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<< Headlines are listed according to date posted <-> Articles are organized by date published >>
August 31, 2007: 'Smart' Traffic Signals Save Dumb Drivers. By Tracy Staedter. Discovery Channel News. "The smart signal, in development at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, is part of a bigger transportation infrastructure being designed to incorporate computers and automated systems to improve traffic flow and safety. Such a system could work to not only alert individual drivers, but also to prevent accidents and track violations. The alert system consists of two standard surveillance cameras, each mounted on a pole at an intersection. ... Image processing software discerns moving cars from the background and determines how fast the vehicles are traveling. The software automatically projects the cars' trajectories and, based on their speed and direction, calculates the likelihood of a collision."
>>> Transportation, Vision, Applications August 31, 2007: Why sci-fi still has a future - Ridley Scott thinks sci-fi films have entered a black hole. Maybe he's not watching the right ones. By Paul Howlett. The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited. "Ridley Scott obviously knows a thing or two about sci-fi films: he's the director of Alien and Blade Runner. ... Agreed, Ridley's all-time favourite sci-fi film, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, is probably the supreme example of the genre, and maybe nothing has topped it in the four decades since its release, but that doesn't mean you can write off all modern sci-fi films ('yes, all of them,' as Ridley put it) as 'nothing original ... we've seen it all before'. ... But there are plenty of modern sci-fi movies in which a superior intelligence can be discerned alongside the computer-generated imagery: ..." August 31, 2007: CSI could benefit from computer sidekick. By Tom Simonite. NewScientist.com news. "A computerised sidekick for crime scene investigators that takes care of the tedious task of correctly documenting evidence is being tested in the UK. Initial results from the trials indicate that the device enables investigators to put together better reports in half the time. ... Computer scientist Chris Baber and colleagues from the University of Birmingham, UK, built their system to make the process quicker, and to facilitate richer reports that might improve detection. ... The computer is worn by the CSI, who uses a headset to give voice commands to the system -- to trigger the attached digital camera, for example, or to record a verbal description of evidence. ... The Birmingham team are now developing an improved version of the device that is better at sharing data between different teams of investigators called to the same scene." August 30, 2007: Robot's search and rescue. The Sydney Morning Herald. "Robbie 8 was developed by German information technology students with the long-term goal to help rescue earthquake victims. It is also a world champion. Robbie came top of its category in the July RoboCup in Atlanta where nearly 300 teams from 33 countries competed in the annual showcase of artificial intelligence at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Students at the University of Koblenz-Landau spent more than two years developing Robbie 8, which is designed to work independently by using real-time reasoning unlike other rescue robots that operate by remote control." August 29, 2007: Barney Pell - Pathways to artificial intelligence [podcast interview / 18:34]. Between the Lines blog posting by Dan Farber. ZDNet.com. "Barney Pell has a passion for artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP). His latest foray into those related fields is Powerset, a search engine that he hopes will challenge Google. He will be speaking, along with other experts in the AI field, at the Singularity Summit 2007, held at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco September 8-9. In this podcast interview, I talked with Pell about his views on AI and how the development of machines smarter than humans will play out in coming decades. ... Pell said that AI entities will get smarter but also humans, via intelligence augmentation, will gain new capabilities." August 28, 2007: U.S. will spend $1.7B on military robots. United Press International Industry Briefing. "The U.S. military will spend about $1.7 billion on ground-based robots in the next five years, according to figures reported by a defense analyst. ... [David] Isenberg points out that, at present, international law forbids the automatic operation of armed robot systems: 'Unmanned systems cannot fire their weapons without a human operator in the loop.' But he predicts there will be pressure to change that as the capabilities of robot systems grow, and notes that, in 2002, a senior military lawyer proposed that robots be programmed to fire at weapons, rather than people, to get around the law." August 28, 2007: Computers Programmed to Get the Joke. By Tracy Staedter. Discovery Channel News. "[A] group of researchers have equipped a computer with a sensor of humor. The technology could lead to programs that can solve problems that are informally stated, as well as to robots that are able to interact with humans more naturally. 'We rely on computers more and more, yet they don't seem to handle the way we communicate,' said Julia Taylor, a Ph.D. candidate for computer science and engineering at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio. 'I think it would be great for computers to understand natural language the way we use it,' she said. Taylor developed the program with associate professor Lawrence Mazlack, coordinator of the university's Applied Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. ... The knowledge base, called an ontology, represents an innovative, and more complex approach, said Christian Hemplemann, chief scientific officer at Hakia, an Internet search engine company. ... With an ontology, the researchers must build a database that includes all of the things and events in a given world -- in this case, the world of children's jokes -- and how they relate to each other. The relationships are categorized in a hierarchical structural from general to a more precise meaning." August 28, 2007: State of Play - Man versus machine. By Margaret Robertson. BBC News. "So what's going on? Surely nothing could be more pointless than watching a machine play a machine. ... It's tempting to see games as the front-line of the great man versus machine debate. As the quest to build computers than can outsmart humans marches on, games remain the high-profile acid test. ... Human intelligence, refusing to be put on the back foot, is taking refuge in creative ingenuity, inventing games like Arimaa, which are specifically designed to be easy for humans but hard for artificial intelligence. But for most people, and for most games, that sense of pitting the human against the artificial isn't what you're aware of. When you play, what you're doing is going up against the men behind the machine. That's why watching bots and algorithms get the best of a game is so satisfying. For years, the machines that game developers build have been getting the better of us. Now our machines can, if only occasionally, get the better of them." August 27, 2007: Machines Like Us interviews - Steve Grand. By Norm Nason. Machines Like Us. "An honorary research fellow at Cardiff University's School of Psychology and NESTA Dreamtime fellow, Steve Grand, OBE, has carved himself a reputation at the cutting edge of artificial life. He is Director of Cyberlife Research Ltd. and was formerly Technical Director of Creature Labs, where he was responsible for the architecture and programming of the artificial life game, Creatures. Currently Grand is developing artificial life applications as well as an intelligent living machine that embodies a set of hypotheses about the neurological mechanisms present in various species of animal. ... SG: ... I think one of the most important aspects of my work is the way I think about computation. Since the development of the computer we've all been conditioned to think of computation as a digital, serial, stepwise process in which varying sets of instructions are used to control data. So many of our metaphors for understanding the world are now set within this paradigm. But living things, brains, social systems, and for that matter most things in the universe compute almost instantaneously, in a massively parallel, analogue way. What's more, it's the 'data' that drive the 'code', in the sense that the laws of physics (the 'instructions') are fixed and universal, and all the richness we see around us is due to the changing relationships between objects. It seems to me that my job as a creator of simulations should involve taking the serial, top-down, digital computer and turning it as quickly as possible into a simulation of a parallel, analogue, bottom-up, data-driven system. From that point on I should simply arrange virtual objects in space and alter their parameters -- the way the real world works. Basically I start out as a programmer and then switch as early as possible to being a biologist. I think this is important, but most people in AI, A-life and computer science find the digital paradigm a hard habit to shake. Once you do shake free of the world of IF/THEN statements, you find that there are many forms of computation in the world beside algorithms. ... As for Artificial Intelligence, it would help enormously if we admitted to ourselves that we don't have a clue how to do it. For a start it would be useful if we made a stronger distinction between 'hard' and 'soft' AI. ... The answer lies, not in computer science but in neuroscience, since the brain is the only example of a fully-working intelligent machine that we have. But we don't know how that works either. I predict that the solutions to the problems of AI will come from computational neuroscience, but we need some changes to the prevailing paradigm before that is likely to happen. ..." August 27, 2007: EU project builds artificial brain for robots. CORDIS News. "Scientists in Spain have achieved a giant leap for robotkind by building the first artificial cerebellum to help them interact with humans. The cerebellum is the portion of the brain that controls motor functions. ... The researchers hope that their work will also result in clues on how to treat cognitive diseases such as Parkinson's The four-year project, dubbed Sensopac (SENSOrimotor structuring of perception and action for emerging cognition) is funded by the EU under its Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) and brings together physicists, neuroscientists and electronic engineers from leading universities in Europe. ... One possible use for the robots would be as home-helpers for disabled people."
