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November 1, 2007: Greek scientists blaze way in solving Internet questions - Experts at i-sieve are developing content-filtering technology. By Lina Giannarou. Kathimerini | eathimerini.com. "The firm, i-sieve technologies, is a Democritos spin-off company whose researchers have developed content-filtering technology to tune into the opinions of millions of people from all corners of the earth who use the Internet for everything from products and services to candidates for the leadership of the PASOK party. The job assigned to i-sieve is to use artificial intelligence to analyze the content of websites. These online media analysis methods are based on an innovative system of thematically organizing Internet content developed at the Software and Knowledge Engineering Laboratory at Democritos. 'In effect, this is an algorithm which we train to search the Web for what interests us and to classify it,' explained Costas Handrinos, the director of i-sieve." October 29, 2007: The Semantic Web Goes Mainstream - Radar Networks is unveiling a new tool that provides a smarter way to find information and increase productivity. By Kate Greene. Technology Review. "Radar Networks, based in San Francisco, is releasing a free Web-based tool, called Twine, that it hopes will change the way people organize their information. Twine is a website where people can dump information that's important to them, from strings of e-mails to YouTube videos. Or, if a user prefers, Twine can automatically collect all the Web pages she visited, e-mails she sent and received, and so on. Once Twine has some information, it starts to analyze it and automatically sort it into categories that include the people involved, concepts discussed, and places, organizations, and companies. This way, when a user is searching for something, she can have quick access to related information about it. ... The idea underlying Twine's function and technologies is known as the Semantic Web, a concept, long discussed in research circles, that can be described as a sort of smart network of information in which data is tagged, sorted, and searchable. ... In addition to employing the Semantic Web standards, Twine is also using extremely advanced machine learning and natural-language processing algorithms that give it capabilities beyond anything that relies on manual tagging. ... Twine will open up to invited users starting today." October 19, 2007: What I Meant to Say Was Semantic Web. John Markoff's post to Bits, The New York Times' Technology Blog. "One great way to start a fight in a crowded Silicon Valley cocktail party (and there are a lot of them these days) is to mention Web 3.0. There is no easy consensus about how to define what is meant by Web 3.0, but it is generally seen as a reference to the semantic Web. While it is not that much more precise a phrase, the semantic Web refers to technology to make using the Internet better by understanding the meaning of what people are doing, not just the way pages link to each other. ... So companies are bubbling up all over the place that claim to be building part of the semantic Web. Some are building voice recognition systems to use while browsing the Internet on a cell phone. Some want to challenge Google head on with a better search engine. ... In a demonstration I saw earlier this week Twine appeared to do a good job of what artificial intelligence researchers refer to as 'entity extraction,' that is categorizing things like people and places automatically."
>>> Interfaces, Representation, Web-Searching Agents, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, Knowledge Management, Applications October 14, 2007: Game software could boost airport security. NewScientist.com news. "Playing games with airport security guards sounds like a bad idea, but Praveen Paruchuri of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles is trying to thwart criminals by doing just that. ... Paruchuri and colleagues created software based on game theory that simulates various random paths that a guard could take around Los Angeles International airport (LAX), and also how criminals might react." October 11, 2007: 'Dark Web' Project Takes On Cyber-Terrorism. By Steven Kotler. FOXNews.com. "'Since the events of 9/11, terrorist presence online has multiplied tenfold,' says Hsinchun Chen, director of the University of Arizona's Artificial Intelligence Lab. 