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December 30, 2002:
Commerce in Security. By Larry Abramson. NPR - All Things Considered.
"Homeland security warriors at the Pentagon and the CIA say the next
terrorist attack may be prevented by investing in data-mining -- the science
of finding patterns in colossal amounts of information. Companies are
lining up to supply the government with the equipment to process the raw
data." [Audio file available.] December 30, 2002: Composer
harnesses artificial intelligence to create music. By R. Colin Johnson.
EE Times. "Just as IBM's Deep Blue showed the world a computer can
play chess as well as a human master, Eduardo Reck Miranda, a researcher
for the Sony Computer Science Laboratories Inc., aims to demonstrate a
computer program able to compose original music. So far, neural networks
have succeeded in imitating distinct musical styles, but truly original
compositions have remained elusive. Miranda is tackling that problem with
an orchestra of virtual musicians — called agents — that interact
to compose original music. ... In his latest book, Composing Music with
Computers (Focal Press), Miranda summarizes his AI research, which began
with cellular automata and evolved into an 'adaptive games' strategy based
on artificial-life models. ... For a computer to create truly novel compositions,
Miranda has turned to artificial life (AL) models — the fodder for
what he calls evolutionary musicology." December 28, 2002: Icarus
May Be Key To Saving Lives. The Evening Telegraph / available from
This is Derbyshire. "The lives of thousands of cancer patients could
be saved after equipment being developed in Derby is introduced into hospitals.
The advanced computer system - known as Icarus (Intelligent Cancer Reporting
Universal System) - uses artificial intelligence techniques to improve
both the success rate and the reliability of cancer diagnoses. ... A version
of the system helping doctors to diagnose inflammatory bowel diseases
- which could develop into cancers - is nearing the end of a successful
trial at Nottingham's Queen's Medical Centre. A version to help diagnose
colo-rectal conditions is now being installed at Lincoln County Hospital.
... [Dr Mitch Grigoriu] said: 'If you can understand how parts of the
brain work, you can try to emulate that in a computer system. Unfortunately,
the human brain cannot process the large amounts of data stored in a computer.'" December 27, 2002: Robot
technology in hospital upgrade. By Barry Hailstone. The Advertiser.
"The world's most technically advanced operating theatre will be
installed next year in one of Adelaide's oldest private hospitals. A $1.4
million robotic technology operating suite, part of a $16.4 million redevelopment
at Wakefield Hospital, would mean shorter surgery times and greater efficiency,
chief executive officer Catherine Miller said yesterday. 'Patients would
spend less time under anaesthesia and in surgery,' she said. The operating
theatre's robotic technology and voice-activated command system would
link equipment within the operating theatre to other departments around
the hospital under the changes." December 26, 2002: Making
Robots, With Dreams of Henry Ford. By Scott Kirsner. The New York
Times (no fee reg. req'd). "One robot was tossed into an abandoned
building in Afghanistan by soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division. Another
shimmied through a thin air shaft in the Great Pyramid of Giza. A third
hunted dust bunnies under Helen Greiner's bed. Field testing for products
made by the iRobot Corporation takes place in settings both exotic and
mundane. 'When you put robots into situations where there haven't been
robots before,' said Ms. Greiner, the company's president, 'you very quickly
find out whether they're up to the job, and what design changes you might
need to make.' ... The company took its name from an Isaac Asmiov science
fiction book called 'I, Robot,' and its early revenue came from research
contracts with government agencies like the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency, or Darpa, at the Pentagon. But more recently, iRobot
began developing products with commercial partners, like a doll designed
with Hasbro called My Real Baby that was able to convey through sounds
and facial expressions whether its owner was providing adequate care.
The company has also financed some projects on its own, like the Roomba,
a $200 device that got its name from the dancelike circular movements
it makes as it cleans. ... 'Robots used to be things that were bolted
to the floor in factories, and ordinary people didn't interact with them,'
Mr. Brooks said, 'just like computers in the 1960's and 1970's were locked
away behind glass walls. In 50 years, I think the world is going to be
full of robots, and we want iRobot to be one of the companies that's building
them.'" December 26, 2002: G.E.
Research Returns to Roots. By Claudia H. Deutsch. The New York Times
(no fee reg. req'd). " Word of G.E.'s new openness is spreading.
Rick Snyder, chief executive of Ardesta, a new company specializing in
technologies that operate at the size of the human hair and smaller, said
he plans to call the G.E. lab soon. 'I could see us joint venturing on
research now, and development later,' he said. The G.E. businesses are
chipping in for research outside their primary areas, too. GE Capital
is paying for research into artificial intelligence, which could help
it with such tasks as setting prices for service contracts." December 23, 2002:
Now the clucky get clackity. By Sue Lowe. The Sydney Morning Herald.
"Not sure you want kids? By mid-next year, hesitant couples with
a spare $80,000 may be able to have a trial run with a child-like robot.
... Like the Aibo dog, Sony's first biped can interact with its "carers",
expressing emotions through a combination of words, songs and body language.
It can recognise up to 10 human faces and voices and adapt its behaviour
according to the way it is treated. ... The United Nations Economic Commission
for Europe has predicted 700,000 useful robots - lawn mowers, vacuum cleaners
and window cleaners - will have been bought by 2005, as well as up to
a million entertainment robots. Sony claims to have sold more than 100,000
Aibo dogs worldwide, mainly in Japan, Hong Kong and America. ... But Sony's
move from pet replacement to child replacement could be contentious. Some
researchers believe children, in particular, are at risk of developing
emotional attachments that the robots cannot live up to. Teams at Washington
University and Purdue University are studying the effects of life-mimicking
toys on young children and the elderly. In the latter case, they are looking
at whether the Aibo dogs could have the same mental health benefits as
real pets. 'In the coming years robotic pets will become more technologically
sophisticated, more animal-like,' says researcher Batya Friedman. 'As
they do, our research suggests that they will evoke more and more psychological
responses from humans. Is that a good thing?'" December 21, 2002: Voice
holds the key. BBC. "Speech recognition has always been something
of a holy grail for the hi-tech industry. For years the technology has
promised much but it has failed to become part of everyday life. But now
the software is reflecting a changed climate where security is paramount.
Recent advances in speech technology have led to a whole new range of
products with different aspirations. December 20, 2002: When
the web starts thinking for itself. By David Green. vnunet's Ebusinessadvisor.
"The so-called semantic web is an extension of the current web in
which data is given meaning through the use of a series of technologies.
... Ontologies provide a deeper level of meaning by providing equivalence
relations between terms (i.e. term A on my web page is expressing the
same concept as term B on your web page). An ontology is a file that formally
defines relations among terms, for example, a taxonomy and set of inference
rules. By providing such 'dictionaries of meaning' (in philosophy ontology
means 'nature of existence') ontologies can improve the accuracy of web
searches by allowing a search program to seek out pages that refer to
a specific concept rather than just a particular term as they do now.
While XML, RDF and ontologies provide the basic infrastructure of the
semantic web, it is intelligent agents that will realise its power. An
intelligent agent can best be described as a piece of adaptive computer
coding that is capable of reasoning and that learns from our behaviour
and preferences, thus delivering what is called 'proactive personalisation'.
There are many thousands of different agents (or bots as they are also
known), each performing specific, specialised tasks, for example search
bots, chatter bots and shopping bots). An important aspect of agents is
that they are sociable and can interact and communicate with humans and
other agents. ... When broken down into a series of explicit search statements
and appropriate content sources to search, a simple user information request
is revealed to be a complex task. Automating such tasks will result in
an ever-larger role for artificial intelligence technologies such as agents.
One key concern about the brave new world of bots is that, by increasing
their autonomy, their accountability will be lost. ... There is a need
to construct boundaries, such as user-determined privacy settings, to
safely contain such interactions." December 18, 2002: This
holiday's a bust for tech toys, but next year could be hot - Let's
talk about hot technology gifts for NEXT Christmas. Column by Kevin Maney.
USA Today. "But by next holiday season, you might be gift-wrapping
amazing new stuff: Trophy Wife Barbie. This comes at the convergence of
a couple of ripening technologies: artificial intelligence (AI) and radio
frequency identification tags (RFID). Great strides in AI software plus
ever more powerful computer chips are making it possible to give small
things limited decision-making capabilities. RFID uses radio sensors on
tiny tags to allow objects to communicate with each other or with a wireless
computer network. Thus we get a doll who can shop -- on her own. ... Personal
robots. First, you have to shake the idea that a robot is going to be
like Rosie on The Jetsons or that hot water heater on tracks that passed
for a robot in Lost in Space. It's probably going to be small and more
about smarts than mechanics --something like R2D2. Early signs are here.
Sony has sold more than 50,000 Aibo electronic dogs since introducing
them in 1999. But this year, Aibo made a giant evolutionary leap, acquiring
software that lets it recognize its owner's face well enough to find him
in a crowd. One popular curiosity this year is Roomba, a robot vacuum
cleaner from iRobot. Another little company, Evolution Robotics, has developed
a robot that looks like a laptop on wheels, and can 'see' where it's going
by taking three photos a second and analyzing them." December 16, 2002:
The World According to Google. By Steven Levy. Newsweek / available
from MSNBC. "By a winning combination of smart algorithms, hyperactive
Web crawlers and 10,000 silicon-churning computer servers, Google has
become a high-tech version of the Oracle of Delphi, positioning everyone
a mouseclick away from the answers to the most arcane questions—and
delivering simple answers so efficiently that the process becomes addictive.
... Google’s uses are limited only by the imaginations of those
who punch in 150 million searches a day. ... By empowering the masses
to make use of the multi-terabit glory of the Web, Google has made supersleuths
of us all. Privacy advocates are going crazy at the Pentagon’s plan
to track citizens’ purchases, Web-site visits and phone calls. But
as my search for the eBay seller indicates, with Google everybody is Big
Brother. ... From the office [Sergey] Brin and [Larry] Page share ...
the cofounders dream up even wilder plans. 'The ultimate search engine
would be smart; it would understand everything in the world,' says Page." December 15, 2002: Robotic
Warfare - part of The 2nd Annual Year in Ideas. By William Speed Weed.
The New York Times Magazine (no fee reg. req'd). "This year at Edwards
Air Force Base in California, the biggest advance yet in robotic warfare
took its first flight: the UCAV, or Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle. Like
the Predator, the UCAV has no human on board. Unlike the Predator, the
kite-shaped UCAV is an autonomous plane that flies itself without constant
direction from any human being. Its ground-based controller (notably not
called a pilot) programs missions with a computer, but he does not direct
the aircraft moment by moment. ... The Army is developing the Unmanned
Ground Combat Vehicle, a tank that can autonomously negotiate landscapes
and fire weapons. And the Navy plans to build a robotic killer submarine.
... Beyond the obvious advantage of keeping Americans out of harm's way,
robotic systems have other advantages. Robotic planes and subs don't have
to accommodate human safety needs, so they're cheaper to build. Not only
can computers think faster than humans, they'll also never suffer from
the emotional stress of battle. Moreover, computers can communicate with
each other at lightning speed. ... The Air Force's [ Col. Michael] Leahy
insists that, though total autonomy is technologically feasible, it is
not morally allowable. 'A human must always be in the loop to authorize
weapons release,' he says." December 15, 2002:
RoboVac - part of The 2nd Annual Year in Ideas. By Virginia Heffernan.
The New York Times Magazine (no fee reg. req'd). "Of all the works
of prophecy of the last century -- '1984,' 'Brave New World,' 'Atlas Shrugged'
-- the one that appears to have generated the most hope about the future
is 'The Jetsons,' the cartoon series that had its premiere in 1962. On
that show, the chipper Jetson family boasted, in addition to a Zippo-size
encyclopedia and a telephone with a video screen, a robot named Rosie
who took care of household chores. So many other utopian dreams were dashed
long ago, but the fantasy of a happy, chore-loving robot has remained
vital into the 21st century, and this year a Massachusetts company called
iRobot offered Roomba, America's first affordable robot vacuum cleaner." December 13, 2002: New
Blood Test Spots Cancer - Could Be Available as Early as 2004. By
Charlene Laino. WebMD Medical News. "In what's being called one of
the biggest advances in cancer research in years, scientists have developed
a blood test that can detect cancer with a greater than 90% accuracy.
This artificial intelligence -- already tested for cancers of the breast,
ovary, and lung -- could one day be used to detect many types of cancer.
... 'All that's needed [for the quick fingerstick test] is a single drop
of blood,' [Emanuel] Petricoin says. 'The computer does the rest.' ...