>>> Cognitive Science, Machine Learning, Robots, Assistive Technologies, Applications August 27, 2007: Education Plus (Chennai) - Q & A. By Jayaprakash Gandhi. The Hindu. "[Q] I am a B.Sc. Biotechnology student, interested in a career in bioinformatics. What are the skills that l need to develop and what are the basic guidelines to choose a right institute for my PG programme in bioinformatics? [A] Bioinformatics and computational biology involve the use of techniques including applied mathematics, informatics, statistics, computer science, artificial intelligence, chemistry, and biochemistry to solve biological problems usually on the molecular level. ... Bioinformatics as a career is lucrative and has a great future." August 27, 2007: Enjoy the labour of work with professionalism. By D. Murali & V.R. Vinod Kumar. The Hindu. "About one third of employees in Indian software companies today are women. An increasing number of women enter professional engineering streams such as computer sciences and electronics. With the demand for technical professionals continuing to be strong in the IT (information technology) industry, women will continue to be valued employees. 'But the glass ceiling does exist at the senior management levels,' says Ms Nita Goyal, co-founder and VP of Tavant Technologies. She should know, as 'the first woman to have obtained a computer science (CS) degree from any of the Indian Institutes of Technology', a PhD from Stanford University in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), and a successful entrepreneur. Ms Goyal is, however, hopeful of better times for women. ... [Q] How did your research in artificial intelligence find relevance in your subsequent work? [A] The PhD had led to my first startup, Exemplary, as a spin out of my research. ..." August 27, 2007: Q&A - Quantitative investing. By Satyajit Das. Financial Times. August 27, 2007: Toyota, Sony working together in robotics. By Yuri Kageyama. The Associated Press / available from TheStar.com / also available from USAToday.com. "Toyota and Sony, two of Japan's biggest technology names, are getting together in robotics, both sides said today, to develop an innovative, intelligent, single-seat vehicle. But don't expect Toyota Motor Corp. to resurrect Sony's now defunct Aibo dog robot -- as some devoted robot fans may be hoping. Sony Corp.'s technology for Aibo and the childlike Qrio is still being kept in-house at the Japanese electronics and entertainment company, said Sony spokesman Tomio Takizawa. ... Toyota has shown a futuristic-looking single-seat vehicle called i-swing at various events. The automaker, on track to beat General Motors Corp. as the world's biggest as soon as this year, has also shown humanoids that can walk and play a trumpet. Also today, Toyota is introducing as a guide at its showroom at headquarters TPR-Robina, a womanlike robot-on-wheels it has developed." August 27, 2007: USF robotics experts help in search for Utah miners. The Associated Press / available from ABC Action News. "A team of Florida robotics experts are helping with the search for six men trapped inside the collapsed coal mine in Utah. ... Robin Murphy is the director of the Center for Robot Assisted Search and Rescue at the University of South Florida. She says her camera's ability to obtain images in the mine is a long shot. ... The camera is similar to one used to search the wreckage of the World Trade Center in New York City after the 9/11 terrorist attacks."
