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August 29, 2003: How
perfect do we want to be? By Margaret A. Somerville. Globe and Mail.
"You know what a humanist is. What about a transhumanist or posthumanist?
It wasn't until after Simon Smith, the Toronto-based editor-in-chief of
BetterHumans, persuaded me to debate American transhumanist James Hughes,
that I spent some time exploring this new worldview. 'Transhumanists'
(Google gives 15,100 hits for the term) believe that the info-bio-nano-robotic-AI
(artificial intelligence) technology revolutions will converge to alter
the fundamental nature of being human. We and all our most important values
and beliefs will be changed beyond present recognition. For transhumanists,
being human is not the end of evolution, but the beginning. ... Transhumanists
and I have completely different and contradictory views of what it means
to be human. ... Whether or not we agree with the transhumanists, they
are doing us a major service in making us aware of the enormity the new
technoscience could effect." August 20, 2003: Man
vs. Machine: Are Robots Getting the Upper Hand in Space Exploration?
August 19, 2003: Robots
set to invade the household. By John Jerney. The Daily Yomiuri."Some
people call opera the grandest of the performing arts. According to these
people, opera has it all: music, singing, theatrical performance, and
occasionally even some dance. In the world of technology, the equivalent
has to be robotics. Robotics combines the best of mechanical design, sensors,
microminiaturization, computer science and artificial intelligence. Robotics
too has it all. Robots are widespread throughout the manufacturing world,
and are increasingly becoming commonplace in a range of hazardous environments.
However, robots are not exactly a household item yet, and therefore, many
of the advances in the state of the art go unnoticed by most of us. But
researchers are coming up some novel technologies and some equally fresh
applications. Take, for instance, the Nursebot Project. ... In providing
assistance to the elderly, the Nursebot Project aims to address several
real world needs. To begin with, a Nursebot designed to reside with an
elderly person could keep track of the medical requirements of its human
companion, reminding the person of time-critical duties such as making
new appointments with doctors. ... More ambitious is research into whether
a robotic companion can provide social comfort to shut-ins. ... But robots
do not just have to be altruistic do-gooders. Robots, as they get more
sophisticated may, in fact, just want to have fun. And what is more fun
than participating in a robotic soccer tournament? RoboCup is an international
initiative that uses the game of soccer as a general purpose testing ground
for all types of robotics related technologies." August 19, 2003: The
two faces of progress. By Eric Bost. Opinion Writer, O'Collegian
News (Oklahoma State University). "There are only a few things
in this world that can leave me utterly speechless. Sometimes when I see
a beautiful painting, hear Jimi Hendrix's "Star Spangled Banner" or watch
certain movies, it's hard not to get a little misty-eyed. But, there is
one aspect of our information-based culture that never ceases to amaze
and scare me, technology. It's not just the super-weapons technology or
the coolest little cell phones in the world, it's everything combined.
It's the evolution of technology and it's use that leaves me both in awe
and terror. ... [T]he inevitability of cloning and the creation of artificial
intelligence is scary. Not the idea that it is possible, but the fact
that as soon as these two scientific breakthrough are achieved, they will
more than likely be abused. There is nothing that can be done to stop
the progress of technology, but there should be more caution in approaching
revolutionary technologies." August 14, 2003: Big
questions for tiny particles. From clear sunscreen to self-cleaning
cars, nanotechnology seeps into daily life and starts to raise tough ethical
issues. By Peter N. Spotts. The Christian Science Monitor. "Although
not strictly nanotechnology, researchers have tested in humans tiny arrays
of light- sensing diodes on a chip, which act as replacement photoreceptors,
in a bid to restore human sight. Over the very long term, some researchers
speak of tiny nanobots, perhaps with some form of artificial intelligence,
injected into humans that repair damaged organs or remove obstructions.
Many researchers and industry insiders reject such speculation as hype.
But others are less dismissive. 'Whether something looks loopy or not
is a function of your time horizon,' says Glenn Rey-nolds, a law professor
at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville who specializes in nanotech
issues. Some ideas, such as self-replicating nanobots, 'are not loopy
at all if you look far enough into the future.' ... Confronting the long-term
concerns over 'intelligent' nanobots and tiny self-assembling machines
is harder. ... Nevertheless, researchers still are trying to learn from
the early days of recombinant DNA research, when scientists imposed a
moratorium on their work until they had agreed on a set of guidelines
addressing the safety concerns. Nanotech researchers gathered three years
ago in Palo Alto, Calif., to establish guidelines for safe and responsible
research, which included provisions governing self-replicating machines
and molecular manufacturing." August 6, 2003: U.S.
Backs Florida's New Counterterrorism Database - 'Matrix' Offers Law
Agencies Faster Access to Americans' Personal Records. By Robert O'Harrow
Jr. The Washington Post (Page A01). "Police in Florida are creating
a counterterrorism database designed to give law enforcement agencies
around the country a powerful new tool to analyze billions of records
about both criminals and ordinary Americans. Organizers said the system,
dubbed Matrix, enables investigators to find patterns and links among
people and events faster than ever before, combining police records with
commercially available collections of personal information about most
American adults. ... Matrix is short for Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information
Exchange. ... 'The power of this technology -- to take seemingly isolated
bits of data and tie them together to get a clear picture in seconds --
is vital to strengthening our domestic security,' said James 'Tim' Moore,
who was commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement until
last month." August 5, 2003: How
Robots Will Steal Your Job. By Joanna Glasner. Wired News. "Listening
to Marshall Brain explain the future as he sees it, it's relatively easy
to suspend disbelief and agree how plausible it is that over the next
40 years most of our jobs will be displaced by robots. After all, it only
takes a typical round of errands to reveal how far we've come already.
... According to Brain's projections, laid out in an essay, 'Robotic Nation
,' humanoid robots will be widely available by the year 2030, and able
to replace jobs currently filled by people in areas such as fast-food
service, housecleaning and retail. Unless ways are found to compensate
for these lost jobs, Brain estimates that more than half of Americans
could be unemployed by 2055. ... But many techies who discussed Brain's
essay on the geek site Slashdot found Brain's projections less than convincing." August 2003: Why
A.I. Is Brain-Dead. Marvin Minsky sits in the "hot seat"
and responds to a series of questions from Josh McHugh. Wired Magazine.
"Wired: The biggest name in artificial intelligence declares
AI research 'brain-dead' since the 1970s. What gives? Minsky:
There is no computer that has common sense. We're only getting the kinds
of things that are capable of making an airline reservation. No computer
can look around a room and tell you about it. But the real topic of my
talk was overpopulation." July 30 - August 5, 2003: Cyborg
Liberation Front. By Erik Baard. The Village Voice. "Yeats's
wish, expressed in his poem 'Sailing to Byzantium,' was a governing principle
for those attending the World Transhumanist Association conference at
Yale University in late June. International academics and activists, they
met to lay the groundwork for a society that would admit as citizens and
companions intelligent robots, cyborgs made from a free mixing of human
and machine parts, and fully organic, genetically engineered people who
aren't necessarily human at all. ... [T]he purpose of the Yale conference
was direct, with no feinting at other agendas. The crowd there wanted
to shape what they see as a coming reality. From the first walking stick
to bionic eyes, neural chips, and Stephen Hawking's synthesized voice,
they would argue we've long been in the process of becoming cyborgs. A
'hybrot,' a robot governed by neurons from a rat brain, is now drawing
pictures. Dolly the sheep broke the barrier on cloning, and new transgenic
organisms are routinely created. The transhumanists gathered because supercomputers
are besting human chess masters, and they expect a new intelligence to
pole-vault over humanity -- in this century. ... 'I would say if a creature
is both sentient and intelligent, and has a moral sense, then that creature
should be considered a human being irrespective of the genesis of that
person,' says Rabbi Norman Lamm, chancellor of Yeshiva University. He
finds agreement at the Catholic-run Georgetown Medical Center. 'To err
on the side of inclusion is the loving thing to do,' concludes Kevin FitzGerald,
a Jesuit priest who happens to be a molecular geneticist and bioethicist." July 24, 2003: Workforce
- Man vs. machine on the job. By T.K. Maloy. United Press International
/ available from Interest!ALERT Opinions. "The real 'brain drain'
is not from certain high-technology jobs going overseas, but from human
jobs going to the machines. Warning of this, Richard W. Samson, author
of an employment trend report issued this week by the think tank EraNova
Institute, said workers should not count on 'yesterday's jobs for tomorrow's
income.' Thanks to a 'brain drain' of human skills into electronic systems,
'even the most high-tech jobs are being downsized rapidly,' said Samson,
the director and founder of EraNova. ... As the earlier industrial age
evolved and machines began taking over muscle work, people adjusted by
moving up to know-how work, notes Samson's report. 'But know-how is the
very thing now being automated,' said Samson." July 18, 2003: US
snooping plan blocked. BBC. "A controversial computer surveillance
project that would comb through the personal records of Americans in the
search for suspected terrorists has suffered a severe setback. The US
Senate has voted to cut funding for the programme, known as Terrorism
Information Awareness (TIA), despite pressure from the White House to
back it. Civil liberties activists have been vocal in their opposition
to the plan, arguing it would impose a Big Brother state and intrude into
the privacy of Americans. ... The aim was to used advanced data-mining
tools to look for patterns of terrorist activities in the electronic data
trails left behind by everyone." July 14, 2003: Pentagon
Alters LifeLog Project. By Noah Shachtman. Wired News. "Monday
is the deadline for researchers to submit bids to build the Pentagon's
so-called LifeLog project, an experiment to create an all-encompassing
über-diary. But while teams of academics and entrepreneurs are jostling
for the 18- to 24-month grants to work on the program, the Defense Department
has changed the parameters of the project to respond to a tide of privacy
concerns. ... 'My father was a stroke victim, and he lost the ability
to record short-term memories,' said Howard Shrobe, an MIT computer scientist
who's leading a team of professors and researchers in a LifeLog bid. 'If
you ever saw the movie Memento, he had that. So I'm interested in seeing
how memory works after seeing a broken one. LifeLog is a chance to do
that.' ... By capturing experiences, Darpa claims that LifeLog could help
develop more realistic computerized training programs and robotic assistants
for battlefield commanders. Defense analysts and civil libertarians, on
the other hand, worry that the program is another piece in an ongoing
Pentagon effort to keep tabs on American citizens. LifeLog could become
the ultimate profiling tool, they fear." July 14, 2003: Funding
for TIA All But Dead. By Ryan Singel. Wired News. "Critics on
the left and right have called TIA an attempt to impose Big Brother on
Americans. The program would use advanced data-mining tools and a mammoth
database to find patterns of terrorist activities in electronic data trails
left behind by everyday life. The Senate bill's language is simple but
comprehensive: 'No funds appropriated or otherwise made available to the
Department of Defense ... or to any other department, agency or element
of the Federal Government, may be obligated or expended on research and
development on the Terrorism Information Awareness program." July 11, 2003: We
hatelovelovehate machines - From cell phones to HAL to BlackBerrys
to ATMs to 'Terminator,' our fascination with technology exists alongside
our profound apprehension. By Julia Keller. Chicago Tribune (no fee reg.