In tests on several hundred blood samples, some taken from women with
ovarian cancer and others from healthy women, the test proved 'an astonishing'
100% accurate in detecting cancer, even at the earliest stages, Petricoin
said." December 13, 2002: Revving
up the rovers. By Molly Bentley. BBC. "With launch dates just
six months away, Nasa's science team is making final preparations to send
two rovers into space in an effort to understand the past environment
of Mars. ... [T]he twin rovers will cover more ground in a day - 100 meters
- than Sojourner did in its entire mission. And the rovers are designed
with autonomous capabilities. Once Earth transmits their daily assignments,
they fulfil them on their own." December 13, 2002: Tech,
and the Future of Finance - Futurist James Canton offers predictions
on how technology will impact CFOs in 2003 and beyond. By Marie Leone.
CFO.com. "CFO.com: Which transformational technology will
CFOs test-drive first? Canton: CFOs will gain the most from building
financial systems that have complete financial knowledge transparency.
In practical terms, financial managers will close the books, get an accurate
cash picture, and identify and locate assets all in real-time. In addition,
CFOs will use artificial intelligence (AI) for decision-support once the
technology is embedded in back-end software. AI agents will retrieve internal
and external data on a daily basis, to send, for example, automatic messages
to notify the CFO if a particular budget is incomplete, or if too much
cash is being is moved from a particular account. CFO.com: Will
these back-end systems be smart enough to sniff out accounting fraud?
Canton: If we program them that way. The software robots -- fraud
agents -- will identify irregular accounting patterns. Whether the irregularity
turns is intentional or just a mistake, is another matter. As more financial
systems become connected in data warehouses, the use of agents will increase.
... CFO.com: When will AI-based decision support systems hit
the mainstream? Canton: Within five years we'll witness the rise
of the neural net, genetic algorithm, and expert systems that provide
advice for CFOs and treasurers -- such as what is the best play to make
for an overnight investment. The systems will create 'expert behavior'
rules from massive databases that are filled with previous transaction
data and outcomes. Eventually CFOs will use financial software agents
to 'clone' their expertise for true multi-tasking." December 12, 2002: The
race to computerise biology. The Economist Technology Quarterly. "It
is in data mining, however, where bioinformatics hopes for its biggest
pay-off. First applied in banking, data mining uses a variety of algorithms
to sift through storehouses of data in search of 'noisy' patterns and
relationships among the different silos of information. The promise for
bioinformatics is that public genome data, mixed with proprietary sequence
data, clinical data from previous drug efforts and other stores of information,
could unearth clues about possible candidates for future drugs." December 11, 2002: Europe
- Are robots after your job? After the hype, a new generation of artificial
intelligence systems shows promise for solving real business problems,
says Business Europe. Available from ebusinessforum.com. "The hype
surrounding AI in the 1980s prompted developers to make extravagant claims
for the sophistication of their products, only for these to be discredited
and business interest to wane. However, today's fully fledged web-enabled
infrastructure, coupled with the explosion in personal computing of recent
years, has revived business interest in AI solutions. ... John Kingston,
senior research fellow at the Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute
in Edinburgh, says this shift in focus is symptomatic of the AI industry's
attempt to shake off the old hype for more practical solutions. 'In the
past, the principal benefit of AI was always seen to be that it would
save money through increasing staff productivity. At present, however,
AI is better at supporting accurate decision-making. Amid huge quantities
of data, an AI system can support its decision well and trace the path
that led it to that point.' This practical business focus is not the only
reason AI is undergoing a renaissance. 'Today companies prefer to avoid
the AI moniker,' said Shashi Buluswar, co-author of the McKinsey report.
'Now that the technology can demonstrate its applicability to real business
issues where in the past its appeal was more conceptual, the term 'business
intelligence' is preferred.' ... As yet, roll-out of AI business systems
remains largely limited to the US and Japan, but the academic exchange
between these countries and Europe is beginning to filter down to the
business level. While the lack of standardisation remains an obstacle,
Mr Buluswar said this too will soon be overcome." December 10, 2002: Darpa
puts thought into cognitive computing. By R. Colin Johnson. EE Times.
"A program that may push cognitive technology to a new level is being
launched by the Department of Defense. The DOD, a longtime supporter and
user of artificial-intelligence systems, aims to build what it is calling
an 'enduring personalized cognitive assistant,' or Epca. The system will
be able to 'reason, use represented knowledge, learn from experience,
accumulate knowledge, explain itself, accept direction, be aware of its
own behavior and capabilities as well as respond in a robust manner to
surprises,' according to a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa)
Broad Agency Announcement. ... 'What we are really after with the enduring
personalized cognitive assistant is to get people working on a multiyear
path to bring all the pieces together,' said director Ronald Brachman,
who will co-head the initiative along with deputy director Zachary Lemnios.
... 'People say that neural networks and AI were not successful because
we don't have humanoid robots walking around, but they don't realize that
there are hundreds of applications of this technology that we use every
day without thinking,' Brachman said. 'Machine-learning techniques are
now built into a variety of commercial systems, finding credit card fraud,
evaluating mortgage applications, detecting illegal telephone calls and
recognizing speech.' He maintained that 'AI planning algorithms were successful
in Desert Storm and are being used every day by the military in complicated
logistic situations.'" December 5, 2002: Research
examines robot-assisted therapy. United Press International. "Computerized
'pets,' such as those coming from Japanese electronics makers, could approach
their flesh-and-blood counterparts in providing people with social interaction
stimuli, scientists said Thursday. Purdue University is running a year-long
study that puts an 'AIBO' robot dog for six weeks in the homes of people
65 years and older who live alone, said Alan Beck, director of the Center
for the Human-Animal Bond in Purdue's School of Veterinary Medicine. Cats
and dogs have the well-documented ability to improve patients' stress
levels, blood pressure and other factors. Using robots could do the same
while alleviating a medical staff's worries about possible animal drawbacks,
such as the need for feeding and exercise, Beck said. ... Japanese researchers
have done similar studies with Paro, a fairly simple, 'baby seal' creation
with a few novel twists to appear more true-to-life." December 3, 2002: Bioterror
monitoring software offered free to aid health groups. By Christopher
Snowbeck. Post-Gazette. " Experimental software developed in Pittsburgh
to detect evidence of a bioterror attack by monitoring activity in hospital
emergency rooms is now being made available free to public health organizations
across the country. ... The computer program, called the Real-time Outbreak
Disease Surveillance System [RODS], was developed at the BioMedical Security
Institute, a collaboration between Pitt and Carnegie Mellon University." December 2002/January 2003: Immobots
Take Control. By Wade Roush. Technology Review. "From photocopiers
to space probes, machines injected with robotic self-awareness are reliable
problem solvers. ... But Deep Space One had something Mars Polar Lander
lacked: an onboard robot able to think autonomously and handle the unexpected.
Using its engineering knowledge, the robot tried to repair the switch
by toggling it on and off. When this failed, it devised a successful plan
to complete the navigation maneuver, and the craft proceeded unharmed.
The robot that saved Deep Space One was in the vanguard of a new breed
of machines poised to have a big impact in space and here on Earth. Quite
unlike the metallic contraptions that march stiffly through sci-fi movies
or the mindless, stripped-down devices that heft parts on our assembly
lines, the new robots have more brain than brawn. Each possesses a detailed
picture of its own inner workings—encoded in software-based models—that
gives it the ability to respond in novel ways to events its programmers
might not have anticipated. Because many of these inward-focused, self-reconfiguring
machines don’t move, some computer scientists call them immobile
robots, or 'immobots.' ... A deep-space probe obviously requires much
more autonomy than, say, a photocopier. But heavily used office machines
must meet a similar demand for reliability and efficiency... 'This distinction
between telling a system how to do its job and telling the system the
end result you want is very fundamental,' says Robert Morris, director
of IBM’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, CA. IBM is working
to build what it calls 'autonomic' characteristics -- model-based features,
as well as others that employ classic heuristic programming -- into products
such as Web servers and storage networks. These features will allow the
products to reconfigure themselves for optimal performance, depending
on what’s being asked of them." December 2, 2002: Futuristic
Prostate Screening. By Rebecca Somach. WHOI News. "Using artificial
intelligence technology, researchers at Eastern Virginia Medical School
are teaching computers to recognize the genetic patterns associated with
prostate cancer. Using blood samples collected and stored from hundreds
of men in Virginia, the program was able to predict prostate cancers with
a 96 percent accuracy rate. Currently, the program is being validated
at seven institutions across the U.S. November 30, 2002: Sign
Language Goes Gobbledygeek. By Louise Knapp. Wired News. " A
new gadget called the Sign Translator may take some of these hazards --
and confusion -- out of traveling abroad. It can automatically translate
signs into English. Here's how it works: The baffled tourist takes a digital
photo of the sign with a camera built into his PDA, and the sign translator
software detects the text within the image. In a matter of seconds, the
text is translated into English. The current version of the Sign Translator
is fluent in Chinese. It can translate more than 3,700 Chinese characters
into English. ... The system is based on three technologies: automatic
detection, optical character recognition and language translation." November 30, 2002:
Friend or foe? This control hub tells in seconds - System identifies
whether a plane is a normal commercial aircraft or a fighter jet through
artificial intelligence. By Natalie Soh. The Straits Times. "A MADE-IN-SINGAPORE
control hub detects any flying object in Singapore's airspace and identifies
it in a split-second, allowing the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF)
to decide quickly how to deal with it. The project, developed by a 45-member
team from the Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA), the RSAF,
DSO National Laboratories and Singapore Engineering Software, won the
prestigious Defence Technology prize yesterday. ... The system identifies
whether a plane is a normal commercial aircraft or a fighter jet through
artificial intelligence - it uses information such as the speed and path
the aircraft is taking. It can also predict the path the aircraft is going
to take." November 26, 2002: National
security work gives tech firm a low-profile boost. By Mike Cassidy.
Mercury News. "'We really were naive,' [Bradley] Horowitz says. 'We
didn't have a business guy. We didn't know how to incorporate. We just
kept going.' Kept going on artificial intelligence and the mysteries of
how to index and search digital video images. They worked on voice recognition
and image recognition -- training computers to recognize, say, the face
or voice of Osama bin Laden. Maybe you see where this is going. The company
Horowitz helped start was Virage, a San Mateo outfit that staked its early
fame on helping networks like CNN keep track of their huge video libraries.
Need some old footage of President Bush? Run a search -- not unlike searching
the Web with Google -- and bingo. Which was really great for the harried
producers over at CNN. But the U.S. government, which was an early investor
in Virage, had some ideas about how the technology would be great for
harried government spies, too." November 20 - December 3, 2002: The
New Age of Service Robots - From Fighting Fires to Serving Beer. Knowledge
@ Wharton. "R2-D2 and Rosie the robot maid may be coming soon to
a home, or nursing home, near you. Thanks to advances in computing and
navigation technology, robots - including sophisticated robot toys and
appliances - are now being developed to serve people directly. ... While
robots have long been used in industrial settings, safe, effective elder-care
robots are most likely several years away. Already some critics suggest
that the enthusiasm over personal androids may be overblown. But industry
players have little doubt the age of service robots is dawning. 'In 20
years, you will get one or several robots in homes, hospitals, everywhere,
entertaining (and) helping people,' says Bernard Louvat, CEO of Evolution
Robotics, a Pasadena, Calif. firm that sells both a personal robot and
software to help other firms develop robots. The idea of a mobile, thinking,
autonomous machine has long captured the human imagination. ... [Joe]
Engelberger is widely regarded as the 'father of robotics,' and at 77,
he wants to sire yet another mechanical child. He is seeking funding to
create a rolling, two-armed robot that could help older people stand up,
cook meals for them, clean their toilets and even carry on simple conversations
- effectively keeping them out of nursing homes." December 1, 2002 [issue date]: The
Robot Evolution - MIT's Rodney A. Brooks is among researchers leading
the charge to develop a smarter and more useful artificial creature. By
Jill Jusko. Industry Week. "The manufacturing industry is no stranger
to robots. Huge robot arms are commonplace in several industrial settings
-- particularly automotive -- and primarily engage in long-run, repetitive
tasks such as welding and assembly. ... Then there are the intelligent
robots of science-fiction movies and books, such as C3PO and R2D2 from
the Star Wars movies, which seem almost human in their ability to reason
and feel and interact with human beings. In his latest book, 'Flesh and
Machines: How Robots Will Change Us' (2002, Pantheon Books), Rodney A.
Brooks, director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, suggests that the 'science
fiction fantasy,' as he calls it, is not so far off. ... But what could
increasingly intelligent robots mean to manufacturing?" November 21, 2002: Caves
of steel. The Economist. "A technological revolution is coming
to the business of mining. ... LHDs are also the subject of another high-tech
approach. In a paper in Information Sciences, Jonathan Roberts
and his colleagues at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research
Organisation (CSIRO) in Kenmore, Australia describe their experience turning
them into autonomous robots. ... Dr Roberts and his colleagues have therefore
set out to make a completely autonomous LHD [Load, Haul, Dump vehicle].
The basic principles—arcana such as reactive navigation and neural
networks—have been kicking around robotics laboratories for years,
but the CSIRO group is among the first to apply them successfully in mines.