>>> Hazards & Disasters, Robots, Applications; also see Could Robots Replace Humans in Mines? August 25, 2007 [issue date]: Interview - In search of a grand unified theory of me - Jeanette Winterson about science's role in our future. By Liz Else and Eleanor Harris. New Scientist (Issue 2618: pages 50-51; subscription req'd). "[Q] What's your next book about? [A] It's called Robot Love and it's for kids. ... I'm fascinated by artificial intelligence and where it will lead. These robots couldn't build anything as bad as us - so why would they keep us?" August 24, 2007: AI system predicts medicine's hidden powers. By Mason Inman. NewScientist.com news. "Treatments for new or drug-resistant infectious diseases may already be in our medicine cabinets, say the molecular biologists responsible for developing an artificial-intelligence system that can predict unknown antibiotic properties of existing drugs. The hope is that the work will result in an armoury of new treatments that can be rushed into service when standard treatments stop being effective or new pathogens arise. 'In the case of new infectious diseases, there might be no time to develop a completely new drug from the ground up,' says Artem Cherkasov of the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, Canada, who made the proposal this week at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston, Massachusetts. However, if the new AI system suggests an existing drug might be an effective antibiotic, it could be quickly tested for efficacy, and then pushed into service, Cherkasov says. And because these drugs would have already been approved for use in people, they wouldn't have to go through all the clinical trials and lengthy regulatory approvals required of brand-new drugs." August 24, 2007: Artificial examiners put to the test. BBC News. "As GCSE students pick up their results this week, they may like to spare a thought for the examiners who devoted thousands of hours to marking their answer booklets. But in future, computers could help them reclaim their summer holidays. Professor Sargur Srihari's research team at the University at Buffalo, New York, is developing software to fully automate the essay-marking process. ... Exam scripts are scanned into the computer, the software reads the handwriting and translates it into computer type, and then grades the response as an examiner would, Professor Srihari explains. ... Professor Srihari asked human examiners to grade 300 answer booklets. Half of the graded scripts were then fed into the computer to 'teach' it the grading process. The software identified key words and phrases that were repeatedly associated with high grades. If few of these features are present in an exam script, it generally receives a low grade. ... Next, the computer was switched from 'learning' mode to 'grading' mode. Professor Srihari fed the remaining 150 scripts into the computer without the human grades attached. The computer predicted which grade a teacher would give each answer. The computer was within a grade of the human examiners 70% of the time. The results are published in the journal Artificial Intelligence. ... Dr Mary McGee Wood at the University of Manchester is also studying the role of computers in exam marking. 'It's interesting stuff,' she says. 'But they've been very clever to limit this to a specific domain - reading comprehension.'" August 23, 2007: Aussies prefer robots to call centres. By Munir Kotadia. ZDNet Australia. "Australians would rather deal with a decent speech recognition system than an offshore call center agent, typically based in India or another part of Asia. Speech recognition technology has matured to a stage where it can be used to increase the efficiency of a call center and provide a better customer experience, according to research from Callcentres.net. ... [Nick] Buckle said using speech recognition provides companies with a better understanding of what their customers actually want--because it does not limit them to choosing from a set number of options." August 23, 2007: Georgia Tech robot grabs attention of federal agency. By Kirsten Tagami. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "For the past couple of years, Georgia Tech music professor Gil Weinberg has been jamming at concerts all over the world with his invention, Haile the drum-playing robot. Haile uses artificial intelligence to improvise on real drums and respond to human musicians in an ensemble. The robot has done so well he has taken up a new instrument -- the xylophone. Weinberg's work with Haile recently caught the attention of the National Science Foundation, which asked him to submit a proposal for a grant to develop a second musical robot. ... Weinberg believes that Haile could help scientists figure out how to make robots more useful to humans -- not as a stand-in for a drummer who doesn't show up at the jazz club, but as an intelligent helper in other areas. 'Now that robots are so prevalent, how do you embed them in the human environment?' he said. 'I could see that this work might be of interest to someone who is studying, for example, how a robot might help an astronaut fix the space shuttle.'" August 23, 2007: A future of embedded chips, networks. By Dean Takahashi. San Jose Mercury News. "Sometimes technologists don't stretch enough when they make predictions. That's when it's time to bring in a science-fiction author. The organizers of the Hot Chips conference at Stanford University relied on this wisdom for their keynote speaker this week. And Vernor Vinge didn't disappoint the 600 chip designers at the conference. The author of sci-fi books 'Rainbow's End' and 'True Names' held the attention of the audience, partly because he is a retired computer science professor who spoke their language and has been writing sci-fi since 1965. Vinge thinks of the future in scenarios. Because microprocessors are built into everything from cars to toys, he says he can foresee a rosy scenario where everything around us has electronic awareness built into it. ... But he also sees four scenarios that can get in the way of such a world. ... The second failure would happen if software can't keep up with hardware. The slow progress of artificial intelligence, for instance, is due more to the failure to create the right software for it than hardware that lacks performance. .... The fourth scenario of failure comes about when we surrender to the government." August 22, 2007: The Next Disruptors - Here are the 10 game-changing startups most likely to upend existing industries - and spawn new entrepreneurial opportunities. By Erick Schonfeld and Chris Morrison, Business 2.0 Magazine via CNNMoney.com. "Disruption is easy to spot - in hindsight. The railroads were always going to be better than canals and wagon trains. The telephone was bound to edge out the telegraph. ... In the following pages, we identify 10 businesses with the potential to rewrite the rules of existing industries or open up entirely new markets. ... THE DISRUPTOR: Blinkx
| THE DISRUPTION: Web video search and ad insertion |
THE DISRUPTED: Search engines and the TV ad business. ... Blinkx's special sauce - something even Google doesn't have - is software that can turn speech into text and count how many times a word pops up in a video. This is very useful to anyone selling targeted ads for, say, Junior Mints. Blinkx can also cluster videos together by topic." August 22, 2007: Firm listens to shrieks of structures. By Roberto Rocha. CanWest News Service | The Leader-Post. "The deadly collapse of an overpass in Laval, Que., and of a bridge in Minneapolis perked awareness of deteriorating structures on the continent and shone a light on new techniques for detecting flaws before they become tragedies. ... Montreal-based Tisec Inc. has harnessed artificial intelligence to 'listen' to a bridge's whispers of distress when tiny, hidden cracks expand under pressure. The technique is called acoustic emission testing, and it's been around since the 1960s. ... To make the process quicker, the company 'taught' computers to ignore all the background rumbling and honking on bridges. This lets a trained inspector do the detection without the presence of a highly specialized engineer. ... Tisec has been supported by Precarn Inc., an Ottawa non-profit company that helps small firms develop and commercialize intelligent technologies." August 22, 2007: Toyota brings concept car for Vietnam show. Reported by Luu Quang Pho, compiled by Luu Thi Hong. Thanh Nien Daily. "Toyota will display its I-swing concept vehicle in Hanoi at the ABU Asia Pacific Robot Contest 2007 scheduled for August 24-29. ... It uses artificial intelligence to communicate with the driver and to learn the driver’s behavior patterns and select information based on this learning." August 22, 2007: Misgivings Spoil Plans of Start-Up. By Saul Hansell. The New York Times. "Three years ago, at a news conference at Tavern on the Green restaurant that featured a free-flowing bar, former President Bill Clinton helped introduce a new Internet search engine, Accoona, which was said to be powered by innovative artificial intelligence technology. ... Hoping to cash in on the excitement in the markets for Internet stocks and search engines in particular, this month Accoona registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission to sell its stock to the public. ... On Monday, Maxim Group, the underwriter, pulled out of the offering, though it did not cite any specific reason for its change of heart. ... This year, Accoona abandoned plans to list its shares on London’s AIM market. Accoona said it was in discussions with other potential underwriters and hoped to proceed with a public offering. ... 'It’s been two years they have been saying they have a great search engine, and they are just not delivering,' Mr. Sullivan said. 'They can’t say it’s because they didn’t have enough promotion. You can’t get any noisier than having the former president of the United States come out and pitch for you.' Valentine Zammit, Accoona’s chief executive, insisted in an e-mail exchange last week that the company had a valid strategy based on three businesses -- search, electronic commerce and a new advertising exchange." August 22, 2007: iRobot revamps vacuums, plans more home robots. Reuters / available from Boston.com. "iRobot Corp
>>> Robots, Household Appliances, Applications, Interviews August 22, 2007: Computerised art - BCS assistant editor Henry Tucker spoke to artist David Rokeby, who is funded by the BCS, about his latest collection of work which makes great use of computers. BCS News. "[Q] Have you always been interested in technology? [A] I played around with very simple computers in the early seventies and was always trying to get them to do more interesting stuff than just the basic text and number output they were capable of. ... In the early 90s I became very interested the issues at play in artificial intelligence research. I began a series of works related to visual object recognition and language generation. In this work, the act of software design and programming was a part of the artistic practice in a new way. It was important to the final content of the work that I go through the actual processes of asking and attempting to solve the kinds of questions that must be asked in the course of doing artificial intelligence research. In a sense, this work was partly a performance piece with an audience of one (my self). While my process has always been art-driven, it has always been a very important part of this process to try to get a complete understanding of the technological processes that I am using. This is partly because it seems to me that the electronics and the logical processes of the computer are effectively the fundamental physics of mediated atmosphere we are surrounding ourselves with. ..."