req'd.). "Don't look now, but that toaster has been squinting at
you funny all morning. And the waffle iron? Wouldn't turn my back if I
were you. The prospect of machines running amok -- of technological marvels
suddenly morphing into weapons of mass destruction -- is a cheesy staple
of science fiction plots, the creaky theme of a gazillion novels, short
stories, movies, cartoons and the overheated dreams of chronic video game
players. ... 'This fear, this almost palpable hatred of technology, is
very curious,' says Richard Rhodes, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning
book 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb' (1986) and 'Dark Sun: The Making
of the Hydrogen Bomb' (1995). 'Many, many more people have been saved
by technology in the 20th Century than were killed in all the century's
wars.' Yet Rhodes, who edited an anthology titled 'Visions of Technology:
A Century of Vital Debate About Machines, Systems and the Human World'
(1999), also knows that throughout history, many people have been deeply
ambivalent about technology, acknowledging its positive results but fearing
its byproducts. In 19th Century Great Britain, naysayers pointed out that
the rise of industrialization -- which helped make the nation an economic
power -- also caused pollution and overcrowding in cities. At the beginning
of the 20th Century, Rhodes noted, American author Henry Adams gave voice
to the uneasiness that many were feeling about the rapid rise of technology
when he viewed an electricity-generating dynamo. ... But it was the deployment
of the atom bomb that really changed humanity's mind about the unalloyed
good of technology, Rhodes says. 'People used to think of technology as
liberating, but after the atom bomb there was a much more energetic and
active social concern about technology. Clearly, there has been a change
in mentality.'" July 9-15, 2003: Big
Brother Gets a Brain - The Pentagon's Plan for Tracking Everything
That Moves. By Noah Shachtman. The Village Voice. "CTS will keep
watch by equipping each camera with a processor, like the one in your
computer. The chips will have programmed into them 'video understanding
algorithms' that can distinguish one car from another. At each checkpoint,
the car's speed, time of arrival, color, size, license plate, and shape
are all instantly passed on to a central server. If the early tests identifying
cars go well, software that recognizes a person's face and style of walk
could also be added. By sharing only this refined data -- instead of the
raw video itself -- CTS should keep fragile computer networks from becoming
overloaded with hours and hours of meaningless footage. Everybody knows
how much of a pain it can be to get a video clip in your e-mail inbox,
instead of a simple text message. Now imagine how much worse the problem
would get if thousands and thousands of such clips were being sent back
and forth, all day, every day. CTS would help government networks avoid
that burden, with each camera transmitting a mere 8 kilobits per second,
instead of the 200 or so kilobits needed for high-resolution video. CTS
would also keep the snoops who stare at the monitors from being overwhelmed.
'We have enough cameras, but not enough people to watch the video feeds,'
said Tom Strat, who's heading up CTS for DARPA's Information Exploitation
Office." July 4, 2003: Civil
Liberties After 9/11. Commentary by Robert H. Bork. FrontPageMagazine.
"When a nation faces deadly attacks on its citizens at home and abroad,
it is only reasonable to expect that its leaders will take appropriate
measures to increase security. And, since security inevitably means restrictions,
it is likewise only reasonable to expect a public debate over the question
of how much individual liberty should be sacrificed for how much individual
and national safety. ... The Terrorist Information Awareness program (TIA)
is still only in a developmental stage; we do not know whether it can
even be made to work. If it can, it might turn out to be one of the most
valuable weapons in America's war with terrorists. In brief, the program
would seek to identify patterns of conduct that indicate terrorist activity.
... Are there techniques that could be devised to prevent TIA from becoming
the playground of [William] Safire's hypothetical supersnoop without disabling
it altogether? In domestic criminal investigations, courts require warrants
for electronic surveillances. As we have seen, the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act also requires judicial approval of surveillances for
intelligence and counterintelligence purposes. While there would be no
need for a warrant-like requirement in initiating a computer search, other
safeguards can be imagined for TIA. Among them, according to [Stuart]
Taylor, might be 'software designs and legal rules that would block human
agents from learning the identities of people whose transactions are being
'data-mined' by TIA computers unless the agents can obtain judicial warrants
by showing something analogous to the 'probable cause' that the law requires
to justify a wiretap.'" July 4, 2003: Computer fear factor in Hollywood. By Julie Moran Alterio. The Journal News. "Here's a quick quiz: As technology advances and computers get smarter, is it possible machines could one day take over the world? Pick an answer: . I think it is likely. . It could happen. . No way. If you're like 46 percent of the people who were asked this question at Blockbuster's Web site, you'll respond, 'It could happen.' If you're worrying that this puts you in the company of crackpots, consider Murray Campbell. The IBM scientist and co-creator of chess-playing supercomputer Deep Blue says it's only a matter of time before his peers create machines smart enough to take over the world. 'There's no fundamental reason there can't be intelligent machines, but I think it's a ways off,' Campbell says. ... Today, we're surrounded by technology that's beyond our comprehension, which makes movies such as 'Terminator 3' seem less far-fetched -- even to scientists such as Bill Joy. He's the chief scientist at Sun Microsystems -- a maker of the kind of computers that the Internet runs on -- and he's definitely in the camp of worriers. Joy wrote an essay titled, 'Why the Future Doesn't Need Us,' in Wired magazine in April 2000 that's become famous in technology circles for seriously considering whether today's computer scientists are writing the code of humanity's eventual doom." And be sure to check out the side-bar: FYI - More smart machines.
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, AI Overview, SciFi, History, Robots, Chess, Smart Houses, Industry Statistics July 2, 2003: Robotics
tech can help reduce foreign workers. Daily Express (Sabah, Malaysia).
"Switching from human power to robotics and automated technology
can reduce the Government's dependency on foreign workers. Assistant Minister
of Tourism, Culture and Environment, Datuk Karim Bujang, said this during
the closing of the inaugural State-level Robot Football League (Robofest
2003) at Sirim Bhd, here Tuesday. 'We all know that the influx of foreign
workers is important for the nation's development but at the same time
it has also created social problems to us,' he said. '(Therefore) using
robotics and automated technology may be an alternative for us to reduce
dependency on foreign labour.'" July 2, 2003: U.S.
Develops Urban Surveillance System. By Michael J. Sniffen. Associated
Press / available from the Times Union. "Dubbed 'Combat Zones That
See,' the project is intended to help the U.S. military protect troops
and fight in cities overseas. Scientists and privacy experts say the unclassified
technology also could easily be adapted to keep tabs on Americans. The
project's centerpiece would be groundbreaking computer software capable
of automatically identifying vehicles by size, color, shape and license
tag, or drivers and passengers by face. The proposed software also would
provide instant alerts after detecting a vehicle with a license plate
on a watchlist, or search months of records to locate and compare vehicles
spotted near terrorist attacks, according to interviews and contracting
documents reviewed by The Associated Press. ... The program 'aspires to
build the world's first multi-camera surveillance system that uses automatic
... analysis of live video' to study vehicle movement 'and significant
events across an extremely large area,' the documents state. ... DARPA
told more than 100 executives of potential contractors in March that 40
million cameras already are in use around the world, with 300 million
expected by 2005. U.S. police use cameras to monitor bridges, tunnels,
airports and border crossings and regularly access security cameras in
banks, stores and garages for investigative leads." July 2003: The
High Cost of Efficiency - Computers make us more productive. Do they
also slow us down? Viewpoint by J. Bradford DeLong. Wired (Issue 11.07).
"Computers are tremendous labor-saving devices. They give us power
to accomplish extraordinary amounts of work in extraordinarily short intervals
of time: financial analysis, data mining, design automation. But they
also give us the capability to do things like play solitaire. Or send
instant messages. Fiddle with fonts. Futz with PowerPoint. Twiddle with
images. Reconfigure link rollovers. ... From a historical perspective,
it's not at all surprising that we are thrashing about, still trying to
figure out how to use these new tools most effectively. As Stanford's
Paul David was the first to point out, much the same thing happened a
century ago when the electric motor came to American manufacturing." June 25, 2003: The
Road to Oceania. Op-Ed by William Gibson. The New York Times (no fee
reg. req'd.). "Had [George] Orwell known that computers were coming
(out of Bletchley Park, oddly, a dilapidated English country house, home
to the pioneering efforts of Alan Turing and other wartime code-breakers)
he might have imagined a Ministry of Truth empowered by punch cards and
vacuum tubes to better wring the last vestiges of freedom from the population
of Oceania. But I doubt his story would have been very different. ...
Orwell's projections come from the era of information broadcasting, and
are not applicable to our own. Had Orwell been able to equip Big Brother
with all the tools of artificial intelligence, he would still have been
writing from an older paradigm, and the result could never have described
our situation today, nor suggested where we might be heading. That our
own biggish brothers, in the name of national security, draw from ever
wider and increasingly transparent fields of data may disturb us, but
this is something that corporations, nongovernmental organizations and
individuals do as well, with greater and greater frequency. The collection
and management of information, at every level, is exponentially empowered
by the global nature of the system itself, a system unfettered by national
boundaries or, increasingly, government control." June 24, 2003: Building
Robot Soldiers - Researchers are rushing to create battlefield robots
that can assist humans in combat. Michael Roger's Practical Futurist column
in Newsweek / available from MSNBC. "After years of on-again, off-again
funding of advanced robotics, the U.S. defense research establishment
is finally putting big, long-term money into military robots. ... During
this decade, military robots will probably save lives not by fighting,
but by performing some of the more mundane but still hazardous support
activities. That will cut casualties right away -- only about a third
of the servicemen killed in Iraq since May 1 have died in actual fighting.
But someday, in some army, robots will bear and fire arms on their own.
Science fiction fans may recall that the first of Isaac Asimov's Three
Rules of Robotics in his 1950 classic book 'I, Robot' was: 'A robot must
never harm a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to
come to harm.' In the book, that rule was ascribed to 'Handbook of Robotics,
56th Edition, 2058 A.D.'" June 23, 2003: Spy
planes steal the Paris show. By Chelsea Emery. Reuters / available
from The Economic Times. "The success of US unmanned spy planes during
the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had prospective foreign buyers packing
the conference rooms at this year's Paris air show. ... 'In the discussions
we've had with international governments, it would appear that there's
a much more serious interest and a better understanding of what Global
Hawk could do,' said Carl Johnson, vice president of the Global Hawk programme
at Northrop Grumman. Unmanned technology 'is the most exciting place to
be in aerospace right now.' ... Some defence industry executives attending
the Paris air show even suggested that Lockheed Martin Corp.'s F-35 Joint
Strike Fighter, which is still being developed, may be the last manned
fighter plane needed for battle. But others were adamant that artificial
intelligence will never totally replace humans, especially in combat." June 2003: Fast
Forward -25 Trends That Will Change the Way You Do Business. From
e-mail to health care, and from artificial intelligence to the end of
HR as we know it, here are forecasts of how different the world of workforce
management will be 10 years from now. Workforce (pages 43-56). "#6
- Artificial Intelligence: Making computers think more like people is
an idea that persists. In the workplace, software already predicts customer
behavior and machine failures on the factory floor. These capabilities
will continue to evolve. As the Web and data warehouses grow, artificial
intelligence will solve problems that are beyond the reach of the human
brain. ... 'AI will bring advances but also usher in ethical concerns,'
[Owen P.] Hall says. ... #22 - Security vs Privacy: ..." June 17, 2003: Robots
without a cause - Thanks to the newest wonders of technology we can
get robots to do our vacuuming, transmit pictures on our mobile phones
and unlock our cars (and adjust their seats) merely by touching them.
