The Great Woz Tells All. Newsmaker Q&A By Hardy Green. BusinessWeek Online. "With his memoir due out soon, Apple inventor Steve Wozniak explains how luck and passion led to creating the breakthrough personal computer. ... [Q:] I gather that you have been involved some with teaching. [A:] I taught a fifth-grade class, sixth through ninth graders in another class, and I taught teachers, all just in the local schools. It got to where I was teaching seven days a week. I'm looking forward to the day when a computer can be a teacher. We're not there yet, since we haven't yet conquered artificial intelligence. Once we've made a robot that can make a cup of coffee, then we've probably got enough artificial intelligence. Then we can have 30 teachers in a class of 30 kids, and the computers can go at different rates with different students." May 23, 2006: So Dad's A Poker Player? Gift Ideas For Fathers' Day. By Earl Burton. Poker News. "If, for example, he's a 21st century dad and has the dexterity to play with the latest gaming systems or the computer, you can surprise him with the latest from the video game world. On May 30th, Daniel Negreanu's 'Stacked' is finally ready to hit the shelves.... The University of Alberta's 'Poki' artificial intelligence (AI) has been adapted for usage in 'Stacked', which should give the game a firm advantage over some other video game productions. The "Poki" AI has been called perhaps the best artificial intelligence that has been developed for computers to play poker." May 23, 2006: Google users promised artificial intelligence. By Richard Wray. The Guardian Unlimited. "A search engine that knows exactly what you are looking for, that can understand the question you are asking even better than you do, and find exactly the right information for you, instantly - that was the future predicted by Google yesterday. Speaking at a conference for Google's European partners, entitled Zeitgeist '06, on the outskirts of London last night Google chief executive Eric Schmidt and co-founder Larry Page gave an insight into perhaps the most ambitious project the Californian business is undertaking - artificial intelligence (AI). 'The ultimate search engine would understand everything in the world. It would understand everything that you asked it and give you back the exact right thing instantly,' Mr Page told an audience...." May 23, 2006: Opening the doors to co-operative software. By Simon Hendery. The New Zealand Herald & nzherald.co.nz. "Peter Harrison. Who: President, NZ Open Source Society. ... Next big thing: Artificial intelligence. 'Eventually that's going to be one of the fundamental changes in how we use computers and how we interact with them.'" May 22, 2006: Autonomous Underwater Vehicles: Look Out Jules Verne. By Jon Erickson. Dr. Dobb's Portal Blog. "Autonomous Underwater Vehicles are 'unmanned, untethered submersible robots that are capable of carrying out missions autonomously'. What's fascinating about them is that they're a little bit robotics, AI, mechanical engineering, embedded systems, sensors, and software--and a whole lot of Jules Verne." May 22, 2006: Digital Planet, the weekly BBC World Service programme presented by Gareth Mitchell which reports on technology stories from around the globe. Listen to the programme in one of three formats. "On the 85th anniversary of the invention of robots, we look at what part they really do play in our lives. Bill Thompson visits an exhibition celebrating the robot in Cambridge and finds out that they were invented by the Czech playwright Karel Capek. In 1921.... Gareth looks to the future with artificial intelligence expert Joanna Bryson from the University of Bath. Need we really worry about Terminator-style robots taking over the world, or are automatic vacuum cleaners and lawnmowers the true pinacle of robotic development ? We also visit the Cybersonica exhibition at the Science Museum in London and get to grips with a machine based on a 19th century music box called the Schitzoporotica. It plays well-known tunes from its digital memory...." May 22, 2006: Kits let kids add science, engineering, math to art explorations. By G. Jeffrey MacDonald. The Boston Globe & boston.com. "During two decades of designing high-tech tools to encourage children's creativity, Mitchel Resnick has found robots disappointing in one respect: They rarely appeal to girls or to kids unexcited by science. 'Lots of kids like to play with robots, but not all kids,' says Resnick, an associate professor of learning research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That observation got him and fellow researchers in MIT's Lifelong Kindergarten project to imagine ''something with an artistic twist that would engage a wider range of kids than just classical robots.' Their brainchild makes its debut today as the Playful Invention Co. begins taking orders online for its new Cricket kits, which are designed to build on kids' interest in art and music while bringing science, math, and engineering into their artistic exploration." May 22, 2006: Scientists - Computers will be everywhere. United Press International. "Spanish scientists say this decade might become known as the dawn of pervasive computing, during which computers became embedded in nearly everything. The researchers say hardware exists that can easily accommodate features such as artificial intelligence and wireless connectivity and software is quickly catching up."
>>> Systems & Languages, Applications May 22, 2006: The SMART money's going on Capital firm packed with PhDs. By Scott Reid. Evening News & Scotsman.com. "An Edinburgh-based company working on an artificial intelligence system that removes the human element from high-volume financial trading has secured £50,000 in Scottish Executive funding. Level E Limited, which boasts six staff with PhDs in artificial intelligence among its eight-strong headcount, said the SMART award plus recent private investment of £112,000 would help it cover costs for a year. ... Chief executive Dr Sonia Schulenburg said: '... It creates a large number of virtual agents that are learning constantly as information is changing, developing several market strategies and then conducting the actual trade. The product can also be used as a decision-support system with human intervention.'" May 22, 2006: Their software idea puts them in the game - RIT students' program has potential for production. By David Tyler. Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. "Video game designers everywhere constantly hunt for new ways to add increased realism to their programs. One of the latest quests is the search for cinematic perspective, which provides the effortless camera shots that make your game experience feel more like being inside a movie. Two Rochester Institute of Technology students are working on a way to make the process quicker and more seamless, making games feel more open as the 'camera' automatically moves around a scene. Kingdon Barrett and Juozas Gaigalas plan to graduate next spring with degrees in computer science. By that time, they also hope their company, Tuesday Studios, will be well on its way to selling software. Their program uses artificial intelligence to help pick camera angles or cinematic styles based on situations in the game." May 22, 2006: Hearing aids, your latest accessory. By Mark Baard. The Boston Globe & boston.com. "The Delta [hearing aid] uses artificial intelligence to help clarify high-pitched sounds in noisy situations. Active boomers are going to need that kind of help to keep up with the pack in work and social situations, said Don Shum, vice president of Audiology & Professional Relations at Oticon." May 22, 2006: AI software attracts Cambridge University Press. By Liam Dann. The New Zealand Herald & nzherald.co.nz. "Auckland company Intuto has reached an agreement with Cambridge University Press to convert thousands of pages of resource material into an online format. Intuto and its software development subsidiary, KoComm, have developed an artificial intelligence software system that can digest expert knowledge and convert it into useful blocks of information for web-based study. The company believes RACE (Rapid Assessment and Conversion Engine) can convert data more quickly and efficiently than anything else on the market." May 21, 2006: Stennis Astro Camp adds summer Plus. The Times-Picayune & Nola.com. "Astro Camp, the summer day camp at NASA Stennis Space Center, is launching a new camp designed specifically for students ages 13 to 15: Astro Camp Plus. ... 'We developed Astro Camp Plus to hold the interest of teens,' said Maria Lott, Astro Camp director. 'The sessions are designed to match the school curricula at the sixth- through ninth-grade levels, incorporating computer technology and requiring the kids to come up with more sophisticated solutions. It should keep them on their toes.'" May 21, 2006: That's no lady, but she's a remarkably lifelike robot. By Justin McCurry. The Observer & Guardian Unlimited. "She is EveR-1, the world's second android and Seoul's latest attempt to crack the rapidly growing global market in intelligent robots. ... [Korean Institute for Industrial Technology (Kitech)] combined the facial characteristics of two popular Korean actresses and the body shape of another well-known entertainer to produce the 50 kg, 150 cm tall 'woman' in her twenties. But EveR-1 is more than just a pretty face. She is capable of displaying emotions, including happiness and anger, can interpret facial expressions and recognises 400 Korean words, enabling her to hold basic conversations." May 21, 2006: First U.S. team to reach finals of international programming competition places 14th. UNT News Service / available from North Texas e-News. "A team of three computer science students from the College of Engineering at the University of North Texas finished 14th among the best 30 teams to compete in the final round of the 6th International 24-hour Programming Contest in Budapest. ... Contest organizers say the major goal of the competition is to challenge and provide an opportunity for students and industry professionals involved in computer science and programming to measure their knowledge and ability in an extreme environment. ... During the 24 hours of the contest, the competing programmers had to perform tasks ranging from the preparation of an imaginary newspaper to managing a virtual country within the frames of a three-dimensional computer game to programming artificial intelligences for a four-round toy car race." May 21, 2006: Spelling and grammar mistakes go up in smoke - WhiteSmoke. By Karin Kloosterman. Israel21c. "Want to write a novel like John Grisham, give a speech like Churchill, or just impress people in chat rooms with your writing skills? Thanks to an Israeli software-developer, WhiteSmoke, you don't have to go to Harvard to sound like you've studied there. The company has developed an artificial intelligence tool that scans databases from news sites such as CNN and The New York Times, and studies documents from Harvard and Yale on an ongoing basis to learn how English sentences are used real-time in business, medicine and every-day life." May 20, 2006: The question of consciousness. Philosopher's Zone, presented by Alan Saunders. ABC Radio National. (A transcript and audio downloads are available.) "Alan Saunders: Hello, I'm Alan Saunders, welcome to The Philosopher's Zone. This week, a virtuoso public performance by one of the most important philosophers in the English-speaking world today: John Searle, Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Language at the University of California, Berkeley. He's talking at 'Towards a Science of Consciousness', a conference put on last month by the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona. His subject is dualism. More than 350 years ago, the great French philosopher, Rene Déscartes, declared that the mind is a thing that thinks and does not occupy space, whereas the body occupies space and does not think. The decisive argument for this, he said, is that body is by its nature divisible: you can cut it up into little pieces, but you can't do that with a mind. This appears to imply that the mind and the body have a different ontological status - in other words, you don't lump them together when you draw up your ontology, that's to say your inventory of what the universe contains. This is dualism, and John Searle's not happy with the idea. John Searle: I have been trying to get out of the consciousness business for a very simple reason: I think once we get it in a kind of shape where it admits of empirical study, it's essentially a problem for a neurobiologist. I mean, there are a lot of other problems for psychology and cognitive science, but the problems that most interest me are things are like, well, how exactly does it work in the brain? That, I see as a neurobiological problem. ... Now people always tell me it was very hard to define consciousness, but I think if you're just looking for the kind of commonsense definition that you get at the beginning of the investigation, and not at the hard-nosed scientific definition that comes at the end, it's not hard to give a commonsense definition of consciousness. Consciousness consists of those states of feeling or sentience or awareness...." May 19, 2006: Female tech researchers are no drop-outs. By Elaine Larkin. SiliconRepublic.com. "Female researchers do not find sectors such as science and technology as attractive as other sectors such as humanities and social sciences. However, according to a report presented at a conference in Vienna yesterday, female researchers in science and technology are less likely than their female counterparts in other disciplines to drop out. The report on Women in Science and Technology (WiST) -- The Business Perspective highlights the existence of a 'leaky pipeline' which sees a progressive decline in female representation at the higher stages of career progression. While this is evident in many areas of research, the report found that in the area of science, engineering and technology that is not so." May 19, 2006: Tech sector set to score at World Cup. By Maxim Kelly. ElectricNews.net. "Since 1993 the RoboCup Federation has used soccer to promote scientific progress in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence. At the junior RoboCup qualifiers in Dublin last week, Dr Ashley Green of the European Space Agency told ENN that since IBM's Deep Blue computer beat Kasparov in 1996, 'soccer is the new grand challenge to replace chess'. However, the ultimate aim of these robotics experts is to construct a team of completely autonomous humanoid robots capable of beating the Fifa World Cup champions by 2050. Remote controls are strictly forbidden." May 19, 2006: All Japan Robot Sumo Tournament - Interviews (Part 2) & Video. Posted by Lem. Robots Dreams. "In this second part of the All Japan Robot Sumo Tournament interview series we explore some of the technical background behind the sumo robots and the strategies and tactics used by some of the top Japanese competitors. In addition to patiently answering all of our endless questions, the officials provided us with video clips from the 2005 competitions (see video below) that clearly, and dramatically, illustrate many of the topics they touched upon. ... .. Lem: You mentioned before that roughly half the robot entries are autonomous and half are radio controlled (R/C). The sumo action seems so fast. How can an operator possibly control the robot that quickly? [Takeshi ] Kanai: Each team designs their own entry, so their strategies vary quite a bit. Of course, the autonomous robots have sensors to track their opponents and also the edges of the ring. Some of them have as many as five sensors and can track their opponents even when they manage to get behind them. Although the R/C entries are basically remote controlled by their operators, there's no rule to prohibit the use of sensors and autonomous behavior as well. As a result, some of the top robots use R/C for general positioning and movement, then the operator will hit a button that locks the robot on target to attack using its sensors and autonomous control program.