>>> Art, Exhibits (@ Resources for Students), Image Understanding, Natural Language Understanding & Generation, Interviews August 21, 2007: Sleights of Mind. By George Johnson. The New York Times. "It was Sunday night on the Las Vegas Strip, where earlier this summer the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness was holding its annual meeting at the Imperial Palace Hotel. ... After two days of presentations by scientists and philosophers speculating on how the mind construes, and misconstrues, reality, we were hearing from the pros: James (The Amazing) Randi, Johnny Thompson (The Great Tomsoni), Mac King and Teller -- magicians who had intuitively mastered some of the lessons being learned in the laboratory about the limits of cognition and attention. ... Sounding more like a professor than a comedian and magician, Teller described how a good conjuror exploits the human compulsion to find patterns, and to impose them when they aren’t really there. ... One evening out on the Strip, I spotted Daniel Dennett, the Tufts University philosopher.... Retreating to a bar at the Imperial Palace, we talked about a different mystery he had been pondering: the role words play inside the brain. Learn a bit of wine speak -- 'ripe black plums with an accent of earthy leather' -- and you are suddenly equipped with anchors to pin down your fleeting gustatory impressions. Words, he suggested, are 'like sheepdogs herding ideas.' ... With a grab bag of devices accumulated over the eons, the brain pulls off the ultimate conjuring act: the subjective sense of I. 'Stage magicians know that a collection of cheap tricks will often suffice to produce "magic,"' Dr. Dennett has written, 'and so does Mother Nature, the ultimate gadgeteer.'" August 21, 2007: Rock sampler. The Engineer Online. "Autonomous systems developed for ESA’s ExoMars rover, which will allow it to analyse Martian terrain and identify the best point on rocks to drill for samples without need for human intervention, could treble the speed at which the rover can collect a sample, compared to previous Mars rovers. ... 'This system allows the rover to do more than find flat areas to drill. The versatility of our system and its ability to pinpoint the best site to take samples, even from complex micro-features on rocks, could be vital when looking for evidence of exobiology,' said Dr Dave Barnes, a Reader in Space and Planetary Robotics at the Computer Science Department at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. ... ExoMars, which is scheduled to launch in 2013, is the first mission in the European Space Agency’s Aurora programme to explore Mars and the Moon." August 21, 2007: Vlingo rolls out speech recognition beta for mobile phones - Startup touts its Find speech recognition software as a 'breakthrough' for mobile phone users By Grant Gross, IDG News Service | InfoWorld. "Other vendors offer speech recognition for mobile phones, but Vlingo's software doesn't limit users to a predefined list of words, like other vendors, said Vlingo CEO Dave Grannan, a former general manager at Nokia. Vlingo uses what it calls adaptive hierarchical language models to learn words, user speech patterns and accents, Grannan said. Vlingo compiles the information from users to improve the speech recognition accuracy, he said." August 21, 2007: Finding new diseases for known cures. By Joseph Hall. Toronto Star (TheStar.com). "The cure for an emerging outbreak may already be in your medicine cabinet. And with an artificial intelligence computer program he's creating, a Canadian researcher is honing in on that link. ... [Artem Cherkasov, a University of British Columbia chemist] says there are untold numbers of drugs on the market that may have more than one pharmaceutical function. His program aims to identify those additional medical capabilities and match them up against emerging infectious ailments. 'My program predicts in a virtual world ... what the chances are for all those tens of thousands of substances to be antibiotic,' he says. ... Cherkasov, who has no connection to any drug manufacturer, says his software has been programmed to 'learn' which substances may look like antimicrobial drugs. Testing a set of drugs with known antibiotic properties against a set of other substances, Cherkasov has 'trained' his program to distinguish, with 95 per cent accuracy, which agents might fight infectious ailments and which will not. 'And once you're happy with your training accuracy, then you can just pour in unknown compounds,' says Cherkasov, an assistant professor in UBC's infectious disease department. 'And your pre-trained artificial intelligence system will assign probabilities for the unknown compound to be either antibiotic or not.'" August 21, 2007: Machine vision aids animal management. By Jennifer Foreshew. Australian IT. "Australian researchers have developed a computerised system that uses Machine Vision Technology to help farmers manage domestic and wild animals on their properties. The system is capable of distinguishing between sheep, goats, cattle, horses, pigs, kangaroos and emus and can be used with other species. Machine vision is the ability of a computer to see. It uses cameras, analogue-to-digital conversion and digital signal processing. The data goes to a computer or robot controller. The project involves the University of Queensland, the University of Southern Queensland the federal government and RPM Rural Products. ... The system identifies animals and controls their movements via automated gates to access watering or feed points. It is expected to boost farmers' productivity and efficiency in remote areas and control loss of feed and water to feral animals."
>>> Agriculture, Natural Resource Management, and the Environment, Vision, Applications August 20, 2007: Invention - The strategy predictor. By Justin Mullins. NewScientist.com news. "Could a computer predict your next move in a game of strategy based only on observations of your past behaviour? The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) certainly hopes so. It has funded a project led by computer scientist H. Van Dyke Parunak to explore the idea. Artificial intelligence experts normally approach this problem by assuming that the inner state of a person (or an 'agent' in AI parlance) can be described in terms of beliefs, desires and goals. Since these goals determine an agent's actions, it should then to be possible to use this knowledge to make predictions about the agent's future actions. ... The patent application [which can be accessed via link in article] gives an interesting insight into DARPA's goals."