Dynamic Automation Systems, a spin-off firm affiliated with CSIRO, now
has two autonomous LHDs running in commercial mines." November 23, 2002: Commentary
- Computing gains still amaze. By Scott R. Burnell. UPI / also
available from The Washington Times. " Even though computer researchers
fell short of meeting science-fiction's prediction of an artificial intelligence
such as Hollywood's HAL by 2001, their achievements in 2002 are more than
enough to astound even this jaded computer veteran. ... SC2002, this year's
look at the state of high-performance computing and networking, was filled
with booth after booth of processor clusters, monster banks of hard drives
and data links literally working at the speed of light. One system ran
a speech-to-text program during the main sessions, quick enough to catch
its own mistakes as a speaker provided more examples of his or her use
of language, even heavily accented voices." November 20, 2002: Proteomics
for Prostates. By Brian Vastag. JAMA (Journal of the American Medical
Association; Vol. 288, No. 19). "In a significant proof-of-concept
test, the emerging technology of proteomics has shown its potential by
distinguishing prostate cancer from benign prostate conditions, according
to a report from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National
Cancer Institute (NCI). ... Artificial intelligence software was programmed
to recognize protein patterns in reference samples from 56 patients who
had had a biopsy and whose disease status was known. The same program
then correctly identified 36 (95%) of 38 cases of prostate cancer and
177 (78%) of 228 cases of benign disease. ... 'We have now demonstrated
that combining proteomic technology with artificial intelligence is a
powerful tool,' said Liotta (J Natl Cancer Inst. 2002;94:1576-1578)." November 20, 2002: Terror
fears boost new security gadgets. By Kevin Anderson. BBC. " In
the late 1990s, AC Technology had a system to match composite sketches
to mugshots. The problem was that 'there was really no cash in that cash
drawer,' said Gregg Gerlach, the company's CTO. Law enforcement agencies
simply didn't have the money to buy the system. But, he said, that all
that changed following the 11 September attacks. The company has adapted
its face recognition technology and is one of many companies at the Comdex
trade show in Las Vegas marketing their systems for the use in the US
government's homeland security initiatives. ... It is a nascent industry,
worth between $240m to $400m, according to Brian Ruttenbur, senior vice
president and equity research analyst with Morgan Keegan & Company.
But stocks in biometric companies have risen 130% after the 11 September
attacks, he said." November 20, 2002: IBM
splashes out another $1 billion on services push. CRM-Forum News.
"Anyone who still doubts IBM's determination to dominate the services
industry can think again following another $1 billion demonstration of
its commitment, this time going on a research arm to focus on consulting
and computer services. The new division, called On Demand Innovation Services
will employ 200 research scientists who will apply their scientific knowledge
of mathematics, artificial intelligence and other fields to help solve
problems for consulting clients." November 14, 2002: Detective
DolphinSearch - Searching technology uses artificial
intelligence to cut time and costs. By Roger Harris. Scripps Howard News
Service / available from Ventura County Star / and
from the Albuquerque Tribune (New database search for law firms - 11/17/02).
"Scouring through millions of e-mails, memos, letters and other documents
looking for information critical to a case is not any lawyer's idea of
fun. The search can take months and cost lots of money. At least, it used
to. Now, thanks to new search technology developed by DolphinSearch Inc.,
a privately owned Ventura company, document searching is easier, faster,
cheaper and more accurate. The patented technology uses artificial intelligence
to search for context and meaning, much like a human, said CEO Andrew
Kraftsow. ... In his research, [Herbert] Roitblat discovered that the
way dolphins recognize objects in the ocean is similar to how humans use
context to determine the meaning of a word. Based on this discovery, he
built a computer using neural network model to mimic the dolphin's search
capabilities. ... The Florida law firm of Carlton Fields saved a client
more than $125,000 in fees because DolphinSearch shortened the document
research time by months." November 2002 issue: Top
10 Smart Technologies for Schools. Technology & Learning. "What's
a 'smart' technology? While one might argue that all technology -- from
a toaster to a moon rover is smart, those we present in the following
Top 10 list meet their own set of criteria. In contrast to the breakthroughs
we profiled last year, which included such broad topics and trends as
wireless and virtual learning, the technologies we've chosen to examine
here perform more specific, identifiable functions. Fingerprint recognition
and artificial intelligence can free educators and school staff of time-consuming
tasks. Telementoring and virtual reality enable collaborations and instant
expert guidance from any spot on earth. And voice-to-text technology and
hybrid devices support young and challenged learners in formerly unheard
of ways. In the hands of well-trained educators, these technologies can
offer powerful new solutions for teaching children." One of the 10
articles offered is "Artificial
Intelligence," by Kristen Kennedy: "They don't do windows
-- but the next generation of AI applications can teach, tutor, and even
grade essays." November 12, 2002: Robots
on drugs. By Bill Lewis. The Tennessean. "Robots, a common sight
on automobile assembly lines for years, are appearing in growing numbers
in hospital pharmacies, including the one at Centennial Medical Center
in Nashville. Automakers have long known that robots perform many mundane
and repetitive tasks better than people. ... Hospitals, where medication
errors endanger thousands of patients nationwide every year, are learning
the same lesson. ... Called Robot-RX, the computerized system fills prescriptions
with a minimum of human involvement. And, while one study of hospitals
and skilled nursing facilities found that one in five doses of medicines
was given in error, the robot is said to be 99.97% accurate. ... Preparing
a dose of a medicine by hand costs 15 cents, on average. Robot-RX's cost
is 5 cents. ... That frees pharmacists to do more of the things they went
to graduate school for, such as interacting with nurses and doctors and
becoming more involved in patient care, [Alfred A. Del Gandio Jr.] said." November 11, 2002: Good
Morning, Dave... The Defense Department is working on a self-aware
computer. By Kathleen Melymuka. Computerworld. " Any sci-fi buff
knows that when computers become self-aware, they ultimately destroy their
creators. From 2001: A Space Odyssey to Terminator, the message is clear:
The only good self-aware machine is an unplugged one. We may soon find
out whether that's true. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA) is accepting research proposals to create the first system that
actually knows what it's doing. The 'cognitive system' DARPA envisions
would reason in a variety of ways, learn from experience and adapt to
surprises. It would be aware of its behavior and explain itself. It would
be able to anticipate different scenarios and predict and plan for novel
futures. ... Cognitive systems will require a revolutionary break from
current computer evolution, which has been adding complexity and brittleness
as it adds power. 'We want to think fundamental, not incremental improvements:
How can we make a quantum leap ahead?' says Ronald J. Brachman, director
of DARPA's Information Processing Technology Office in Arlington, Va.
Brachman will manage the agency's cognitive system initiative. ... But
what about HAL 9000 and the other fictional computers that have run amok?
'In any kind of technology there are risks,' Brachman acknowledges. That's
why DARPA is reaching out to neurologists, psychologists - even philosophers
- as well as computer scientists. 'We're not stumbling down some blind
alley,' he says. 'We're very cognizant of these issues.'" November 7, 2002: Center's
screen saver provides predictions about the Earth. By Justin Henning.
The Kansan (University of Kansas). "One University program has spent
two years developing a screen saver, which computes, maps and provides
information of where the Earth's plants and animals have lived, currently
live and could one day live. The Informatics Biodiversity Center at the
University of Kansas developed this screen saver, called Lifemapper. Lifemapper
uses an artificial intelligence algorithm, called GARP for short. The
Genetic Algorithm for Rule-set Production examines and compares similarities
between a species and the area and climate it is found in. It can then
predict the likelihood of finding a specific plant or animal in an area.
... 'This will help researchers address global research, management and
policy issues in environmental biology,' said William Michener, director
of the Long-Term Ecological Research Network at the University of New
Mexico in a press release, 'Increasingly, these issues require efficient,
automated access to diverse and widespread data.'" November 4, 2002: Intel
gives health care a tech checkup. By Richard Shim. . ZDNet. "Intel
is working with health care and technology companies to improve the role
computing can play in caring for people. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based
chipmaker has formed a division, called the Proactive Health Research
group, to look at how computing can be used in the health care industry
and specifically how current technologies can be applied to help take
care of the quickly growing population of senior citizens. ... One of
the group's goals is to take technology that is already available and
use it to help senior citizens live their lives where they feel most comfortable,
also known as 'aging in place,' and where it is most feasible from a caretaker's
point of view. Ninety percent of Americans 60 and older wanted to be cared
for at home, according to AARP (formerly known as the American Association
of Retired Persons), but health care costs are rising. Intel is using
three core technologies, sensor networking, smart home technology and
artificial intelligence, to develop products that can be used in the home
to help monitor mentally disabled or senior citizens." November 2, 2002: An
Electronic Cop That Plays Hunches. By Mindy Sink Ucson. The New York
Times (no-fee reg. req'd). "Officials building a case against the
Washington-area sniper suspects are using a new investigative tool to
help trace their movements across the country. It is an Internet-based
system called Coplink, developed at an artificial intelligence laboratory
here, that allows police departments to establish links quickly among
their own files and to those of other departments. ... Coplink was designed
by Hsinchun Chen, the director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
at the University of Arizona. 'It's the Google for law enforcement,' he
said, referring to a speedy popular Internet search engine that, given
a couple of words, can find an array of related Web sites. 'Things that
a human can do intuitively we are getting the computer to do, too.' ...
While no one is suggesting that old-fashioned detective work is being
replaced by machines, the idea behind Coplink is to provide a computer
program that can save busy police officers precious time and sometimes
even help solve cases. That's something Coplink's oh-so-human advocates
will boast about like a good story about a rookie getting a lucky break
in a case. It is like having a new partner in the form of a computer backing
up a cop. 'There is a greater and greater role for technology in law enforcement,'
Lieutenant [Mitch] Cunningham said. ... Because Coplink relies on existing
criminal records, it does not necessarily cause Big Brother concerns,
but it is not without critics. October 28, 2002: Farmers
learning to grow the right crop in the right place - UT Ag group works
to bring high-technology tools to farms. By Larisa Brass. Knoxville News-Sentinel.
"At the University of Tennessee, John Wilkerson and his co-researchers
in the Precision Agriculture Research and Education Group's sensors and
controls lab test technologies available to farmers today and develop
technologies for the future. ... Wilkerson said he's particularly excited
about the work UT is doing with neural networks, or artificial intelligence,
to help farmers better know their crops. The lab has developed prototypes
of a technology that measures the wavelengths of light reflecting off
a plant to 'learn' how much fertilizer particular plants, such as health
or sick varieties, need. The farmer first introduces the device to different
types of plants, inputting information about the plants and how much fertilizer
should be dispensed in each case on a Palm-type device. Gradually the
computer learns to discern each plant's need on its own. When the 'training'
process is complete, the sensor would be attached to the front of a vehicle,
with the nutrient dispenser on the back. As the computer 'sees' each plant,
it communicates to the dispenser in the rear about which dose to dispense."
October 23, 2002: At
the Intersection of Robbie and HAL. Contrary to sci-fi portrayals
where robots rule the world, tomorrow's robots will aid in the simplification
of our daily lives. USC is leading the Southern California effort to bring
them seamlessly into society. By Gia Scafidi. USC Today. "Aiming
to bring robotics out of the lab and into society, USC has established
its first robotics research center, the largest multidisciplinary robotics
effort in Southern California. ... 'As robotic technology becomes more
and more advanced, this field will have a huge impact on society,' said
Maja Mataric«, CRES [Center for Robotics and Embedded Systems] founding
director and USC associate professor of computer science. 'Until now,
societal pressures and fear of robots in our lives have kept robotics
at bay.' ... 'The key to fitting robotics into society is gradual change,'
said Mataric«. 'Robotic devices are socially acceptable today because
they don't stand out.' ... Innovative robotics research and development
could provide us with the means to care for more disabled persons, remotely
check in on elderly parents or children home alone or even replace underpaid
and overworked factory workers, suggested Mataric«." October 23, 2002: Sniper
probe to get help from Tucson. By L. Anne Newell. Arizona Daily Star.
"A program developed by Tucson police and the University of Arizona
will be used to try to capture the Washington, D.C.,-area sniper... COPLINK
works by combining databases, limiting the number of individual searches
officers have to perform. They can enter partial vehicle and suspect descriptions
and the program will locate everyone who fits the description. ... The
program - developed at the UA Artificial Intelligence Lab and funded through
grants from the National Institute of Justice and the National Science
Foundation - is also being used in Texas, Michigan, Massachusetts, Iowa
and Washington state. ... [Sgt. Randy Force] said it will be especially
helpful to his department for the same reason it should help authorities
in the Washington, D.C., area: It helps alleviate many burdens of multi-jurisdictional
cases. There are about 20 law enforcement agencies in the greater Phoenix
area, he said." October 21, 2002: British
Concern to Help U.S. Track Terrorists. By John Markoff. The New York
Times (no-fee reg. req'd). "Autonomy, a British developer of sophisticated
information retrieval software, plans to announce on Monday that it has
been chosen to provide an analysis system to help the United States government
track suspected terrorists. ... Autonomy's software uses statistical techniques
to search for patterns of information across large masses of data. Mr.
