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. . . and if you broaden your search beyond the February 2003 news archive, you'll find articles such as:

• Man vs. Machine - Unions Desperate to Keep Jobs as Technology Replaces Human Labor. By Dean Reynolds. ABC News (October 1, 2002).
• The cyborg evolution. By David Stonehouse. The Sydney Morning Herald (March 22, 2003)."Warwick, a cybernetics professor at the University of Reading in England, is involved in ambitious and dangerous experiments in the quest to meld man and machine. In March 2002, an electrode was implanted in his wrist in order to read the electrical signals pulsing through his nerves and report the information to a computer, thus providing a link between the machine and his nervous system."
• Man or Machine? (Part 1 of 3): Human or Robot? Ivanhoe Newswire / available from HealthCentral.com (May 5, 2003). "In the future these experts predict humans and machines will actually merge. Humans will think using non-biological intelligence."
• Workforce - Man vs. machine on the job. By T.K. Maloy. United Press International / available from Interest!ALERT Opinions (July 24, 2003).
• Man vs. Machine: Are Robots Getting the Upper Hand in Space Exploration? By Tariq Malik. Space.com (August 20, 2003).
• Hey, That Big Computer Is Really a Great Actor. By James C. McKinley Jr. The New York Times (November 20, 2003; no fee reg. req'd.). "After all, machines had insinuated themselves into the lives of people in a thousand forms, [Richard Dresser] said, so why shouldn't theater strike back and insinuate itself into machines? The project is called the Technology Plays, a theater experiment that is trying to take the old man-versus-machine theme to new extremes."
• Man vs. Computer - Still a Match. Opinion by Charles Krauthammer. The Washington Post (November 21, 2003). "To most folks, all of this man-vs.-computer stuff is anticlimax. After all, the barrier was broken in 1997 when man was beaten, Kasparov succumbing to Deep Blue in a match that was truly frightening. Frightening not so much because the computer won but because of how it won, making at some points moves of subtlety. And subtlety makes you think there might be something stirring in all that silicon. It seems to me obvious that machines will achieve consciousness. After all, we did, and with very humble beginnings. ... Interestingly, in each game that was won, the loser was true to his nature. Kasparov lost Game 2 because, being human, he made a tactical error. Computers do not. ... In Game 3 the computer lost because, being a computer, it has (for now) no imagination. ... In the meantime, Kasparov is showing that while we can't outcalculate machines, we can still outsmart them."
• Heart helps new ventricular pump do its job. By Byron Spice. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (November 28, 2003). "Doctors are increasingly using heart pumps, called left ventricular assist devices, to keep patients with weak hearts alive. The pumps relieve hearts of much of their pumping effort, but a new model now undergoing human tests also is receiving some help from the heart in return. The heart serves as a sensor for the HeartMate II, enabling the device to automatically adjust its pumping to match the patient's level of physical exertion. 'The body is a hostile environment, so we try to avoid using [electronic] sensors,' explained James Antaki, a University of Pittsburgh bioengineer who developed the artificial intelligence system that controls the device. By monitoring how hard the heart is beating, the device can figure out whether the patient is resting or climbing stairs and adjust the flow of blood accordingly."
• The Metaphysics of Philip K. Dick - Don't know Dick? Here's his philosophy in capsule form. By Erik Davis. Wired Magazine (December 2003; Issue 11.12). "2. HUMAN VS. MACHINE: Dick wanted to know how, in a technological society, we can recognize the authentically human. He saw the line between people and machines become hopelessly blurred. So his human characters often behave like cruel robots, while spunky gadgets - like the automatic cabbie in Now Wait for Last Year - can be sources of wisdom and kindness. And in 'The Electric Ant,' when businessman Garson Poole discovers that he is actually an android, he doesn't despair. Instead, he begins to reprogram himself."
• BCS flap no digital divide. By Sam Ross Jr. Tribune-Review (December 10, 2003) / available from PittsburghLIVE. "Like latter-day Luddites, critics of the Bowl Championship Series are spinning the controversy over title game participants as a case of man vs. machine."
• China's first "man-against-machine" chess match scheduled for June 8. Interfax-China (June 3, 2004). "Tsinghua UniSplendour Co. Ltd is to hold China's first human versus computer chess game on June 8 and 12 according to recent company statement. As the company stated, the game would feature reigning women's chess world champion, China's Zhu Chen and 'Star of UniSplendour', the latest portable computer unveiled by Tsinghua UniSplendour on June 1."
• Robotic repair call to Hubble taking shape. By Dan Vergano. USA Today. (June 7, 2004)"NASA officials are starting to fill in the blanks on how they might rescue the Hubble Space Telescope with a robot. In the process, they are defining the kinds of space exploration in which robots would be just as effective as astronauts, eliminating risks to human life in space. Robots have long been a NASA mainstay -- witness the success of the Mars rovers this year. But certain missions have always been set aside for astronauts. Repairs to Hubble have been among those missions -- until now. ... Goddard engineers have described tremendous progress in the past two months in robot ground tests of Hubble repairs. 'That's a piece of cake,' [Frank] Cepollina says. He notes that robots already perform equally complicated tasks in factories on Earth."