>>> Agents, Genetic Algorithm, Military August 18, 2007: America gets cash to boost science education. NewScientist.com news. "'America is in trouble,' says Vernon Ehlers, a Republican representative from Michigan. The problem, thinks Ehlers, lies in the nation's classrooms.... On 9 August, President George W. Bush signed legislation to recruit thousands of new teachers, update the science and maths skills of those already in classrooms and help science-orientated kids to launch research careers. It also calls for significant increases to the National Science Foundation's $4.7 billion annual research budget...." August 18, 2007: Scientists race to create life - They can’t say exactly what it is, but that doesn’t stop researchers from tinkering with it. By Seth Borenstein. The Associated Press / available from TheChronicleHerald.ca / also available from USAToday.com (Scientists struggle to define life; August 19, 2007) and MSNBC.com (What exactly is life?; August 19, 2007). "Philosophers wrestling with the big questions of life are no longer alone. Now scientists are struggling to define life as they manipulate it, look for it on other planets, and even create it in test tubes. ... And some futurists are pondering the prospect of robots becoming so human they might be considered a form of life. So as scientists push the bounds of biology, astronomy and robotics, a big question looms: What exactly is life? ... Last month, the National Academy of Sciences issued a 'weird life' report cautioning NASA not to be so focused on water. ... That same report urged NASA to avoid being 'fixated on carbon' when it looks for life even though carbon is often called the backbone of life on Earth. But if carbon isn’t a requirement for life, how about silicon? In other words, what about machines? Ray Kurzweil, a renowned futurist who advises people such as Bill Gates, believes that by 2029 a machine will pass a prime test of artificial intelligence, offering the same kind of answers as a human. 'The key issue as to whether or not a non-biological entity deserves rights really comes down to whether or not it’s conscious,' he said. 'Does it have feelings?' This isn’t just a Kurzweil concept. 'A monumental shift could occur if robots continue to be developed to the point where they can at some point reproduce, improve themselves or if they gain artificial intelligence,' said a 2006 study commissioned by the British government." August 18, 2007: Robot wars are a reality - Armies want to give the power of life and death to machines without reason or conscience. Comment by Noel Sharkey. The Guardian. "The deployment of the first armed battlefield robots in Iraq is the latest step on a dangerous path - we are sleepwalking into a brave new world where robots decide who, where and when to kill. Already, South Korea and Israel are deploying armed robot border guards and China, Singapore and the UK are among those making increasing use of military robots. The biggest player yet is the US: .... Most robots currently in combat are extensions of human fighters who control the application of lethal force. ... But fully autonomous robots that make their own decisions about lethality are high on the US military agenda. ... This is dangerous new territory for warfare, yet there are no new ethical codes or guidelines in place. I have worked in artificial intelligence for decades, and the idea of a robot making decisions about human termination is terrifying. ... It is imperative that we create international legislation and a code of ethics for autonomous robots at war before it is too late." August 18, 2007 [issue date]: Robots surf the web to learn about the world. By Michael Reilly. New Scientist (Issue 2617: pages 22 - 23; subscription req'd). "Just as you might run a Google image search to see what a Buddha's hand citron looks like, so robots, and computer programs, are starting to take advantage of the wealth of images posted online to find out about everyday objects. When presented with a new word, instead of using the limited index it has been programmed with, which is the conventional method, this new breed of automatons goes online and enters the word into Google. The robot or software uses the resulting range of images to recognise the object in the real world. ... To test the idea, last month [Paul] Rybski, together with colleague Alexei Efros, organised the first Semantic Robot Vision Challenge at the annual conference of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence in Vancouver. Four teams took part, entering one robot each. The robots were given a list of 20 objects, including a DVD, a CD case, a banana and a calculator, that would be strewn across tables and chairs in a 6-metre-square area. The robots were allowed one hour to search the internet for images that were relevant to the words on the list and to analyse them. After that, they had to set out in search of the items. ... Curious George ended up winning, by identifying seven of the 20 objects, including distinguishing between a red bell pepper and a red plastic cup, which had been deliberately added to cause confusion." August 17, 2007: Chris Melhuish - Energy Autonomy. Talking Robots podcast. "In this episode we interview Chris Melhuish, who is the director of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory at the University of Bristol and the West of England in the UK. Whether for your iPod or robot, we all crave for a better energy autonomy. Batteries, solar panels and gas tanks are the usual, but what if machines could digest bugs or waste to get on the move? Chris Melhuish presents the fly-eating EcoBot, artificial gills for underwater robots and the technology behind Microbial Fuel Cells. The question now is whether these robots will be begging for food or capable of autonomously foraging for it in their environment (SlugBot). So... why don't we have humanoids sitting in our restaurants yet?" August 17, 2007: Surviving Immortality - Just getting to the Singularity is the hard part. [Audio available.] I, Cringely - The Pulpit, Robert X. Cringely's weekly column. PBS. "I've been thinking about the Technological Singularity, which to proper geeks is that point where computers become smarter than humans and supposedly all bets are off as technological development races forward faster than we can catch it and you and I are either left eating bonbons or are put to death by computers no longer amused by serving us. ... What's fascinating about the Singularity is not so much guessing what life will be like then as looking at our very approach to the concept and some likely side effects we'll bump into along the way. Some very smart people are getting really worked up about the Singularity. Artificial Intelligence pioneer Ray Kurzweil, who makes his living from explaining and describing the Singularity, thinks it is generally good, that the Singularity will transform our culture in mostly positive ways and allow us to become effectively immortal. Bill Joy has a darker view, seeing really smart machines as a threat that might enslave us and certainly expose us as a culture to unexpected risks. ... The real peril in all this is that our social, cultural, and political technologies probably won't keep pace...." August 17, 2007: LawnBott - a Roomba for your backyard? This robotic lawnmower can come out to work while you're away. By Clayton Collins. The Christian Science Monitor. "Don't like to mow during the dog days? The electric LawnBott -- a device from Paradise Robotics that looks like the child of R2D2 and a tiny Ferrari -- can roam a yard solo, its mulching blades whirring quietly, then dock and recharge until its timer awakens it." [Watch the brief video report in the sidebar.] August 16, 2007: Summer robotics workshop sets the pace for competition. By Louise Shannon-Martin. SavannahNOW | Savannah Morning News. "Twenty-six children from May Howard and Islands elementaries met July 30-Aug. 3 for the first camp-style workshop that prepares students for the 2007 FIRST Lego League robotics competition. ... FIRST was founded in 1989 to inspire young people's interest and participation in science and technology. Each year the competition has a different theme with a different set of challenges." August 16, 2007: U of A women lagging behind in male-dominated sciences. By Amanda Ferguson. The Edmonton Journal. "Women now make up slightly more than half of all university students enrolled in science-based programs, but still lag far behind men in subjects such as computer science and mechanical engineering, some science experts say. The University of Alberta reports female students make up only 10 per cent of current enrolment in computer science and just 20 per cent in engineering. ... 