Cooper has said publicly on several occasions that the domestic security
effort will require technology that will allow government agencies to
share and analyze information, and that data-mining technologies will
be a central part of the operation. ... One early application for the
Autonomy software will be as part of a consolidated watch list for suspected
terrorists that the agencies will maintain, according to Mr. Cronin of
Autonomy. He described the possibility that dozens of separate data repositories
would be accessible by Autonomy software known as the Intelligent Data
Operating Layer, which is designed to integrate unstructured text documents
and traditional database information. ... The Autonomy software has the
flexibility to search names and words with variable spellings as well
as to retrieve information based on patterns that are related but may
not match exactly. The software is based on Bayesian statistical techniques,
which are used to match patterns and are gaining favor among software
designers and artificial-intelligence researchers." October 21, 2002: RightNow
Technologies Receives Innovation Award From American Association of
Artificial Intelligence. CNET Investor News (based upon a press release).
"RightNow eService Center uses a broad range of AI technologies and
techniques that it employs -- including natural language processing, intelligent
'clustering' of related knowledge items, and automated ranking of knowledge
items based on relevancy and age, for which RightNow recently received
a patent. RightNow eService Center represents, 'an excellent example of
how AI technology and the Internet can be used to provide increasing levels
of customer support in an economic fashion,' Steve Chien, Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, IAAI Conference Chair for 2002 said. ... The academic paper
that led to RightNow's award from the AAAI can be viewed...." October 15, 2002: Protein
Patterns In Blood May Predict Prostate Cancer Diagnosis. ScienceDaily
Magazine (based on a press
release from NIH/National Cancer Institute). "The diagnostic
test relied on computer software that detects key patterns of small proteins
in the blood. Researchers analyzed serum proteins with mass spectroscopy,
a technique used to sort proteins and other molecules based on their weight
and electrical charge. They then used an artificial intelligence program
developed by Correlogic Systems, Inc., in Bethesda, Md., to train a computer
to identify patterns of proteins that differed between patients with prostate
cancer and those in which a biopsy had found no evidence of disease. These
patterns were identified using serum samples from 56 patients who had
undergone a biopsy and whose disease status was known. Once established,
the protein patterns were then used to predict diagnosis in a separate
group of patients, whose biopsy results were not known by the researchers.
... 'We have now demonstrated that combining proteomic technology with
artificial intelligence based bioinformatics can be a powerful tool, and
is a new paradigm in the detection and diagnosis of both ovarian and prostate
cancers,' said Lance Liotta, M.D., Ph.D., the senior investigator on the
study from NCI's Center for Cancer Research." October 14, 2002: Intel,
Microsoft Dip into Speech with SALT. By Thor Olavsrud. siliconvalley.internet.com.
"Aiming to help businesses extend their Web presences with speech,
Intel and Microsoft Monday announced they are jointly developing technologies
and a reference design based on the Speech Applications Language Tags
(SALT) 1.0 specification submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
in August. ... Intel and Microsoft said their tools will support both
telephony and multimodal applications on a range of devices. The partners
believe the value proposition of such technology is clear: it stands to
reduce costs associated with call center agents. A typical customer service
call costs $5 to $10 to support, while an automated voice recognition
system can lower that to 10 cents to 30 cents per call. Additionally,
voice recognition technology can be used to give employees access to critical
information while on the move. Earlier this year, market research firm
the Kelsey Group projected worldwide spending on voice recognition will
reach $41 billion by 2005. But Intel and Microsoft are by no means alone
in the space." October 14, 2002: Football
injuries are rocket science. By Karl Flinders. Vnunet. "Clubs
could save millions by using software to predict injuries: High-spending
football clubs are set to save millions on injury-prone players with biomedical
software from Computer Associates (CA), if a successful trial at Serie
A giant AC Milan is taken up by other clubs. The software collects data
during workouts over a period of time, which it then translates into predictions
on how likely players are to pick up injuries. ... CA is using its CleverPath
predictive analysis technology, which performs neural analysis and uses
artificial intelligence to transform vast amounts of numeric medical statistics
into meaningful predictions. ... CA is claiming an accuracy rate of over
70 per cent for the technology. "The club gave us unseen test data from
the previous season to see if we would predict the injuries that had already
happened and our success rate was in the high 70s." October 14, 2002: Giving
innovation. By Janet Forgrieve. Rocky Mountain News. "When Hossein
Eslambolchi became president of AT&T Laboratories in August 2001,
his first goal was to hasten the pace of delivering new technology. ...
Today, 80 percent of the invention at the company's labs in Basking Ridge,
N.J., and Menlo Park, Calif., is focused on 'direct research,' he said.
That's new technology created after input from customers and aimed at
quickly meeting their business needs. ... Scientists are working on voice-over
IP, natural language, text-to-speech and artificial intelligence technologies,
all aimed at improving business for customers. For example, call center
customers can buy AT&T's 'How May I Help You,' a natural language
understanding system that cuts the time customers wait on the line and,
about 26 percent of the time, handles problems without an employee, he
said. The next version will have even more problem-solving ability, he
said, with the goal of eliminating the need for human intervention altogether." October 9, 2002: IBM
Ready With Speech Recognition Prototype. By Kavita Nair. Financial
Express. "Imagine a situation where you send a parcel in the courier
and then make a phone call to find out its whereabouts. The information
is given to you by an automated voice enabled response system in an Indian
language of your choice! This is the scene that IBM's India Research Lab
(IRL) is working towards with its prototype Speech Recognition technology.
The IRL is working on two important components as part of its local language
initiatives in India. These are: Speech Recognition, which helps provide
people unfamiliar with English a chance of interacting with computers
in Indian languages and Machine Translation, which ensures automatic translation
of text from one language to another. ... 'These technologies, though
currently in the realm of research, are potential real-life applications
of the future,' says IBM IRL director, Dr Manoj Kumar. ... Dr Kumar, however,
adds that the sectors that can benefit with the local language capability
are the banking and financial sectors, call centres, airlines, railways,
etc. The increased capability of local languages in IT systems will also
enhance ease of use and development of local language tools and content
for e-governance solutions." October 7, 2002: Utah
Firm Says its Net Software Knows Proper from Profane. By Vince Horiuchi.
The Salt Lake Tribune. "Some Internet filtering programs are overzealous,
branding Web sites for breast cancer support groups or the Gay and Lesbian
Alliance Against Defamation as objectionable as Hustler Onlinewww.hustler.com.
On some Utah school computers, for example, the Web filter may let students
read local newspaper articles about drugs, but block out similar stories
from other news sites. 'If you're trying to learn something like the reproductive
system, you can't research it on the Internet,' 17-year-old Cottonwood
High senior Jill Smithwick said about the computers at her school. 'You
can't be informed about it if you can't get to those sites.' A Bluffdale
company says it has developed Internet filtering software that does more
than just block out objectionable Internet sites based on the Web address.
According to the company, the software is 'smart' enough to identify a
truly objectionable site. ... ContentWatch, which is developing filtering
software for a number of online applications, just released ContentProtect,
software that not only blocks sites, but analyzes the content of Web pages
before they appear on the computer screen. In other words, it is supposed
to know the difference between the phrases 'breast cancer' and 'big breasts,'
and block out one but not the other. 'When a request goes out [for a Web
site], as it comes back, it's held and evaluated before it comes into
the computer,' said ContentWatch's product manager Michael Cuevas. With
sophisticated artificial intelligence, the software looks at the source
of the pictures and any links on the page as well as the text to determine
if it should be blocked based on the user's settings. ... According to
an annual UCLA study on Internet filtering software, parents clearly are
concerned about what their children see on the Web. Of the parents surveyed
in 2001, a third said they use some sort of filtering software. And 88
percent said they keep on eye on their kids on the computer. Slightly
more than half of children between 12 and 15 years admitted they do not
tell their parents about everything they see on the Web." October 4, 2002: Robots
try humble path to success. By Charles J. Murray. EE Times. "Never
mind the computer or even the Cuisinart. Engineers at a handful of companies
are finally turning out machines that promise to be useful from the ground
up: smart, economically priced robots that can vacuum floors and mow lawns.
The soul of these new machines is the home appliance. They have more in
common with, say, the toaster than the PC, much less the pricey industrial
robots used in automotive and other manufacturing plants. Guided by artificial
intelligence and equipped with sensors or sonar, these products are looking
to ignite the long-awaited migration of robots into the home, where they
will serve, Jeeves-like, on demand. ... Indeed, by lowering the price
of entry for consumers, makers of the new breed of 'bots hope to launch
a market. 'Home robotics today is where the PC industry was in the 1970s,'
said Paolo Pirjanian, chief scientist for Evolution Robotics. 'We're at
the beginning of the creation of a large industry that's positioned to
grow very fast.'" October 2, 2002: SPE
[Society of Petroleum Engineers] - Industry slow to adopt downhole robotics.
By Guntis Moritis. Oil & Gas Journal. "Joe Donovan, Intelligent
Inspection Corp., Houston, chronicled the oil and gas industry's slow
adoption of autonomous downhole robots in his presentation at the 2002
Society of Petroleum Engineers Annual Technical Conference & Exhibition
in San Antonio today. Currently, his company's robot, called MicroRig,
is undergoing reliability testing. He said the untethered, 30 ft long,
150 lb, 2-in. OD tractor tool will be capable of carrying various tools
downhole and working without guidance from the surface because of the
artificial intelligence built into the robot. Donovan attributed part
of the failure of a past attempt to introduce such a tool to cute naming
concepts that were foreign to the oil and gas industry. The 'Bore Rat,'
introduced in 1997 came with such terms as 'missions' instead of runs
in the hole. These terms had a negative connotation in the market, Donovan
said." October 2, 2002: Hi-Tech
Tool Helps Traffic Snarls. By Dawn Marie Woodward. KVAL-TV. "Researchers
at the University of Oregon have applied the computing muscle of artificial
intelligence to the enormously complex and frustrating problem of battling
traffic congestion in Southern California. 'Traffic Dodger' is an Internet-based
personalized routing service that tells drivers the best way to get to
their destination and how long the drive is likely to take - all before
they even start their car." September 29, 2002: Credit
Card Companies Turn To Artificial Intelligence. By Margaret Webb Pressler.
The Washington Post / available from the Tampa Tribune. "With billions
of dollars at stake, and more clever crooks, credit card companies have
become very smart about protecting themselves with astonishingly sophisticated
network computers and software programs. 'We're at a level whereby we
can understand with artificial intelligence ... the potentially fraudulent
transactions,' said Raf Sorrentino, vice president of risk management
for First Data Corp., one of the biggest providers of credit card processing
and payment services. Credit card fraud costs the industry about a billion
dollars a year, or 7 cents out of every $100 spent on plastic. But that
is down significantly from its peak about a decade ago, Sorrentino says,
in large part because of powerful technology that can recognize unusual
spending patterns." September 28, 2002: Radio
Interview - Joe Budelli of ABBYY USA. Let's Talk Computers(R). "ABBYY
develops software in the field of artificial intelligence, document recognition
and applied linguistics." September 26, 2002: Inventor
foresees implanted sensors aiding brain functions. By Stephan Ohr.
EE Times. "Kurzweil was enthusiastic about his own experiments with
virtual reality and artificial intelligence. 'People say of AI, 'Nothing
ever came of that,' yet it keeps spinning off new things,' he said. For
example, British Airways has combined speech recognition and synthesis
technology with virtual reality to create an interactive reservation system
that allows a user to interact with a 'virtual personality' to build a
travel itinerary. Via the Internet, Kurzweil demonstrated 'Ramona,' a
woman's face that serves as an interactive interface to Kurzweil's Web
site." September 25, 2002: Artificially-intelligent
hearing aid wins European Information Society Technology Award. A
Press Release available from IDGNet New Zealand. "Adapto, a hearing
aid that understands people with artificial intelligence that identifies
and amplifies human speech over other sounds - has won a prestigious European
Information Society Technology Prize." September 25, 2002: Special
system developed to diagnose nutritional disorders of black pepper.