• Cyborg geologist explores Spain - Part human, part machine tests kit for planetary missions. By Philip Ball. news@science.com (November 12, 2004). "European scientists have sent a 'cyborg' to roam the Spanish countryside as part of a mission to create robots that are good at exploring planets independently. Researchers at the Centre for Astrobiology near Madrid kitted out a human with a camcorder linked to a computer system programmed to look for interesting features in the landscape. The human merely did the donkey-work of carrying the hardware while the computer did the 'thinking'. On a planetary mission, a robotic vehicle such as NASA's rovers Spirit and Opportunity, currently touring the surface of Mars, would carry the hardware. ... Proponents of human space exploration often argue that robots are no match for trained astronauts and geologists in spotting promising study sites and responding to chance discoveries. But if the current work fulfils its promise, future robotic explorers will have a decision-making capacity similar to that of human experts. ... The system's mapping software, developed by the Madrid team and computer scientists at the University of Bielefeld, Germany, mimics the behaviour of real geologists scanning a new scene."
• Man vs. Machine.  By Andrew Chaikin. Wired (December 2004; Issue 12.12). "Of course, the costs and risks of sending humans to the moon, Mars, or nearby asteroids will outweigh the benefits for at least the next decade. Until that balance is tilted by the development of new spacecraft and protective measures that reduce danger and expense, we'll have to live by the watchword of engineer Gentry Lee, a 30-year veteran of NASA's Mars missions: 'Never send a human to do a robot's job.' But the balance will tilt, and when it does, humans will follow in the footsteps of our robotic creations. That doesn't mean machines will act only as a kind of advance team for people; even after astronauts have begun exploring alien worlds, they will need robotic assistants to handle repetitive or especially dangerous tasks. But only human explorers can raise the pace of discovery a quantum leap. And only they will tell us what it is like to be there."
• Robots in space the next frontier. By Isao Ishida. The Asahi Shimbun (April 19, 2005). "JAXA envisages robots digging for resources on the moon. Within two decades, a Japanese space shuttle will blast off with astronauts working alongside robots to make Japan a brand name in space. That's the plan the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) pitched to the technology ministry's Space Activities Commission this month. ... JAXA hopes to make the most of Japan's advanced robotic and artificial intelligence technology already developed. In space, man and robot will work together, giving the programs a 'distinctively Japanese trademark,' says a JAXA official."
• It's Man vs. Machine Again, and Man Comes Out Limping. By Robert Byrne. The New York Times (July 10, 2005; registration req'd.). "Hydra, an extraordinarily powerful chess computer that resides in Abu Dhabi but was assembled by an international crew, mostly from Western Europe, lived up to its advance billing by slaughtering Michael Adams 5½ to ½ in their six-game match at the Wembley Conference Centre in London, held from June 21 to 27. The $150,000 prize went to Hydra."
• Robotnauts. The next generation of space explorers will look -- and act -- more like people than probes. By Carolyn Y. Johnson. The Boston Globe & Boston.com (January 9, 2006). "'The thing we were tasked by NASA is: How can robots support manned missions on the moon and Mars before people get there, while they are up there, and after they've left?' said [Rodney] Brooks, director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 'The danger is sticking with the mind-set that developed in the 1960s of "what robots do" and "what humans do."' It is now clear that both humans and robots have their advantages in space -- and the segregation between the two is fading as NASA pursues colonization of the moon and Mars."
• Man vs. Machine in Newsreader War. By Ryan Singel. Wired News (March 16, 2006). "Man vs. machine stories are an old standby in journalism. Think back to John Henry racing a steam drill and forward to Garry Kasparov trying to outmaneuver IBM's Deep Blue in 1997 to the Onion tweaking the genre with its accountant battles Excel story. But the latest twist on the meme takes it to the meta-level by raising the question: in the future, will you find your man vs. machine story relying on a human-edited source or from an algorithm?"
• man vs. machine. By Jasmine Michaelson. The Herald Journal & HJNews Online (April 5, 2006). "USU [Utah State University] prof: robots will dominate, and countdown is underway The division between the two parties will become so heated that assassinations and intrigue will culminate with a war unlike any the world has ever seen. The number of fatalities will be so high that the event will be referred to as 'gigadeath.' [Hugo] De Garis’ 2005 book 'The Artilect War: Cosmists vs. Terrans: A Bitter Controversy Concerning Whether Humanity Should Build Godlike Massively Intelligent Machines' reads a lot like the premise for a sci-fi summer blockbuster. But de Garis isn’t just musing. ... De Garis, a computer science and physics professor with undergraduate degrees in applied mathematics and theoretical physics and a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence, says everything hinges on the advancement of nanotechnology (microscopic technology). It’s in its beginning stages now, but nowhere near where it needs to be to aid in the development of what is known as 'strong artificial intelligence.' ... He also thinks a third smaller party will emerge: the Cyborgians, who, instead of looking at the issue as 'man versus machine,' will want to incorporate artificial intelligence into their own bodies and brains --- becoming, themselves, cybernetic organisms, 'cyborgs' or, in essence, artilects."