>>> Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Robots, Sports May 19, 2006: Robots Begin World Domination At Oregon Museum Of Science & Industry May 27. NewsAshland.com. "On Saturday, May 27, visitors to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) will have a chance to see what robots look like in real life and how we use and interact with them in hands-on labs, when the highly anticipated Robots + Us exhibit makes its debut. Robots + US will give OMSI visitors a lighthearted look at modeling artificial life after the real thing, without the threat of robot world domination! Robots + Us encourages OMSI visitors of all ages to compare sci-fi fantasies of robots with today's technical realities and to explore why it's so hard to build robots to be like humans. ... It is also about some persistent questions with a surprisingly long history: Could a machine ever be alive? Could we make machines that exceed our own capabilities? Are we, too, a kind of machine?" May 18, 2006: A Meeting Of The Metal Minds. Science News blog from James Vlahos. Popular Mechanics. "Robots vacuum our homes, search for landmines, perform surgery, and explore Mars. They’ve been taught to dance, play chess, arm wrestle, and ballroom dance. For all of this service and goodwill toward men, robots deserve credit, but fictional and cinematic slams are the norm. You know the plot: Machines rebel, humanity is enslaved, and Asimov rolls in his grave. One hears of no such silliness at the 2006 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), held this week at the Walt Disneyworld Hilton in Orlando, Florida. ... This year’s theme is 'Humanitarian Robotics.' ... A primary role of these lifelike robots is not to advance human mimicry but rather human understanding. Scientists formulate theories about how various systems of the human body work, and roboticists believe that some of these theories can be verified or rejected by building robots."
>>> Robots, Cognitive Science, AI Overview, Conferences (@ Resources for Students), Science Fiction, Applications May 18, 2006: Flocking birds inspire information organisation. By Tom Simonite. NewScientist.com news. "In the age of the internet, there is so much information flying around it can be hard to sort through it all. Now a system that organises information by mimicking the way birds of the same species flock together could help." May 18, 2006: UCI senior receives fellowship - Grant pays for three years of graduate study in exchange for 21-year-old's contribution to research and teaching. By Slav Kandyba. The Orange County Register & ocregister.com. "For the next three years, Arthur Uy Asuncion Jr. won't have to worry about how he will pay for graduate school. The 21-year-old Cypress resident and UC Irvine senior has received a prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. ... Q: What will the fellowship allow you to do? [A:] This fellowship is going to fully fund my graduate education and it will allow me to work on the topic that I proposed trying to do cross-disciplinary work between distributed computing and artificial intelligence. Q: What do you hope to accomplish after completing the graduate study? ..." May 18, 2006: Searching for the soul in the machine. IST Results. "If computers could create a society, what kind of world would they make? Thanks to the work of an ambitious project that adds a whole new meaning to the phrase, ‘computer society’, in which millions of software agents will potentially evolve their own culture, we could be about to find out. With funding from the European Commission’s Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) initiative of the IST programme, five European research institutes are collaborating on the NEW TIES [New and Emergent World models Through Individual, Evolutionary, and Social Learning] project to create a thoroughly 21st-century brave new world -- one populated by randomly generated software beings, capable of developing their own language and culture. This kind of social interaction is a tantalising prospect for the artificial intelligence (AI) experts, computer scientists, sociologists and linguists working on NEW TIES. ... 'For the linguists and sociologists, the main motivation is to study existing processes in societies and languages,' [Gusz] Eiben explains. 'The computer scientists on the other hand want to develop and study machine collaboration, with an eye on future applications in robotics. Robots in the home are only five to 10 years away, and in the future we might be able to send robot rescue teams to disaster areas to search for survivors. They could even one day travel to Mars. Obviously, it will be important for them to be able to cooperate with each other -- especially if they are in a hostile environment.'"
>>> Multi-Agent Systems, Agents, Social Science, Machine Learning, Robots, Applications, Artificial Life, Ethical & Social Implications May 17, 2006: MIT's Speech Recognition Baby. By Jason Lee Miller. WebProNews.com. "The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) may be on the verge of a revolutionary development in speech and video algorithmic technology. Their test subject: a 9 month-old baby boy, who is the center of a project called 'The Human Speechome Project.' ... [Deb] Roy's team will be developing machine learning systems with a variety of speech and video processing algorithms to test hypotheses of how children learn and to make sense of behavioral and communication patterns embedded in the data collected. They hope to, though analysis, to expose basic movement patterns with the home (e.g., a person moving from room to room), as well as more complex behaviors (e.g., changing a diaper or putting away dishes). ... It's interesting enough what may come of what we learn about human speech development, but [Frank] Moss informs us that the research could have a wide impact on other technological realms. 'Equally exciting are the 'spinoff' opportunities that could result from this research. The innovative tools that are being developed for storing and mining thousands of terabytes of speech and video data offer enormous potential for breaking open new business opportunities for a broad range of industries -- from security to Internet commerce,' Moss said."