In the face of this wizardry, Stuart Jeffries has only one question: why?
The Guardian. June 16, 2003: The
New Pet Craze: Robovacs. By Leander Kahney. Wired News. "Just
as owners of robot pets like Sony's Aibo develop emotional attachments
to their mechanical companions, people are acquiring similar feelings
for their robot vacuum cleaners. The two leading robovac manufacturers
-- iRobot and Electrolux -- report that owners treat their robovacs somewhat
like pets. ... Scientists believe that robot pets trigger a hard-wired
nurturing response in humans. It appears robot vacuums tap into the same
instincts. MIT anthropologist Sherry Turkle, one of the leading researchers
in the field, is conducting studies on how children perceive smart toys
like the Aibo, Furby, Tamagotchi and My Real Baby. She says humans are
programmed to respond in a caring way to creatures, even brand-new artificial
ones." June 15, 2003: My
Son, the Cyborg. By Margaret Talbot. The New York Times Magazine (no
fee reg. req'd.; pages 11 - 12). "Why, exactly, was it front-page
news (and Starbucks -line conversational fodder) that playing 'first-person
shooter' video games enhances visual skills? Maybe it had that tang of
the counterintuitive that makes certain stories from academia attractive
far beyond it: Hey, violent video games can be good for you! Maybe it
was a consolation prize for parents whose kids can't get enough of games
like 'Grand Theft Auto 3' 'Rogue Spear' and 'Medal of Honor,' where the
object is to terminate with extreme prejudice as many enemies as you can.
... It might seem odd to say that neurological studies on how technology
might be changing the way we use our hands or take in visual information
have anything to do with that cyborgian dream, but it's not really such
a stretch. ... But there's probably another reason that the article about
violent video games and visual attention got good play: it took us away,
for a moment, from the eternal debate about whether violent video games
cause children who play them to become more aggressive. The truth is that
while partisans on both sides are always declaring the matter resolved
by social science, it hasn't been. ... In its own way, the quest for a
definitive scientific answer to the question of whether violent media
cause violence is as persistent and as elusive as the dream of mechanical
life." June 14, 2003: TSA
Modifies Screening Plan - Computerized Analysis Changed in Response
to Criticism That It's Intrusive. By Robert O'Harrow Jr. The Washington
Post (Page E01). "Under the new approach, the system known as CAPPS
II ['second-generation Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System'].
would draw less personal information about passengers into the government
computers, the documents show. ... An earlier version of the system would
have used a more intensive mix of government computers and artificial
intelligence to analyze passenger records. Previous plans also suggested
that officials wanted far wider latitude in how they used records about
passengers' lives. The government and business officials behind those
efforts are no longer involved in the project. New details about the system
are expected to be included in a Privacy Act notice to be published in
the Federal Register next week. ... According to a draft of the document,
the notice will sharply narrow how officials intend to collect and share
personal information about passengers. It also probably will describe
plans for a 'passenger advocate' for handling complaints about inaccurate
scores or other problems. The new notice is intended as a signal that
officials are committed to finding the right balance between security
and privacy. 'We care about those issues, and we're addressing them,'
one senior government official said." June 6, 2003: A
Pentagon computer as your cyberdiary. Opinion by William Safire. The
New York Times / available from the International Herald Tribune. "DARPA's
LifeLog initiative is part of its 'cognitive computing' research. The
goal is to teach your computer to learn by your experience, so that what
has been your digital assistant will morph into your lifelong partner
in memory. ... Followers of Ned Ludd, who in 1799 famously destroyed two
nefarious machines knitting hosiery, hope that Congress will ask: Is the
computer our servant or our partner? Are diaries personal, or does the
Pentagon have a right to LifeLog?" June 5, 2003: Convention
envisions a more robotic future. By John Keilman. Chicago Tribune
(no fee reg. req'd.). "Robots perform surgery, squire patrons though
museums, even milk cows. And robots in the home could become commonplace
soon, some experts said Wednesday at a robotics convention in Rosemont.
... [Joe Engelberger] said a machine could be helpful in home care, assisting
an elderly person to get out of bed, preparing meals and cleaning the
house, all the while keeping up a flow of cheery conversation. ... Henrik
Christensen, a Swedish robotics professor, said a sophisticated helper
robot could prompt a backlash from displaced workers. Several on the panel
and in the audience brought up questions of regulation and liability.
... Some questioned whether the elderly would welcome the formidable technology
into their homes. ... [Colin] Angle added that in his experience, people
are not reluctant to bond with a robot. More than 60 percent of the people
who have bought his company's automated vacuum cleaners have given them
names, he said." June 4, 2003: Smartcams
Take Aim at Terrorists. By Kari L. Dean. Wired News. " These
distributed digital video arrays, or DIVAs, are collections of really
smart cameras able to detect and identify an individual in a crowded train
station and track him wherever he goes -- out of the station, into the
parking lot, onto the freeway and so on. They also notify authorities
when they 'think' the individual engages in suspicious activity or meets
with questionable cohorts. You can watch for these DIVAs in summer 2004.
... For the past four years, CVRR's DIVAs assessed traffic patterns, located
accidents and notified firefighters of emergencies, according to Mohan
Trivedi, director of the DIVA project and professor at UCSD's Jacobs School
of Engineering. ... The capability to identify a man automatically based
on his facial structure, or to locate a woman digitally based on her distinctive
gait is not what makes DIVA special. The Department of Defense has been
contracting with developers of those technologies for years. What's unique
is the DIVA systems' ability to communicate with each other automatically
and intelligently in order to better detect and then follow individuals,
according to Trivedi." June 3, 2003: 'Big
Brother' watching new super diary? By Michael J. Sniffen. Associated
Press / available from CNN / also available from The Seattle Times (Super
Diary Worries Privacy Activists). "A Pentagon project to develop
a digital super diary that records heartbeats, travel, Internet chats
-- everything a person does -- also could provide private companies with
powerful software to analyze behavior. That has privacy experts worried.
Known as LifeLog, the project aims to capture and analyze a multimedia
record of everywhere a subject goes and everything he or she sees, hears,
reads, says and touches. ... LifeLog's goal is to create breakthrough
software that 'will be able to find meaningful patterns in the timetable,
to infer the user's routines, habits and relationships with other people,
organizations, places and objects,' according to Pentagon documents reviewed
by The Associated Press. DARPA's Jan Walker said LifeLog is intended for
those who agree to be monitored. It could enhance the memory of military
commanders and improve computerized military training by chronicling how
users learn and then tailoring training accordingly, officials said. But
defense analyst John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org is dubious about the project's
military application. 'I have a much easier time understanding how Big
Brother would want this than how (Defense Secretary Donald H.) Rumsfeld
would use it,' Pike said." May 28, 2003: Pentagon
seeks to sort, store lifetime experience. By Jim Wolf. Reuters. "The
Pentagon is shopping for ways to capture everything a person sees, says
and hears as part of a project it says is meant to help create smarter
robots. The projected system called Lifelog would suck in all of a subject's
experience -- from phone numbers dialed and emails viewed to every breath
taken, step made and place gone. The idea is to index the material, and
make patterns easily retrievable in an effort to make machines think more
like people, learning from experience. ... The LifeLog goal is to create
a searchable database of human lives -- initially those of the developers
-- to promote artificial intelligence, the agency said. ... Perhaps eager
to avoid any comparisons with George Orwell's all-seeing 'Big Brother'
in the classic novel 1984, DARPA said respondents must address 'human
subject approval, data privacy and security, copyright and legal considerations
that would affect the LifeLog development process.'" May 26, 2003: Rob
Kling, 58; Specialist in Computers' Societal Effect. May 24, 2003: Forget
al-Qaeda, it's robots that will get us, says judge. By Matthew Thompson.
The Sydney Morning Herald. "Hostile robots and dangerous 'quark atoms'
dwarf al-Qaeda as the major threats of the 21st century, Justice Michael
Kirby said yesterday. In his keynote address at a Centenary Medal ceremony
at Paddington Town Hall, the High Court judge warned of biotechnology
running riot. Reminiscent of a Matrix-style scenario where machines rule
the world, Justice Kirby's doomsday fears came from an article by Martin
Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal, in a recent issue of New Scientist magazine
- an article he described as 'the most important thing I read this year'.
Rees has claimed humanity has only a 50:50 chance of surviving the 21st
century. ... [Jeanne] Little said although she shared Justice Kirby's
concerns, the proliferation of advanced robots might benefit humanity.
'They could make armies out of robots, which might save lives,' she said." May 21, 2003: The
Computer World Could Use More IT Girls - The industry is still mostly
a guy thing, and that's a major drawback for women and society. Commentary
by Jane Margolis. Los Angeles Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "Though
women accounted for 46.6% of the U.S. workforce in 2002, when administrative
and support positions were excluded, women made up only 25% of the IT
workforce. It matters greatly that the inventors, designers and creators
of computer technology are mostly males. At the most basic and individual
level, girls and women who do not become engaged in the technology are
missing the educational and substantial economic opportunities that are
falling into the laps of computer-savvy young men. In the long term, the
absence of women at the design table will affect computing as a discipline
and the direction of its influence in society. At the very least, products
are being designed that do not meet the needs of women. For instance,
there are numerous accounts of early voice-recognition systems that were
calibrated to male voices and literally did not hear or respond to the
tones in women's voices. More important, entire domains of the economy
and our social lives are being crafted without the explicit infusion of
the perspectives and experiences of half the population." May 21, 2003: Pentagon
Details New Surveillance System - Critics Fear Proposed Extensive
Use of Computer Database Raises Privacy Issues. By Ariana Eunjung Cha.
Washington Post TechNews. "The Pentagon yesterday detailed the development
of a massive computer surveillance system that would have the power to
track people as never before. It would identify people at great distances
by the irises of their eyes, the grooves in their face or even their gait.
It would look for suspicious patterns in video footage of people's movements.