By Peter Sibon. Sarawak Tribune News. "The Sarawak Department of
Agriculture has developed a special system for diagnosing nutritional
disorders of black pepper. The tool was developed as an aid for agriculture
extension workers to provide advisory services on crop health measures
to pepper growers in Sarawak. 'Named 'XCRO-pepper', the system can assist
users in diagnosing symptoms caused by 16 diseases, 13 pests and 10 nutritional
disorders of black pepper,' revealed Fatimah Othman, Wong Ting Hung. Lily
Eng, Paulus A. Det and Asmah Salowi in their working paper entitled, 'XCROP-Pepper:
An Expert System for Diagnosing Diseases, Pests and Nutritional Disorders
of Black Pepper... According to the paper, the expert system is a branch
of artificial intelligence (AI), which is widely used as decision-making
tools in a wide range of businesses including agriculture. 'This innovative
information technology tool is an intelligent computer programme that
makes extensive use of specialised knowledge to solve problems at the
level of human experts,' it said, adding that the system was pioneered
by Professor Edward Feigen-baum [sic] of Stanford University." September 23, 2002: Public
Transportation Leaders In LV Look To Future. KVBC Local News. "Leaders
of more than 300 transit groups are meeting today in Las Vegas to discuss
the latest in public transportation advances. ... Hot technology includes
onboard global positioning satellite systems, artificial intelligence
security systems, and solar-powered bus stops." September 23, 2002 (issue date): Next Frontiers
> Careers & Technology > Hot Tech Careers >
A
Solution to Flight Risk: The military gives a starring role to unmanned
aircraft. By Kevin Peraino. Newsweek.MSNBC. "It's hard to imagine
that there are hot jobs in aerospace and aviation, considering the financial
woes of the airlines. But research on all types of unmanned aerial vehicles
(UAVs) - from reconnaissance drones that fly at 65,000 feet to low-flying,
fully armed fighters - is one of the industry's bright spots. Consulting
firm Frost &Sullivan estimates that the U.S. military market for UAVs
will reach almost $1 billion by 2007, up 25 percent from today. Boosters
say drones could also be used for homeland security, guarding oil and
natural-gas pipelines, for example. [Dennis] Gvillo's project made its
first test flight in May. The 26-foot tailless craft will be programmed
to perform its mission autonomously." September 23, 2002 (issue date): Next Frontiers
> Careers & Technology > Hot Tech Careers > Gray
Market For Gadgets: Technologies to help the elderly live on their own.
By Joan Raymond. Newsweek.MSNBC. "But considering that every seven
seconds another of the nationÕs 75 million baby boomers turns 50, there's
clearly gold in helping the old. So developing tech solutions that enhance
independence and keep people in their homes longer may be the hottest
software gig of the next decade. [Don] Patterson's applications and others
like it use artificial intelligence to enable devices to make decisions
on their own. At Carnegie Mellon, AI researchers are working on a four-foot
'nursebot' named Pearl. ... At the Georgia Institute of Technology, researchers
have a 5,000-square-foot Aware Home decked out with the latest AI gizmos
that recognize and then interpret activity in a house." September 23, 2002 [issue date]: Maid
To Order - A little robot called Roomba vacuums your house while you
lounge by the pool. Is this the beginning of the end? By Lev Grossman.
TIME Magazine. "[M]eet Roomba, a new housecleaning robot spawned
by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Artificial Intelligence
Lab and built by a Somerville, Mass., company called iRobot. Roomba's
function is a humble one: it's designed to vacuum your living room while
you're otherwise engaged. But Roomba also represents a technological watershed:
it's the first robot ever built that is designed to live in your home,
serve a useful purpose and be priced for the mass market -- at $199, it
costs about the same as a mid-range vacuum cleaner. Roomba isn't quite
Rosey the Robot, but it just might be Rosey's great-great-grandparent." September 23, 2002: Company
Makes Robot Vacuum Cleaner. By Larry Blasko. Associated Press / available
from The Herald-Sun. "She's named Roomba, and is manufactured by
iRobot Corporation, just outside of Boston in Somerville, Mass. Like any
case of infatuation, this one makes you throw out objectivity, but it's
safe to say she's unlike any vacuum cleaner I've ever met. For one thing,
Roomba is a robot with smarts, billed by her manufacturer as a 'Intelligent
FloorVac.' ... Roomba is able to move effortlessly from bare floor to
throw rug and back to floor or onto carpeting. If she gets stuck when
confronting a throw rug head on, she's smart enough to switch to an angular
approach. ... Those who, for any physical reason, find it hard to handle
a standard vacuum cleaner should check it out, as well as those of us
who will vacuum the floors every five weeks, whether they need it or not.
All kidding aside, this is an affordable application of artificial intelligence
to an everyday task, and just another addition to the wonders that were
pure science fiction not too long ago." September 22, 2002: 'Danger,
Will Robinson! Dust Bunnies!' By Wayne Rash. The Washington Post (Page
H07). "Home robots that do actual work have been dreams for decades,
while the few actual robots to be sold for use in homes have been simply
toys -- fun, but not much help. But the Roomba, from Somerville, Mass.-based
iRobot Corp. (www.irobot.com), actually works. This flat, round device
is no R2-D2; it does only one job, sweeping and vacuuming floors unattended.
But it does that job effectively and without requiring any special training
-- and it costs just $200. The Roomba's parent company comes with good
credentials: Those robots you saw on television searching for survivors
in the ruins of the World Trade Center were made by iRobot. The Roomba
is derived from models the company built to clear minefields; it uses
their search algorithms to find dust bunnies instead of explosives."
September 18, 2002: Somerville
firm thinks robot will really clean up. By Hiawatha Bray. The Boston
Globe. "Somerville-based iRobot Corp. has sent its robots into the
caves of Afghanistan and across the sands of Egypt. Now comes the hard
part - getting past the front door of the American home. ... [Colin] Angle
is hoping that the company's latest product, Roomba, an automated floor
cleaner, may fit that bill. Roomba is a six-pound battery-powered disk
with just enough intelligence to scour the dust and dirt from carpets
and bare floors. A user can turn it on and leave, according to the company,
and Roomba will find its way around the room using a combination of infrared
sensors and sophisticated navigation software embedded in its tiny brain."
September 12, 2002: Form
SB-2 Registration Statement filed with the Securities and Exchange
Commission by One Voice Technologies, Inc. Provided by FreeEDGAR. PROSPECTUS
SUMMARY: (excerpt) "Our initial product is the first in our line of intelligent
voice interactive solutions. Our software is based on artificial intelligence
that allows people to talk with their computers and wireless devices through
everyday common speech. Our artificial intelligence technology is so advanced
that it understands not only simple phrases but advanced linguistic concepts
such as topic, subject and synonym relationships. By asking the user relevant
questions, our software system can help clarify and learn from the user's
requests." September 9, 2002: America
has moved into a security-conscious era. By Muriel Dobbin. Scripps
Howard News Service / available from the Knoxville
News-Sentinel. "Since terrorists struck New York and Washington last
year, America has moved into a security-conscious era of biometrics, gamma
ray imaging systems, radiation detectors, isotope identifiers and 'bomb-bots'
- remote-control robots that can disable explosives. Advancing technology
has allied human and artificial intelligence, especially in situations
like airports, where security experts cautioned that passenger and baggage
screening needed a combination of people and efficient machines. 'Machines
don't get tired, but they need a human to make sure they're working,'
said Douglas Harris, a security specialist who is chairman of Anacapa
Sciences in Santa Barbara, Calif., a company specializing in analytical
technology. The need for new programs and technology in response to the
terrorism threat was emphasized in President Bush's strategy for homeland
security, which called for about $11 billion for resources to fight bioterrorism,
including increasing security at borders and airports. The White House
Office of Homeland Security ... is also supporting the development of
biometric technology that recognizes individuals by fingerprints or the
iris pattern of the eye, which was hailed by Bush as showing 'great promise'
as a security device." September 6, 2002: Internet
pornography not a problem, say IT experts. By Tshering Gyeltshen.
Kuensel (Bhutan). "According to online survey reports, there are
over 230,000 pornographic websites on the internet with 200 - 300 new
sites being included each day. In addition to this, computer hackers often
hijack sites with respectable names and convert them to pornography sites
- as has been the case with Kuensel.com. ... Filtering systems, such as
BAIRSM, instantly recognizes and evaluates visual images as well as text.
The BAIRSM Filtering System is reportedly the only software program that
uses artificial intelligence to recognize and block pornography and other
material considered 'objectionable'." September 2, 2002: Designs
for easier steering through life. The Toronto Star. "Canada is
a world leader in rehabilitative technology, and Geoff Fernie, director
of Sunnybrook Hospital's Centre for Studies in Aging, is one of the reasons
why. Judy Steed speaks with a designer on a mission. ... Fernie's team
is also working on an artificial intelligence project for people with
dementia, to prompt them to do simple tasks, such as go to the bathroom
and wash their hands. 'A camera will watch what they're doing, and if
they make a mistake -- if they just stand in front of the sink and forget
what they're supposed to do -- a computer will cue a voice telling them
to turn on the tap, pick up the soap, rinse their hands,' says Pam Holliday,
a research associate. There's a huge, expanding market for the centre's
products. But Fernie and his team are constantly scrounging for money.
'You want to produce a simple product that people need -- getting on and
off toilets is a passion of mine,' Fernie says. 'But try writing a grant
application for adjustable grab bars around the toilet. It's hard to get
any interest -- until you put the word robot in front, and then the product
flies.' He's got one: RoboNurse, a device that's driven by a nurse and
functions as a sort of forklift for humans -- a description that troubles
Fernie." September 2, 2002: The
Robot Shopkeeper - New customer behavior technology from NCorp gives
a personal touch to online shopping. By Thomas K. Grose. TIME Europe:
Digital Europe Start-Up of the Week. "In today's world of online
shopping, call centers and impersonal supermarkets, that human touch is
missing. But technology developed by a former Cambridge University researcher
could help introduce old fashioned personal care into online shopping.
Mike Lynch, who has a doctorate in pattern recognition, began developing
algorithms to help identify patterns more than a decade ago. ... The basic
technology is a form of Artificial Intelligence that 'gives computers
the ability to recognize patterns the way humans can,' explains Nick Bidmead,
NCorp chief executive." September 1, 2002: Robots
Revolution: The arrival of robots at General Motors Corp. in 1961
brought the promise of flexible automation. Today's advances in research
offer robots the chance to reach their full industrial potential. By John
Teresko. Industry Week. "About 800,000 robots populate global manufacturing
with almost half working in Japan. About 121,000 industrial robots work
in the U.S., says Donald A. Vincent, executive vice president, Robotic
Industries Association, Ann Arbor, Mich. ... The new fundamental is intelligence-robotic
technology converging with a wide variety of complementary technologies,
says senior analyst Dick Slansky, ARC Advisory Group, Dedham, Mass. He
cites machine vision, force sensing (touch), speech recognition and advanced
mechanics. The result: exciting new levels of functionality for areas
never before considered practical for robots, adds Slansky." August 30, 2002: Computer
to predict Forth wildlife fears. By Jason Cumming. Edinburgh Evening
News. "New computer software that can predict long-term threats to
Firth of Forth wildlife linked to the Capital's population boom was today
unveiled by city researchers. Edinburgh University-based experts in artificial
intelligence and ecology have devised a complex modelling system capable
of warning exactly what impact development will have on the environment
over the next 20 years. ... The Green Echo project uses software developed
by Edinburgh University spin-out firm Simulistics Ltd to make 'animated
maps' based on various scenarios. " August 26, 2002: High
Tech's Future is in the Toy Chest. By Arlene Weintraub. BusinessWeek;
issue title, 25 Ideas For a Changing World. "Toymakers are
pushing the boundaries in artificial intelligence, wireless communications,
and virtual reality. And the benefits are flowing to other industries
as well. ... Robotics provides some of the best examples of how the military
has tapped into the creativity behind toys. ... And robots could assist
the sick or elderly. Last year, a dozen robots combed the wreckage of
the World Trade Center looking for victims. ... Children growing up with
the seeds of this technology constantly push it forward. At the Carnegie
Mellon Robotic Autonomy course this summer...Liz Cabrales, 17, built SpongeBots,
a species that runs, walks and dances." August 23, 2002: Artificial
Intelligence? Out of their minds - Here we go again . . . pundits
can't stop hyping the business opportunities of artificial intelligence.
By Geoffrey James. Red Herring. "A spate of books that tout astounding
breakthroughs in AI are about to hit the shelves. Sun Microsystems' chief
scientist, Bill Joy, who years ago mused in the pages of Wired magazine
about a future in which robots are the dominant form of life on earth,
reportedly has a book in preparation on the subject, as does Jeff Hawkins,
cofounder of the personal digital assistant manufacturer Handspring, and
Tom Mitchell, professor of AI and learning at Carnegie Mellon University.
AI pioneer and entrepreneur Ray Kurzweil is also working on a book, The
Singularity Is Near, a sequel to his previous best-seller, The Age of
Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence (Penguin
USA, 2000). These books will join the recently published Flesh and Machines:
How Robots Will Change Us (Pantheon Books, 2002), in which Rodney Brooks,
the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory,
promises that machines will have 'emotions, desires, fears, loves and
pride.' These pundits clearly believe that AI is on the brink of a major
comeback. ... The AI pundits will no doubt continue to predict that generalized
AI will be achieved within 20 years. That's a promise, however, that AI
pundits have been making since the '60s. Absent multiple major revolutions
in both computer science and neuroscience, it's almost certain that the
bold AI prognostications of today will be no more accurate than those
of the past." August 20, 2002: Robot
vies to be wedding snapper. BBC. "Wedding photographers could
be put out of a job by a robot developed by scientists at Washington University
in St Louis in the US. The machine, called Lewis, looks like an upside
down dustbin with a digital camera on top. It is programmed to wander
around a room, picking out people's faces and taking photographs. ...