• Cybernetics: Merging machine and man. By Michael Bay and Matt Ford. CNN.com (April 18, 2006). "'We are the species that goes beyond our limitations,' says futurist Ray Kurzweil. 'The science of control and communications in the animal and machine,' is how American mathematician Norbert Wiener defined cybernetics. The fields of neuroscience, biomechanics, robotics, mathematics, computer science, materials science and tissue engineering all play a role in the effort to use machines to help patients who have lost some control over their bodies, whether through accident or disease. 'By merging human and machine, by creating that intimacy,' says Hugh Herr of the MIT Biomechatronics Group, 'we will truly be able to rehabilitate people.' ... We already augment our intelligence by using computers: A quick Internet search helps us find information faster than ever before. ... photo caption: Replacement limbs powered by artificial intelligence could soon become commonplace."
• The Big Question: Is manned space exploration a waste of time and money? By Rupert Cornwell. The Independent Online (July 6, 2006). "The case for manned exploration boils down to the eternal argument over human versus artificial intelligence. Computer-controlled robotic missions can gather vast quantities of data. But they are less good at evaluating it. They cannot make the on-the-spot, creative judgements on which avenues should be pursued and which abandoned. ... So what is the future of space exploration?Man may return to the moon and one day reach Mars. But machines will set the pace - if only for economic reasons. While Nasa looks for human exploits to rekindle enthusiasm for space, its European equivalent, the ESA, spends only one eighth of its budget on manned space projects. The spectacular successes of the two Mars Rovers cost less than $800m."
• Crossword software thrashes human challengers. By Tom Simonite. NewScientist.com news (August 31, 2006). "A crossword-solving computer program yesterday triumphed in a competition against humans. Two versions of the program, called WebCrow, finished first and second in a competition that gave bilingual entrants 90 minutes to work on five different crosswords in Italian and English. The competition took place in Riva del Garda, Italy, as part of the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence. ... Tony Veale works on software that can deal with human language at University College Dublin, Ireland, and watched WebCrow in action. He told New Scientist he was impressed. 'It's part of a trend to use the web as a shallow source of human knowledge for artificial intelligence,' he says."
• Science vs. Exploration? Robots vs. Humans? Broadcast from The Planetary Society's Planetary Radio (October 30, 2006). "The recent meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences also saw a public event sponsored by the Planetary Society. Hear highlights of a dramatic discussion of some of the biggest issues facing humankind's venture beyond Earth, featuring Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin, Mars Exploration Rover science team member Jim Bell, NASA Ames researcher Chris McKay, and the Society's Executive Director, Lou Friedman. Emily Lakdawalla returns with a new Q&A."
• OK computer, it's time... By Malcolm Pein. Telegraph.co.uk (November 25, 2006). "The next phase in the battle for supremacy between Man and Machine begins this afternoon in Bonn when the world champion Vladimir Kramnik takes on the computer program Deep Fritz. ... Kramnik admitted the odds are against him: 'The machine is the clear favourite, but don't discount me just yet. But I think I can still beat it. Whenever I can fight, I'm extremely motivated. After all, I might be the last human being to be able to defeat this machine. My team and I will be expending all our efforts to cut this so-called artificial intelligence down to size.'"
• A Computer Program Wins Its First Scrabble Tournament. By Brock Read. The Chronicle (of Higher Education) Wired Campus Blog (January 26, 2007). "When Deep Blue first defeated chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, the computer program's victory was hailed as a watershed moment for artificial intelligence, and rightfully so. But in November, another program reached a gaming milestone of its own, and no one seemed to notice. The Wired Campus intends to fix that. At a Scrabble tournament in Toronto, a piece of software called Quackle triumphed in a best-of-five series over David Boys, a computer programmer who won the world Scrabble championship in 1995. ... Mr. Boys seemed to have no trouble keeping a sense of perspective after the loss: 'It's still better to be a human than to be a computer,' he said."
• Artificial Intelligence, With Help From the Humans. By Jason Pontin. The New York Times (March 25, 2007). "Jeff Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon.com, has created Amazon Mechanical Turk, an online service involving human workers, and he has also personally invested in a human-assisted search company called ChaCha. Mr. Bezos describes the phenomenon very prettily, calling it 'artificial artificial intelligence.'  Normally, a human makes a request of a computer, and the computer does the computation of the task,' he said. 'But artificial artificial intelligences like Mechanical Turk invert all that.' ... ChaCha.com, a start-up in Carmel, Ind., uses artificial artificial intelligence -- sometimes also called crowdsourcing -- to help individual computer users find better results when they search the Web."