'Around the year 2000, there were 70 to 80 core terrorist sites online; now there are at least 7000 to 8000.' Those sites are doing everything from spreading militant propaganda to offering insurgency advice to plotting the next wave of attacks, making the net, as Chen also points out: 'arguably the most powerful tool for spreading extremist violence around the world.' But thanks to Chen, that tide may be turning. He's the architect behind the newest weapon in the war on terror -- a giant, searchable database on extremists known as Dark Web. Using a bevy of advanced technologies, Dark Web is an attempt to uncover, cross-reference, catalogue and analyze all online terrorist-generated content. ... Dark Web is Chen's second foray into online crime-fighting. The first began in 1997, when he -- already an expert at tracking social change online (crime and terrorisms being extreme examples of social change) -- teamed up with the Tucson Police Department and the National Science Foundation (NSF) to help develop Coplink, a way for law enforcement forces around the country to link files and consolidate data. ... [Dark Web] utilizes existing technologies... as well as brand new technologies like sentiment analysis, which is capable of scanning documents for emotionally charged keywords such as 'that sucks.'... Civil-liberties concerns may continue to dog the technological front of the war on terror, but Dark Web is already producing results." October 1, 2007: USC student's computer program enlisted in security efforts at LAX - Program developed by a USC student is intended to thwart terrorists by making the frequency of searches unpredictable. By Larry Gordon. Los Angeles Times. "The doctoral dissertation of a 26-year-old USC computer science student is having an unusual effect on security and transportation at Los Angeles International Airport. That's because the LAX police are giving a trial run to a new computer program that, they say, seeks to keep potential terrorists and criminals constantly uncertain about where, when and how often vehicles will be searched at airport entrances. The software is based on the thesis of Praveen Paruchuri, who earned his doctorate in May. ... Citing security concerns, Butts declined to discuss specifics of the program and its complicated algorithms other than to say it affects police deployment and the frequency of car searches in a way that 'makes it virtually impossible to predict where resources might be deployed.' It not only takes away the routine behavior that terrorists might study and take advantage of, it also designs schedules more likely to catch criminal behavior, [James] Butts said. ... LAX's adoption of Paruchuri's work is 'something that we, as researchers, dream of: creating research that is not only academically wonderful but something that is also very useful,' [Milind] Tambe said. Although engineers in artificial intelligence often are inspired by thinking about what robots will do on Mars in 50 years, Tambe said, 'This is not planet Mars. This is planet Earth, and we are being useful right here and right now.'" September 28, 2007: The Element of Surprise - To help combat the terrorism threat, officials at Los Angeles International Airport are introducing a bold new idea into their arsenal: random placement of security checkpoints. Can game theory help keep us safe? By Andrew Murr. Newsweek Web Exclusive available from MSNBC.com. "Security officials at Los Angeles International Airport now have a new weapon in their fight against terrorism: complete, baffling randomness. Anxious to thwart future terror attacks in the early stages while plotters are casing the airport, LAX security patrols have begun using a new software program called ARMOR, NEWSWEEK has learned, to make the placement of security checkpoints completely unpredictable. ... Randomness isn't easy. Even when they want to be unpredictable, people follow patterns. ... The ARMOR software is the real-world product of an idea that began as an academic question in game theory. USC doctoral student Praveen Paruchuri sought to find a way for one 'agent' (or robot or company) to react to an adversary who has perfect information about the agent's decisions. Using artificial intelligence and game theory, Paruchuri wrote a new, fast set of algorithms to randomize the actions of the first agent. ... Soon ARMOR will begin jumbling the placement of the bomb-sniffing canine patrols too, says Butts. Other potential uses are too secret to talk about. [James] Butts says that the new random placement 'makes travelers safer' and even gives them 'a greater feeling of police presence' by making the cops appear more numerous."