'We still have a lot of work to do,' said Women in Scholarship, Engineering, Science and Technology program co-ordinator Grace Ennis. ... WISEST, a summer program created to encourage women to enter non-traditional science fields, wrapped up Wednesday at the University of Alberta. 'The need is evident in the gender proportions but also in the industry at large,' said chemical engineer and WISEST vice-chairwoman Gail Powley. 'There's a huge demand for science and engineers,' Powley said." ... The explanations range from feelings of isolation and self-doubt, competing loyalties, a lack of scholarship opportunities and the lack of role models. 'They have the interest, but often they don't see other women in science and engineering because it's seen as a non-traditional career for women,' Powley said. But there is hope for a change, Ennis said. WISEST had the highest number of applications in its history...." August 16, 2007: How Do Post Office Machines Read Addresses? By Ben Mauk. LiveScience.com. "The United States Postal Service (USPS) began researching remote computer readers (RCRs) for handwritten addresses in 1983. At the time, the technology required to scan and understand a human scrawl simply did not exist. Not until Christmas of 1997 did the USPS and the University of Buffalo's Center for Excellence in Document Analysis and Recognition (CEDAR) deploy its first handwritten address-reading prototype.... Humans read and comprehend with an ease that belies the immense difficulty of computer pattern recognition (including patterns such as numbers and letters). It is one of the central problems in artificial intelligence. ... 'That Christmas alone we saved several thousand dollars for the post office,' Sargur Srihari told LiveScience. Srihari founded CEDAR and led the early research on large-scale RCRs. Today, the large majority of letters sent through the post office are read and sorted entirely by computer. According to Srihari, current reading success rates are above 90 percent." August 16, 2007: Cognitive Science Initiative encapsulates expertise. By R. Colin Johnson. EE Times. "Armed with cognitive models of human behavior, Sandia National Laboratories is aiming to enhance soldiers' performance with knowledge augmentation, while simultaneously diminishing our enemies' effectiveness by second-guessing their next move. ... 'Using patterns instead of rules, we have achieved the goal of the Grand Challenge--building a software framework that we can populate automatically from text and spatio-temporal behavior,' said [John] Wagner. As a result of its success, the Cognitive Science and Technology Program has been upgraded to a strategic initiative, thereby making it a permanent part of Sandia's national security development efforts. ... By switching from outmoded rule-based expert systems, Sandia chose to instead use pattern-based artificial intelligence that employs semantic networks to store knowledge and statistics, thereby predicting actions. They also wanted their models to feel like humans feel, which meant including simulations of fatigue and other emotions from real situations. Now the researchers believe they have the tools to build cognitive models of people perceived as potential threats, in order to predict their behavior in response to current events. ... Sandia also plans to add a natural language interface to the system so that users can interact with experts--ask their advice using natural language." August 16, 2007: Computers Driving Education in Marion. By Brett Garrett. KAIT. "In Marion, artificial intelligence is driving the intelligence of their students. Thursday, teachers in the district trained on a program that is helping students score 31% higher on state assessment tests in reading and writing. As the old saying goes practice makes perfect. ... 'If you had to do it in a traditional manner, you would spend all of your time including your free time grading essays," said [Glenn] Hudspeth. That's why Marion has turned over the job to artificial intelligence. ... The program called My Access by Vantage Learning trains the system to grade papers based by grade level with input from three to five hundred example papers. It also frees up time for teachers for more specialized learning. ... The program costs around $30 per student a year. Principal [John] Heath feels that is a small price for the results they have already seen." [Watch the video report via sidebar link.] August 16, 2007: Artificial Intelligence to Promote Feature Film 'Flatland.' Press release available from Prime Newswire. "You're an independent filmmaker. You don't have a big Hollywood marketing budget. How do you market your film? Make robots, of course! Or, to be more precise, you make 'chatbots.' ... 'No one likes chatbots that pretend to be humans,' said [Ladd] Ehlinger. 'But I wondered if they could be put to better use? To be entertaining in and of themselves, to answer questions about my film, to introduce people to the world of Flatland?' said Ehlinger. Flatland, an animated science fiction feature film based on the 1884 novel by Edwin A. Abbott, is popular with mathematicians and computer scientists for its explorations into such heady subjects as dimensionality and the nature of reality. ... MyCyberTwin (www.mycybertwin.com) is a new technology providing intelligent software clones who can have life-like conversations on behalf of their human twins. MyCyberTwin users can easily create online clones that can chat on websites and through social networks such as MySpace, blogs, dating sites, Second Life and MSN instant messaging. ... Soon the Internet may be filled with all sorts of fictional characters you can chat with. Maybe you could discuss the movie 'Shrek' with Shrek himself, or have a shouting match with Darth Vader, or flirt with Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie. And it all started with A simple Square. You can chat with A Square and other Flatlanders at www.FlatlandTheFilm.com." August 16, 2007: An Interactive Robotic Toy to Amuse Youngsters (and Scare Pets) as It Scuttles Across the Floor. By Warren Buckleitner. The New York Times. "What has four legs, walks like a crab and uses seven batteries? It’s Roboquad, a cat-size robotic toy from WowWee (www.wowwee.com) that manages to be both cute and creepy at the same time. ... As with WowWee’s Robosapien, the infrared sensors play a crucial role: they help the robot avoid obstacles and detect motion, so the robot jumps back if you wave your hand in front of its face." August 15, 2007: In the next war, maybe, no drivers will be needed - In the fight against roadside bombs, two Twin Cities companies helped