>>> Cognitive Science, Machine Learning, Applications; also listen to this related radio broadcast May 17, 2006: Artificial intelligence firm helps Air Force study enemies. Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal. "Stottler Henke Associates Inc. said Wednesday it signed a $750,000 contract with the U.S. Air Force to develop intelligent adversary modeling tools. The San Mateo-based company said the tool will more realistically portray the behaviors of opposing forces for 'course of action' analyses. Once completed, the company said, the new tool will also have applications in commercial video game development...." May 17, 2006: State students net $69,000 in awards at science event. The Arizona Republic & azcentral.com. "Arizona students are bringing home more than $69,000 in scholarships and prizes from the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair 2006, presented by Agilent Technologies. The fair is the world's largest exhibition of the world's young scientists and inventors in Grades 9-12. A pool of 1,482 competitors entered from 47 countries, regions and territories. ... Here are the Arizona winners and their projects: ... Andrew David Gamalski, 17, Hamilton High School in Chandler and Vinayak Muralidhar, 16, from Corona del Sol High School in Tempe Project: A New Algorithm To Minimize Factory Inefficiency Through Penalty Reduction. Award of $500, American Association for Artificial Intelligence. Also Second-Place Grand Award, Team Projects, $1,500. ..." May 17, 2006: Oregon students score. The Oregonian & OregonLive.com.. "Oregon students score: ... Students from Oregon high schools won $171,800 in scholarships and awards at the Intel International Science Fair last week in Indianapolis. ... Winners from Oregon: ... Alan Garrett Pierce, $500, American Association for Artificial Intelligence; Nathaniel John Broussard, $500, American Association for Artificial Intelligence; ..." May 16, 2006: Students Compete in Robotics Competition - High school students competing at the FIRST robotics competition learn science and life lessons. [Transcript of television broadcast. Audio & video also available.] Correspondent Tom Bearden reports. The Online NewsHour: the Web site of the NewsHour with Jim Leher. "TOM BEARDEN: The $1,000 robot had been stopped cold when a key that cost about a nickel fell into the drive train. It was heartbreaking, but dealing with breakdowns like this is exactly what FIRST is all about. FIRST, an acronym meaning 'For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology,' was the brainchild of Dean Kamen, an inventor best known for developing the Segway scooter and the iBOT wheelchair. DEAN KAMEN, Founder, FIRST: The skills these kids learn when they participate in FIRST give them career opportunities. Do you want to be an electric engineer, physicist? Do you want to do proteomics, or genomics, or nanotechnology? What exciting career do you want to go into? We're helping you make that option possible. TOM BEARDEN: Kamen says helping kids develop a passion for math, science and engineering is vital to the country's future. ... TOM BEARDEN: It was back in January when this year's competition began with a kickoff rally in New Hampshire that was beamed by satellite to auditoriums all over the country. For the nearly 30,000 high school students who participate, this is their first glimpse of what game they will have to design their robots to play. ANNOUNCER: This year's game is played on a 26-by-54-foot field. TOM BEARDEN: This year, it was a complicated mix of shooting a ball through a high goal for three points, into low goals for one point, and climbing up a ramp at end of the two-and-a-half minute game to score bonus points. Just minutes after the kickoff rally ended, Team 159 huddled to plot their strategy. ... ANGELINA SALDIVAR, High School Senior: I really didn't think that I could do anything like this, engineering. I'm a Hispanic female. And doing engineering or even going to college was something that was completely out of the question for me. And really being through the program, it taught me to believe in being able to achieve anything." May 16, 2006: An artist at RPI who draws on the future - Graduate student in electronic arts uses provocative acts to make people think about issues. By Kate Perry. TimesUnion.com. "Last February, Boryana Rossa and her colleagues sent a decree of robot rights by e-mail to the Pope's people at the Vatican. And the staff of the Bulgarian Orthodox patriarch. It should be considered a sin, the decree said, to kill an artificially created, sentient being (that is, a robot). Robots have the right to chose their own religion, it continued. An entity or creature created by humans must be considered equal to humans. Rossa, a Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute student, and the members of her artistic collective, Ultrafuturo, weren't being funny when they sent the e-mail. 'In terms of artificial intelligence, you can't have an intelligent entity without the possibility of free will,' she said. 'It has to have choices and intentions, otherwise it is like a toaster.' ... Ultrafuturo critiques science, specifically the uses of artificial intelligence and the responsibilities that come with that. But Rossa said statements Ultrafuturo makes about robots can often be applied to the marginalized in society, such as women, homosexuals, minorities and animals. ... 'One of the key things Boryana is interested in, and I am as well, is encouraging public debate around scientific practices,' [Kathy] High said. .... Even if she's demanding rights for robots, Rossa said being over-the-top is important because provocative acts are more likely to get people thinking about societal issues." May 16, 2006: Chess Olympiad - Chess and Culture: The 37th Chess Olympiad will be an event full of chess, and full of cultural activities related to the game. By Roberto Rivello. ChessBase.com. "In the same days there will be a Computer Olympiad, again organised by the ICGA. Every year games subjected to testing change in relation to the current interest of the scientific community. In Turin, programs can be submitted for 28 different games, including Chinese Chess, Go, Shogi, Clobber, Dots and Boxes, Computational Pool, and, for the first time, Kriegsspiel! It has a strongly scientific imprint and attracts leading researchers in the field of software for games of strategy other than chess. The development of programs for such games is recognised as an extremely fertile field for Artificial Intelligence research. ... [A] series of conferences will be held during the Olympiad, regarding the most sensitive and recent themes; questions such as the state of the art of games software, theoretical developments and relations with advances in research; in addition to new techniques of Artificial Intelligence as applied to games and social and cognitive aspects of computer chess." May 16, 2006: Hawaii students earn awards at science fair. starbulletin.com. "Members of Hawaii's student delegation to the International Science and Engineering Fair last week in Indianapolis brought home an array of awards from the competition. ... Lucia Mocz, 15, Mililani High School -- $500 from the American Association for Artificial Intelligence; Honorable Mention from the American Statistical Association. Project: 'Computer-aided Identification of Cancer from Photomicrographs by Entropy Analysis.'" May 16, 2006: Futurist sees world changed by technology. By Katherine Cox. The Stanford Daily Online. "Sponsored by the ASSU Speakers Bureau, [Ray] Kurzweil gave a talk titled 'The Coming Merger of Human and Machine: the Radical Expansion of Human Longevity and Intelligence' last night in Dinkelspiel Auditorium. ... Kurzweil’s forecasts for the artificial modeling of human intelligence were dependent on these rapid advancements in biology and the current and predicted capabilities of nanotechnologies. He said he was confident that 'the hardware needed to create a human level of intelligences will be available in the 2020s.' ... Bryan Ellis, a first-year graduate student in electrical engineering added, 'It was hard to believe that supercomputers could overtake human intelligence in a few decades, but I guess the data seems to indicate that it is a possibility.'" May 16, 2006: Testing Artificial Intelligence on German Soccer Fields. By Sean Sinico. Deutsche Welle. "German researchers play a key role in developing the robots that Robocup organizers hope will take the field against a human soccer team -- and win -- by 2050. Human scouting can start this June in Bremen. ... How far [Sven] Behnke and his team have come with their robots will be put to the test next month in Bremen, where robots on some 350 teams from 40 countries play in four size-based leagues and one computer-based simulation league at the 10th Robot World Cup, an international initiative designed to research and development of robotics and artificial intelligence. ... Just like the players on soccer's more traditional pitches, the robots make their own decisions when it comes to shooting or passing. ... To help speed up development, the competitions are accompanied by scientific conferences where researchers are able to share information and detail how their droids process the thousands of decisions involved in a soccer game. ... 'The soccer tournament is a good test area for many aspects of what is being developed,' [Peter] Dauscher said, adding that advanced mechanics, photo recognition and artificial intelligence are among the many skills researchers are still trying to teach robots. 'In the game the robots see the ball, their opponents and the goalposts, in a daily situation it could be the cat, a chair and the oven.'" May 15, 2006: A New Robot Rolls, and a New Prize Is Set - The quest to build autonomous vehicles for the battlefield continues. By W. Wayt Gibbs. In Focus feature from Scientific American. "At the podium was Steve Welby, who directs the office of tactical technology at the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). 'And now please join me,' Welby said, 'in congratulating Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Center, as we present Crusher.' Up went the high bay door, and out from a cloud of dry ice fog rolled two of the most intimidating robotic vehicles yet to emerge from DARPA's decade-long quest to build autonomous vehicles for the battlefield. ... At the same time as DARPA pays the NREC group to take a steady and predictable path toward autonomy, the agency is also holding a third Grand Challenge competition to encourage more out-of-the-box approaches. Two days after the Crusher roll-out, DARPA officials invited roboticists, professional and otherwise, to submit entries for an 'Urban Challenge' to be held in November 2007." [A video of Crusher can be seen on page 2 of the article.] May 15, 2006: Photo in the News - Female Android Debuts in S. Korea. By Victoria Gilman. National Geographic News. "She can hold a conversation, make eye contact, and express joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness. But is she good with kids? These school-age tots seem to be making friends with EveR-1, a female android that made her debut this month in South Korea. The robot was built by Baeg Moon-hong, a senior researcher with the Division for Applied Robot Technology at the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology (KITECH) in Ansan, just south of Seoul." May 15, 2006: Kathleen lets the robots take over. CEN News & Cambridge Evening News. "Man is a robot with defects,' wrote Emile Cioran, in The Trouble with Being Born. By their very nature, robots have always raised questions about what it means to be human. The word robot was coined by Czech writer Karel Capek in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), first performed in 1921. Now, 85 years on, a Cambridge PhD student is reviving the play, alongside a series of robot-themed events. ... Robots through the ages will be examined through a series of films, talks with invited speakers, and an exhibition of photographs of robots from the USA, UK and Japan." May 15, 2006: Spam Blogs Pollute Internet Searches - Spam blogs, known as splogs, are invading the Web by the millions. Blog search engines are trying to stamp them out, but more work needs to be done. By Christopher Heun. InformationWeek. "There are millions of spam blogs, or splogs, with more added every day. 'It's not getting any better, and it's probably getting worse,' says Tim Finin, a computer science professor at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who co-wrote a paper about detecting splogs that was presented at an American Association for Artificial Intelligence conference in March." May 15, 2006: Queen Creek students show off robotics skills. azcentral.com. "The work of Queen Creek High School students will be demonstrated at the Arizona Science Center on Saturday in conjunction with 'Robots: The Interactive Exhibition.' This was the first year that Queen Creek students had their own robotics-competition team, which consisted of 14 students. The team is led by teacher Matt Chicci. The 'Robots' exhibition at the Science Center was inspired by the 20th Century Fox/Blue Sky Studios movie Robots, and immerses visitors in the world of real-life robotics technology. The tour allows guests to interact with characters from the film while expanding their knowledge about the robot technology." May 15, 2006: UK businesses snub cheap robots. The Engineer Online. "A survey of robot sales in the UK produced by British Automation and Robot Association (BARA), based at the University of Warwick, has revealed UK small businesses are failing to exploit a significant fall in price of industrial robots at a time when US figures are showing record sales of robots to US small businesses. The BARA/University of Warwick survey shows a continuing trend for robot prices to fall. ... Dr Ken Young, chairman of BARA, said, 'It seems strange to me that our culture drives us to work hard rather than to adopt technologies that allow us to work smart.'" May 15, 2006: Largest Cosmic Map Confirms How Little We Know. By Sara Goudarzi. SPACE.com. "The new cosmic map is a three-dimensional atlas of more than one million galaxies reaching a distance greater than 5 billion light-years. The most distant galaxies in the universe are more than 13 billion light-years away, and not all of them have been catalogued or even discovered. The map was created using a new artificial intelligence technique that helps overcome challenges to figuring out how far galaxies are in a photograph that renders them all essentially in two dimensions. 