>>> Law Enforcement, Agents, Game Theory (@ Multi-Agent Systems), Applications; also see this related article September 24, 2005: AI is A-OK in new games. By Mike Snider. USATODAY.com. "Our video-game enemies are smart -- and getting smarter. The artificial intelligence that guides in-game characters today leads to far more natural actions and realistic friends and foes than in the past. 'As graphics improvements top out, artificial intelligence will (drive) game innovation,' says University of California-Santa Cruz professor Michael Mateas. A look at AI evolution: ...." September 13, 2007: Online worlds to be AI incubators. By Mark Ward. BBC News. "Online worlds such as Second Life will soon become training grounds for artificial intelligences. Researchers at US firm Novamente have created software that learns by controlling avatars in virtual worlds. Initially the AIs will be embodied in pets that will get smarter by interacting with the avatars controlled by their human owners. ... 'The virtual world provides the body,' said Dr Ben Goertzel, founder and head of Novamente. He said the company had developed a 'Cognition Engine' that acted as the thinking part of the artificial intelligences it wanted to create. ... 'Robots have a lot of disadvantages, we have not solved all the problems of getting them to move around and see the world,' he said. 'It's a lot more practical to control virtual robots in simulated worlds than real robots.'"
>>> Machine Learning, Agents, Video Games, Robots, Applications September 10, 2007: Scientists Use the "Dark Web" to Snag Extremists and Terrorists Online. Press release from the National Science Foundation (NSF). "Terrorists and extremists have set up shop on the Internet, using it to recruit new members, spread propaganda and plan attacks across the world. The size and scope of these dark corners of the Web are vast and disturbing. But in a non-descript building in Tucson, a team of computational scientists are using the cutting-edge technology and novel new approaches to track their moves online, providing an invaluable tool in the global war on terror. Funded by the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies, Hsinchun Chen and his Artificial Intelligence Lab at the University of Arizona have created the Dark Web project, which aims to systematically collect and analyze all terrorist-generated content on the Web. ... Using advanced techniques such as Web spidering, link analysis, content analysis, authorship analysis, sentiment analysis and multimedia analysis, Chen and his team can find, catalogue and analyze extremist activities online. According to Chen, scenarios involving vast amounts of information and data points are ideal challenges for computational scientists, who use the power of advanced computers and applications to find patterns and connections where humans can not. One of the tools developed by Dark Web is a technique called Writeprint, which automatically extracts thousands of multilingual, structural, and semantic features to determine who is creating 'anonymous' content online. ... Dark Web also uses complex tracking software called Web spiders to search discussion threads and other content to find the corners of the Internet where terrorist activities are taking place."
>>> Law Enforcement, Web-Searching Agents, Natural Language Processing, Data Mining, Machine Learning, Agents, Applications September 10, 2007: U.S. Marines Define Simulation Objectives Through 2017. By Jack Weible. DefenseNews.com. "The U.S. Marine Corps’ new Training Modeling and Simulation Master Plan lays out objectives for the Corps through 2017, with specific goals for 2009, 2014 and beyond. ... If the Corps accomplishes its myriad objectives through 2017, the master plan sees the 'end state' of Marine Corps ground training featuring these M&S attributes: ... 'Simulation systems will utilize tailorable artificial intelligence and intelligent agents that exercise levels of decision-making through application of tactics, techniques and procedures; rules of engagement; and the Law of Armed Conflict. Systems will also have a robust capability to model and simulate kinetic and nonkinetic military operations, to include nation-building, force protection, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief that incorporate political, economic, cultural and informational lines of operation.'" September 2007: The Hard Science of Making Videogames - Behind every realistic explosion, racecar and Jedi are programmers solving some of the toughest problems in physics, psychology and math. By Jacob Ward, Doug Cantor and Bjorn Carey. Popular Science.
>>> Video Games, Agents, 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 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 8, 2007: Cognitive Science and Technology Program becomes Sandia initiative. Press release from Sandia. "Imagine a world where a machine creates a 'virtual you' by modeling how you think and your expertise on a subject. Or one where your car’s computer appreciates your driving skills and compensates for your limitations. That’s the world Sandia National Laboratories has entered full throttle through its Cognitive Science and Technology Program (CS&T). A revolution is at hand, says Chris Forsythe, member of the Labs’ cognition research team. It’s not one of just better guns and weapons for national security. Instead, 'it’s a revolution of the mind -- of how people think and how machines can help people work better.' ... The term 'cognitive systems' has been used worldwide to identify a variety of programs, initiatives, and technologies. However, so many varied uses have led to ambiguity of meaning. Sandia has established its own definition of cognitive systems: 'Cognitive systems consist of technologies that utilize as an essential component one or more computational models of human cognitive processes or the knowledge of specific experts, users, or other individuals.'"