• Man vs machine in football fan battle - Can this computer understand the offside rule? By Steve Ranger. Silicon.com (April 17, 2007). "Which is a better football fan - man or machine? That's a puzzle BT researchers are working on. The researchers, working at the Adastral Park labs near Ipswich, have developed an algorithm that tries to spot the most interesting bits of a football game - the goals, corners and rows with the ref. ... In the longer term the technology could be used to help computers spot emotions, so a machine could recognise funny or sad parts of a video, for example.[Be sure to see the related video.]
• Computer bested humanity, technically. By Bruce Kauffmann. News-Journal.com (May 9, 2007). "That re-match culminated this week (May 11) in 1997, when the new Deep Blue defeated [Garry] Kasparov 3.5 games to 2.5. Kasparov, who had been called by Newsweek magazine 'The Brain's Last Stand,' conceded defeat after just 19 moves in the decisive sixth game. Yet in many ways the match was inconclusive in settling the 'human' versus 'artificial' intelligence debate. If Kasparov's humanity -- his ability to reason -- was his strength, so was it his weakness.  ... Will artificial intelligence ever advance enough to trump human intelligence, and, if so, what happens then? ... An age-old question that everyone from scientists to science fiction writers has pondered. It's when the machines start pondering it that we will all have to start worrying."
• We've Made Our Match. By William Saletan. The Washington Post (May 13, 2007). "Ten years ago this week, a computer beat the world chess champion in a six-game match. Since then, human champs have played three more matches against machines, scoring two draws and a loss. Grandmasters are being crushed. The era of human dominance is over. ... Don't be afraid. We, too, are getting smarter, and computers are a big reason why. They're not our enemies. They're our offspring -- our creations, helpers and challengers. We certainly needed the challenge. Chess computers, in particular, have exposed our complacency. ... When the cosmic game between humans and computers is complete, here's how the sequence of moves will read. In the opening, we evolved through engagement with nature. In the middle game, we projected our intelligence onto computers and co-evolved through engagement with them. In the endgame, we merged computers with our minds and bodies, bringing that projected intelligence back into ourselves. The distinction between human and artificial intelligence will turn out to have been artificial."
• Poker pros out of luck in battle with 'bot - U of A team pits man against machine in experiment that negates effect of good fortune. By David Staples. The Edmonton Journal (June 11, 2007). "Poker is a game of luck and skill, but to find out who really is better at the game, man or machine, a group of University of Alberta computer scientists has come up with an experiment that negates luck as a factor. In the experiment, the U of A team will pit its state-of-the-art poker-playing laptop program, Polaris, against two top-flight professional poker players, Phil (The Unabomber) Laak and Ali Eslami. They will play four sessions of Texas Hold 'Em at an artificial intelligence conference July 23 and 24 in Vancouver. 'The question is: "How good are humans in poker in relation to computers?" and we don't have an answer for that because the previous results have been clouded by this luck versus skill issue,' says Jonathan Schaeffer, chairman of the U of A's computer science department. He designed Chinook, the checkers program that beat world checkers champion Marion Tinsley in 1994. ... The U of A team, led by Prof. Michael Bowling, has 15 members and includes former poker pro Darse Billings. ... The poker challenge isn't as significant in the public imagination as IBM Deep Blue's victory over world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, but it's more significant in terms of artificial intelligence science, Schaeffer says.  ... 'Poker is a much better representative of real-world situations with imperfect information, negotiation, bluffing and misrepresentation,' Schaeffer says. 'This makes it much more interesting. From a scientific point of view, it's a harder problem because of that.'"
  • Also see: U of A computer put up against top poker players. By John Cotter. The Canadian Press / available from the Edmonton Sun / also available from CBC News: Alberta computer vs. poker pros in $50K match (June 11, 2007). "The $50,000 man-versus-machine poker match will not only be fun - it will help test advances in artificial intelligence, said Jonathan Schaeffer, leader of the computer science team that created Polaris. 'We have developed a format that has helped us factor out luck and make it into a scientific experiment to determine how good humans are relative to the best program in the world,' Schaeffer said. ... The match will be played on July 23 and 24 in conjunction with the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Conference in Vancouver. ... With a degree in mechanical engineering, [Phil 'The Unabomber'] Laak has tangled with computer poker programs before. Facing a check-raise from a computer during a match in 2005 he once exclaimed, 'If that is a bluff, it's over for humanity,' and promptly folded. It was a bluff."
  • Here's a link to The First Man-MachinePoker Championship.