'By using very accurate distances of just 10,000 galaxies to train the computer algorithm, we have been able to estimate reasonably good distances for over a million galaxies,' said Adrian Collister of the University of Cambridge. 'This novel technique is the way of the future.'" May 14, 2006: Robotic Society hosts festival - Whatcom residents can learn to make their own robots. By Kira Millage. The Bellingham Herald. "R2D2 and C-3PO weren't there, but Nicky Mangan still bounced around excitedly as he examined the robots on display at the second annual Bellingham Robotics Festival on Saturday. 'It's amazing that people could build these machines,' the 7-year-old robot enthusiast said, after watching a robotic dog play with a rubber ball. 'What's mainly exciting me is I've never been here before.' He was among hundreds of people who came through the Bellingham Public Library to see robots constructed by members of the Bellingham Artificial Intelligence Robotic Society. ... 'We want to promote artificial intelligence and robotics in Bellingham and Whatcom County,' said [Jianna] Zhang, president of BAIRS. 'We want to get people to know exactly what a robot is and how they can make one. We want to let everyone know they can make a robot.' 'It's so wonderful,' said Arlan Norman, dean of College of Sciences and Technology at WWU. 'To have something in science and math that combines with the community is essential these days.'" May 14, 2006: Farmers fear worker shortage - Higher crop yield, tougher border controls contribute to crunch. By Steve Wilhelm. Puget Sound Business Journal / available from MSNBC.com. "Growers are taking several initiatives of their own, including seeking federal visas to bring in more farmworkers from other nations, and developing new technologies, including mechanization, that will lower the need for workers at all. ... Jim McFerson, manager of the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission, said his organization is working on a number of new technologies, such as mobile picking platforms that do away with ladders, to increase the productivity of workers. With a $4 million annual budget, the commission is funded by a levy on producers. 'Ultimately we're gearing toward using computer vision, along with robotics, to automate or semi-automate mundane tasks,' he said." May 14, 2006: Boulder Children Get a Hi-Tech Headstart. By Rivka Chaya Berman. Lubavitch News Service. "Matan Bilavsky, who turns ten later this month, has already built robots that can climb ramps and sumo wrestle with other 'bots. So has Nathan Hill, and he’s only six. Technological wizardry in the genes of Boulder, CO, youngest residents finds expression at Chabad Lubavitch of Boulder County’s monthly Youth Zone robot building workshops.... The success of the program proves the axiom understood by vibrant Chabad centers: Know your community. Boulder is in the heart of Colorado’s science and technology corridor. Two of the world’s ten fastest supercomputers are in the state. Cyberstate 2005, a state-by-state overview of the high technology industry, ranked Colorado number one in the U.S. for concentration of high tech workers; 91 of every 1000 private workers are classified as high tech." May 14, 2006: Robotic project gets £3,000 boost. BBC News. "A school in Worcestershire has been awarded £3,000 by the UK's top scientific society so pupils can design and build robots. The Royal Society funding will help Droitwich High School's science club, which aims to build search-and-rescue robots within 12 months. ... The Royal Society aims to promote excellence in science." May 14, 2006: Robots 'R' us? The machines are getting smarter every day. Human beings better be thinking about science fiction becoming reality. Opinion by Charles Rubin. post-gazette.com. "The recent unveiling of the 'Crusher' robotic combat truck by the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute makes it clear that Pittsburgh is a leader in this increasingly important area of technology. After decades of slow change and unfulfilled promise, it may be that robots and artificial intelligence are on the verge of transforming what people do and how we do it. Yet popular culture has long reflected how the rise of robots is not a prospect that everyone greets with enthusiasm. If people's fears are to be addressed honestly, the hopes behind the serious work of invention going on here will need to be matched by equally serious thought about the consequences for the human future these cutting-edge efforts will have. At first glance, the benefits of ever more sophisticated robots are obvious. ... In our world of dumb robots and dangerous jobs, concerns about artificial intelligence out-of-control are easy to dismiss as too speculative. But had you presented today's technologies to the 'great generation' back when they were young, many would have sounded just as implausible -- to say nothing of how they would have sounded to generations now past. Indeed, it is a truism among those who think about the implications of the accelerating rate of technological change that if speculation does not sound like science fiction, it is probably missing the boat. ... At another extreme, imagine an extended sphere of moral concern like animal rights advocacy, which would protect robots on a par with humans, the way Lieutenant Commander Data was treated by the crew of the starship Enterprise." May 14, 2006: The power of their knowledge - Stellar students' studies span the gamut, and many are already applying them. By Bob Braun. The Star-Ledger. "She was designated a Mort Pye Scholar while a senior at Highland Park High School in 2002, the highest honor in the program begun by The Star-Ledger in 1988. It is named after the paper's editor who began the program at the direction of Donald Newhouse, president of The Star-Ledger. Since its beginning, the program has supported 216 young men and women. Like Kelly, three other Mort Pye Scholars -- two at Harvard, one at Stanford -- also are pursuing research in multidisciplinary fields. Roger Grosse of Berkeley Heights is combining studies of the brain with artificial intelligence to determine whether computers can mimic the neural processes involved in vision. Grosse, who says he is likely to pursue a doctorate in artificial intelligence once he graduates from the Palo Alto, Calif., university next year, also is studying whether computers can be taught whether one written or spoken sentence logically follows another. ... Grosse also is working on a computer that listens to music and then develops a program showing how the composition was put together. ... Each year, 12 scholars are selected -- a Mort Pye Scholar and 11 finalists from the newspaper's primary circulation areas. The Mort Pye Scholar receives a full, four- year tuition scholarship, while the finalists receive $12,000 awards over four years." May 13, 2006: UI's Beckman Institute blazes trail for interdisciplinary research. By Jim Paul. Associated Press / available from bellevillenewsdemocrat.com. "Opened in 1989, the Beckman has become the nation's model for interdisciplinary research, a collaboration of scientists and researchers from academic endeavors as far flung as physics and psychiatry, or engineering and linguistics. ... The Beckman has shattered the notion that science is a lonely pursuit. Instead, its scientists share their knowledge to conjure new ideas for solving problems, sometimes as they share lunch in the atrium or bump into each other in the corridors of the five-story building. ... The institute's research focuses on three broad themes: biological intelligence, human-computer intelligent interaction and molecular and electronic nanostructures." May 13, 2006: Thai students receive honours at Intel's global science competition - Four Thai students have won preliminary awards at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), which has 1,190 projects from 47 countries in competition. The Nation (Bangkok). "Nat Piyapramote, 17, of Ratchaburi's Sarasit Phithayalai School, won two awards, one from the Association for Computing Machinery and another from the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. His project is called 'Statistical-based Adaptive Binarisation for Document Imaging'." May 13, 2006: Drummers tune in to robot rhythm. New Scientist (Issue 255: page 27). "Drum machines have done drummers out of a lot of work, so a robot percussionist might be expected to pile on the misery. But not Haile. Its developer, Gil Weinberg of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta claims it will help drummers rather than hinder them. ... Weinberg now plans to use genetic algorithms to modify the beats in real time, to come up with new patterns." May 12, 2006: Right questions key to data mining - Finding phone links possible but difficult. By Jon Van. Chicago Tribune. "Connecting the dots is difficult, but for homeland security agents, the real trick is figuring out where the dots are and which ones need connecting. ... The White House hasn't confirmed the NSA program, but in December, an official of DARPA, a Defense Department agency that funds advanced research, published a paper in an academic journal that suggests an ambitious role for link mining. 'Metaphorically, link mining offers the potential not only for connecting the dots, but for determining which dots to connect, a far more difficult task,' wrote Ted Senator, who stipulated he was expressing his own views, not those of DARPA or the government. The science of connecting the dots began decades ago when sociologists began studying social networks, charting people's connections with each other by hand, said Karrie Karahalios, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign." May 12, 2006: Smarter than thou? Stanford conference ponders a brave new world with machines more powerful than their creators. By Tom Abate. San Francisco Chronicle & SFGate.com. "Is technology poised to develop machines that can outsmart their human creators? And what will happen to mere mortals if such superintelligent machines arise? These will be among the questions pondered when experts in artificial intelligence, brain research and other futuristic fields gather at Stanford University on Saturday for what is being called the Singularity Summit. ... The speakers' lineup will include inventor and author Ray Kurzweil, whose recent book, 'The Singularity Is Near,' argues that a fusion of machine and biological intelligence is not only imminent but beneficial. ... More-skeptical speakers will include Douglas Hofstadter, a cognitive scientist at Indiana University who is probably best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, 'Gödel, Escher, Bach.' 'I don't think it's inconceivable that some kind of singularity entity could eventually have superior intelligence to humans, but I'd be very surprised if anything remotely like this happened in the next 100 to 200 years,' Hofstadter said, adding that if and when superintelligent machines arise, the question will be, 'whether we become animals in the zoo, or go extinct or just coexist (with it) like ants.' ... In a way, the daylong summit is shaping up as the Bay Area coming-out party for the tech-inspired philosophy called transhumanism. In a nutshell, transhumanism holds that genetics, nanotechnology and robotics are converging, creating the potential for 'human enhancements.' ... Although little known outside technological circles, transhumanism inspires intense opposition from ethical watchdog groups that dispute the notion that such technological tweaking would represent progress."
>>> The Future, Ethical & Social Implications, Systems; also see this other related interview May 11, 2006: Fuzzy maths - In a few short years, Google has turned from a simple and popular company into a complicated and controversial one. The Economist. "The breakthrough that made their search engine so popular was the realisation that the chaos of the internet had an implicit mathematical order. By counting, weighting and calculating the link structures between web pages, Messrs [Larry] Page and [Sergey] Brin were able to return search results more relevant than those of any other search engine. ... Since its stockmarket debut, however, Google has been adding new and often quite different products.... At a maximum, the transformation goes quite a bit further. George Dyson, a futurist who has spent time at Google, thinks that the company ultimately intends to link all these digital synapses created by its users into what H.G. Wells, a British science-fiction writer, once called the 'world brain'. Google, Mr Dyson thinks, wants to fulfil the geeks' dream of creating 'artificial intelligence'. Passing the so-called 'Turing test', created by Alan Turing, a British mathematician, to determine whether a machine can be said to be able to think, would be the ultimate reward. But many who deal with Google in their daily lives are getting fed up with such grandiose notions." May 11, 2006: Making Computers Smarter - Scientists at IBM cognitive conference hope to create computers that act just like the human brain. Red Herring. "Computers seeking to emulate the human brain will have to abandon current structures and become more organic, scientists and researchers said at IBM’s annual Almaden Institute conference in San Jose, California. The theme of this year’s conference, cognitive computing, had experts declaring Wednesday that traditional software programs emulating behavior should be tossed away. Computers based on neuroscience and psychology more accurately reflect the way the brain works, they said. ... 'The brain isn’t like a [current] computer. It’s more like an evolutionary jungle,' said Nobel Prize winner Gerald Edelman, director of the Neurosciences Institute, which devises and tests theories on how the brain works. 'They learn by making mistakes, just like we do,' said Dr. Edelman. He believes cognitive computing focuses on meeting a goal, while current artificial intelligence technology is concerned too much about following software instructions and can’t learn from errors. Though his organization focuses on theory, Dr. Edelman is also involved in practical applications -- such as creating robots like Darwin X and BrainWorks. They can learn similar to the way humans or animals do. BrainWorks won the 2005 RoboCup, a soccer-like event for robots."