>>> Cognitive Science, Agents, Interfaces, Systems, Education, Military, Law Enforcement, Transportation, Ethical & Social Implications, Applications July 31, 2007: Divorce Software Designed to Handle Negotiations. By Melinda Wenner. LiveScience. "Divorce is never pleasant, but new software is aimed at making the process a little less harrowing. The computer program combines artificial intelligence, game theory and an electronic or human external mediator to help divorcing couples settle their disputes in a fair and rational manner -- and hopefully with fewer gray hairs. The new software is a fresh incarnation of a project going back to 2004, when Emilia Bellucci and John Zeleznikow from Victoria University in Australia developed 'Family Winner' to help couples settle divorce disputes by focusing on compromise. ... While 'Family Winner' successfully met the needs of both husband and wife, it wasn't always fair to the needs of third parties, like children, according to Bellucci and Zeleznikow. So, to address this problem, they developed new software called 'Family Mediator.' As the name implies, the software relies on a mediator -- either a family law practitioner or an electronic decision support system...." July 30, 2007: Virtual worlds: Perfect for studying humans? New Scientist Technology Blog by Will Knight, online technology editor. "Fortunately, in the real world, it's pretty hard to overthrow a democracy and introduce a totalitarian regime, just to see what happens. Likewise, you can't mess with the rules of kinship or the rate of inflation on a whim. But that's not to say sociologists, anthropologists and economists wouldn't like to try. And that's why the rapid growth of virtual worlds, from Second Life to World of Warcraft, is such an exciting prospect for researchers in these fields. ... This prospect is explored in some detail in an interesting review paper in last week's Science [link]. ... it'll be interesting to see how the field develops. For example, I was intrigued to read, in the Science article, about research being done by Mary Lou Maher [link] and colleagues at The University of Sydney in Australia. They are using virtual worlds as a test platform for different artificial intelligence techniques. I see how virtual worlds would offer nice simple environment for testing AI on 'real people'."
>>> Agents, Social Science, Military, Applications July 25, 2007: Dogged determination leads to RoboCup victory - How does a small liberal arts college in Maine overwhelm computing legends in the sport of canine soccer? By Marsha Walton. CNN. "Bowdoin College's RoboCup captain, Henry Work, says it was a combination of programming skills, competitive spirit, and fuel from Dunkin' Donuts. ... The RoboCup competition uses soccer-playing robots to promote research in computing and artificial intelligence. The engaging Sony AIBO dogs have lured undergrad and graduate students from around the world to competitions on four continents; Asia, Europe, Australia, and North America. Why use soccer to further such complex scientific goals? 'The reason for soccer is that everybody understands it. We don't have to explain that the goal is to get the ball in the goal. Everybody knows instantly,' said Tucker Balch, associate professor of computing and director of the Georgia Tech Institute for Personal Robots in Education. Georgia Tech hosted RoboCup 2007. ... The aspect of the game that becomes almost eerie for non-scientists is that once the game starts, the humans cannot give commands, but the dogs 'talk' to one another. ... And, as the creators of RoboCup, the Robot World Cup Initiative, realized when it premiered in 1997, the challenges faced by a robot playing soccer can translate to many other fields, such as manufacturing or medicine. ... About 300 teams, with 1,700 participants representing 37 countries, took part in all divisions of RoboCup 2007." July 9, 2007 [issue date]: A Web That Thinks Like You. BusinessWeek. "Later this summer, Radar will launch a private test of its service. A public version should follow in the fall and is certain to draw close scrutiny from Web techies. ... Built-in artificial intelligence will continually learn as people use the service and computers troll for similar information. Says [Nova] Spivack: 'We want to use networks to make people smarter.' The Semantic Web has long been a sort of Holy Grail for Internet scientists. The problem with the way the Web works today is that for all its automation, the actual information that's being sorted in a typical search is structured so that it is most understandable to people, not machines. Semantic systems use a standard format to classify all the Web's information, whether it be airline flight tables and passenger data, biographies, or drug lab results, so that it can be read by computers. And unlike today's search engines, Semantic Web technologies are designed not simply to look up information but to understand its meaning. ... Experts predict that in the next 5 to 10 years, companies will use the Semantic Web to build smarter search engines, automate everyday Web tasks such as comparison shopping, and identify connections between information stored in far-flung corporate databases. In 2004 a consortium led by Web architect Tim Berners-Lee set Semantic Web standards, such as how to tag information. A number of large organizations, including Citigroup (C ) and Eastman Kodak Co. (EK ), have already started using Semantic technology to make better sense of their own data."