• Why computers can't surpass Go and collect $1 million - There’s one game where artificial intelligence can’t beat humans. Comment by Ben Macintyre. Times Online (June 29, 2007). "Ten years ago last month, to the dismay of many chess enthusiasts, the IBM supercomputer program Deep Blue beat the world chess champion Gary Kasparov: the greatest chess mind alive was elbowed aside by raw computing muscle. ... The computer is now dominant in almost every board and card game devised by man. ... Yet there is one game in which the computer is still no match for Man, a game in which a competent teenager can beat the world’s most sophisticated computer program with ease: and that is the ancient Chinese board game Go, the oldest game in the world, and the only one at which man remains the undisputed champion. ... Go is seen as a key to unlocking the secret of artificial intelligence (AI). If computers can “learn” the game, some scientists believe, mankind would be a huge step closer to replicating human thought processes, with great scientific benefits. ... A Taiwanese organisation has offered $1 million for the first computer program to defeat a junior Go champion, yet despite some recent advances, none has yet reached that skill level."
• Checkmate for checkers - Computer program is unbeatable at English draughts. By Tom Geller. news @ nature.com (July 19, 2007). "Long-time world checkers champion Marion Tinsley consistently bested all comers, losing only nine games in the 40 years following his 1954 crowning. He lost his world championship title to a computer program in 1994 and now that same program has become unbeatable; its creators have proved that even a perfectly played game against it will end in a draw."
• Poker aces triumph over computer. Canadian-built gambling program suffers narrow defeat. CanWest News Service | The Vancouver Sun (July 27, 2007). "The contest was tied going into the final round but was finally won by the humans. The two-day event was staged as part of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence's annual conference in Vancouver. The victors admitted they won by the narrowest of margins. "This was not a win for us," [Ali] Eslami said. 'We survived. I played the best heads-up poker I've ever played and we just narrowly won. I think this program is good enough to win against any of the best players in the world. The quality of this machine -- this beast -- is amazing.' Polaris, designed by artificial intelligence researchers at the University of Alberta, is the world's reigning poker program."
• How to beat a computer: lies, bluffing and taking risks are all on the cards. By Chris Ayres. Times Online (July 27, 2007). "Computers can fly aircraft, build cars, fire missiles and even calculate your taxes. But for those who fear that we may one day be ruled by machines, reassurance has arrived. It turns out that there is one thing computers still cannot do better than us: bluff. ... The victory, however, was as slim as silicon: the humans prevailed in the fourth and final game, and by a mere $570. 'I’m surprised we won,' an exhausted Prince Ali admitted as he left the table close to midnight on Tuesday after 48 hours of play. ... Man v machine ---- Deep Blue ... A virtual wine buff ... An unbeatable draughts-playing computer."
• Have Brain, Must Travel. Forum column by Jim Bell. Scientific American (August 2007 [issue date]). "[Y]ou might think that researchers like me who are involved in robotic space exploration would dismiss astronaut missions as costly and unnecessary. To the contrary: many of us embrace human exploration as a worthy goal in its own right and as a critically important part of space science in the 21st century. Although astronaut missions are much more expensive and risky than robotic craft, they are absolutely critical to the success of our exploration program. Why? ..."
• The next 50 years of exploration. Viewpoint by David Southwood, director of science at the European Space Agency (Esa). BBC News (October 5, 2007). " We have been in space for 50 years. It is a long time and we have certainly come a long way so far. Where exactly will we be in space 50 years from now? It is hard to say. ... Humans vs robots ... Robotic explorers, sent out on our behalf, will help us find out not just what is out there but also to address many of these questions about our Solar System. Nonetheless, there always remains the question of whether we send men and women out there with the machines. Should we send people out to the unpleasant environments we want to investigate? Isn't it better to let robots take the strain? ... However beyond our Solar System, manned exploration isn't an option. This is where robotic exploration really comes into its own."
• Man vs. machine. By Jeff Benjamin. Investment News (December 3, 2007). "When computers manage the portfolio, the first challenge is often preventing the human brain from getting in the way. This has become the mantra of Shashi Mehrotra, chief investment officer at Legend Advisory Corp., an asset-management firm based in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., which hands over responsibility for more than $2 billion in investor assets to an artificial-intelligence computer program. ... 'I used to second-guess her, but I was wrong nine out of 10 times,' he said. The use of artificial intelligence, also known as neural networks or genetic algorithms, has been described by some as the second generation of quantitative investing because it has the flexibility to get smarter through the expansion of input data."
• Rubik's champ canes bot. By Sebastian Lander. The Sun (January 31, 2008). "This is the moment man squared up to machine over a Rubik’s Cube - and won. Dan Harris - who holds the UK title for unscrambling a Rubik's Cube in 10.59 seconds - took on the 'Cubinator' yesterday in a competition to see who could solve the colourful conundrum first. Clever RuBot 2 - designed by boffin Pete Redmond - scans all six sides of the cube with two eye webcams and uses artificial intelligence...."
  • Be sure to watch the embedded video clip: Man vs Machine.