>>> Cognitive Science, Machine Learning, Neural Networks & Connectionist Systems, Systems, Applications, Conferences (@ Resources for Students) May 11, 2006: Game Days - Feeling Some Euphoria. Blog by John Gaudiosi. washingtonpost.com. "The thing that most impressed me as I walked back to my hotel (I always like to be within walking distance of the [E3 Video Game] convention to avoid LA's nasty traffic) was the Euphoria technology that LucasArts was demonstrating in their booth. In essence, the licensed technology allows game makers to create artificial intelligence that behaves like real human beings." May 11, 2006: Smart house monitors seniors. By Jennifer Matthews. News 14 Carolina. "When elderly people start to have memory problems, they might have a tough time remembering to take their medications. Some scientists are using wireless technology to help solve the problem, in hopes that these patients can remain independent. ... Research Summary: ... Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, Ore., are developing technologies and monitoring systems that will enable earlier detection of dementia. Researchers outfitted the homes of 50 older adults with devices that record activities in the house and then send the information to a person offsite. ... Paying people to monitor and interpret the information gathered by the sensors would be the main significant cost. Scientists are, however, creating artificial intelligence computer programs that would be able to combine information from a variety of sensors and tracking devices to assess situations in which mobility problems or dementia may be occurring." May 11, 2006: Trends hint at a golden era of nanotechnology - Innovations like robotic blood cells portend a “golden era” of nanotechnology. Commentary by Ray Kurzweil. Science & Theology News. "One of the profound implications is that we are understanding our biology as information processes. We have 23,000 little software programs inside us called genes. ... A robotic white blood cell is also being designed. A little more complicated, it downloads software from the Internet to combat specific pathogens. If it sounds very futuristic to download information to a device inside your body to perform a health function, I’ll point out that we’re already doing that. There are about a dozen neural implants either FDA-approved or approved for human testing. One implant that is FDA-approved for actual clinical use replaces the biological neurons destroyed by Parkinson’s disease. The neurons in the vicinity of this implant then receive signals from the computer that’s inside the patient’s brain. This hybrid of biological and nonbiological intelligence works perfectly well. The latest version of this device allows the patient to download new software to the neural implant in his brain from outside his body. These are devices that today require surgery to be implanted, but when we get to the 2020s, we will ultimately have the 'killer app' of nanotechnology, nanobots, which are blood cell-sized devices that can go inside the body and brain to perform therapeutic functions, as well as advance the capabilities of our bodies and brains. If that sounds futuristic, I’ll point out that we already have blood cell-size devices that are nano-engineered, working to perform therapeutic functions in animals. ... It is a mainstream view now among informed observers that by the 2020s we will have sufficient computer processing to emulate the human brain. The current controversy, or I would say, the more interesting question is, will we have the software or methods of human intelligence? To achieve the methods -- the algorithms of human intelligence -- a grand project to reverse-engineer the brain is under way. ... By early in the next decade, computers won’t look like today’s notebooks and PDAs; they will disappear, integrated into our clothing and environment. ... Every time you use Google you can see the power of nonbiological intelligence. Machines can remember things very accurately. They can share their knowledge instantly. We can share our knowledge too but at the slow bandwidth of language." May 10, 2006: Website helps users develop reading skills. USAToday.com. "IBM will give schools, libraries and community centers free access to a new website that allows young children and adults with limited English to practice reading aloud, the company announced Wednesday. The website uses newly developed speech-recognition software that 'listens' to readers and helps correct errors. The Reading Companion program...." May 10, 2006: Microsoft updates its office of the future. By Candace Lombardi. CNET News.com. "Metadata and more visuals. Therein lies the future of information technology as seen through the eyes of the Center for Information Work (CIW), the concept office on Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., campus. ... Future software will automatically search and harness metadata--identifying information tagged to items like appointments or Word documents--to automatically identify, organize and orchestrate common-sense relationships. These 'pattern recognitions' are then automatically acted on to anticipate the needs of the 'information worker.' ... The CIW fictional office space spans 3,500-square feet and anticipates hosting 10,000 visitors this year. Executives from Fortune 2000 companies, as well as dignitaries and journalists, have toured or interacted with the space since its birth in 2002." May 9, 2006: Emotional Rescue
- Are interactive soap operas the future of gaming? By Trevor Pritchard. CBC (The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). "[D]espite Grace's country-club parents and Trip's predilection for vintage Chardonnay, these are no upwardly mobile Toronto yuppies. They're fictional characters at the heart of Façade, hailed by the New York Times as 'the future of video games.' Equal parts soap opera and psychological experiment, Façade may one day be regarded as the program that sparked a new character-driven genre of video games: the interactive drama. ... The success of Façade has given rise to programs like Inform 7 and the upcoming Storytron, which make it easier for those without computer-science PhDs to craft their own interactive dramas. ... Though much has been written about the technological innovations behind Façade -- particularly its sophisticated language-recognition system -- if it is remembered in 50 years, it will likely be because it ushered in a generation of games based on emotional intelligence rather than hand-eye coordination. ... It's coincidental that one of the first programs that tried to respond intelligently to typed dialogue was ELIZA (1966), a primitive application that parodied self-help and relationship therapy. Since then, many games have expanded on the open-ended ideal. May 9, 2006: Flying robot attack "unstoppable." Agence France Presse / available from Yahoo! News. "It may sound like science fiction, but the prospect that suicide bombers and hijackers could be made redundant by flying robots is a real one, according to experts. ... Eugene Miasnikov of the Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies in Moscow said these kinds of threats must be taken more seriously. 'To many people UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) may seem too exotic, demanding substantial efforts and cost compared with the methods terrorists frequently use,' he said. 'But science and technology is developing so fast that we often fail to recognise how much the world has changed.'" May 9, 2006: Robo-roach could betray real cockroaches. By Tom Simonite. NewScientist.com news. "Cockroaches and other insects such as ants display 'collective intelligence'. This means that complex group behaviour emerges from simple individual action and interaction. Researchers from France, Belgium and Switzerland set out to create a robot capable of controlling a group of cockroaches by exploiting this emergent behaviour. The researchers came up with 'Insbot', a wheeled robot about the size of a small matchbox. ... 'This work has useful applications for influencing animals,' says Eduardo Izquierdo-Torres, who researches evolutionary artificial intelligence at Sussex University in the UK. 'But what is perhaps more important is understanding how intelligence can arise from simple components.' A better understanding of the rules that produce collective intelligence in cockroaches and ants could lead to innovative forms of artificial intelligence, says Izquierdo-Torres. 'It would be interesting to build our own intelligent societies of animals,' he says." [A related video is available via a link in the article.]
>>> Agents, Robots, Multi-Agent Systems, Artificial Life May 9-15, 2006: Ubiquity Interviews David Hanson. Ubiquity (Volume 7, Issue 18). "As CEO of Hanson Robotics, Inc, David Hanson creates robot faces that have been dubbed 'among the most advanced in the world' by the BBC, and inspired Science to label Hanson 'head of his class' in social robotics. ... UBIQUITY: So what would your definition of social robotics be and how does it differ from other kinds of robotics? HANSON: Social robotics is comprised of robots meant to engage people socially. ... UBIQUITY: Where do you see your research going? HANSON: I'm interested in making these robots easily custom-designed and mass producible -- in other words, easily designed using low-cost hardware, so that very inexpensive facial expressions can go with inexpensive walking robot bodies, as well as easily customized software. Therefore, we will be improving the software, improving the quality and rate of the speech recognition. The ability to design a custom personality and animation for the robots and to tweak and tune those things needs to get better. I see these as practical tools for bringing social robots into our lives, be they human-like or cartoon-like. These tools will be useful for artificial intelligence development. In an essay a couple of years ago AI pioneer Marvin Minsky lamented the fact that the graduate students and the AI lab at MIT had spent most of their time soldering instead of developing artificial intelligence. ... UBIQUITY: Look back on the history of artificial intelligence and social robotics and help us see it as a unified history. You remember Eliza, right? Start from Eliza, and tell us what's happened since then. ..." May 9, 2006: The ideas interview: Nick Bostrom. By John Sutherland. The Guardian & EducationGuardian.co.uk. "The World Transhumanist Association was founded in 1998 by the philosophers Nick Bostrom and David Pearce. It describes itself as 'an international nonprofit membership organisation which advocates the ethical use of technology to expand human capacities.' Its proclaimed goal is that people should be 'better than well', and that human development, in evolutionary terms, has not reached anything like an endpoint: all kinds of emerging technologies - neuropharmacology, artificial intelligence and cybernetics, and nanotechnologies - have the potential, it says, to enhance human abilities. In effect, it is interested in self-improvement and human perfectibility through the ethical application of science. In a world suffused with gloom, is the WTA project not wildly utopian, I ask Dr Bostrom, who is the association's principal spokesperson and teaches at Oxford University." May 9, 2006: Turning online feedback into trust. By Bruce McCabe. Australian IT. "If you are a regular seller on eBay, you will know feedback ratings from previous buyers are your most precious asset. ... Trawling through all the material, and there are often hundreds of postings for a high-volume eBay seller, can be a time-consuming headache, stopping us from using it to the extent we would like. ... Although media attention was focused on robots at the international conference on Intelligent User Interfaces in Sydney, one of the best paper awards was quietly given a group of Osaka University computer scientists, on summarising comments on auction sites and efficiently presenting results to buyers. Although the work of these scientists was concerned auction sites, it could be applied to feedback about anything else you care to name. The Osaka team is just one of many groups working to develop better systems, and no doubt some will deservedly make millions out of it. Much of their work relates to natural language processing and finding better methods for breaking down text." May 8, 2006: Science teaching gets weak diversity grade. USAToday.com. "A survey of 100 top technology executives gives the nation's public schools a C-minus for efforts to encourage girls and minorities to pursue science and technology careers. But the same survey finds that only 37% of these executives say their companies or employees support science education programs that help create 'the next generation of inventors, innovators and discoverers.'"