>>> Representation, Ontologies, Web-Searching Agents, Applications, Industry Statistics July 2007: Swarm Behavior - A single ant or bee isn't smart, but their colonies are. The study of swarm intelligence is providing insights that can help humans manage complex systems, from truck routing to military robots. By Peter Miller. National Geographic Magazine. "'Ants aren't smart,' [Deborah M.] Gordon says. 'Ant colonies are.' A colony can solve problems unthinkable for individual ants, such as finding the shortest path to the best food source, allocating workers to different tasks, or defending a territory from neighbors. As individuals, ants might be tiny dummies, but as colonies they respond quickly and effectively to their environment. They do it with something called swarm intelligence. ... . It relies instead upon countless interactions between individual ants, each of which is following simple rules of thumb. Scientists describe such a system as self-organizing. ... In Houston, for example, a company named American Air Liquide has been using an ant-based strategy to manage a complex business problem. ... Working with the Bios Group (now NuTech Solutions), a firm that specialized in artificial intelligence, Air Liquide developed a computer model based on algorithms inspired by the foraging behavior of Argentine ants (Linepithema humile), a species that deposits chemical substances called pheromones. ... By demonstrating the power of self-organizing models to mimic swarm behavior, [Craig] Reynolds was also blazing the trail for robotics engineers. A team of robots that could coordinate its actions like a flock of birds could offer significant advantages over a solitary robot. ... Marco Dorigo's group in Brussels is leading a European effort to create a 'swarmanoid,' a group of cooperating robots with complementary abilities ... Military agencies such as DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) have funded a number of robotics programs using collaborative flocks of helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, schools of torpedo-shaped underwater gliders, and herds of unmanned ground vehicles. But at the time, [Centibots] was the largest swarm of robots ever tested." July/August 2007: Artificial Societies and Virtual Violence - How modeling societies in silico can help us understand human inequality, revolution, and genocide. By Mark Williams. Technology Review. "In the early 1990s, [Joshua] Epstein and [Robert] Axtell had created a simulation called Sugarscape, a square grid representing a two-dimensional landscape inhabited by autonomous subprograms -- agents --that were driven from square to square by crude artificial metabolisms that demanded a resource, designated 'sugar.' When hundreds of these agents were programmed so that their ranges of vision and metabolic rates varied, even in simple ways, surprising patterns emerged. ... Essentially, Epstein and Axtell found, Sugarscape functioned as a model of a hunter-gatherer society, reproducing a common feature of human societies: skewed wealth distribution. ... [N]ature is full of peculiarly consistent statistical relationships, which reoccur across dissimilar realms and which statisticians call 'power laws.' The most common power law is the Pareto distribution, named for the 19th-century Italian economist - Vilfredo Pareto. In the late 1890s, Pareto argued that in any given society, 20 percent of the people will hold 80 percent of the wealth. ... That the behavior of Sugarscape's automata yielded power law-type distributions indicated to Epstein and Axtell that they were on to something." THERE'S MORE! SEE THE AGENT ARCHIVES |
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