The robot alternates between detecting faces and adjusting the camera
position to take well-composed photographs." August 15, 2002: Recent
transplant launches firm to protect individual identities. By Donald
I. Hammonds. Post-Gazette. "A sluggish economy and a bear market
for almost anything high-tech may seem to make it a bad time to launch
a new technology company. But Latanya Sweeney has faced tougher obstacles.
Such as being reared by her great-grandparents in Nashville, Tenn. Or
being the first African-American woman to graduate from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology with a doctorate in computer science. ... Sweeney
recently co-founded and serves as chief technology officer for DatAnon,
a start-up that uses computer technology to protect private information
in publicly released databases. ... Sweeney is excited about the prospects
for the firm's services in an age of diminishing privacy. 'It's important
because tremendous amounts of information is captured on individuals as
they go through their daily lives, whether it's food purchased at the
grocery store, a bank card, medical information, parking tickets, whatever,'
she said. ... 'The absence of role models for young people, particularly
young women here, is a problem,' she said. 'Having somebody else who believes
in them is really crucial, and I feel it's important that I give back
to the community. Hopefully, students will look at me and say to themselves,
'I can do this. I can do better than her -- and that's exactly right.'" August 8, 2002: Software
gauges debtors' ability, inclination to pay. By Dan Luzadder. The
Denver Post. "'The problem for debt collections is that the vast
majority of people will not pay,' says Bernhard Nann, president and founder
of Narex Inc., a Golden-based company that developed and is marketing
artificial intelligence programs to improve debt collection efforts. 'For
collectors the solution to the problem is to find out which consumers
they should spend time and money on, trying to get a payment,' Nann said.
... Artificial intelligence - the spooky part of technology that allows
computers to make logical judgments on all manner of things, including
human behavior - is now allowing debt collectors to predict, before they
dial, whether debtors are likely to pay, how much they'll pay, and how
soon." August 2002 issue: To
Boldly Go to CMU - When I went to work with William Shatner on a book
about the future, I knew I had to bring him home to Pittsburgh, where
a good bit of the future is already being shaped. By Chip Walter. Pittsburgh
Magazine. "Bill (no one, I learn, calls William Shatner William),
inspired by a comment made by the great physicist Stephen Hawking when
he was visiting the 'Star Trek' set in the early '90s, settles on the
title, I'm Working on That -- 'that' being the future. (As Hawking was
being wheeled by the Enterprise's imaginary warp drive engines, he asked
what they were. When he was told, he considered them and said, 'Oh. Yes.
I'm working on that.') Thus the book's basic premise: As we round the
corner on a new millennium, lots of the technologies inspired by 'Star
Trek' seem to be coming true. ... We talk (really) with Flo the Nursebot,
a robot designed to extend independent living for the elderly by becoming
a kind of mechanical helpmate. (Her digital daughter, Pearl, is now being
tested in retirement community Longwood at Oakmont.) ... [W]e experience
a kind of universal translator that [Alex Weibel] and his team have developed.
... To solve the thorny issue of converting the meaning of one language
directly into another, Weibel's team has created a separate master language
into which ALL tongues can be translated. ... We also spend hours in mind-bending
discourse over dinner with Hans Moravec, considered by many the world's
most provocative visionary in robotics. ... When asked when we can expect
a creature like Data, he doesn't even blink. '2050,' he says." July 25, 2002: Artificial
intelligence tackles breast cancer. By Duncan Graham-Rowe. New Scientist.
"Techniques borrowed from artificial intelligence could help doctors
assess just how serious a particular case of breast cancer is and, therefore,
how to treat it. ... When tested on 100 women, the new technique proved
to be nearly 90 per cent accurate at predicting the extent of this spread
and whether they would survive for five years. The approach, developed
by a team led by Raouf Naguib at the University of Coventry and Gajanan
Sherbet at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, builds on an existing
analytical method called image cytometry. ... Naguib and Sherbet compared
this technique to their own, which uses a neural network program and fuzzy
logic, a decision-making tool commonly used by artificial intelligence
researchers when dealing with imprecise data." July 24, 2002: Vendors
showcase educational programs. By Jason Nix. The Brunswick News. "If
Mehrl Martin has his way, 2002 might mark the first year Glynn County
and other Georgia students' essays are graded by a computer system reminiscent
of the movie '2001: A Space Odyssey.' Standing at his vendor's booth at
the 2002 Georgia Association of Educational Leaders Summer Conference
at the Jekyll Island Conference Center, he explains the ins and outs of
IntelliMetric, an online computerized essay grading program he hopes will
eliminate the handwritten red marks of teachers that students are used
to seeing when their essay is returned. His company, Vantage Learning,
developed the HAL-like artificial intelligence technology after $10 million
in research and development. ... Vantage Learning has already sold the
idea to College Board, the group responsible for the SAT. ... IntelliMetric
uses artificial intelligence technology to combine the elements of a rubric
developed by teachers as well as a sample of 300 papers graded by real
teachers in order to grade student essays." July 21, 2002: Signs
of Fraud Go Beyond Signature - Credit Card Companies Use Artificial
Intelligence to Thwart Thieves. By Margaret Webb Pressler. The Washington
Post (Page H05). "As it turns out, however, credit card companies
no longer rely on retail clerks to catch the crooks. ... 'We're at a level
whereby we can understand with artificial intelligence . . . the potentially
fraudulent transactions,' said Raf Sorrentino, vice president of risk
management for First Data Corp., one of the country's biggest providers
of credit card processing and payment services. Credit card fraud costs
the industry about a billion dollars a year, or 7 cents out of every $100
dollars spent on plastic. But that is down significantly from its peak
about a decade ago, Sorrentino says, in large part because of the powerful
technology that can recognize unusual spending patterns." July 15, 2002: New
'smart' appliances for home gain U.S. foothold in Playa Vista. By
Al Ridenour. Los Angeles Times / available from The Nando Times. "The
integration of voice-command technology into domestic systems is not unique
to GE. The Italian Turboair Group has created a stove hood with speech-recognition
capabilities, and the British bathroom manufacturer Twyford has endowed
a prototype toilet with a voice-activated flushing mechanism. There are
also smart appliances that do the talking themselves. Sweden's Electrolux
(maker of the robotic vacuum) is offering Indian consumers the 'Washy
Talky,' a washing machine that prompts users with cues like "drop detergent,
close lid and relax" in English or Hindi. And in Maryland, Home Automated
Living provides software that not only recognizes and obeys voice commands,
but also speaks back." July 1, 2002 issue [posted 6/23/02]: Where
Lech Does Tech. By Desa Philadelphia. TIME. "Leading Poland to
democracy brought Lech Walesa a Nobel Peace Prize and international acclaim,
but he admits to a few regrets. One is that he was so busy throughout
the 1980s and '90s that he 'did not have the time to follow developments
in technology closely.' But he is catching up.The first corporate board
Walesa, 58, has agreed to join is that of NuTech Solutions, a closely
held company founded three years ago in Charlotte, N.C., by a pair of
Polish immigrants. NuTech creates software that uses artificial intelligence
(AI) to boost efficiency in its clients' manufacturing, distribution and
customer service. NuTech software allows Ford to find profitable new ways
to sell vehicles that are coming off leases. It helps Unilever target
inefficiencies in its supply chain. And it is being used to detect check
and credit-card fraud at Bank of America ... AMR Research, a technology
research company based in Boston, estimates that 40% of all new manufacturing-related
software already incorporates some form of AI. ... Walesa, who leads a
foundation that promotes a free-market economy in Poland, says that although
he is happy to be working with his countrymen, he joined NuTech primarily
because he is passionate about the promise of its technologies, which
he is studying avidly. 'The science and technology NuTech represents,'
he says, 'are the future of all companies.'" June 28, 2002:The
return of artificial intelligence. The McKinsey Quarterly / abridged
version available from CNET News. "[T]the AI development community
has generated techniques that are beginning to show promise for real business
applications. Like any information system, AI systems become interesting
to business only when they can perform necessary tasks more efficiently
or more accurately or exploit hitherto untapped opportunities. What makes
AI much more likely to succeed now is the fact that the underlying Web-enabled
infrastructure creates unprecedented scope for collecting massive amounts
of information and for using it to automate business functions. The following
exhibits introduce three types of AI, along with real business applications
for each. In every case, the company involved has derived real economic
benefit." June 24, 2002: AI
to Assist Alzheimer's Patients. By Mark Baard. Wired News. "Scientists
in the emerging field of assisted cognition are designing AI systems to
care for Alzheimer's patient without any direct human assistance. Assisted
cognition systems meld artificial-intelligence software, GPS technology,
sensor networks and infrared ID badges into a ubiquitous computing environment.
With assisted cognition, those with early-stage Alzheimer's will use intelligent
personal digital assistants and 'smart homes' to help them do everything
from making a cup of tea to catching their morning bus." June 21, 2002: New
cancer test praised by lecturer. WVU speaker lauds medical discovery
By Jan Boyles. The Dominion Post. "Just one drop of blood might make
the difference in early detection of cancer. ... Researchers conduct the
test by placing a single drop of the blood's serum on a metal bar. The
bar is then inserted into a vacuum chamber and scanned by a laser beam.
An artificial intelligence computer system then produces a chart of the
body's proteins resembling a bar code. This chart is compared to those
of cancer patients and noncancer patients. ... Results from the machine
are amazing predictors, ranging from 93 percent to 100 percent accuracy." June 21, 2002: Internet
'brain' speeds up searches. By Nick Farrell. VNU Net. "Sony plans
to use it for PlayStation technical support Boffins at Cambridge University
claim to have developed an internet 'brain' that helps people get information
from internet-based databases. Dubbed Metafaq, the system can answer emailed
questions and also guide surfers through websites. Dr Davin Yap, who developed
the system, said it uses artificial intelligence to answer questions as
well as a human. 'It allows people to search intelligently and predicts
the questions they will ask,' he said. ... More than 85 per cent of PlayStation
questions could be answered directly by Metafaq." June 20, 2002: MIT
project shows future interface technologies. By Sam Costello. InfoWorld.
"Imagine a future in which you could tell your computer to move a
folder inside another, and just by pointing with your finger, it would
happen. Or being able to command your computer to print your vacation
pictures on the nearest color printer, and not have to supply any more
configuration information. While you're imagining these scenarios, researchers
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are working on a project
that could make these, and other new ways to interface with computers,
a reality. Called the Project Oxygen Alliance.... The alliance is working
on a number of projects, including those listed above, and demonstrated
a handful at its second annual meeting, held last week in Cambridge." June 1, 2002: Science
fiction made real - Calgary gathering showcases future technology.
By Feroza Master. Calgary Herald. "Nearly 30 different groups of
inventors, universities and firms from across the country took part in
the three-day conference that wrapped up Friday, sponsored by Precarn
and the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems, managed by Precarn.
Both are networks of high-technology companies and universities. Intelligent
systems -- machines like Jose that can observe, collect data, analyse
it and make decisions -- are the thing of the future, said Precarn's president
and CEO, Anthony Eyton. ... Robots aren't the only machines that are classified
as intelligent systems. In oilsands mining, an infrared camera can take
a picture that identifies different substances and can indicate how much
bitumen -- raw oil -- is in the rock, to an accuracy level of plus or
minus five per cent. This Intelligent Sensing Systems for Oil and Mining
Industries developed by the Alberta Research Council is faster than the
old way of collecting and analysing samples in a lab. And researchers
at Simon Fraser University and the University of Toronto are working on
ways for doctors to learn laproscopic surgery -- making small incisions
in the body to operate using a mini-camera and a cutting tool -- through
computer simulation instead of operating on animal organs and live pigs." May 29, 2002: University
At Buffalo Research Provides First Scientific Proof That Handwriting Is
Unique To Each Of Us. ScienceDaily Magazine, based upon a news release
from the State University of New York at Buffalo. "Computer scientists
at the University at Buffalo have provided the first peer-reviewed scientific
validation that each person's handwriting is individual, according to
a paper that will be published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences in
July. The UB research was cited in an April 29th decision of the U.S.
District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. That decision
(U.S. v. Gricco) allows expert testimony concerning handwritten documents
pertinent to the case to be presented. ... CEDAR [the Center of Excellence
in Document Analysis and Recognition at UB] is the largest research center
in the world devoted to developing new technologies that can recognize
and read handwriting. In the U.S., it is the only center in a university
where researchers in artificial intelligence apply pattern-recognition
techniques to the problem of reading handwriting. ... Over the past decade,
CEDAR has worked with the U.S. Postal Service developing and refining
the software now in use in postal distribution centers across the nation
that allow up to 70 percent of the handwritten addresses on envelopes
to be read by sorting machines." May 28, 2002: A
Map That Maps Gene Functions. By Kristen Philipkoski. Wired News.