create a car that drives itself. By Leslie Brooks Suzukamo. Pioneer Press (TwinCities.com). "Roadside bombs and improvised explosive devices have become one of the greatest threats to U.S. troops traveling the roads in Iraq, causing more than 40 percent of U.S. military fatalities. The U.S. military wants to reduce that risk by using robotic vehicles to ferry supplies by themselves without humans at the steering wheel. Comtrol Corp., a Maple Grove company that makes computer-routing equipment, teamed up with the Bloomington-based subsidiary of a German company, Sick AG, that makes laser measurement sensors, to bring the robotic car of the future closer to reality. They are participating in a contest sponsored by DARPA - the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which created the forerunner of the Internet in the 1960s - to develop a robot vehicle that can handle complex situations, like those dealing with traffic and the hazards of war. ... It's science fiction getting tailgated by science fact. Although robo-cars won't be on your street for another 20 years, maybe, company officials say, military officials have a tighter deadline: They want their own robot vehicle on the road within eight years. 'Hopefully by 2015, a good percentage of the Humvees and convoy vehicles will be autonomous,' said Bradford Beale, Comtrol's vice president. ... Comtrol and Sick have been involved in the contest before, but this year they are teaming up - along with several other companies - to co-sponsor North Carolina State University's entry, the Insight Racing Lotus Elise." August 15, 2007: System error. By Gillian Tett and Anuj Gangahar. Financial Times (FT.com). "The question now being asked by some bankers - and regulators - is whether this week's events show that the modern financial industry is foolish to be placing so much faith in these complex computer-driven models. 'People say these are one-in-a-100,000-years events but they seem to happen every year,' says Satyajit Das, a consultant to hedge funds and investment banks. 'This episode should make people ask questions about models - I think it could lead to a real reassessment.' Any such reassessment could have far-reaching consequences. The spread of financial models is at the heart of the growth of modern banking. Indeed, were it not for modern computing power, this decade's remarkable explosion in finance would not have occurred at all. ... Computers are thus now using models to make trades - and often trading with other computers - with barely any human intervention. This shift has delivered many powerful benefits for finance. ... [E]fforts are under way to address problems such as the 'feedback loop', or danger of computer herding. One key focus of some banks, for example, is the search for ways to apply research in the field of artificial intelligence, or neural networking, to financial models. This, they hope, will enable them to 'learn' from mistakes and bouts of irrationality - and thus perform better at times of market stress. 'Academic research has been shifting to some degree from a focus on "efficient market" theories to focus more on "inefficient market" theories [and] there is an increased recognition of inefficient market trading strategies,' says Colm Fitzgerald, head of quantitative trading at the Bank of Ireland." August 15, 2007: DARPA Wants Software Teachers, Learning Computers. Wired's Danger Room Blog by Noah Shachtman. "The idea, almost as old as DARPA itself, is to get computers to learn on their own -- and eventually, to think. But Oblinger's approach [with the Bootstrapped Learning project] is new, and wild. Most machine learning algorithms today, he explains, are configured to the kinds of jobs they do -- spotting signals buried in noisy sounds, finding credit card cheats. ... What he wants instead is a machine teaching program -- one that can instruct other algorithms how to perform. These teaching programs won't be configured to specific tasks. They'll be oriented by teaching style -- one will work by example, another through feedback, a third by explaining failures."
>>> Machine Learning, Applications August 15, 2007: Pensive deviled eggs? Irate gazpacho? - MIT Media Lab's Hugo Liu has radical ideas about the future of recipes. By Regina Schrambling. Los Angeles Times. "[T]his 27-year-old, spiky-haired computer whiz at the MIT Media Lab here in Cambridge is starting to shake up the food world with a combination of artificial intelligence and natural obsession. Any geek could run 160,000 recipes on the Internet through a software program to deconstruct them. How many would think to sort them not by course or ingredient or even technique but by that most ineffable of quantifiers: emotion? His first big project, a searchable database called the Synesthetic Cookbook, brought [Hugo] Liu to national attention two years ago. ... In applying artificial intelligence to aesthetics, he says his overall goal is to 'help people become fluent in taste.' And he is clearly equipped with one of the more free-ranging minds in food today. Whereas Harold McGee brought rigorous science to bear on food, Liu contributes a combination of linguistics, imagination and fascination. ... Among the groundbreaking projects that caused a sensation at the Greenbrier are what Liu calls Taste Spaces, essentially 'maps' of a sort of solar system of different kinds of foods and wines. By parsing descriptions online (32,000 of wine alone), he groups Champagne with Muscat, ... and olives with durian and shiitakes. Human intelligence would balk, as Liu has found, particularly among longtime food writers, but sorting them by common descriptions or contexts online simply puts them together."
>>> Information Retrieval, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, Applications August 15, 2007: Spelman team makes point with robotics. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (ajc.com). "After watching college graduate students struggle to score in an international robotics competition, the women from Spelman College -- led by a first-year student -- knew they were in the big leagues. The premise of the 11th annual RoboCup, sponsored by the RoboCup Federation, seemed simple enough: Get off-the-shelf, programmable robotic dogs to recognize and pass a soccer ball. Advanced techniques would have teams work to block and score goals against an opposing team. But the experiments in artificial intelligence from some of the 16 teams, from Turkey to Japan to China, that preceded them showed that the mechanical pups didn't always have enough minds of their own. ... After all, it was hope -- and a sense of purpose -- that brought [Andrew Williams] to Spelman in the first place to become an associate professor of computer and information sciences. ... Three years ago, he was a faculty member at the University of Iowa who loved teaching but who longed to help African-Americans reach their full potential. ... He settled on Spelman and Atlanta as a place to raise his three children. That first year [2005], he worked with researchers at Carnegie Mellon University to become fluent in the appropriate programming language and set off to find interested students.... The Spelbots submitted technical data and a video and became the first all-female team and the first from a historically black school to qualify for the competition, selected as one of 24 teams from 33 who applied."
>>> Competitions -and- Academic Departments -and- Diversity -and- Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Robots, Resources for Educators; also see this related article August 14, 2007: A discussion about emerging technologies with Esther Dyson of EDventure [video]. Charlie Rose Show.