And it would analyze airline ticket purchases, visa applications, as well
as financial, medical, educational and biometric records to try to predict
terrorists' acts or catch them in the planning stage. ... DARPA spokeswoman
Jan Walker said the report is intended to express the agency's 'full commitment
to planning, executing and overseeing the TIA [Terrorist Information Awareness]
program in a way that protects privacy and civil liberties.' ... The report
outlines technologies and related programs in the surveillance system,
including programs to mine data in foreign-language communications and
to gauge biological threats by analyzing data from hospitals and other
sources." May 19, 2003: Robots
are rushing to the rescue - Mechanical creatures look through rubble
and mine fields: Reuters / available MSNBC; also available from the Turkish
Daily News (Japan
researchers hope robots will save lives). "They look like something
out of a science fiction movie, but they are real. One resembles a giant
spider, another calls to mind a stubby snake or a worm. But Japanese researchers
think robots like these, built to detect landmines or search rubble for
earthquake survivors, may soon save human lives. "Give us about five years
and I think we can show the world something pretty impressive," says Tokyo
Institute of Technology professor Shigeo Hirose. His state-funded work
is an example of efforts to develop robots for use outside factories,
where most now operate. Officials and researchers in Japan, home to almost
half the world's 756,000 industrial robots, hope a new robot industry
will give the stagnant economy a boost. But designers of rescue and mine
detection robots stress they are not working for profit. 'To be able to
save people like those who didn't survive the (1995) Kobe earthquake --
that's the aim of our research,' says Satoshi Tadokoro, chairman of the
International Rescue System Institute, a non-profit organisation developing
disaster relief technology with state funding. Japan is not alone in this
field: Rescue robots helped search through the rubble of the World Trade
Center after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. ... Researchers
are concerned their robots might be adapted for military use. 'We need
to publicise the fact that our research is intended for rescue activities
and not for war,' says Fumitoshi Matsuno, a professor at the University
of Electro-Communications." May 17, 2003: 'Matrix'
plugs in to modern anxiety. By Mark Caro. Chicago
Tribune (May 18th) / available from Knight Ridder/Tribune Information
Services and The Ledger-Enquirer. "'There is this long history of
viewing technology and culture . . . with this view that technology eventually
will destroy us,' said Dan Sandin, director of the Electronic Visualization
Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago. These concerns, he
added, date to ancient philosophers fearing that the act of writing would
destroy the oral tradition. 'Socrates was against it because he thought
people would become forgetful.''There is a fear of the unknown, so a lot
of science fiction, particularly in the movies, portrays these future
capabilities in a dark, sinister way,' said Ray Kurzweil, who wrote the
1999 book 'The Age of Spiritual Machines' as well as an essay in the compilation
book 'Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix.'"The
first was '2001': HAL (the computer) was malevolent, and a lot of future
technology is portrayed in that way.' ... 'There's almost a daily onslaught
of news in which things that seemed to be science fiction have suddenly
become science fact or on the drawing boards, like mergers between electronics
and humans,' said Kurzweil, who runs Kurzweil Technologies in Wellesley,
Mass." May 8, 2003: Balancing
Data Needs And Privacy. Opinion by Leslie Walker. The Washington Post.
"It's hard to believe much good will come of the Bush administration's
plan for a grandiose surveillance network that would scour trillions of
data snippets worldwide hunting for signs of terrorism. I think civil
libertarians are right to worry about the dangers lurking in the massive
governmental snooping expedition known as Total Information Awareness
(TIA), especially since it rests on the unproven notion that machines
can automatically detect terrorism patterns in seemingly unrelated transactional
data. Nonetheless, if such a system can be made to work while respecting
the privacy of law-abiding Americans, Teresa Lunt likely will play a key
role. ... Lunt's project intrigues me. It falls into a relatively young
field of computer science dubbed 'data privacy,' in which researchers
are exploring ways to scrub databases of personally identifiable information
without trashing the usefulness of the digital repositories for socially
valuable research. 'It is an emerging and important field,' said Latanya
Sweeney, the computer scientist who directs Carnegie Mellon University's
Laboratory for International Data Privacy. Sweeney's team recently did
data-privacy development work for the federal government that is just
starting to be used in the Washington region for early detection of bioterrorist
attacks, through screening such records as emergency-room visits. 'It
allows the sharing of information for bioterrorism surveillance with guarantees
that no one can be identified,' Sweeney said." May 4, 2003: In
the future, computers will fight wars. Gray Matters column by Abram
Katz. New Haven Register. "Judging by the technology of Operation
Iraqi Freedom, it's only a matter of time until battlefields are automated.
In the near future, only the American half of the combat zone will operate
by itself. Results will be nightmarish for the unfortunate recipients
of advanced robotic weapons with artificial intelligence. ... What happens
when AI armies confront each other? A lot of metal, silicon and plastic
gets trashed. The side with superior software and better engineers wins.
(Whatever that means.) At around this time, the human world approaches
what futurists call 'the singularity.' The term, borrowed from physics,
is the moment when people stop being able to make sense of what's happening.
Smart machines beget smarter machines. They surpass us. ... [Vernor] Vinge
considers the singularity inevitable. Other equally creative people believe
that machines can never attain self-awareness or rival the power of the
human brain." May 3, 2003: Tomorrow's
man - The worldwide web did not exist when William Gibson started
to write his technologically visionary brand of science fiction but he
created the notion - and the term - cyberspace. With his latest novel,
the 'American Ballard' brings the future even closer and moves further
from genre and into the literary mainstream. By Steven Poole. The Guardian.
"Legend has it that Gibson was inspired to create cyberspace by early
arcade games, but he explains that it wasn't the stuff on the screen he
was interested in but the people looking at it. 'I wasn't as taken by
the graphic content of the early arcade games as I was by the posture
of the kids playing the games,' he says. 'It was so evident that they
wanted to get through the screen: you could see them yearning for some
kind of surround, and doing everything they could to just be there.' ...
Gibson's fiction has always been concerned with the problem of how people
make sense of a world that has been irreparably changed by new technology.
... 'What happens to those characters,' Gibson maintains, 'illustrates
the impact of technology on society, and I find myself thinking sometimes
that there isn't anything other than the impact of technology on society
- possibly that has been more significant historically than any sort of
political thought, in terms of bringing us to where we are now.'" May 2, 2003: One
pill makes you smarter. By Loey Lockerby. Kansas City Star. "Fantasy
stories (including science fiction, fantasy-adventure and horror) usually
rely on metaphor to make their points, allowing them to come at their
subjects in more indirect ways. ... For instance, 'X-Men' isn't just about
hyper-evolved mutants fighting for acceptance. It isn't even about the
specter of another Holocaust. It's about any minority group, in any society,
that has ever faced hostility and discrimination. ... More recently the
issue of artificial intelligence has taken on resonance, leading to scenarios
like those in the 'Terminator' and 'Matrix' franchises, which continue
their sagas this summer. In both series, highly sophisticated computer
programs become sentient and enslave or destroy humans, even finding ways
to masquerade as their prey. Not only do our machines try to kill us,
they take our identities as well. These are unlikely scenarios, but anyone
who has ever had a computer beat them at chess can relate to the concern
that the things we create might overpower us someday. It's a concept that
goes back at least as far as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which also doubled
as a post-Enlightenment philosophical treatise." April 24, 2003: The
end of the world as we know it (maybe) - Martin Rees, the astronomer
royal, believes our civilisation will be lucky to survive the century.
By Simon Hattenstone. The Guardian. "In his new book, Our Final Century,
the astronomer royal predicts that we're doomed. Well, almost. The subtitle
is not quite so hopeless: 'Will the human race survive the 21st century'
it asks. Ultimately, Rees concludes that we have no more than a 50-50
chance of surviving. ... Artificial intelligence is another worry. Soon
enough, he says, we may make robots that are smarter than us and they
may decide we are redundant. Or we may start inserting chips into our
brain to make ourselves that little bit smarter or fitter and find that
we end up more computer than human. ... Just as politicians have never
had as great a duty to act responsibly, he believes the same is true of
scientists, and such a title doesn't help. Scientists must always remember
that they are part of society rather than an isolated priesthood, he says.
'Scientists do have an obligation to ensure that the wider public is aware
of what they've done and of its implications and they also have an obligation
to do what they can, even if it's not very much, to ensure that the work
they do is applied beneficially rather than the opposite.'" April 24, 2003: Wakamaru
Bot at Your Service. By Elisa Batista. Wired News. "Pretty soon,
a robot named Wakamaru may become a fixture in the homes of elderly Japanese
who have no one else to look after them. The robot, which recently wheeled
around to greet guests at the Embedded Systems Conference, is still in
development. But it has the potential to replace a human caretaker in
Japan where robotic technology is embraced and the graying of the population
has left many young people wondering who will care for their parents.
... While Wakamaru may frighten people who are not used to being around
robots -- it resembles a science fiction alien more than a human child
-- in Japan, home to the Sony Aibo and others like it, robots are much
more acceptable members of society. ... 'Obviously, if this completely
replaces human companionship, that would be sad,' [Mark] Tilton added.
'But maybe that is a step up from television that keeps a lot of Americans
company.'" March / April 2003: Someone
to Watch over You. Editorial by Nigel Shadbolt. IEEE Intelligent Systems.
"Our own disciplines of AI and IS can serve to maintain or invade
privacy. They can be used for legitimate law enforcement or to carry out
crime itself. One application area is the analysis and exploration of
relationships between different pieces of information, which involves
the deployment of a whole raft of knowledge-based systems. ... We are
also exploiting AI to support biometric surveillance -- programs that
are increasingly capable of recognizing faces. identifying an individual
from his or her walk, determining who is speaking from a fragment of voice
data, and so on." April 20, 2003: The
Unmanned Army. By Matthew Brzezinski. The New York Times (no fee reg.
req'd.). "It is one thing for computer programs to serve as backup
systems, or for unmanned aircraft to snap pictures or relay intelligence,
functioning as little more than low-orbit satellites. That's mostly what
they were used for in Iraq. But it's a different story entirely when the
decision makers actually get to fight the wars themselves, sending machines
rather than soldiers into battle. The unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV)
is the first tangible evidence of this robotic future. ... If the UCAV
program succeeds, it could lead us to a distant point on the horizon where
no Americans in uniform will ever again fight on the battlefield -- automated
submarines launching cruise missiles, divisions of unmanned ground vehicles
racing toward enemy capitals. Autonomous helicopters will charge ahead
of the columns, flying 15 feet off the ground at full throttle, picking
off targets and ejecting microdrones capable of close-quarter fighting.
... The X-45A doesn't just remove people from the cockpit; it takes humans
almost entirely out of the loop. Unlike the Predator, whose flight, video
and weapons systems are controlled by ground-based operators, nobody wields
a joystick with the X-45A. The machine, which was built by Boeing's Phantom
Works, is programmed to fly itself. All the operator has to do is load
software containing flight and battle plans and press 'Enter.' The computer
takes it from there. ... The emergence of unmanned fighting machines has
tactical, moral and political consequences that will become ever more
apparent as the technology develops." April 15, 2003: Look
out for the butterflies. Opinion by John Lenarcic. The Sydney Morning
Herald. "Science and the humanities may be the two dominant cultures
in academia, according to the late British novelist C. P. Snow, but in
which camp does information technology belong? Whether it's called computer
science or software engineering or information systems, the scientific
method implicitly reigns supreme. IT in academic institutions has become
a blinkered monoculture in need of an injection of humanity. I frequently
lecture on computer ethics, which attempts to instruct IT specialists
on how to best lead their professional lives. It's not meant to be a Sunday
school for budding technocrats. The goal is to foster a 'reflective practitioner'
mentality in examining such issues as professional responsibility, privacy,
equity of access to technology and the social consequences of the new
knowledge economy. ... Those in positions of influence within IT are responsible
for the future. Bill Joy, the co-founder and chief research scientist
of Sun Microsystems, was both praised and pilloried in the media for his
opinions on putting the brakes on development of technologies that mesh
artificial intelligence and genetic engineering. 'Why the Future Doesn't
Need Us' was the title of his April 2000 Wired magazine article and the
source of much public debate as to whether the machines were going to
take over the planet. ... It was a case of the technocrat discovering
the conscience of the dystopian visionary within, and that made a lot
of people uncomfortable." April 8. 2003: Astro
Boy's tears. Editorial. The Asahi Shimbun. "We have to learn
messages from comic hero. Many events are being staged nationwide to mark
the birthday of Astro Boy, the beloved boy-like comic book humanoid hero
created by master cartoonist Osamu Tezuka, who died 14 years ago. ...