"The genetics revolution is generating such a gigantic glut of information
that artificial intelligence may be the only way scientists will ever
put it to practical use. Inspired by an AI effort to record all of the
common-sense knowledge shared among humans called Cyc, scientists have
come up with a technology that can gather all of the information scientists
know about an organism. ... Working with Doug Lenat -- who started the
Cyc common-sense project in 1985 -- inspired Karp to apply some of the
Cyc artificial intelligence techniques; namely, using knowledge representation
to map metabolic pathways in organisms. ... 'Artificial intelligence comes
in when you can use the tool interactively and ask very advanced queries.
Others just implement perl scripts that are, I'd say, dumb,' said Lukas
Mueller, a researcher at the Carnegie Institution and a curator of the
Arabidopsis Information Resource." May 20, 2002: Making
good on bad debt. By David Milstead. Rocky Mountain News. "NAREX
has developed an artificial-intelligence program that quantifies collectibility
-- it tells which bad-debt accounts are likelier to pay than others, and
the best way to make them pay up. 'We can match up what kinds of human
interaction works best with which type of consumers,' said NAREX founder
and CEO Bernhard Nann. 'We can quantify that.'... Maryland-based consultant
Kaulkin Ginsberg Co. estimates $135 billion in delinquent consumer debt
was farmed out for collection in 2000, and there were 6,500 collection
agencies and 1,600 credit reporting agencies chasing it." May 19, 2002: 'Artificial
physician' threatens doctors' careers - Computer could replace MDs
on space missions. By David Stonehouse. The Ottawa Citizen. "Researchers
in the United States are developing an intelligent computer that could
one day spell the end of one of the most honourable and admirable of professions:
doctoring. A team in Kentucky is under contract with NASA to design a
system that can act as medical adviser onboard the International Space
Station and a mission to Mars. ... The intelligent medical system is to
take at least seven years to create, but in the end it will be able to
call up medical histories, assess patients and offer treatment options.
It will be outfitted with the latest in artificial intelligence so it
will be able to 'think' and adapt, which will come in handy during its
mandatory residency. ... It could also be ideal for rural clinics and
could be effectively pressed into service in a battlefield or during civilian
disasters when there aren't enough human doctors available. ...
The team, though, is quick to caution that
the system it is developing is not intended to replace the expertise of
human physicians, but to act more as a clever assistant. ... Still, the
very reason for its creation is to act as a substitute when no doctor
is at hand, when radio contact with Earth is lost and an astronaut can't
wait for a doctor." May 12, 2002: Robots
poised for pivotal role in landmine clearance. By Hisatoshi Kabata.
The Asahi Shimbun. "Computerized helpmates shaped like bugs or snakes
may accelerate the demining process by decades. Mention robotics to most
people and what likely springs to mind is a toy dog or other electronic
'pet.' But robotics technologies are also being put to far more serious
use, and through some of their applications, such as clearing landmines,
they stand to save numerous lives. ... Many nations estimate it would
take from several decades to several centuries to unearth all their mines
manually. To increase both the efficiency and the safety of such life-threatening
work, Japanese robotics engineers are developing a variety of machines.
One such machine is the COMET3 ... developed by a team including Chiba
University professor Kenzo Nonami. The COMET3, which is the size of a
subcompact, is powered by a gasoline engine and can maneuver itself. It
has two antennas, one of which has a metal detector installed on its tip
and the other of which features a marking device. The robot moves along
on its six legs with its antennas moving from side to side and marks with
paint locations where metal is detected." May 9, 2002: AI
helps in fraud fight. By Eric Doyle. Computer Weekly CW360. "Alliance
& Leicester says it has saved millions of pounds of potential losses from
credit card frauds with the introduction of an artificial intelligence-based
detection system. ... The system uses a combination of rules and the pattern-matching
and recognition capabilities of neural networks to alert managers to suspicious
activity." April 30, 2002: Silicon
super-agents. By Barbara Gengler. Australian IT. "Autonomous
software agents are rapidly moving from the development stage to providing
industrial-strength help in everyday environments. Gartner forecasts that
enterprise automation, which includes autonomous software agents and artificial
intelligence software, will account for almost 50 per cent of total IT
spending in 10 years. By 2010, it will be worth $US250 billion ($463 billion).
This new breed of technology uses small software programs built with artificial
intelligence to make independent decisions, such as automatically searching
for and purchasing products on the web." April 23, 2002: Robots
bring dubious cheer to the lonely elderly. By Graeme Kerr. Asahi Shimbun.
"The 80-cm tall robots do everything from bidding a cheery 'good
morning' to checking response times to maths riddles to keep old people
alert. Initial feedback is positive, with 60 percent of elderly users
saying they prefer the robot's voice to a human one. 'They are a good
substitute for grandchildren, many of whom live far away,' says Kuniichi
Ozawa, director of the Sincere Kourien nursing home. 'They've definitely
helped cheer up the atmosphere.' Unlikely though it seems, there is growing
evidence that robots-like pets have a therapeutic effect on old folk.
... While sales of pet robots are still small, the Japan Robot Association
predicts that the market will grow to 1.5 trillion yen in 2010 and 4 trillion
yen in 2025. And with the number of people aged 65 or over in Japan set
to rise from 22 million to 30 million by 2005, or a quarter of the population,
firms like Matsushita, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and Secom Co.
are feverishly working on robotic aids to care for the graying population." April 22, 2002: Fancy
an electronic helper through life? By Maggie Shiels. BBC. "Inside
a nondescript squat brick building that is home to Sprint's Advanced Technology
Lab, a team of engineers, scientists and technologists is busy devising
what it hopes might become the virtual future. And at the centre of operations
is something called an 'e-assistant'. The company bills the invention
as 'an intelligent agent that acts as a virtual personal assistant to
help you sort through the junk mail of life'. ... 'In the morning you'd
like to have something that as an entity will fetch your e-mail, tell
you about your appointments and remind you of the files to bring to work,
recognise what the weather is going to be like and say, 'Hey! - it's going
to rain today. Bring the umbrella.' ... In reality, the e-assistant is
an amalgam of various existing technologies ranging from voice recognition
to face recognition." April 16, 2002: Machines
Are Filling In for Troops. By James Dao and Andrew C. Revkin. The
New York Times (no-fee reg. req'd). "But the Pentagon, energized
by successes in Afghanistan, is moving ever closer to draining the human
drama from the battlefield and replacing it with a ballet of machines.
Rapid advances in technology have brought an array of sensors, vehicles
and weapons that can be operated by remote control or are totally autonomous.
Within a decade, those machines will be able to perform many of the most
dangerous, strenuous or boring tasks now assigned to people, military
planners say, paving the way for a fundamental change in warfare." April 15, 2002: In
Search of Blessed Bots. By C. Brian Smith. Library Journal netConnect,
Spring 2002. "Call it the case of bots to the rescue. Despite their
cute name, they could soon be a powerful addition to the librarians' and
information professionals' toolkit. Eric Lease Morgan, head of the new
Digital Access and Information Architecture Department at Notre Dame University
Libraries and founder of Infomotions, Inc., defines a bot as 'a computer
application mimicking or embodying elements of human intellect.' Also
known as intelligent agents, bots are computer programs that act independently
and autonomously -- but on behalf -- of another. ... With bots, librarians
and information professionals are poised to step into the brave new world
of artificial intelligence (AI). Though still largely in the experimental
stages of use in libraries, bots promise time savings in our current work
and the help needed to expand our roles." April 3, 2002: Robots
Make the Rounds To Ease Hospitals' Costs - VA Experience May Herald
New Uses for 'Droids.' By Susan Okie. Washington Post. "Stationary
robots and those that roll along tracks or wires are used in many industries,
but independently mobile robots that interact with human co-workers or
the general public are still relatively uncommon. Yet 'service robots,'
designed to perform mundane jobs such as delivering drugs, food trays
and laboratory specimens, are increasingly being employed in hospitals,
which must operate 24 hours a day and face severe labor shortages and
high costs for personnel. ... 'Oh, the robot. I'm so used to him now,'
said James Tulsky, a doctor on the hospital staff. 'We all treat him like
a co-worker, like somebody with a personality. He talks to you, he walks
around you.'" April 1, 2002: Computer,
Heal Thyself. By Karyl Scott. Information Week. "Too bad computers
aren't more like people. When we work harder, our hearts beat faster.
When we're hot, we sweat. But in the 54 years since British mathematician
Alan Turing introduced the notion of artificial intelligence, computer
scientists haven't delivered anything close to a self-aware and self-healing
computer. That may change soon enough. Researchers in business and government
labs are building systems that will challenge what it means to be an IT
worker by automating many of the monitoring and maintenance tasks done
today by hand. ... The motivating factor behind it all: to wage war on
complexity. The interlocking pieces of software that make up business
computer networks will soon be beyond the comprehension of most IT workers.
Plus, these complex systems tend to be fragile, breaking down when even
minor changes are made. ... The ultimate goal of adaptive computing isn't
just to have smart, self-healing systems, but to have smart business processes.
That's the prize researchers at Sun are aiming for with a product-forecasting
system that constantly monitors its own performance and tests assumptions
about business execution." March 29, 2002: Showing
Off the Future of Artificial Intelligence - New robots on display
include device that shows human emotions, using artificial muscles and
silicon skin -- and that's not all. By Kuriko Miyake. PC World. "'Pay
attention to what robotics engineers at universities are doing,' said
Kazuo Hirai, an executive managing director of Honda Motor and a developer
of its humanoid Asimo robot. 'What they are doing now is sowing the seeds
for the future robot market.' Those seeds are on display this week at
the Robodex 2002 exhibition, which opened on Thursday and continues until
Sunday in Yokohama, Japan. ... In addition to making interaction with
robots more human, other researchers are looking at adding artificial
intelligence to their creations. Engineers at Professor Shigeki Sugano's
laboratory at Waseda University are trying to give their Wamoeba robot
a sense of values and the ability to determine for itself how to react
towards given situations, said Yuki Suga, a student at Waseda University.
... At one of Chiba University's laboratory, researchers led by Professor
Kenzo Nonami are developing a six-legged robot which works as a land-mine
detector. ... Advances in robot technology aren't just being led by large
organizations and research labs. ... [A] Japanese university student spent
just $75 and six months to develop a radio-controlled robot that can walk
on two legs." March 2002: It's
Alive! - From airport tarmacs to online job banks to medical labs,
artificial intelligence is everywhere. By Jennifer Kahn. Wired (10.03).
"Quietly, though, AI researchers were making more than progress -
they were making products. It's a trend that's been easy to miss, because
once the technology is in use, nobody thinks of it as AI anymore. 'Every
time we figure out a piece of it, it stops being magical; we say, 'Oh,
that's just a computation,'' laments Rodney Brooks, the director of MIT's
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. 'We used to joke that AI means 'almost
implemented.'' In truth, we may never chat up a computer at a cocktail
party. But in smaller yet significant ways, artificial intelligence is
already here: in the cruise control of cars, the servers that route our
email, and the personalized ads clogging our browser windows. The future
is all around us." March 24, 2002:
UBS Goes High - Tech to Fight Money Laundering. Reuters / available
from The New York Times (no-fee reg. req'd) / also
available from CNET ( UBS clamps down on money laundering - 3/25/02).
"Swiss bank UBS AG said on Monday it would use a British technology
firm's artificial intelligence software to monitor all banking transactions
in a bid to thwart money laundering. ... The London Stock Exchange, for
example, uses Searchspace's artificial intelligence software, dubbed Intelligence
Enterprise Framework, to detect particular market abuses, such as insider
trading and share price ramping activities. March 19, 2002: San
Antonio companies score big with test mandate. By Joshua Benton. The
Dallas Morning News. "The federal education bill signed by President
Bush in January requires states to test their students.... Someone's got
to design, build, refine and grade the dozens of tests that don't yet
exist. And with the testing industry already stretched by rapid expansion
- it has gone from a $141 million industry to a $390 million one from
1996 to 2001, according to the nonprofit group Achieve - some are concerned
that companies might not be ready to deal with the coming demand. ...
The more difficult problem comes when grading answers that aren't multiple
choice Š essay questions or short, open-ended responses. Traditionally,
those have required hiring human graders, often retired or vacationing
teachers. But getting qualified graders - willing to work long hours in
the short bursts required by testing calendars - isn't always easy. As
a result, companies such as Harcourt are looking hard at artificial intelligence:
computer programs that can read and grade essays as though they were human.