>>> Diversity & Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Industry Statistics May 8, 2006: CMU's Reddy to be honored by National Science Board. By Jennifer Curry. Pittsburgh Business Times. "Raj Reddy, a professor of computer science and robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, will be honored this week by the National Science Board. Reddy will receive the Vannevar Bush Award Tuesday for his research in robotics and intelligent systems and his contributions to national information and telecommunications policy. The award, which is named after Vannevar Bush, was established in 1980 to recognize outstanding contributions made in science and technology. Bush was an engineer and scientific adviser to presidents who played a key role in establishing the National Science Foundation in 1950. He also was one of the original pioneers of artificial intelligence and came up with an idea similar to today's World Wide Web. 'I would call him the first computer scientist,' Reddy said. 'In many ways, he was ahead of his times. I'm glad that I'm the first computer scientist to win this award. It's great that finally a computer scientist is getting this awarded that was named after him.'" May 8, 2006: Robotic tentacles get to grips with tricky objects. By David Hambling. NewScientist.com news. "Robotic 'tentacles' that can grasp and grapple with a wide variety of objects have been developed by US researchers. ... The tentacle-like manipulators, known as 'Octarms', resemble an octopus's limb or an elephant's trunk. They were developed through a project called OCTOR (sOft robotiC manipulaTORs), which involves several US universities and is funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). 'An elephant's trunk can pick up a peanut or a tree trunk,' says Ian Walker, a member of the project team from Clemson University in South Carolina. 'This ability, inherent in the OCTOR robots, gives OCTOR arms a huge advantage over conventional industrial robots.'" May 8, 2006: Sony at 60 - Developing for the Future. By Martyn Williams. Digit. "Here’s a selection of five technologies that could prove key to Sony’s future. ... Robotics and artificial intelligence: Aibo may have been a failure as a commercial product -- the cyber mutt was recently put down as part of Sony’s restructuring -- but it served to push development on a number of advanced technologies. Perhaps most obviously these include real-time processing and control of the robot’s motor and servo-system for movement." May 8, 2006: Keeping players in the game - Re-energizing the gaming industry: E3 trade show takes on added significance with the introduction of next generation of video game consoles and a looming DVD format battle. By Ryan Kim. San Francisco Chronicle & SFGate.com. "For an industry built upon carefree, escapist fun, the video game sector faces a number of crucial real-world concerns. To be sure, the $25.5 billion worldwide interactive entertainment industry has grown by leaps and bounds since the early days of video games. But domestic sales growth has slowed to a trickle in the last four years. There are growing concerns about spiraling game development costs, few new revenue streams, a lack of creativity in video games and a user market limited to young boys and men. ... More than 70,000 industry professionals, analysts and journalists will gather in Los Angeles at the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo this week to seek some answers to these questions. ... Developers are struggling with rising development costs. The cost of developing current-generation games has increased from about $4 million to $8 million, and for next-generation titles, from $10 million to $20 million. ... The industry is looking at streamlining development costs using new animation technology that can handle some of the work through artificial intelligence. ... While new ideas will be necessary to expand the market, many developers say they are confident many of the technological breakthroughs made possible through the marriage of next-generation hardware and software will also be a powerful draw for customers. Not only are the graphics and sound in next-generation games extremely realistic, they also sport advanced game play and in some cases artificial intelligence that creates truly unique experiences for gamers." May 8, 2006: Video Games Struggle to Find the Next Level. By Robert Levine. The New York Times & nytimes.com. "To succeed, Army of Two will need to impress hard-core gamers, and it is made to show off the processing power and advanced graphics of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. ... 'They just paid all this money for a machine and they want to see what it can do,' said Dan Hsu, the editor in chief of Electronic Gaming Monthly. Army of Two uses what the development team calls 'high dynamic range lighting,' meaning players will have to adjust to very dark or light spaces, just as the human eye does in real life. As the title indicates, players can get help from an onscreen partner, controlled by a friend or by the computer, which can respond to verbal orders issued through a headset and can learn to adapt to the player (the processing power of the new consoles enables impressive artificial intelligence)."
>>> Video Games, Systems, Applications, Resources for Educators May 8, 2006: A "Neural" Approach to the Market - This S&P portfolio uses a computer model that "learns" from its mistakes -- and has handily beaten its benchmark index. By Will Andrews. BusinessWeek Online. "For investors, experience is the best teacher -- even for a computer-driven stock-selection strategy. That's the basic approach of Standard & Poor's Neural Fair Value 25 portfolio, which employs the investment research outfit's proprietary quantitative stock ranking system. The Neural Fair Value (NFV) concept, which was created by Andre Archambault, S&P's director of quantitative strategies, starts with S&P's Fair Value stock valuation system, which uses earnings estimates and other metrics to determine whether stocks are trading above or below their fair value. The 'neural' part comes into play when Archambault's model, updated weekly, combs the 3,000 stocks in that group for the 25 names it thinks have superior price appreciation potential. ... The NFV approach, Archambault explains, is based on 'Neural Network' theory, an artificial intelligence concept that seeks to replicate the human brain's ability to learn from mistakes. ... [Q:] The Fair Value concept is familiar to many investors, but the part that makes this unique is the neural overlay. How does the artificial intelligence concept come into play? [A:] Neural nets are kind of like 'black boxes,' and they're being used in all kinds of industries. ..." May 7, 2006: ASI's robots do the dirty work. By Brice Wallace. Deseret Morning News. "Who would think that just a few feet off that dirt road sits a vehicle able to disable land mines, its roughneck exterior concealing high-tech innards built by a team of engineers nearby who toil making robots? But the high-tech hardware and software developed by Autonomous Solutions Inc. is helping a wide range of people -- everyone from farmers fighting battles with boredom to the military fighting the war on terror. Making robots that are as light as 5 pounds to systems that can automate 420-ton, three-story-tall, open-pit mining vehicles, ASI looks to keep people away from jobs that are repetitious or hazardous by letting machines do the work for them. 'We're looking for those industries with quantity potential that are dull, dirty and dangerous applications,' said Melvin Torrie, founder and chief executive officer. ... ASI's 'middle of Utah' location will change a little this summer when it moves into different digs about 14 miles away." May 7, 2006: Music made modern with robotic marvels. Kirsten Tagami. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution & ajc.com. "[I]f it hadn't been for that piano teacher, would [Gil Weinberg] have gone on to get a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's famed Media Lab and join the cutting edge of music technology? Weinberg has made it his life's work to invent new instruments that allow kids --- and untrained adults --- to experience the bliss of music-making before they ever have to play scales or study music theory. ... Expect more such ideas to originate in Atlanta: Weinberg is overseeing the creation of a new master's degree in music technology at Georgia Tech. The program was announced in March and is awaiting final approval from the Board of Regents, which is considered likely. ... The leader in the field of music technology, MIT professor Tod Machover, said Weinberg brings to the field 'a fine sense for human-machine interaction of a kind that is fun both for the human player and the human observer/listener. This work shows that intelligent physical systems can be worthy collaborators with people, even in the sensitive interplay of musical jamming.' That said, all members of the collaboration still have a lot of practicing to do --- in mechanical nuance, musical response and sonic variety, before this is ready for prime time. ... His robot plays a real drum but also uses certain aspects of artificial intelligence, such as perception, to do things few humans (except maybe Mozart) ever could, such as play back, in reverse, an extended musical motif from 10 minutes before." May 6, 2006: Q&A: IBM’s Dharmendra Modha - Cognitive computing guru wants to build smarter machines based on human brain. Red Herring. "In real life, computers that think like humans have eluded their would-be makers. Some experts believe that’s because scientists have focused too much on artificially creating intelligence rather than learning first how the mind works. The Almaden Institute at IBM’s San Jose, California, research facility will tackle the issue when it presents its cognitive computing conference Wednesday and Thursday. Dharmendra Modha, chair of the institute and IBM’s leader for cognitive computing, hopes scientists will accept his challenge to pursue neuroscience and psychology in order to create computers with minds. ... Q: Why use the term “cognitive computing” rather than the better-known “artificial intelligence”? A: The rough idea is to use the brain as a metaphor for the computer. The mind is a collection of cognitive processes -- perception, language, memory, and eventually intelligence and consciousness. The mind arises from the brain. The brain is a machine -- it’s biological hardware. Q: Are programs or algorithms that, for example, measure feelings and thoughts similar to this? A: No. Cognitive computing is less about engineering the mind than it is the reverse engineering of the brain. ..." May 6, 2006: Metro News Column. By Mercedes Olivera, Metro Columnist. The Dallas Morning News. "The first time 11-year-old Christian Gomez saw a real robot, it was two months ago at NASA's Johnson Space Center. He was impressed. But he decided he doesn't trust robots. 'Someday they're going to build them with artificial intelligence, and terrorists might take control of them and use them to hurt us,' he said this week. It's a very precocious observation. But his reaction about the trip to NASA was very typical: 'It was the most important thing I've ever done.' That's how the rest of the 11 students from Obadiah Knight Elementary School also felt about the annual field trip to Houston. ... It was the high point in the school year for the students who are in the school's talented and gifted program and who had been studying a space-centered curriculum. ... For the past 12 years, Southwest Airlines has funded the trip to help students see first-hand the wonders of science." May 5, 2006: Golden Anniversary For AI [podcast]. Dartmouth News: Views from the Green. "The field of artificial intelligence was officially named 50 years ago by Dartmouth Professor John McCarthy when he convened the 1956 Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence. In this podcast, philosophy professor Jim Moor discusses the history of AI and some of the philosophical questions he's been thinking about. He also talks about this summers's AI@50 conference, which will be held July 13-15 at Dartmouth." May 5, 2006: The poker machine. By Tim Harford. FT.com. "[Chris] Ferguson, who is reported to have won more than $5m in tournament play, is the best of a new generation of players trying to conquer poker with the branch of mathematics known as game theory. It is a curious struggle, one that has pitted bespectacled geeks against hardened gamblers. But the strangest thing is that poker intellectuals exist at all. Late in the 1920s, the most brilliant man in the world decided to work out the correct way to play poker. John von Neumann, the mathematician who would mastermind the development of the computer and the atomic bomb, had been struck by an engaging new conceit: he wanted to apply mathematical principles to social sciences and devise a theory to analyse everything from the breakdown of diplomatic negotiations to unexpected co-operation