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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."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications

August 20, 2003: Man vs. Machine: Are Robots Getting the Upper Hand in Space Exploration? By Tariq Malik. Space.com. "Although today's real-life robots may lack Robby's sophistication, they are quite adept as human proxies for space exploration. In fact, robots and space go together so well that some critics have doubted whether manned space exploration is needed at all since we can always send a cheaper, mechanical replacement. 'Robots are good explorers because you don't have to deal with life support systems that humans would need,' said Ronald Arkin, director of the Mobile Robot Laboratory at Georgia Institute of Technology. 'They're easier to take care of and much more adaptable for hostile environments than people.' ... 'The one thing that worries me s the creation of another slave race for humans,' said Arkin, adding that there are ethical use issues should be addressed before pressing intelligent robots into servitude. 'So I would rather see robots be partners and peers to humans as opposed to servants and slaves.' [Eddie] Tunstel said those ethical issues are just beginning to come under NASA study, where researchers are trying to decide how much intelligence and independence their space robots should have. ... 'But it will be advancements in artificial intelligence that is truly going to make us jump to the next generation of robots,' Tunstel added."
>>> Space Exploration, Robots, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications, Smart Rooms, Assistive Technologies, Newstoons, Summer 2003 AI in the news column

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."
>>> Robots, Assistive Technologies, Hazards & Disasters, Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Applications, Ethical & Social Implications

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."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Applications, SciFi
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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."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Applications

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."
>>> Law Enforcement, Data Mining, Knowledge Management, Ethical & Social Implications, Applications, Machine Learning, SciFi

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."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Applications, Robots; also see a related article

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."
>>> AI Overview, Interviews, Commonsense, Reasoning, Ethical & Social Implications

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."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Philosophy, Conferences (@ Resources for Students), Robots, SciFi

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."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Applications; also see our Newstoon and our Winter 2002 AI in the news column

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."
>>> Law Enforcement, Ethical & Social Implications, Machine Learning, Applications

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."
>>> Cognitive Science, Law Enforcement, Ethical & Social Implications, Machine Learning, Applications

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."
>>> Law Enforcement, Ethical & Social Implications, Machine Learning, Applications

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.'"
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, SciFi

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."
>>> Biometrics (@ Image Understanding), Vision, Machine Learning, Law Enforcement, Ethical & Social Implications, Applications

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.'"
>>> Data Mining, Machine Learning, Law Enforcement, Military, Ethical & Social Implications

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.

  • Also see Blockbuster's news release: 61 Percent of Survey Respondents Say Machines Could Take Over the World, According to Survey by Blockbuster (May 15, 2003).

>>> 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.'"
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Robots, Applications

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."
>>> Vision, Image Understanding, Military, Law Enforcement, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications

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."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Applications

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."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Turing (@ Namesakes), SciFi

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.'"
>>> Robots, Military, Ethical & Social Implications, SciFi, Autonomous Vehicles, Hazards & Disasters, Medicine, Applications

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."
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Military, Ethical & Social Implications, Robots, Applications

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: ..."
>>> AI Overview, Business, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications, Machine Learning, Law Enforcement, Biometrics (@ Image Understanding)

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.
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Applications

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."
>>> Robotic Pets, Assistive Technologies, Smart Houses, Robots, Ethical & Social Implications, Applications

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."
>>> Video Games, SciFi, Ethical & Social Implications, Applications, Robots

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."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Machine Learning, Law Enforcement, Applications

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?"
>>> Data Mining, Machine Learning, Ethical & Social Implications, Military, Law Enforcement

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."
>>> Robots, Applications, Assistive Technologies, Smart Houses, Ethical & Social Implications, Industry Statistics

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."
>>> Law Enforcement, Biometrics (@ Image Understanding), Multi-Agent Systems, Vision, Applications, Transportation, Ethical & Social Implications; also see the Fall 2002 "AI in the news" column in AI Magazine

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."
>>> Data Mining, Machine Learning, Ethical & Social Implications, Military, Law Enforcement, Public Health & Welfare

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.'"
>>> Reasoning, Machine Learning, Ethical & Social Implications