The anniversary of his creation apparently fired the imagination of many
people who were inspired by this imaginary robot character as they grew
up to harbor their own dreams for the future. Some of these dreamers have
apparently continued to pursue their youthful ambitions by becoming robot
engineers, hoping to create their own form of Astro Boy. One such dreamer
is Toshitada Doi, a Sony Corp. engineer who played a leading role in the
development of Aibo, the company's popular robot pet. 'Astro Boy has been
the primary source of inspiration for Japanese efforts to develop robots
that have yielded one form of mechanized partner for humans after another,'
said Doi. ... Two years ago, the British Ministry of Defense released
a report that predicted human combatants would be replaced with weapons
with artificial-intelligence and combat robots in wars waged 30 years
from now. Astro Boy would have cried to hear that, pleading, 'Don't use
robots for such a purpose.'" April 8, 2003: Welcome
to the Matrix. By San Grewal. Toronto Star. "Today, 80 per cent
of North Americans access the Internet. Computers, video games, cellular
phones and the Internet now occupy more of the average North American
teenager's time than any other activity, including school. They shop,
listen to music, do their homework, play and communicate online. What
has been created isn't the dark realm of technology predicted by pop culture
and intellectuals. ... [Ejovi] Nuwere was one of the presenters at Digifest
2003, an international festival of online and digital culture held recently
in downtown Toronto, which focused on the future of the Electronic City.
Video game developers, digital artists, hackers and others from around
the world challenged the idea that virtual environments are potentially
dangerous places where people are led astray by sex, violence, bad ethics
and escapist fantasies.... [Tim] Carter says the gaming industry is in
its nascent stage. Till now most games have focussed on 'High Twitch'
reactions to the violent or fast paced confusion that takes place on screen.
But as programming and artificial intelligence get more sophisticated,
the gaming industry will change, just as Hollywood did. 'Action movies,
westerns, that was the easy way to attract an audience. You still have
them, but you also get films about real life, that represent the whole
spectrum of what their audiences relate to. A game like The Sims, using
artificial intelligence, gives players an interactive ability to 'play'
the game of life, hard decisions and all. The industry is becoming more
responsive to the demands of digital communities.'" April 7, 2003: Digging
through data for omens - The government begins sifting databases to
find clues to terrorism in the making. By Dana Hawkins. U.S. News & World
Report. "If government officials have their way, the [Transportation
Security Administration's] test is just the beginning of a new approach
to security called data mining. ... It's a delicate dual challenge: accurately
spotting suspicious patterns across multiple databases while minimizing
false alarms and safeguarding individual privacy. 'It's a project similar
in scale to putting a man on the moon,' says Usama Fayyad, a data-mining
specialist who is CEO of digiMine. 'It's going to take a national commitment,
the best brains in the country, and many years to do it right.'" April 3, 2003: Conference
explores human-machine dynamic. By Pam Noles. Inland Valley Voice
/ Los Angeles Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "Some of the top robotics
researchers are gathering at Harvey Mudd College for a workshop on man,
machine and the potential sociology of a mechanized future. ... Scientists
used to look at the idea of artificial intelligence and robotics as a
matter of brute force, creating specific codes to guide the movements
and actions of the machine or computer mind. In the late 1980s and early
1990s the thinking shifted toward a more organic approach, creating programming
that 'brings them up the way we bring up babies. They're working on this
idea that computers can be conscious, have emotions,' [Sal] Restivo said." April 1, 2003: IC
prof Bailey ponders the magic of machines. By Kelli B. Grant. The
Ithaca Journal. "[Lee] Bailey, an associate professor of philosophy
and religion at Ithaca College, has been studying modern culture's obsession
with technology. He is currently finishing a book on the subject, called
'The Enchantments of Technology.' ... The goal of Bailey's study is to
bring out the parts of humanity that have become estranged by our technological
culture, he said. Modern reverence toward technology has repressed spirituality
and other human qualities. ... 'Machines will never duplicate humans because
they're built on a false assumption that humans are like machines,' Bailey
said. 'We're only enchanted (with robots) because we ignore our own souls.'
Bailey said robots with human form are created for vanity, not for any
technological reason. Such devices cost more to create and could perform
required functions more efficiently in another form." April 2003: I,
Clone - The Three Laws of Cloning will protect clones and advance
science. Column by Michael Shermer. Scientific American. "In his
1950 science-fiction novel I, Robot, Isaac Asimov presented the Three
Laws of Robotics: '1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through
inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey the
orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict
with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long
as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.' The
irrational fears people express today about cloning parallel those surrounding
robotics half a century ago." April 2003: Surveillance
Nation - Webcams, tracking devices, and interlinked databases are
leading to the elimination of unmonitored public space. Are we prepared
for the consequences of the intelligence-gathering network we're unintentionally
building? By Dan Farmer and Charles C. Mann. Technology Review. "The
other two cameras in the Coolidge Bridge project are a little less routine.
Built by Computer Recognition Systems in Wokingham, England, with high-quality
lenses and fast shutter speeds (1/10,000 second), they are designed to
photograph every car and truck that passes by. Located eight kilometers
apart, at the ends of the zone of maximum traffic congestion, the two
cameras send vehicle images to attached computers, which use special character-recognition
software to decipher vehicle license plates. The license data go to a
server at the company's U.S. office in Cambridge, MA, about 130 kilometers
away. As each license plate passes the second camera, the server ascertains
the time difference between the two readings. The average of the travel
durations of all successfully matched vehicles defines the likely travel
time for crossing the bridge at any given moment, and that information
is posted on the traffic watch Web page. To local residents, the traffic
data are helpful, even vital: police use the information to plan emergency
routes. But as the computers calculate traffic flow, they are also making
a record of all cars that cross the bridge -- when they do so, their average
speed, and (depending on lighting and weather conditions) how many people
are in each car." March 28, 2003: Aibo
inventor - Don't use robots for war. AFP / available from The Star.
"The Japanese inventor of Sony's Aibo pet robot said Thursday that
humanoid robots should not be used in conflict situations, such as the
war in Iraq, to harm people. 'Technologically, it is still very difficult
to realise, to have robots fighting each other but if they are connected
to the Internet without security measures, a hacker or a bad guy could
control them easily and harm people,' Masahiro Fujita, who also helped
develop Sony's SDR-4X II humanoid robot, told a press conference."
March 28, 2003: Privacy
in age of data mining topic of workshop at CMU. By Byron Spice. Post-Gazette.
"A Pentagon initiative to find terrorists by sifting through computer
databases has caused an outcry among privacy advocates, but the problem
of safeguarding personal information isn't restricted to the military's
Total Information Awareness program. Even when identification, such as
names and Social Security numbers, are stripped from medical records or
other computerized information, it can be all too easy to infer identities
by combining the remaining information with other databases, said Latanya
Sweeney, director of the Data Privacy Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University.
That makes privacy a concern even when the analysis isn't intended to
identify or track any individual, as is the case for the Real-time Outbreak
and Disease Surveillance program being developed at the University of
Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon as an early warning for bioterrorism. ...
Her own research has shown that 87 percent of the U.S. population can
be uniquely identified based just on gender, birth date and five-digit
ZIP code. In one study, she found that by linking medical records -- stripped
of names but including gender, birth dates and ZIP codes -- gathered by
a governmental group, with voter registration records for Cambridge, Mass.,
she was able to identify the medical records of 97 percent of the 55,000
voters." March 14, 2003: Spell
czech, for better or wurst? By Charles Sheehan. Associated Press /
available from The Bakersfield Californian. "A study at the University
of Pittsburgh indicates spell-check software may level the playing field
between people with differing levels of language skills, hampering the
work of writers and editors who place too much trust in the software.
... Dennis Galletta, a professor of information systems at the Katz Business
School, said spell-checking software is so sophisticated that some have
come to trust it too thoroughly. 'It's not a software problem, it's a
behavior problem,' he said." March 11, 2003: Software
Pioneer Quits Board of Groove. By John Markoff. The New York Times
(no fee reg. req'd.). "The [Total Information Awareness] project
has been trying to build a prototype computer system that would permit
the scanning of hundreds or thousands of databases to look for information
patterns that might alert the authorities to the activities of potential
terrorists. Civil liberties activists have argued that such a system,
if deployed, could easily be misused in ways that would undercut traditional
American privacy values. ... The debate echoes an earlier one that placed
scientists at odds with advancing technologies. The war on terror is raising
ever more difficult civil liberties issues. 'Computer scientists are going
to have the same kinds of battles that physicists did amidst the fallout
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,' said Michael Schrage, a senior adviser to
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Security Studies Program." February 21, 2003: Rein
in Pentagon snooping - Congress' actions help, but more safeguards
are needed. Editorial. Sarasota Herald-Tribune. "Civil liberty watchdogs
on the left and right are celebrating news that Congress has imposed more
restrictions on a controversial surveillance program being developed at
the Pentagon. But their sense of relief may be premature. A bipartisan
coalition of lawmakers on Capitol Hill agreed recently to bar the Department
of Defense from using a proposed computer data-mining program -- called
Total Information Awareness -- on American citizens. That's certainly
a welcome step. So is a related move that will require the Pentagon to
give Congress a detailed report about the program's cost, privacy safeguards
and oversight before research can continue. The program, if developed
to its fullest potential, would have enabled federal authorities to snoop
through credit-card receipts, phone bills and other records of any citizen
for clues about potential terrorism attacks. Pentagon officials put a
vastly different spin on their intentions, contending that they're simply
trying to build an 'artificial intelligence' program that would enable
law-enforcement officials to match up a series of events, such as an individual
buying large amounts of chemicals and renting a truck, that could be part
of a terrorist plot." February 13, 2003: Attack
of the clone debate - For visionaries, legislators, escalating issue
has many facets. By Michael E. Ross. MSNBC. "Writers, futurists and
visionaries are bracing for the real-life impact of cloning, with some
predicting violent social upheaval, a re-evaluation of our esthetic sensibilities,
and the dawn of tailored genes and life spans of 100 years or longer.
... Scientists and futurists say that whether you oppose or embrace cloning,
trying to ban it is a fruitless cause, and unwise. ... Cloning is the
latest genetic technology to come before a public whose values and attitudes
have slowly evolved with each new development. Ray Kurzweil, an inventor
and author of 'The Age of Spiritual Machines,' a 2000 book speculating
on the interface of computers and human intelligence, notes that the passionate
antipathy that accompanied other once-cutting-edge procedures, from in-vitro
fertilization to surrogate motherhood, has largely given way to a sense
that such practices are commonplace. 'All the reproductive technologies
we have -- artificial insemination, test-tube babies -- were once considered
radical,' said Kurzweil, CEO of Kurzweil Technologies, a company specializing
in artificial-intelligence and computer systems. 'A lot of technology
when we first hear about it, we can't get used to it.'" February 7, 2003: Ethics
Matters - People like the old rules. Corporations have redefined the
workplace, but individuals haven't. January 31, 2003: Total
Information Awareness official responds to criticism. By Shane Harris.
Government Executive. "The second-ranking official on the Defense
Department's Total Information Awareness Project to predict terrorist
attacks says critics of the effort have misinterpreted its goals and the
nature of the technology it will use. ... [I]n recent interviews with
Government Executive, TIA Deputy Director Robert Popp showed how TIA would
rely on the artificial intelligence work of earlier projects as well as
the inspection of databases that has inflamed TIA's critics. TIA's goal
is to predict terrorist attacks before they happen. ... Thinking Machines:
In 1989, DARPA started working with the Air Force Research Laboratory
in Rome, N.Y., to develop "automatic decision-making" practices to aid
the military in times of crisis and planning, documents show. It was among
the first in a series of DARPA projects aimed at teaching computers to
think more like people, and to make analyses and decisions on their own.