between enemies, or even the possibility of nuclear terrorism. He believed that if you wanted a theory that could explain life, you should start with a theory that could explain poker - game theory. ... Chris Ferguson soon emerged as a dominant player in this rarefied world. A computer-science graduate in the doctoral programme at University of California, Los Angeles, Ferguson was studying artificial intelligence, using game theory to help computers play board games. Ferguson was exposed to both poker and game theory at an early age. ... When Binion’s hosted the World Series of Poker in 1970, participation was by invitation only; a few hands were played and then everyone voted to honour the veteran Johnny Moss with the title of world champion. The 2005 World Poker Robot championship, the first such event, harked back to that tradition. The six software programs were there by invitation, and the true champion was not in doubt: the University of Alberta games research group, having defeated all electronic challengers for seven years, was asked to referee rather than play. ... [Darse] Billings and his colleagues have yet to produce software capable of beating Ferguson, who is seen as a particular challenge because he is unfazed by an opponent who gives away no physical clues. But they relish the challenge of besting a world champion who holds a doctorate in artificial intelligence and game theory. For now, though, just about any top human player can outplay the robots. In a pair of exhibition matches concluding the World Poker Robot championships, the big-name professional Phil 'Unabomber' Laak was recruited to play the machines. As a partisan crowd chanted 'Hu-mans! Hu-mans!' he swiftly disposed of both the Alberta program and the newly minted world champion, a program called PokerPro. Nobody was surprised. Artificial intelligence researchers see the same challenge in poker that von Neumann did nearly 80 years before them, that of understanding deception. At the moment von Neumann’s game theory remains the most successful approach, exemplified by the fearsome computer program, SparBot, which beats most of the humans who log on to the Alberta website to try their skill. 'I believe that bots will eventually play better than all human beings,' predicts Billings. Ferguson agrees. 'If poker robots had a tenth of the resources that were spent on chess, they’d already have beaten us.'" May 5, 2006: 'Baby' robot learns like a human. By Tom Simonite.NewScientist.com news. "A robot that learns to interact with the world in a similar way to a human baby could provide researchers with fresh insights into biological intelligence. Created by roboticists from Italy, France and Switzerland, 'Babybot' automatically experiments with objects nearby and learns how best to make use of them. This gives the robot an ability to develop motor skills in the same way as a human infant. ... Babybot's 'brain' is actually a cluster of 20 computers running several neural networks. This is software that mimics a biological neural system and learns in a similar way - by establishing and altering the strength of links between artificial neurons. By adjusting the neural network software and observing the robot's learning behaviour, the roboticists can test different neuroscience models." May 4, 2006: Open the pod bay doors, HAL. New Scientist (Issue 2550; page 27). "HAL 9000, the chatty computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey, has come a step closer to reality. A team crewing NASA's Mars Desert Research Station, a simulated planetary environment in the Utah desert, has been experimenting this week with software that can talk to the crew about the status of their spacecraft's systems. Using wireless headsets, crew members ask the computer questions ...." May 4, 2006: Record speed set by walking robot. BBC News. "A robot which is said to be the fastest of its kind when walking has been built by the universities of Glasgow, Stirling and Goettingen in Germany. RunBot is 30cm high and walks at the 'record-breaking' speed of 3.5 leg lengths per second. The 'minimalist' robot uses only a handful of sensors and neurons to establish walking and can adjust speed." May 4, 2006: Imagine an e-mail that can reveal your emotions. By Shane Schick. globeandmail.com. "No one who entered the Ludwig Museum that night in Budapest five years ago would have called it a product demo. ... But there was another component to that evening, and it was happening on-line, starring software developed by a Canadian who hopes to change the way we communicate electronically. It's called CodeZebra OS, and while you might not see it in a retail store any time soon, it could provide some inspiration and influence to the next generation of Web-based collaboration tools. CodeZebra is the brainchild of Sara Diamond. ... CodeZebra is essentially chat software, but one that provides a sort of three-dimensional guide to what is being said. ... CodeZebra tries to learn -- through a combination of artificial intelligence and data processing modules -- the emotional state of the people using it, and capture the underlying associations between related topics and issues. The result sounds like a menagerie. 'If you were a flighty sort of personality and you seemed to dart from topic to topic, you would be [represented as] a butterfly,' Ms. Diamond says. 'If you were more quick to the point, you might be a cheetah.'" May 4, 2006: Enjoy the show as robot mops up. By Martha McKay. NorthJersey.com. "As we sipped, Scooba's floor brush spun at 14,000 rpm while it sprayed out a cleaning solution of water and Clorox and vacuumed it up. All this took place out of sight, underneath the circular bot. Had 'The Jetsons' finally arrived? Scooba moved with purpose across the wood floor of my oddly shaped kitchen, using artificial intelligence to 'learn' the shape of the room, cleaning as it went. I was ready to scoff at the machine. I was prepared to find all things wrong with the $400 robot. I wanted to write a robotic obituary. Instead, I fell in love with a floor-cleaning product. ... If there's a robot to vacuum and wash the floor, why not a robot that can dust? 'That would be called a husband,' deadpanned Timothy Chang, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at New Jersey Institute of Technology. Really sophisticated home robots are still years away, he said, describing the depressing reality. While you could build a prototype in a lab for several hundred thousand dollars, getting a workable and inexpensive home duster would be tough. ... Robots do extraordinarily complex tasks in factories, taking over repetitive jobs often in toxic environments. But those areas are controlled, unlike the wilds of the home frontier where unpredictable humans move furniture, children race around and robots just have to be smarter." May 3, 2006: The importance of business rules - After a near-death experience, business rules management technologies are back in demand as a prerequisite for business agility. By Madan Sheina. Computer Business Review Online. "Business rules touch our lives in many interesting ways. They can dictate your credit worthiness, what type of loan or insurance rate you qualify for or even why you are overlooked for the last business class upgrade at the airport. Driving these decisions is a new generation of business rules management systems (BRMS) designed to automate decision making in enterprise IT applications. These systems differ radically from the old 'expert systems' of yesteryear that failed to catch corporate IT attention because they were too complex, expensive to run and maintain and not business-user friendly. ... What has really changed in BRMS is that rules have been formally introduced to business users, who are now presented with an opportunity to control the behaviour of corporate processes, workflows and mission-critical applications without depending on IT. In other words business, not IT, makes the rules. BRMS vendors have responded in kind by making their software more usable through new graphical interfaces that let non-programmers intuitively create, view and modify rules logic in their production applications in a controlled manner without knowing anything about the underlying syntax or code. Fair Isaac's Blaze Advisor BRMS hides the complexity of the rules development behind an intuitive graphical interface, that masks a complex conditional programming language with English-like statements that are easily understood by business staff. ... Commerzbank, one of Germany's leading private sector banks, implemented rules technology to streamline its customer credit applications by an impressive 50%. It improved the ability of business users to tweak and change hundreds of rating assessment criteria rules in near real-time. The company also managed to shave off 50% in overall deployment costs and times. ... [Mark] Layden believes the next big opportunity is to combine the agility and automation of BRMS with the segmentation of data mining analytics and optimisation techniques for automated, predictive analytics." May 3, 2006: Father, son graduate together from SCC but have different goal. Citizen-Times.com. "When Dale and Darren Hall of Sylva walk across the stage during commencement exercises at Southwestern Community College on May 10, both father and son will take steps toward the future. Dale Hall is a man who likes to keep learning as his interests grow and to gain knowledge to share with his home-schooled children. ... Darren Hall looks to a more distant future. 'I want to work in areas of creating artificial intelligence for extra planetary exploration, on machines that would be able to think and analyze problems as people would or to take on tasks that would be dangerous for people,' Darren Hall said. Darren Hall will receive an associate degree in applied science. And he’s done it while also finishing his high school education. ... He will say that he’s looking at four possible universities." May 2, 2006: Brain Power. By Jim McKay. Government Technology. "Police know that most crimes are committed by repeat offenders, so a staple of police work is identifying patterns that link crimes together and deduce the results to specific individuals. This becomes difficult when analysts look at thousands of cases each year. ... The Classification System for Serial Criminal Patterns (CSSCP) is the brainchild of Dr. Tom Muscarello, an assistant professor at DePaul University. It's different from other crime-analysis systems being used by law enforcement in that the CSSCP thinks 24 hours a day, seven days a week -- not just when prompted by an analyst. It can, however, be prompted to search for a particular data set, analyze data from multiple crimes and find patterns that link crimes without human intervention. Running 24/7, the system combs through police department IT systems, searching for patterns or clusters of data elements that might tie together a string of crimes and give police the data they need to find the perpetrators. ... The system uses pattern-recognition software that is 'trained' to find those clusters of data. Neural networks are considered artificial intelligence -- the networks attempt to imitate the human brain in the way the brain programs data structures and recognizes patterns. Neural networks function by creating connections between processing elements, which are the equivalent of neurons to the computer system. ... The neural network was derived from analysis of the most successful detectives in Chicago. These six detectives were at the top of the department in terms of arrests made and cases closed, Muscarello said." May 2, 2006: Artificial intelligence grad students meet at Cornell to network, discuss and practice. By Bill Steele. Cornell Chronicle Online. "'These are our future colleagues,' said Cornell graduate student Filip Radlinski, waving his hand at some 100 other graduate students assembled in Upson B-17 for a talk by Tom Mitchell, professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. The lecture was part of the first annual North East Student Colloquium on Artificial Intelligence (NESCAI), held on the Cornell campus April 28-29. Graduate students came from 18 regional schools, some as far away as Pittsburgh, Montreal, Philadelphia and Boston. Mitchell's talk and an earlier one by Jon Kleinberg, Cornell professor of computer science, were the only intrusions of faculty into the student-organized event. ... Why a conference just for graduate students? ..." May 2, 2006: Another Robot Vehicle Contest Is Planned. The New York Times. "The Pentagon said Monday that a third Grand Challenge competition would be held to foster research and development into advanced robot vehicles. In contrast to the previous contest, which took place in the desert on the border between California and Nevada, the new competition will be carried out in a mock urban area. Robots will be required to obey traffic laws while merging into traffic, as well as negotiating traffic circles, busy intersections and obstacles. The event is scheduled for Nov. 3, 2007."