ALSO SEE: AI in the news column, Summer 2003. AI Magazine, 24(2): 112.

Human possibilities. By Jim McClellan. The Guardian (October 23, 2003). "'Tell me a joke.' A small audience sits in front of a big screen waiting for a response to pop up. A short pause - then some type flickers up onscreen. 'Why did the chicken cross the road?' A slight groan from the audience. A reply is dutifully typed up. 'I don't know - why did the chicken cross the road?' Another pause. Up on screen, more type appears. 'Because it was stapled to the elephant.' Welcome to the Loebner prize contest, an annual attempt to find the world's most 'human-seeming' chatbot."

Can't see the trees for the ads. Opinion by Jonathan Green. The Age (December 8, 2003). "Here in a pitch-dark subterranean vestibule was the grotesquely outsized computer-generated head of Australian performance artist-cum-digital-interface Stelarc. ... Here was an opportunity to present this agile artificial intelligence with the key questions of our time, to place before it complex issues of arcane ontology. 'Knock knock.' 'Who's there?' said the prosthesis. This was quick work, but we could go one better. 'Why did the chicken cross the road?' we typed. 'Because it was a robot.' Which was good. We'd always thought it was because of the burden of expectation."

Robocopters dodge obstacles. By Michael Kanellos. CNET News.com (December 23, 2004). "The Berkeley Aerial Robot (BEAR) project passed a significant milestone earlier this month, when a 130-pound model of a helicopter successfully guided itself through a course that included random obstacles that weren't on its internal map -- a first, according to the university. ... Last year, BEAR researchers flew two helicopters at each other in a game of chicken. 'They flew toward each other, sensed each other and adjusted their course,' said a UC Berkeley spokeswoman."