... Beer and Diapers: Most of the scientific skepticism about TIA concerns
data mining. The term is ill-defined, but is well illustrated by an often-cited
case. A number of convenience store clerks, the story goes, noticed that
men often bought beer at the same time they bought diapers. The store
mined its receipts and proved the clerks' observations correct. So, the
store began stocking diapers next to the beer coolers, and sales skyrocketed.
The story is a myth, but it shows how data mining seeks to understand
the relationship between different actions." January 28, 2003: Four
Voices on the Future - At the World Economic Forum in Davos, prominent
scientists and technologists offered their take on robots, cloning, digital
life, and the 'yuck factor' in tech. By David Kirkpatrick. Fortune. "As
baby-boomers age, [Rodney] Brooks sees assistive robots catching on. They
could, for instance, help people carry groceries to and from the car.
Or they might help us out of bed. Simple versions of products like that
will be on the market within five years, Brooks predicts. ... Sir Martin
talked about what he called the 'yuck factor' in many advances in modern
science and technology. 'We can do things we're not sure we want to do,'
he says. Sir Martin sounded a bit like Sun's Bill Joy (who was among the
many eminent technologists and scientists in the audience) when he said,
'As a layperson I'm very scared about how with things like biotech and
robotics we may be empowering individuals in dangerous ways and exposing
ourselves as a human race to grave new risks.'" January 27, 2003: Watching
the defectives in terrorism war. By Ted Bunker. Business Today. "Just
last week, the Senate voted to shut off funding for a Pentagon project
that critics fear could result in systematic domestic spying on a massive
scale. Called the Total Information Awareness program, the project is
being designed to create a way to comb multiple government and commercial
databases in search of patterns and clues that might expose terrorists
in our midst and abroad. 'The Senate has now said that this program will
not be allowed to grow without tough congressional oversight and accountability,
and that there will be checks on the government's ability to snoop on
law-abiding Americans,' said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who called the TIA
project 'the most far-reaching government surveillance plan in history.'
... Of course, U.S. corporations have been developing some of these capabilities
for more than a decade. Companies such as American Express have long tinkered
with using artificial-intelligence systems to comb through databases of
customer activity to profile their clients and segment them into groups
for targeted marketing efforts. But selling camping gadgets to travel-minded
young people or club memberships to high net worth golfers follows a far
different path than singling out people whose 'profiles' make them suspicious,
even when they're innocent. ... Even as America struggles to adapt to
new technologies while maintaining the rule of law, our judicial and political
processes are meeting those challenges, [Louis] Freeh said...." January 6, 2003: Palo
Alto scientist may fend off Big Brother - Researcher could hold key
to protection of public from government's intrusions. By Ian Hoffman.
The Oakland Tribune. "In a $1 million-a-year, three-year contract
soon to be signed with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA),
the Pentagon's technology venture-capital arm, [Teresa] Lunt and colleagues
at Palo Alto Research Center will attempt to hide the names and identifying
numbers that link people to their phone calls, medical records, travel
reservations and electronic purchases -- all data that Poindexter says
is needed to hunt terrorists. ... So far, Pentagon research managers plan
for names and identifiers -- addresses, telephone numbers, credit-card
numbers, Social Security numbers -- to be blanked out or 'aliased.' Joe
Williams might become Jane Smith. Visa card, zip-code and car-tag numbers
would be changed or obscured. Lunt's charge is to make it virtually impossible
for Total Information Awareness users to pierce those aliases and learn
people's identities without first showing a federal court that a crime
has occurred, or is about to occur, and obtaining a court order akin to
a search warrant. ... 'The idea of DARPA funding research into privacy
technology is terrific. It's a field that has enormous application, and
in general it's a promising line of development,' said Steven Aftergood,
director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American
Scientists. If the government waits for the software, the privacy safeguards
could redefine the debate over Total Information Awareness. It also raises
new philosophical and legal issues." January 3, 2003: Scientists
concerned that increase in restrictions may hurt research - Some reject
federal funds because of limits placed after Sept. 11 terror threat. By
Connie Cass. Associated Press / available from The Baltimore Sun / other
versions of this AP story are available (see for example: Terror
Fears May Affect Research Dollars, ABC News; and Universities
resist federal attempts to review research, Seattle Post-Intelligencer).
"The Massachusetts Institute of Technology walked away from a $404,000
study because the government wanted to restrict participation by foreign
students. Other universities are balking at demands that the government
check research in the name of national security before scientists can
publish or even talk about it. University leaders worry that the trend
could jeopardize the tradition of open science - talking and writing about
findings so they can be verified and built upon by others. ... [T]he National
Security Agency refused to budge from a requirement that any foreigners
working on a planned project at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
be screened by the government in advance, so the school turned down the
money in September, [Paul] Powell said. ... Meantime, researchers and
scientific journals are debating whether - and how - they should censor
themselves to safeguard information from terrorists." January 1, 2003: Robots
offer learning opportunity. By Fumiko Endo. Daily Yomiuri. "Yoshiaki
Sakagami, chief engineer of Honda R&D Co. who oversaw development
of the new Asimo's recognition ability, believes that the robot should
serve as a 'life assistant' for human beings. Describing Asimo as a 'multifunctional
machine to enrich human life,' Sakagami, 45, hopes that the humanoid robot
will become able to help people--especially wheelchair users--move around.'
... During the process of developing the robot, Sakagami began worrying
about the fact that advanced technology has become too close to human
beings. 'I am worried that people empathize too much with robots. I especially
feel great concerns when I see children--who don't even understand human
society--interacting with robots,' he said. For instance, children do
not know what makes robots move. 'I am afraid that they do not recognize
the border between the real and virtual world,' he warned. ... Sakagami
agrees with the oft-quoted belief that the concept of robots in Japan
differs from that in Europe and the United States, a difference that is
said to spring from differences in religious beliefs. Due to such concerns,
when Honda Motor Co. started developing Asimo, it asked the Vatican whether
the production of humanoid robots would be acceptable for Christians.
The Vatican's response was moderate, showing a full understanding toward
the company's project." January 1, 2003: Coexistence
of humans and robots - Nation adjusting to robots. 2003 New Year's
Special. By Fumiko Endo. Daily Yomiuri. "Since ancient times, people
dreamed of creating machines or beings to help them in their work. The
Japanese were no different, but had to wait until the 20th century, when
industrial robots came into their own. Confined for years to plants and
factories, robots finally entered livingrooms and walked into lobbies
with the release of a slew of robots, including Sony Corp.'s pet robot
Aibo in 1999 and Honda Motor Co.'s Asimo in 2000. Industry watchers now
believe we are witnessing the dawn of the age of the robot, in which robots
and human beings coexist in harmony." December 30, 2002: Getting
smart about predictive intelligence. By Scott Kirsner. The Boston
Globe (page C1). "If you want to get ready for the biggest technology
debate of 2003, you should spend a few hours this week with Tom Cruise.
... The movie to rent is 'Minority Report,' directed by Steven Spielberg
and based on a short story by Philip K. Dick.... The technology world's
big debate for 2003 will center on just this kind of predictive intelligence:
the ability to use software running on powerful computers to analyze information
about your prior behavior, like where you've traveled and what you've
bought, to guess about what you might do next. Are you more likely to
purchase a plasma screen TV next year, or attempt to blow up a nuclear
power plant? In real-world Washington, retired Navy Admiral John Poindexter
is constructing a system called Total Information Awareness, with the
hopes of being able to identify terrorists before they commit acts of
terrorism, based on a series of suspicious transactions. In the private
sector, companies are already using predictive intelligence to analyze
your data profile and solve more mundane business problems.... You may
think that attempts at divining crimes before they're committed need more
congressional oversight than they've been receiving - or that we shouldn't
try at all. But whatever you do, give it some thought. Because defining
the limits of how predictive intelligence can be used, by government and
the private sector, is going to be the major technology debate of the
coming year." December 24, 2002: The
shape of playthings to come - Today's toys are more technologically
advanced than ever. What will toys of tomorrow be like? By Chip Walter.
The Boston Globe. "'You're going to see what 10 years ago we would
have defined as science fiction,' says Randy Pausch, co-director of Carnegie
Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center. 'Toys that know where
they are, that can recognize people and respond to them; toys that build
up a mental state of the things around them; toys that talk to each other
and interact with the television set or the computer. You can envision
all kinds of scenarios.' ... What are the downsides as toys grow more
intelligent and networked? Privacy is a big issue because of the vulnerability
of children. How, exactly, would toys use their intelligence, and with
whom would they be connected? What if the smart doll your daughter is
playing with suddenly says she's hungry and wants to go to McDonald's,
or is bored and suggests talking to mom and dad about a trip to Disneyland?
... The ultimate question may be this: Will the electronic sophistication
of tomorrow's toys enhance the way children play or blunt their imaginations?" 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 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 19, 2002: The
end of history, tech version? - Some tech prophets see humans made
irrelevant by machines. But there's a choice. By Kenneth James. The Business
Times. "Seated across the table, they posed their questions earnestly:
Do you think machines will become more intelligent than people in the
next 100 years? Won't that present a danger to humankind? What can be
done to keep that from happening? Disturbing questions, these. And the
two final-year business school undergrads were clearly anticipating disturbing
answers. The interview was one of several they were conducting for a project,
and the research topic pretty much spelt out where they were coming from:
'Chaos from technology: Where is the future taking us?'. Even more telling
were the authorities they cited: Moravec, Kurzweil, Joy, among others.
... But are we really careening towards a future where our destiny is
determined by super-intelligent machines? Is it foolish to expect that
humans will continue to be in control even when machines are demonstrably
more intelligent in every way?" 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 12, 2002: Pacifist
Leonardo may have made mistakes to foil warlords. By Tom Leonard.
The Telegraph / available from The Sydney Morning Herald. "Leonardo
da Vinci inserted a series of deliberate flaws into his inventions, perhaps
to prevent them being put to military use, a new television series says.
... Five designs - for a tank, glider, parachute, diving suit and robot
- were built for the series by enthusiasts and tested by experts. ...
Mr [Michael] Mosley believes the clue lies in one of the notes Leonardo
made beside his aqualung design. It reads: 'Knowing the evil in men's
hearts they will learn how to kill men on the seabed.'" December 9, 2002: Too
Much Information. Comment by Hendrik Hertzberg. The New Yorker. "When
it comes to concocting fevered visions of the future as a way of illuminating
the present ... no literary divinator gets it righter than the sci-fi
pulp master Philip K. Dick, author of 'Clans of the Alphane Moon' and
dozens of other books, and inspirer of some of Hollywood's spookiest dystopias,
including 'Blade Runner,' 'Total Recall,' and 'Minority Report.' And this
is odd, given that he has been dead for twenty years. Too bad he's not
still around. It would be interesting to get his take on the Information
Awareness Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the
Department of Defense. ... The 'example technologies' which the Office
intends to develop include 'entity extraction from natural language text,'
'biologically inspired algorithms for agent control,' and 'truth maintenance.'
One of the Office's thirteen subdivisions, the Human Identification at
a Distance (HumanID) program, is letting contracts not only for 'Face
Recognition' and 'Iris Recognition' but also for 'Gait Recognition.' ...