>>> Grand Challenges, Autonomous Vehicles, Military, Transportation, Robots, Competitions (@ Resources for Students) May 2, 2006: Pentagon's 'wish list' to enhance commandos' abilities. By Kim Burger. Jane's Defence News. "US DoD officials have outlined the technologies and capabilities they would like to develop for its special operations forces and counter-terrorism operations. ... The US government is also seeking digital analysis and artificial intelligence technology that may enable analysts to track terrorists' financial transactions and communications, while other capabilities are desired for non-intrusive download of data from cellular telephones, pagers and personal digital assistants, [John] Reingruber said." May 2, 2006: Top robotics scientist calls for 100% global e-literacy. Gulf Times. "Eminent computer science and robotics expert Dr Raj Reddy has called for developing capacity building programmes to make 100% of the world population e-literate. ... Dr Reddy, the Mozah Bint Nasser University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Pittsburgh, US, was delivering one of the keynote addresses of the second symposium in the Innovations in Education (IIE2) series yesterday. Speaking on 'Empowerment of Masses through Education and Capacity Building,' he explained that multi-lingual interfaces, spoken language interfaces and multi-lingual translation systems ought to be developed." May 2, 2006: BabyBot takes first steps. IST Results. "BabyBot, a robot modelled on the torso of a two year-old child, is helping researchers take the first, tottering steps towards understanding human perception, and could lead to the development of machines that can perceive and interact with their environment. The researchers used BabyBot to test a model of the human sense of 'presence', a combination of senses like sight, hearing and touch. The work could have enormous applications in robotics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine perception. The research is being funded under the European Commission’s FET (Future and Emerging Technologies) initiative of the IST programme, as part of the ADAPT project. 'Our sense of presence is essentially our consciousness,' says Giorgio Metta, Assistant Professor at the Laboratory for Integrated Advanced Robotics at Italy's Genoa University and ADAPT project coordinator. ... 'We took an engineering approach to the problem, it was really consciousness for engineers,' says Metta, 'Which means we first developed a model and then we sought to test this model by, in this case, developing a robot to conform to it.' Modelling, or defining, consciousness remains one of the intractable problems of both science and philosophy. 'The problem is duality, where does the brain end and the mind begin, the question is whether we need to consider them as two different aspects of reality,' says Metta. ... ADAPT did not seek to solve it in one project. They made a very promising start and many of the partners will take part in a new IST project, called ROBOTCUB. In ROBOTCUB the engineers will refine their robot so that it can see, hear and touch its environment. Eventually it will be able to crawl, too. " May 2, 2006: Is it animal, vegetable or artificial intelligence? A computer program based on a parlour game could one day be an astronaut's best friend. By Ian Harvey. The Globe and Mail. "Robin Burgener wants to turn child's play into rocket science. When he speaks to a room full of NASA scientists, programmers and technicians later this month, he'll explain how a simple parlour game he first adapted into a computer program 20 years ago might just be the answer to some of the agency's most pressing issues. The game is 20 Questions.... Leveraging that neural network for NASA isn't pie in the sky, as he'll explain at the Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland when he discusses artificial intelligence (AI), spacecraft and customer service. 'What's intriguing to NASA is the ability of the neural network and the algorithm to formulate an answer even if the data isn't accurate,' he says. 'So if a sensor fails, you're able to see past it.' More importantly, based on the data the AI is fed, it might then predict problems with systems before they happen -- an invaluable tool in space." May 1, 2006: Smarter Spam Could Mimic Friends' Mail. By Gregg Keizer. TechWeb News. "The next generation of spam and phishing e-mails could fool both software filters and the most cautious people, Canadian researchers said Sunday, by mimicking the way friends and real companies write messages. John Aycock, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Calgary, and his student, Nathan Friess ... created software that mined the data in a pair of e-mail message pools to find statistically-significant patterns of abbreviation, capitalization, and signatures. A second program then used the discovered patterns to automatically transform a standard, one-line spam into a more convincing and individualized reply." May 1, 2006: Computer Science Looks for a Remake - How can CS become an appealing career choice again? Robot dogs, a new focus on users and a prime-time TV show. Future Watch by Gary Anthes. Computerworld. "Two of the world's premier facilities for research and education in computer science are celebrating big birthdays this spring. Stanford University's CS department observed its 40th birthday in March, and Carnegie Mellon University's school of CS passed the half-century mark last month. Despite the celebrations on both campuses, there is a deep malaise in computer science these days. Professors bemoan falling enrollments, a decline in prestige and a lack of attention to real-world problems. But, paradoxically, they say the future of CS has never been brighter, both within the discipline and in fields that computer technology will increasingly influence. Computerworld's Gary Anthes recently asked six CS professors [Kenneth P. Birman, Randal E. Bryant, John Canny, Jaime Carbonell, Bernard Chazelle, and William J. Dally] what lies ahead for the field. ... How important is computer science as a discipline today? ... Which areas in CS will show the most important and interesting advancements in the next few years? ... Carbonell: Artificial intelligence. Although those words may be somewhat out of fashion these days, much of the deep excitement and universally useful apps descend therefrom. For example: speech understanding and synthesis in handheld devices, in cars, in laptops; machine translation of text and spoken language; new search engines that find what you want, not just Web pages that contain query words; self-healing software, including adaptive networks that reconfigure for reliability; robotics for mine safety, planetary exploration; prosthetics for medical/nursing care and manufacturing; game theory for electronic commerce, auctions and their design to ensure fairness and market liquidity and maximize aggregate social wealth. ... Is the looming end of Moore's Law a key driver for CS today? ... How can CS be made a more attractive choice for students? ... How should CS programs be modernized? ... Bernard Chazelle says CS lacks a 'great popularizer' such as Stephen Hawking in physics. Does CS need such a person?" May 1, 2006: Fair Isaac's designs are on artificial intelligence - The firm is betting its future on selling companies powerful software capable of being taught to help make business decisions better and faster than humans. By Thomas Lee. Star Tribune. "Like its trademark FICO credit scoring system, Fair Isaac Corp. long has been something of a black box to the outside world. But if the generation of credit scores seems like financial alchemy, the Minneapolis-based firm's next set of innovations in artificial intelligence promise to take Fair Isaac even further into the rarefied world of predicting your behavior before you make a move. From calculating insurance policies to recognizing your typing patterns, the technology is intended to bring next-generation sophistication to customers' interactions with banks, insurers, credit card companies and retailers. ... 'We build neural networks that are a lot smarter than bugs or even some small animals,' said Ted Crooks, vice president of global fraud solutions. 'To detect fraud, you have to look at a lot of "weak" clues. There are almost never any silver bullets. The problem is complicated enough that humans can't really solve it very well,' Crooks added. 'Instead of trying to program a solution, we program a system to learn the solution. We feed it data on past examples. The system learns all the combinations, strong or weak, that indicate fraud.' ... The technology is impressive -- and a bit disturbing, said Allen Lynch, a professor of economics and quantitative methods at Mercer University in Georgia. 'It is a little creepy,' Lynch said. 'If it doesn't smack of Big Brother, then I don't know what does.' At the same time, the technology is invaluable to large companies, he said." May 1, 2006: Vehicles run on ingenuity - Students lay groundwork for cars of the future at UW competition. By Barbara Aggerholm. TheRecord.com. "Karen Pambrun sees the day when we're driving down the road with our hands off the steering wheel. Not today. That's clear. On this day, miniature versions of fully autonomous robot vehicles are smashing into orange pylons and running off the road at University of Waterloo. But the technology that runs them, and the brains that created them, are here now. ... Despite smash-ups among racing robots during the recent competition at the University of Waterloo, that kind of future isn't so far off, said Pambrun, a UW graduate who is a software developer with a B.C. company and a member of UBC's Thunderbird Robotics team. ... Pambrun, 27, was one of the few women at the Robot Racing competition at UW on Friday. The competition is the brainchild of Mike Peasgood, a PhD student in mechanical engineering. He says low female representation is a reflection of the engineering field in general. Pambrun doesn't know why more women aren't interested in robotics. ... Under a sunny sky, six student teams from UW, UBC and University of Western Ontario in London were lining up their robotic vehicles to race on an outdoor track." May 1, 2006: Expert system fuses human and computer knowledge. News Release from The University of Reading, edited by & available from Engineeringtalk. "[S]cientists at the University of Reading, in conjunction with the University of Leicester and Alcoa, have developed a new state-of-the-art fused expert system that has shown through plate rolling trials how mills could work at optimum performance levels. ... The EPSRC-funded research (following on from groundbreaking work by University of Leicester) involved the combining of knowledge-elicitation and data-mining techniques to develop the fused expert system. Knowledge elicitation involves establishing important facts and heuristics (rules of thumb) from plant experts, whereas data mining is the process of analysing data, often using advanced artificial intelligence techniques, in order to identify patterns or relationships." May 1, 2006: Conference probes digital future. BBC News. "Robotic pets and new textiles will be among the subjects discussed at two conferences in Aviemore. Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) organised The Digital Future event to probe how people and businesses will use new science and technologies. May 2006: Bolt Down Those Costs - How artificial intelligence keeps a truck business on track. By Ron Stodghill. Fortune Small Business Magazine (Volume 16, Number 4: page 85). "[Ron] Towry is the kind of client Sageworks, the Raleigh software firm that created ProfitCents, hopes to target. 'Most small-business owners are smart, college-educated, and have great savvy in operations and sales, but they really can't make heads or tails of their financial statements,' says Brian Hamilton, CEO of Sageworks, which charges a variable annual fee for access to the ProfitCents site (profitcents.com). 'This is like an automated CFO for small businesses.' A former CFO himself, Hamilton founded Sageworks in 1998 with Sarah Tourville, an information technology consultant with whom he created a patented technology called FIND. It aggregates data from a firm's general ledger and compares its performance to that of similar companies in its industry. Then, using artificial-intelligence software that Hamilton developed, it translates those findings into narrative text. Today, Hamilton says, ProfitCents is used by thousands of accounting firms, banks, and financial companies worldwide." May 2006: Getting Vexed - A robot kit that's fun as well as functional. By Stephen Cass. IEEE Spectrum. "Either you think building robots is cool, or you don't. But if you do, then you'll love the Vex Robotics Design System, a line of robot construction kits and accessories from RadioShack Corp., headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas. RadioShack developed the Vex system in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, in Pittsburgh, and the organizers of an international high school robotics competition sponsored by FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition in Science and Technology), a nonprofit organization based in Manchester, N.H. While the kit's target audience is high school kids in classroom and lab settings, it is versatile enough to appeal to a much wider audience. ... The controller module can also be configured to use a basic, but fully autonomous, preinstalled program that enables a robot to feel its way around a room on its own." May 2006: Android Science - Hiroshi Ishiguro makes perhaps the most humanlike robots around - not particularly to serve as societal helpers but to tell us something about ourselves. By Tim Hornyak. Scientific American 294(5): 32-34. "Director of Osaka University's Intelligent Robotics Laboratory, Ishiguro has a high furrowed brow beneath a shock of inky hair and riveting eyes that seem on the verge of emitting laser beams. Besides the justification for making robots anthropomorphic and bipedal so they can work in human environments with architectural features such as stairs, Ishiguro believes that people respond better to very humanlike robots. Androids can thus elicit the most natural communication. 'Appearance is very important to have better interpersonal relationships with a robot,' says the 42-year-old Ishiguro. 'Robots are information media, especially humanoid robots. Their main role in our future is to interact naturally with people.' ... To emulate human looks and behavior successfully, Ishiguro yokes robotics with cognitive science. In turn, cognitive science research can use the robot as a test bed to study human perception, communication and other faculties. This novel cross-fertilization is what Ishiguro describes as android science." |
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