>>> AI Overview, Nature of Intelligence, Philosophy, Expert Systems, Chess August 14, 2007: The taste of Pittsburgh: Edible robots? Posted to the CNET News.com Tech news blog by Candace Lombardi. "Carnegie Mellon University would like to give families in the Pittsburgh area the chance to build a robot. In celebration of the city's 250th anniversary in 2008, the Robotics Institute at CMU wants to inspire people with Robot 250, in which citizens will have access to robot parts and educational how-to materials. The program, which started this summer as a series of community events, will run through 2009 and focus on robotics education.... "This will help Pittsburgh celebrate its robotic roots, which stretch back to the 1920s, when Westinghouse created some of the world's first robots," according to a CMU statement." August 14, 2007: Centre to map your phone network. By Joji Thomas Philip. The Economic Times. "(New Delhi): The government has decided to create a database of all mobile and fixed line calls within the country in an ambitious and unique attempt to track unlawful activities by identifying calling patterns and mapping social networks. The system will help the government track complete networks of 'people who could possibly be involved in unlawful activities by creating a national database of all individuals. Analysis of their call data records using advanced artificial intelligence techniques can help control unlawful activities,' the department of telecom (DoT) has said. ... 'With the massive and foreseeable subscriber base of 400 million over the next five years, there is a need for the development of computational approaches using artificial intelligence techniques, biometric devices, crypto analysis, voice recognition technologies, grid surveillance, encryption/decryption and mining databases for security of the telecom and data networks and to provide useful inputs to the national security agencies,' the DoT has said in the expenditure statement. ... Globally, many countries are enacting surveillance laws which give governments more power to tap the communication systems. ... The move raises the issue of invasion of privacy. ..." August 14, 2007: Technically speaking. By Rob Amen. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (pittsburghlive.com). "About 7,300 tech firms employ more than 207,000 people in Pittsburgh and the surrounding 13-county region, said Kevin Lane, spokesman of the Pittsburgh Technology Council. That accounts for 17.5 percent of the region's work force, but the companies' combined $10.8 billion annual payroll represents about a quarter of the area's total average payroll. ... MobileFusion ... Claim to fame: Scout Ball Noteworthy: The ball, still awaiting patent approval, is an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance system that could have a profound impact on the military, police and fire departments. The ISR, about the size of a softball, is filled with cameras, audio sensors, GPS and similar artificial intelligence technology to be used for short-range, on-the-ground surveillance. ... Apangea Learning Inc. ... Noteworthy: SmartHelp is a tutoring system that identifies where students have weaknesses, provides lessons for them and, when necessary, directs them to real tutors and teachers who are waiting online. ... Cepstral ... Noteworthy: It's just like it sounds: Cepstral uses computer software to turn text into speech. ... Sim Ops Studios ... Noteworthy: A spin-off of CMU's Entertainment Technology Center, Sim Ops developed software -- Code3D -- that simulates real-world crisis situations." August 14, 2007: Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch. By John Tierney. The New York Times. "[I]f you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. [Nick] Bostrom’s, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation. This simulation would be similar to the one in 'The Matrix,' in which most humans don’t realize that their lives and their world are just illusions created in their brains while their bodies are suspended in vats of liquid. But in Dr. Bostrom’s notion of reality, you wouldn’t even have a body made of flesh. Your brain would exist only as a network of computer circuits. ... Dr. Bostrom [director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford] assumes that technological advances could produce a computer with more processing power than all the brains in the world, and that advanced humans, or 'posthumans,' could run 'ancestor simulations' of their evolutionary history by creating virtual worlds inhabited by virtual people with fully developed virtual nervous systems."
>>> Social Science, Agents, The Future, Science Fiction August 13, 2007: On track. The Engineer Online. "A technology being used to identify possible criminals or terrorists in a crowd may help UK in its bid for medals at the 2012 Olympics. The analysis of body movement using artificial intelligence helps security services pick out unusual body movements and suspicious behaviour at events such as rallies or football matches. Now, Muscle Memory Second Generation (MM2G) is developing a web-based product that will use the same technology to enhance the sports performance of professional and amateur athletes. ... 'The aim is to marry artificial intelligence and behavioural templates to sports science and performance. The resulting product will take sports training and performance analysis onto the internet,' said [Winslie] Gomez. 'We are going to be taking on a postgraduate student who will create the normalised templates of how the body behaves during sports, using artificial intelligence.'" August 13, 2007: Visualize better government - Agencies are learning how to use Web tools to interact with constituents. By Trudy Walsh. Government Computer News. "Agencies have yet to harness the 2-D nature of electronic media, said Ben Shneiderman, professor of computer science at the University of Maryland. One of the goals of democracy is to make government a two-way process, and the Web offers a way to do this, he said. ... One of the most compelling examples of this new method is an interactive Web site the Army is using to achieve one of its most important missions: recruitment. Sgt. Star (which stands for the Army values of Strong, Trained and Ready) is ready to answer questions about Army life at www.goarmy.com (GCN.com, Quickfind 825). Clicking on a link on the right-hand side of the page, 'Ask SGT STAR,' takes the visitor directly to an interactive session with the virtual man himself. When Sgt. Star debuted in August 2006, a typical user’s session lasted about four minutes, said Jeff Brown, senior vice president of sales for Next IT, the company that designed software based on artificial intelligence technology that powers Sgt. Star. The AI core engine lets Next IT developers understand what questions users want answered. ... [I]n the past year, the average user session time there has increased to 17 1/2 minutes. This 'stickiness' of a site is the new way that Next IT is looking at Web site engagement." August 13, 2007: English teacher engages students with science fiction. By Kylene Kiang. The Daily Sentinel. "Ever since Fruita Monument High School English teacher James Van Pelt started teaching a course in science fiction literature, he’s been able to reach out and engage even the most reluctant of readers and writers. 'Science fiction is the literature of change. It says that the way things are now is not what they are going to be. Most literature doesn’t posit that,' Van Pelt said. ... Concepts of artificial intelligence, time travel and alternate realities are just some of the topics that get his students talking and asking questions in the classroom. 'Is it possible that a computer could become self-aware? … Would it be murder to kill such a robot? Well, gee. Maybe it could be.' The ideas can be so fascinating to kids that sometimes they forget they are in a literature class, Van Pelt said. But in all ways, the science fiction class is a literature class where students read texts and learn about the relatively new genre through history and thematic study."
>>> Science Fiction, Resources for Educators August 13, 2007: Is artificial intelligence clever enough to take over the world? By Sarah Freeman. Yorkshire Post. "'Most films involving robots will inevitably show them as verging on the psychopathic bringing death and destruction to the world,' say Nigel Shadbolt, president of the British Computer Society. 'I don't see a HAL-style robot from 2001: A Space Odyssey suddenly turning malevolent, but the development made in artificial intelligence labs are a part of everyday life. AI can seem a bit remote and even frightening, but we are becoming more reliant on it. Now you can sign up to automatic bidding on eBay, there are software packages which can translate foreign languages and there are chips in washing machines which tell it which setting to use. They might not be robots in the traditional sense, but they are the kind of advancements which couldn't have been made without AI.' Prof Shadbolt, who will be one of the guests at this year BA Festival of Science in York next month.... [W]ith the trend only likely to deepen, the downsides of our dependency on an au | |||