The Information Awareness Office is working on some really cool stuff
that will eventually turn up at Brookstone and the Sharper Image, like
a Palm Pilot-size PDA that does instantaneous English-Arabic and English-Chinese
translations. ... But the Office's main assignment is, basically, to turn
everything in cyberspace about everybody ... into a single, humongous,
multi-googolplexibyte database that electronic robots will mine for patterns
of information suggestive of terrorist activity. Dr. Strangelove's vision—'a
chikentic gomplex of gumbyuders'—is at last coming into its own.
It's easy to ridicule this—fun, too, and fun is something the war
on terrorism doesn't offer a lot of—but it's not so easy to dismiss
the possibility that the project, nutty as it sounds, might actually be
of significant help in uncovering terrorist networks. The problem is that
it would also be of significant help in uncovering just about everything,
including the last vestiges of individual and family privacy." December 6, 2002: We'll
All Be Under Surveillance - Computers Will Say What We Are. By Nat
Hentoff. The Village Voice. "Orwell died in 1950. Prophetic as he
was in 1984, however, he could not have imagined how advanced
surveillance technology would become. ... Our government's unblinking
eyes will try to find suspicious patterns in your credit-card and bank
data, medical records, the movies you click for on pay-per-view, passport
applications, prescription purchases, e-mail messages, telephone calls,
and anything you've done that winds up in court records, like divorces.
Almost anything you do will leave a trace for these omnivorous computers,
which will now contain records of your library book withdrawals, your
loans and debts, and whatever you order by mail or on the Web. As Georgetown
University law professor Jonathan Turley pointed out in the November 17
Los Angeles Times: 'For more than 200 years, our liberties have
been protected primarily by practical barriers rather than constitutional
barriers to government abuse. Because of the sheer size of the nation
and its population, the government could not practically abuse a great
number of citizens at any given time. In the last decade, however, these
practical barriers have fallen to technology.'" December 6, 2002:
Real love from fake dogs? Cosmic Log by Alan Boyle. MSNBC. "We
know that real pets can make a positive impact on the health of senior
citizens — but could robot pets have the same effect? That’s
what Purdue University’s Center for the Human-Animal Bond plans
to find out, in cooperation with the University of Washington. ... In
another facet of the investigation, the researchers found that some Aibo
owners formed a strangely organic relationship with their inorganic pets.
University of Washington psychology professor Peter Kahn said one owner
reported that when he got dressed in the morning, he turned his Aibo in
another direction for modesty’s sake. ... There’s nothing
wrong per se with the no-muss, no-fuss robotic interaction, Kahn said,
but there is a nagging worry: 'Our concern is that it’s replacing
interaction with real animals,' he said. Would children raised with robotic
pets develop the same sense of responsibility for their fellow creatures?
That’s giving psychologists like Kahn something to think about.
... Can a robo-companion serve as a comforter? Or does this trend serve
as a somewhat sad social commentary? December 1, 2002: Big
disaster, teeny packages. By James N. Gardner. The Oregonian. "Michael
Crichton is the undisputed master of the techno-thriller genre. ... The
underlying scientific developments in 'Prey' are nanotechnology (precision
engineering at the molecular level) and artificial life (the younger,
scarier cousin of artificial intelligence). These fields of research have
generated dire warnings from the likes of Bill Joy, the chief science
officer at Sun Microsystems, and Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal
of England. Joy, for instance, cautions that self-replicating nanodevices,
only a few molecules in volume, could conceivably infect and fatally degrade
our technological infrastructure -- and that no power on Earth would be
able to stop the tiny machines once they began reproducing. In Crichton's
hands, this horrifying possibility comes to life. ... Computer guru Ray
Kurzweil has predicted that before the 21st century ends, thinking machines
will have raced far ahead of humanity in terms of sheer mental ability.
... This is the disquieting specter of artificial intelligence research
succeeding beyond our wildest dreams or nightmares. But as Crichton chillingly
demonstrates, fast-moving research in nanotechnology and artificial life
technologies, some of it funded by the military, raises an even creepier
possibility...." November 25, 2002: IT
to Fight Terrorism. Will it work, or will it backfire? By Gary H.
Anthes. Computerworld. "David Holtzman says that since Sept. 11,
2001, the U.S. government has come to view IT as a key weapon in its war
on terrorism. 'The administration is currently at work planning a new
information system -- one capable of anticipating terrorist acts using
artificial intelligence, or 'data profiling' technologies,' he says. Some
elements of the system would be beneficial, but some go too far and wouldn't
be effective in any case, Holtzman argues. ... Holtzman talked with Computerworld
about the role of IT in fighting terrorism: ... What are the issues
for companies? ... 'How can the corporate IT manager help
head this off? I'd like to see the IT people start this discussion, but
that doesn't seem to be happening. There's this idea that if you can do
something, it's de facto OK to do it. Technology professionals don't think
about the consequences of this stuff. I'm not saying they shouldn't build
something like a CRM system, but there's more than one way to build something.'"
Also see the related story in the same issue:
Global Surveillance: The Government's Plan November 11, 2002: Ithaca
Discusses Frankenstein Technology - Robotics related to man-made man.
By Aliza Wasserman. The Cornell Daily Sun. "The Tompkins County Public
Library held a community forum with the theme 'Frankenstein and the Future
of Artificial Intelligence' last Thursday evening. Four specialists in
technology and artificial intelligence from Cornell and the Ithaca community
spoke about their areas of expertise and discussed the relevance of artificial
intelligence with members of the audience. The forum was part of a series
of 'Monster Talks' and other activities at the public library to augment
the Frankenstein: Penetrating the Secrets of Nature exhibit. ... [Bob]
Walters stressed the importance of technology education to create citizens
of the world who know as much about technology as they do about writing.
'Every student in New York state has to learn about technology because
that's what we, as humans, do,' Walters said. Accordingly, he expressed
great concern that the New York State Board of Regents might soon eliminate
the current state mandate on technology education programs. Although Walters'
program and many others have shown excellent results, technology education
is often one of the first to be cut when funding decreases. ... Panelist
Michael Babish M.S. '02 outlined his role during the past several years
with the Cornell RoboCup Soccer Team." 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 6, 2002: Futurist
airs dire warning - Says 'good science' is in limited supply. By Tony
Waltham. Bangkok Post. "A noted futurist at British Telecom asks
the question 'what's next?' and in an article published in the BT Technology
Journal, Ian Pearson then tells us why things look pretty bleak. ... The
biggest threat that he spells out is the eventual capability of individuals
to make a device capable of wiping us all out, although there are many
other risks that could lead to our extinction. Artificial intelligence
is getting better all the time, and Mr Pearson suggests that it is reasonable
to assume that there will be 'machine consciousness,' with machines gaining
the ability to design and build their own offspring. He warns of a Terminator
scenario, when AI-enhanced weapons could eliminate humans, and he also
warns that as we hand more responsibility for our systems to AI and become
unable to manage these ourselves, so it might become hard to survive a
system failure. But the real threat is that these 'superior' intelligences
may come to regard humans as insignificant lower life forms much as we
disregard the insects on a building site. And he also warns of the possibility
that AI-based systems could pose a crime threat, making the Mafia look
like a convent." Fall 2002: Frankenstein:
Penetrating the Secrets of Nature. "Frankenstein will visit 80
libraries across the country between October 2002 and December 2005. In
addition to the exhibition, participating libraries will host interpretive
and educational programs that help audiences examine Mary Shelley's novel
and how it uses scientific experimentation as metaphor to comment on cultural
values, especially the importance of exercising responsibility toward
individuals and the community in all areas of human activity, including
science. ... The exhibition and related materials were developed by the
National Library of Medicine (NLM) of the National Institutes of Health
and the ALA Public Programs Office and funded by a major grant from the
National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)." One of the main
topics of the exhibition is: "3. Passages from the novel and
how they illuminate the dilemmas raised by Dr. Frankenstein's ability
to create life and his failure to take responsibility for what he has
created." 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: Privacy
advocates decry Patriot Act - Web monitoring targets terrorism. By
Nik Bonopartis. Poughkeepsie Journal. "Barely more than a month after
Sept. 11, as rescuers were still looking for bodies among the charred
remnants of the World Trade Center and the government was warning new
terror attacks could and would happen, lawmakers rushed to implement the
USA Patriot Act. The act gave law enforcement and intelligence communities
unprecedented powers of surveillance and communications listening on both
foreign and domestic targets. ... Privacy advocates are also worried about
Carnivore, a program used by the FBI that opponents say has been used
increasingly since Sept. 11. Carnivore, which can be installed back-end
to ISPs like America Online and Microsoft Network, uses artificial intelligence
to scan the subject lines of e-mails. If the artificial intelligence 'flags'
an e-mail as something possibly of value to an investigation, it is forwarded
for review by agents, experts say. That could cause certain groups to
become more prone to scrutiny, said Tala Dowlatshahi, New York's representative
of Reporters Without Borders, a journalism and free information advocacy
group." 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 7, 2002: Privacy
- Who Needs It? We're better off without it, argues Canada's leading
sci-fi writer. Essay by Robert J. Sawyer. Maclean's. "Surveillance
and the collection of personal information are unavoidable in this closed-circuit,
computerized world. Rather than trying to end them, we should be striving
to find ways to maximize their benefits for the average citizen. Earlier
this year, I was keynote speaker at the 12th Annual Canadian Conference
on Intelligent Systems, Canada's principal gathering of experts on robotics
and artificial intelligence. The two tasks most of the researchers there
were concentrating on were pattern recognition and data-mining. So far,
most applications for these technologies have been commercial: if you
buy a Walkman and are enrolled in a night-school course, you might be
interested in buying textbooks on tape. ... But I can't see the downside
of an RCMP or CSIS computer noting that my neighbour has bought all the
materials to make a pipe bomb and has booked a one-way flight to Tahiti.
... Still, Luddites will continue to insist that monitoring of humans
means giving up too much. Perhaps. But as Scott McNealy, CEO of computer
giant Sun Microsystems, says, 'You have zero privacy anyway. Get over
it.' In other words, such monitoring and tracking is already going on
to benefit big business. Why not take advantage of it to improve our own
lives? ... Why shouldn't we take advantage of technology to protect ourselves?
Instead of having a knee-jerk reaction that says any loss of privacy is
bad, let's discuss the potential pitfalls and work out ways to relieve
them." October 1, 2002: Man
vs. Machine - Unions Desperate to Keep Jobs as Technology Replaces Human
Labor. By Dean Reynolds. ABC News. "There is no question that
technology has made the workplace safer and more efficient. Today a robot
can do the jobs of 10 workers. Steel mills are less dangerous. Sorting
machines have made the movement of goods more efficient. New cars are
turned out in much quicker fashion -- all because of technological advances.
Organized labor understands that, but, like Cato, feels left out of the
discussion. 'We ought to have a say in [the use of technologies],' said
Ron Blackwell of the AFL-CIO. 'We ought be able to shape whether they
are going to be technologies that create jobs and help everyone.' ...
Jeremy Rifkin, of the Foundation on Economic Trends, suggests the problems
are deeper. 'We're going to have to rethink what human beings do on this
planet,' he said. 'We're so conditioned to the idea that the central worth
of a human being is to have marketable skills and to work in the marketplace.