→ Related pages: Chatbots (@ Natural Language), Turing Test, Autonomous Vehicles, and Humor Research (@ AI toons)

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also see: Sexes 'brains work differently.' BBC (July 8, 2001). "Boys and girls were equally good at both tasks. But they appeared to use different, though sometimes overlapping, parts of their brains to process the information. The researchers believe it is possible that boys process faces at a global level, an ability more associated with the right hemisphere of the brain. Conversely, girls may process faces at a more local level - an ability associated with the brain's left hemisphere."

and: Sexes handle emotions differently. BBC (July 23, 2002). "Scientists have come up with a theory to explain why men and women seem to deal with emotion in different ways. They believe that the sexes use different networks in their brains to remember emotional events. This may explain why women are more likely to be emotional and to remember fraught occasions. Researchers from Stanford University in California used scan technology to measure the brain activity of 12 men and 12 women who were shown a range of images."

and: Women need widescreen for virtual navigation. New Scientist (April 17, 2003) Print Edition. " Women who navigate around 3D computer-generated environments for a living - or even for fun - are having their style cramped by ultra-narrow computer displays and graphics software that favours men. Female architects, designers, trainee pilots and even computer gamers should be given much wider computer screens, a team of computer scientists from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Microsoft's research lab in Redmond, Washington, told a computer usability conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, last week. Wider screens and more realistic 3D animations, they say, will boost women's spatial orientation and 3D map-reading skills to match those of their male counterparts. It may sound like sexual prejudice, but it seems that men's much-debated ability to navigate slightly better than women applies in virtual environments as well as the real world."

and: Landmark invention. By Scott Warren and Stephanie Brooking. Blue Mountains Gazette (October 22, 2003). "Forget about the space age, artificial intelligence could be among us in the near future thanks to a Glenbrook man who has developed a robot prototype able to perform up to 16 tasks at once. The technology, developed by Glenbrook's Dr Peter Hill, allows the robots to modify their behaviour according to the situation. The program also mimics a human approach to a problem, launching multiple tasks with any excess capacity, a problem solving trait commonly attributed to women. 'We deliberately chose mimic the female rather than the male mind. The distinct differences in the way women prioritise and work, in particular the ability to start new tasks while others are still in progress, is important in this field of producing new technology.' Dr Hill said."

and: Intelligence in men and women is a gray and white matter. Men and women use different brain areas to achieve similar IQ results, UCI study finds. Today @ UCI Press Release (January 20, 2005). "While there are essentially no disparities in general intelligence between the sexes, a UC Irvine study has found significant differences in brain areas where males and females manifest their intelligence. The study shows women having more white matter and men more gray matter related to intellectual skill, revealing that no single neuroanatomical structure determines general intelligence and that different types of brain designs are capable of producing equivalent intellectual performance." [This press release did not appear in AI in the news.]