Dr. [Margie] Jorgensen said that AI technology has advanced to the point
that a computer grader is virtually indistinguishable from a human. 'It
feels to me that it's so close to being doable,' she said. 'I think in
a couple of years you'll see AI being used to grade a major test.' Both
Harcourt and CTB/McGraw Hill now offer AI grading of essays on selected
writing tests.'" March 19, 2002: Robots
- entertainers or companions? Reuters / available from ZDNet UK. "It's
a question anyone might ask about a potential live-in partner -- should
your household robot be cool or practical? For consumer electronics giant
Sony, which on Tuesday unveiled the sleek and diminutive SDR-4X that can
sing in vibrato and dance with fluid or funky motions, robots ought to
be entertaining. But for automaker Honda, which showed off the latest
version of its Asimo robot at a Tuesday luncheon with foreign reporters,
such machines should one day perform useful tasks for their human masters." March 15, 2002: Are
You Being Served? By Joe Nickell. Technology Review. "They aim
to build so-called 'service bots' -- software-hardware hybrid systems
that understand spoken or written English (or any other dialect or language
preferred by the customer), interpret vague or broad queries, possess
a thorough understanding of both the company's products and the customer's
past interactions, and speak or write answers in an intelligible, context-
and emotion-sensitive fashion. ... It may all sound pie-in-the-sky, but
numerous technology companies, as well as research centers at leading
academic institutions, are hammering away at the challenges of building
a better service bot. The first generation is already here. Ford Motor
Company employs a chatty online bot named Ernie, built by San Francisco-based
NativeMinds, who helps technicians at its network of dealerships diagnose
car problems and order parts. IBM's Lotus software division employs a
service bot from Support.com that can examine a user's software, diagnose
problems and fix them by uploading patches to the user's computer -- without
any necessary intervention by human tech support personnel." March 14, 2002: AI
by another name. The Economist. "Like big hairdos and dubious
pop stars, the term 'artificial intelligence' (AI) was big in the 1980s,
vanished in the 1990s -- and now seems to be attempting a comeback. The
term re-entered public consciousness most dramatically with the release
last year of 'A.I.', a movie about a robot boy. But the term is also being
rehabilitated within the computer industry. Researchers, executives and
marketing people are using the expression without irony or inverted commas.
... Perhaps the biggest change in AI's fortunes is simply down to the
change of date. The film 'A.I.' was based on an idea by the late director,
Stanley Kubrick, who also dealt with the topic in another film, '2001:
A Space Odyssey', which was released in 1969. ... It may be, however,
that now that 2001 turned out to be just another year on the calendar,
the comparison with HAL no longer seems quite so important, and AI can
now be judged by what it can do, rather than by how well it matches up
to a 30-year-old science-fiction film. 'People are beginning to realise
that there are impressive things that these systems can do,' says Dr Leake
hopefully. 'They're no longer looking for HAL.'" March 2, 2002: Digital
characters 'talk' to the deaf. By Jon Wurtzel. BBC. "Using digital
avatars as signing translators could significantly expand the ways deaf
and hard of hearing people communicate with the hearing world. The avatars
are computer animations designed to look and move like real people. A
computer program takes spoken English and converts it in real-time to
text. The digital avatars then take this English text and sign its meaning
on a display screen, in effect becoming a translator between spoken English
and British sign language. ... Businesses should pursue this technology,
and not just because it is the right thing to do. The deaf and hard of
hearing account for 8.6 million of the 59 million people in the UK. Combine
that with the millions throughout the world who would also benefit, and
a huge market opportunity emerges for the right products." February 28, 2002: Designers
Take Robots Out of Human Hands. By Anne Eisenberg. The New York Times
(no fee reg. req'd). "Researchers are working to create just such
independent robots, endowing them with enough intelligence and versatility
to be, in the jargon of the field, autonomous -- able to work out complex
problems by computer without help from their creators. A robotic helicopter
so endowed would be smart enough to spot a suitable place to land and
then do so without any remotely controlled help; a terrestrial robot designed
to travel on its own could change its shape from tanklike to snakelike
when it needed to be narrow enough to enter a cave. Robots of this caliber
are actually coming into being. 'Today, for the first time, people are
creating autonomous robots that can function in novel situations, reasoning
and then acting,' said Dr. Gaurav S. Sukhatme, an assistant professor
of computer science at the University of Southern California, who has
jointly edited a special section in the March issue of Communications
of the Association for Computing Machinery that describes some of the
emerging research on robot autonomy." February 27, 2002: Robot
helps pharmacists spend more time with patients. The Citizen. "The
1,800-pound robot fills between 80 to 100 prescriptions an hour, nearly
three times more than a pharmacist can do by hand. ... The hospital also
has an R2D2-like Star Wars robot that is programmed with the hospitalÕs
floor plan, enabling it to deliver ointments, lotions, tablets, capsules
and IV bags -- almost anything but controlled substances. Sensors inside
the robot keep it from bumping into people, gurneys or other moving objects
in the hallways. It even can take the elevator. 'The stuff you dreamed
about 10 years ago, you are using now,' said Chuck Rozak, the hospital's
pharmacy director. The new technology comes at the right time. The National
Association of Chain Drug Stores predicts the number of pharmacists will
increase by 4.5 percent through 2005 while the growing number of older
people will push up the number of prescriptions by 29 percent." February 26, 2002: Robotic
milking making inroads into farms. By Marc Levy. Associated Press
/ available from the GazetteExtra. "With the help of robots and a
little training, 150 cows on the H.E. Heindel & Sons dairy farm in Brogue,
Pa., are practically milking themselves. One of seven farms in the United
States, including three in Wisconsin, that are experimenting with robotic
milking systems, Heindel & Sons has trained most of its cows to walk up
to the milking station and spend a few minutes munching grain while the
robot's quietly moving parts prod at the animal's udder. ... The technology
is billed as a tool for the salvation of small, family owned dairy farms....
The robot, conversely, guides itself, largely cleans itself, and notifies
a farmhand's cell phone if it detects a mechanical problem." February 21, 2002: High-tech
surgery gets closer. Edited by James Kirby. Business Review Weekly
(Australia); BRW Vol. 24 No. 6. "Astronomical fees, post-operative
pain, extended recuperation periods and the risk of infection and complications
are often features of conventional surgery. Although still not the norm,
minimally invasive surgical (MIS) techniques combining robotics, artificial
intelligence and other technology are beginning to replace traditional
surgery." February 21, 2002: Robot
care bears for the elderly. By J. Mark Lytle. BBC. "The sleepy
town of Kourien on the outskirts of Osaka in western Japan is home to
the world's first hi-tech retirement home. The 106-bed facility run by
Matsushita Electrics, called Sincere Kourien, features robot bears whose
sole purpose is to watch over the elderly residents. The bears monitor
patients' response times to spoken questions. They record how long they
spend performing various tasks, before relaying conclusions to staff or
alerting them to unexpected changes. The voice recognition interface helps
remove the barriers presented by using traditional computers for similar
tasks. ... initial feedback has been encouraging, with most of residents
developing an affinity to the bear." February 14, 2002: Biometric
technology moves to secure center stage. By George Leopold. EE Times.
"Facial recognition systems appear to be gaining favor for law enforcement
and other security applications, experts said, mainly because the technology
is the least intrusive. In a security breach, said security specialist
Mike Thomas of United Airlines, an intruder's face could also be flashed
on screens throughout airports. Face recognition technology is also being
used by local police to monitor large crowds. The police in Tampa, Fla.,
used the technology during the 2001 Super Bowl. The technology is also
being used at the Salt Lake City Olympics." February 10, 2002: A
robotic alternative to household chores. By Nicky Blackburn. The Jerusalem
Post. "The first product was a robotic lawn mower, introduced to
the market two years ago. The second, which will be released later this
year, is a robotic vacuum cleaner that vacuums up the dirt, crumbs and
mud from your floor leaving you free to do whatever else you fancy. Home
robotics is a very innovative and exciting new arena. ... The overall
market for lawn mowers in Europe and the US, is about five to six million
units every year in each market. Of this [Udi] Peless estimates that robotic
products will probably capture about 10%. ... People are looking for liberation
from chores," says Peless. 'They simply don't want to do these jobs any
more. That's how household chores have been going in the last couple of
decades. Either you get someone else to do it for you, or you get a robot
to do it. In the past it wasn't possible to mechanize this process, because
technology wasn't intelligent enough. Now it is.'" February 8, 2002: Stunt
Flying Software Robot Helicopter Pilot May Advance Unmanned Vehicles.
By Paul Eng. ABCNEWS.com. "In Afghanistan, unmanned drones have proven
crucial to the U.S. war on terror and military researchers want to make
them even smarter. ... 'We want to have intelligent vehicles that can
respond to real-time threats and make decisions on the fly,' says Allen
Moshfegh, program officer at the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Moshfegh.
In essence: To give pilot-less flying drones, human-like smarts. ... Researchers
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology may have recently taken a
step closer to the goal of a smart drone." February 8, 2002: Ovarian Cancer - A New Test May Catch the 'Silent Killer' Before It Spreads. Reuters / available from ABCNEWS.com. "The 30-minute blood test has been used to detect ovarian cancer but it could be used for any type of cancer. .. The test, which is reported on The Lancet medical journal's Web site, marries proteomics and artificial intelligence computer programmes to fight cancer. Proteomics is the study of proteins inside cells."
February 7, 2002: New
blood test detects early ovarian cancer Artificial intelligence may point
way to lifesaving breakthrough. By Robert Bazell. NBC News / MSNBC.
"But nine out of 10 women with ovarian cancer, like Lyman, get the
diagnosis after the cancer already has already spread because there's
often no symptoms - and until now no way to detect it early. For that
reason, many experts see a new computer-assisted blood test for ovarian
cancer as possibly one of the greatest cancer advances - ever." (Video
available.) February 7, 2002: The
search for intelligence- Smart routers from promising startups could make
the Internet faster and more reliable. Their biggest challenge: timing.
By Om Malik. Red Herring. "Enter the intelligent-routing companies.
If the technology works as promised, equipment being developed by these
companies will have the ability to 'look' into a network and quickly gauge
performance. If there is congestion on a particular network route, then
the intelligent router instructs data traffic to take an alternate, faster
route. This equipment can also instruct the traffic--depending on the
urgency of the data being transmitted--to use networks from a carrier
that provides lower-cost service at certain times of the day." December 9, 2001: Software
helps maritime pilots make more accurate decisions. By William McCall.
Associated Press / available from the Modesto Bee. "Loading extra
cargo worth millions of dollars can come down to drawing just a few extra
inches of draft on a big ship, a decision that maritime pilots can now
make with room to spare using software originally written to detect credit
card fraud. The Physical Oceanographic Real-Time System, or PORTS, also
is helping the shipping industry improve navigation safety and avoid costly
spills that could damage the environment. ... The PORTS system is a practical
application of AI - something generally associated with futuristic robots
rather than fraud prevention or shipping navigation, said Richard Barfus,
chief executive and co-founder of MindBox." December 6, 2001: two articles from the Economist Technology Quarterly:
>>> Customer Service & E-Commerce, Natural Language, Speech, Interfaces, Transportation November 15, 2001: Computer history - It all started with pies. The routine use of computers in business is 50 years old this week. The Economist. "'Is this the first step in an accounting revolution, or merely an interesting and expensive experiment?' asked The Economist in an article devoted to the world's first business computer, nearly 50 years ago. The machine, the Lyons Electronic Office (LEO), was built by Lyons, a British catering company. On November 17th 1951, it ran a program to evaluate the costs, prices and margins for that week's output of bread, cakes and pies, and ran the same program each week thereafter.... And one big question remains unanswered. 'Might computers not have a valuable contribution to make in improving business efficiency?' asked our 1954 article on LEO. The jury is still out on that one." November 11, 2001: Inventions
of the Year -- The Best Inventions of 2001. A special feature from
TIME.com. Here are just two of their picks:
*Optically-Guided Bus: "Now buses on real-life autopilot
are coming to Las Vegas." * Mini Autonomous
Robots: "Imagine a robot small enough to crawl through pipes to check
for chemical leaks or sneak under doors to spy on intruders." October 9, 2001: Artificial
intelligence finds real-world use. By Jonathan Sidener. The Arizona
Republic. [Also
available from USA Today, October 15, 2001: Let your (artificial)
intelligence be your guide.; and
October 24, 2001] "A Georgia company, LogicJunction, has merged artificial
intelligence with 3D technology to create a stable of virtual museum guides.
The company is demonstrating its technology this week at the Association
of Science and Technology Centers annual conference at the Phoenix Civic
Center and at Arizona museums. ... Artificial intelligence, the field
of trying to make computers think and learn, has struggled to translate
laboratory accomplishments into real-world applications. The field, often
known as AI, has produced incremental advances but has not lived up to
the revolutionary changes that were predicted more than a decade ago.
While the technology has struggled to break out of the laboratory, products
such as LogicalMuseum show that it's starting to produce real-world applications,
[Mark] Jowell said." back to General Index by Topic: APPLICATIONS
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