The bottom line is that by the mid decades of the 21st century, we're
going to replace most workers with intelligent technology.' All of this
could end years of labor drudgery, of dead end jobs, and dissatisfied
workers, Rifkin said, 'but we have to rethink what a human being does
and how we can get income to him once we replace him with robotics and
technology.'" September 9, 2002: Surveillance
Society - Don't look now, but you may find you're being watched. By
Benny Evangelista. San Francisco Chronicle. "These days, if you feel
like somebody's watching you, you might be right. One year after the Sept.
11 attacks, security experts and privacy advocates say there has been
a surge in the number of video cameras installed around the country. The
electronic eyes keep an unwavering gaze on everything from the Golden
Gate Bridge to the Washington Monument. And biometric facial recognition
technology is being tested with video surveillance systems in a handful
of places such as the Fresno airport and the resort area of Virginia Beach,
Va. ... The terrorist attacks have led to a 'rapidly expanding use' of
closed- circuit video cameras and related technology, according to a March
2002 report by the research bureau of the California State Library. And
studies show that a majority of people support the expanded use of video
surveillance of public areas and of facial recognition technology to pick
out suspected terrorists, said Marcus Nieto, the report's co-author." September 7, 2002: Under
the spell of a machine - Whether machines have contributed to humanity
or have they actually dehumanized people is a big question to which there
can be no definite answer. By Noor Saleh. The Star (Jordan). "How
we communicate, work, plan, entertain ourselves, and even select a mate
have recently been transformed by computers. Entire sectors of labor have
been replaced with artificial intelligence and advanced office machines
entered the work place. Thousands of jobs have been lost to a computer
chip. Man is no longer important, or to be fair, his importance is secondary.
What is now important is the presence of that machine. Just think of what
happens when electricity is cut off in a big company, shutting off all
the machines, or just imagine the fear when a virus attacks the computers,
deleting all data. ... Our minds are no longer functioning as in the past.
We are under the spell of the machine, that invention that has succeeded
in killing the presence of the human touch in everything we do." September 4, 2002: Interview
- Bill Joy. Interviewed by Simon London, Inside Track column. Financial
Times. "FT: Three years ago you caused a stir with your article in
Wired magaine warning of the threat to humanity posed by biotechnology
and robotics. Have your views changed? BJ: No.... FT: What about artificial
intelligence? There's a lot in the article about the potential threat
posed by self-replicating machines.BJ: ..." September 4, 2002: Air
Security Focusing on Flier Screening - Complex Profiling Network Months
Behind Schedule. By Robert O'Harrow Jr.. The Washington Post. "From
the moment the Transportation Security Administration was formed, agency
officials have been consumed by the idea of a vast network of supercomputers
that would instantly probe every passenger's background for clues about
violent designs. The agency has spent millions of dollars and innumerable
hours studying how the secret profiling system known as CAPPS II could
enable them to 'deter, prevent or capture terrorists' before they board
an airplane, government documents show. In recent months, the agency hired
four teams of technology companies that have honed their expertise in
profiling for casinos, marketing companies and financial institutions.
Their mission was to demonstrate how artificial intelligence and other
powerful software can analyze passengers' travel reservations, housing
information, family ties, identifying details in credit reports and other
personal data to determine if they're 'rooted in the community' -- or
have an unusual history that indicates a potential threat. Now transportation
and intelligence officials believe that CAPPS II -- short for the second-generation
Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System -- will form the core
of a new framework in aviation security: a far more intense focus on people
rather than baggage. They intend to extend its use to screen truckers,
railroad conductors, subway workers and others whose transportation jobs
involve the public trust. ... The agency also has not resolved key questions
about the system's impact on civil liberties, although officials have
wrestled with the issue and acknowledge that the system would be intrusive
if used inappropriately. A host of other policy issues that might need
congressional input, such as limits on law enforcement agencies' access
to the system for criminal profiling, have not been formally broached
on Capitol Hill." August 19, 2002: Robot
risk 'is worth it.' HARDtalk with Lyce Doucet. BBC. "Research
into developing robots must continue despite the risks involved, an artificial
intelligence expert has said. Rodney Brooks, Director of the Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory at Massachussets Institute of Technology, said:
'The benefits of having robots could vastly outweigh the problems.' And
he dismissed fears of robots taking over the world as a 'Hollywood plot
device"'. Any new technology - such as a new drug or a new digital TV
- could cause problems, he acknowledged. But he said it was more important
to understand how humans exist and operate in the world." See the
complete interview by clicking here. May 25, 2002: Technology
- Taking the good without the bad? New Scientist. "Very soon,
unimaginably powerful technologies will remake our lives. This could have
dangerous consequences, especially because we may not even understand
the basic science underlying them. How will we defend ourselves if bio,
nano or infotech go wrong? Should we give in to the seduction of the androids?
Will we have to invent new politics to deal with the unknown? These were
some of the key issues at the third public debate organised by New Scientist
and Greenpeace last week. On the panel were Ian Pearson, a futurologist
at BTexact, Brian Aldiss, science fiction writer and author of the story
behind the movie AI, Robin Grove-White, professor of science and society
at Lancaster University and chair of Greenpeace in Britain, and Jon Turney,
head of science and technology studies at University College London. Julia
King, a director of engineering and technology at Rolls-Royce, ensured
fair play." May 15, 2002: At
MIT, they can put words in our mouths. By Gareth Cook. The Boston
Globe. "Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have
created the first realistic videos of people saying things they never
said - a scientific leap that raises unsettling questions about falsifying
the moving image. In one demonstration, the researchers taped a woman
speaking into a camera, and then reprocessed the footage into a new video
that showed her speaking entirely new sentences, and even mouthing words
to a song in Japanese, a language she does not speak. The results were
enough to fool viewers consistently, the researchers report. ... But scientists
warn the technology will also provide a powerful new tool for fraud and
propaganda - and will eventually cast doubt on everything from video surveillance
to presidential addresses. ... Previous work has focused on creating a
virtual model of a person's mouth, then using a computer to render digital
images of it as it moves. But the new software relies on an ingenious
application of artificial intelligence to teach a machine what a person
looks like when talking." May 2002: The
New Mobile Infantry - Battle-ready robots are rolling out of the research
lab and into harm's way. By Michael Behar. Wired (10.05). "According
to [Lieutenant Colonel John] Blitch, no single tactical robot meets all
five imperatives yet. But he has seen a steady evolution. 'First you had
radio control,' he says, 'where there was a full view of the vehicle at
all times, and you dictated its every move.' Next came tele-assisted bots,
which are still guided by a human but can venture out of sight because
they employ video, audio, and other sensory feedback. Tele-operated units
can maneuver independently, asking questions only when they are confused.
The final step, says Blitch, is complete autonomy, meaning that the robot
will carry out a mission according to a set of predefined parameters,
without step-by-step human guidance. ... The biggest challenge between,
say, the PackBot and complete autonomy is software. It's easy enough to
add another sensor; it's much harder for the robot to know how to interpret
the data that sensor collects and how to integrate it with other incoming
data. ... 'A robot is not a weapon,' he says, after a moment or two. 'It
can save someone from a sniper's bullet or be used to clear land mines
all over the world.' That's not to say that he doesn't wake up at night
with visions of Terminator 2 replaying in his mind. 'Creating machines
to fight wars might indeed create more war ... even robot wars,' he says.
'And I don't want to go down in history as the father of weaponized robots.'
In fact, he may go down in history as the first soldier to put tactical
mobile robots to the test. In mid-January, four months after his unauthorized,
post-retirement mission at the World Trade Center, Blitch was called back
into active duty - with orders to assemble a team of robots for the mission."
April 20, 2002: Review
by Paul Marks of Douglas Mulhall's book, Our Molecular Future: How nanotechnology,
robotics, genetics, and artificial intelligence will transform our world.
New Scientist. "But plenty of others worry where research into genetics,
robotics, artificial intelligence and nanotechnology, known as the GRAIN
technologies, is leading us? Will nanomachines undertaking tasks such
as scrubbing the plaque from our arteries one day evolve into forms that
threaten us? Will learning machines assume control of our computing constructs,
like the Internet? March 26, 2002: The
next step in human evolution. The Independent (London). "'I want
the work on cyborgs and artificial intelligence to be monitored and stopped
before it goes too far,' says [Kevin] Warwick, who is professor of cybernetics
at Reading University. 'I hope my work is a wake-up call for the human
race.' ... Already we are handing over more and more control to computers
and giving them the power to evolve. Britain's telephone networks, for
example, have learnt how to route their own calls and continuously change
and adapt their programming to cope with changes in demand." March 25, 2002: Good
old days with your robot. New Zealand Herald. "Friendly robots
will look after many of today's workers when they retire, says a leading
scientist. Dr David Bibby, general manager of science policy at the crown
research institute Industrial Research, believes robots will be necessary
because there will be too few working-age people to look after the expected
numbers of the elderly. ... But Auckland University engineering lecturer
Kepa Morgan said engineers should think about the ethics of handing old
people over to robots before rushing into such new technology." March 11, 2002: IT
Confidential. By John Soat. InformationWeek. "Columbia University
in New York held a conference last week on the ethical and societal implications
of the accelerating developments in science and technology. The conference,
called 'Living With The Genie,' featured scholars and deep-thinkers from
a wide variety of disciplines, from anthropology and architecture to philosophy
and sociology. Representing the IT community were Bill Joy, one of the
authors of the Unix operating system and the brains behind Sun Microsystems;
Mr. Artificial Intelligence, Raymond Kurzweil; and Mitch Kapor, founder
of Lotus Development." March 7, 2002: Lord
of the Hackers. By Sherry Turkle. The New York Times (no fee reg.
req'd). "'The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring' is a
brainy and beautiful film ... It takes nothing away from its artistry
to allow that its appeal, like that of the books on which it is based,
owes much to the computer culture that made J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy
world its own. That culture has a particular way of using the computer
to think about the world, a binary perspective that is appealing but problematic.
Our fascination with Tolkien's work says more about us than it does about
Tolkien. In many ways, Middle Earth, the universe of 'The Lord of the
Rings,' is like a computer program, rule-driven and bounded. In the early
1970's, the computer scientists at Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory were so enamored of the books (they were first published in
the 1950's, but did not gain popularity in America until a decade later)
that they designed three elfin fonts for their printers. ... But the work
of J. R. R. Tolkien captures a certain computational aesthetic that is
reflected in the mass culture. This sensibility tends to be binary. Perhaps
such simplicity helps explain the current popularity of 'The Lord of the
Rings'; at a time when friends and enemies are sometimes indistinguishable,
the black-and-white world of fantasy holds a particular allure." November 1, 2001: Can
face recognition keep airports safe? By Stefanie Olsen and Robert
Lemos. CNET News.com. "As U.S. airports begin installing face-recognition
systems to thwart terrorism in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, civil
rights activists are rushing to decry the technology as ineffective and
invasive. ... Biometrics is the digital analysis using cameras or scanners
of biological characteristics such as facial structure, fingerprints and
iris patterns to match profiles to databases of people such as suspected
terrorists. ... Takeo Kanade, a professor of computer science and robotics
at Carnegie Mellon University, agreed -- to an extent -- with the ACLU's
evaluation of facial recognition. ... Yet, Kanade said he believed face
recognition could make it easier to ensure airport security. 'The system
can be used as a screening method,' he said. 'If the police have to look
at 10,000 people rather than 1 million people, then it is worth it.'" |
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