May 26, 2003: Rob Kling, 58; Specialist in Computers' Societal Effect. By Myrna Oliver. Los Angeles Times. "Rob Kling, an author and educator regarded as the founding father of social informatics -- how computers influence social change -- has died. ... Concerned that all discussion of computers focused on technology, Kling studied government, manufacturers and insurance companies to determine how computers affect society and require choices that consider human values as well as technological values. ... Kling's studies convinced him that 'there is an underside to computer technology,' he said. For example, he said that organizations often fail to train employees properly in computer use, making the task a 'hassle and a cause of stress' and that dependency on computers for communication eliminates creative, stimulating social interaction. Another major downside, he said, can be loss of privacy. 'Many people, particularly white-collar workers, have a view that the best factory is one where almost nobody is there,' he said in a speech to the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility meeting at Chapman University in 1985. 'Most functions are automated. In this view the factory is a production machine, a gadget, and there's no honorable role for people except to fill in where the machines aren't good enough yet.'"
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Tributes

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."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, AI Overview, SciFi, Robots, Applications, Military

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."
>>> Equality & Diversity (@ Resources for Students), Ethical & Social Implications, Video Games, Applications, NewsToons

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."
>>> Biometrics (@ Image Understanding), Ethical & Social Implications, Machine Learning, Public Health & Welfare, Fall 2002 AI in the news column

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."
>>> Robots, Hazards & Disasters, Military, Ethical & Social Implications, Industry Statistics, Applications

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."
>>> SciFi, our Human/Machine toon (@ NewsToons), Ethical & Social Implications, Philosophy

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."
>>> Law Enforcement, Ethical & Social Implications, Data Mining, Knowledge Management, Machine Learning, Public Health & Welfare, Applications

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."
>>> Military, Ethical & Social Implications

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.'"
>>> SciFi, Ethical & Social Implications

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."
>>> SciFi, Ethical & Social Implications

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.'"
>>> AI Overview, Ethical & Social Implications, Robots, Newstoons; also see "AI Topics - A Responsibility to Celebrate AI Responsibly"

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.'"
>>> Assistive Technologies, Robots, Ethical & Social Implications, Applications

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."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Law Enforcement, Biometrics (@ Image Understanding), Machine Learning, Applications, Newstoons, Fraud Detection & Prevention

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."
>>> Military, Autonomous Vehicles, Ethical & Social Implications, Applications, Robots

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."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications

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.'"
>>> Robots, Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), SciFi, Robotic Pets, Military, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications

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.'"
>>> Video Games, Ethical & Social Implications, Applications, Conferences (@ Resources for Students)

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.'"
>>> Data Mining, Ethical & Social Implications, Machine Learning, Law Enforcement, Military

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."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Cognitive Science, AI Overview, Philosophy

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."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Robots, SciFi, Philosophy

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."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, History, Robots

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."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Pattern Recognition, Image Understanding, Data Mining, Law Enforcement, Vision, Machine Learning, Applications

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."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Military, Robots, Robotic Pets, Applications

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."
>>> Data Mining, Public Health & Welfare, Ethical & Social Implications, Machine Learning, Applications

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."
>>> Education, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications

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."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Data Mining, Machine Learning

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."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Law Enforcement, Data Mining, Applications, Machine Learning

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.'"
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February 7, 2003: Ethics Matters - People like the old rules. Corporations have redefined the workplace, but individuals haven't. By Carlton Vogt. InfoWorld. "The fly in the ointment, of course, is that in our dealings with corporations, we interact with their representatives, who are moral agents, who are human, and who do have feelings. But what if we could eliminate that? Imagine that there were an AI (artificial intelligence) system so advanced that it could actually do the hiring for a company without any human intervention at all. It scanned incoming resumes, selected candidates, and screened applicants all by itself. ... [W]ithout human intervention, it selected candidates, made offers, and completed paperwork for those who accepted the offer. It then placed new hires on work schedules and assigned them to projects. On the first day of work, the supervisor received an e-mail saying that 'Pat Smith begins work on your project today.' Would that change anything? Would you now feel as bound by your acceptance of the offer as you would had you interacted with a human being? If you could simply log on to the system and cancel your acceptance -- the same way you can log in and cancel a hotel reservation -- would you feel you had 'broken your word?'"
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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."
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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 fiv