and: Opening doors for women in computing. By Ed Frauenheim and Alorie Gilbert. CNET News.com (February 7, 2005). "Data from the National Science Foundation shows that the female share of bachelor's degrees in computer science dropped from 37 percent in 1985 to 28 percent in 2001. And while women comprised 33 percent of information technology professionals in 1990, that figure was down to 26 percent in 2002, according to NSF. The drop is puzzling in part because women are making progress in related areas such as the natural sciences. On the other hand, some efforts to bring women back to computing appear to be paying off. That's seen as vital for reasons including fueling the nation's tech economy and preventing male bias in the way future technology is developed. ... A growing body of research suggests that there are real differences between the brains of men and women. But a number of scholars reject the idea that women are biologically less apt to succeed in the computer science field. They point instead to factors such as the stereotype of computer jockeying as a geeky, male profession. The long hours often required with computing jobs also may deter women who wish to raise children."

and: His Brain, Her Brain. It turns out that male and female brains differ quite a bit in architecture and activity. Research into these variations could lead to sex-specific treatments for disorders such as depression and schizophrenia By Larry Cahil. Scientific American (May 2005).

and: Women get a bigger buzz from cartoons. By Gaia Vince. NewScientist.com news (November 8, 2005). "Women get more of a buzz out of cartoons, a brain-imaging study has found, with their brains feeling more rewarded by a funny joke than those of men. Women and men are often perceived as having differences in their senses of humour but, until now, there had been no neurological evidence for such suspicions. The new brain scanning study showed that although men and women tended to agree on which of the single-panel cartoons they were shown were funny, they processed the humour differently in their brains."

and: The mismeasure of woman - Men and women think differently. But not that differently. The Economist (August 3, 2006). "These differences in structure and wiring do not appear to have any influence on intelligence as measured by IQ tests. It does, however, seem that the sexes carry out these tests in different ways."

and: The Truth Behind Women's Brains. By Elizabeth Vargas & Alan B. Goldberg. ABC News (September 28, 2006). "Recent reports show that newborn males and females have very different brain circuitry, and hormones dramatically shape their future thoughts, feelings and behavior in the first years of life."

and: Sex, shopping and thinking pink - The brains of men and women are, indeed, different. The Economist (August 23, 2007).

• See the related paper: Spatial adaptations for plant foraging: women excel and calories count. By Joshua New, Max M. Krasnow, Danielle Truxaw, and Steven J.C. Gaulin. Proceedings of The Royal Society (August 21, 2007).

and: Research adds new perspective to high-tech gender gap. By Jessica Mintz. The Associated Press / available from Nashuatelegraph.com (September 27, 2007). " For more than a decade, academics and technology executives have been frowning at the widening gender gap in computer science. Everyone has a theory, but no one has managed to attract many more women. Now, some computer science researchers say one solution may lie in the design of software itself – even programs regular people use every day. Laura Beckwith, a new computer science Ph.D. from Oregon State University, and her adviser, Margaret Burnett, specialize in studying the way people use computers to solve everyday problems – like adding formulas to spreadsheets, animation to Web sites and styles to word processing documents. ... Research like Beckwith's may help ensure that when the industry starts adding new features for those everyday computer users, differences between men and women aren't left out of the equation. What's more, making complex everyday software more accessible to women could help get more of them interested in computer science, Beckwith and Burnett believe. As it is, the percentage of bachelor's degrees in computer science awarded to women fell from 37 percent in 1985 to just 22 percent in 2005, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, even as women made gains in other science and math-based fields. Most gender-gap theories today have more to do with computer science's image as a haven for solitary male geeks. ... Julie Jacko, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and president of the Association for Computing Machinery's group on human-computer interaction, said research like Beckwith's could end up changing how young women feel about computers. 'We know from our colleagues in psychology and sociology that there are gender differences that can be very important to take into account in human-computer interaction and software design,' Jacko said. 'Projects like this can help us have a better impact, even at younger ages, where I believe interventions need to happen.'"

• Also see Laura Beckwith's thesis: Gender HCI Issues in End-User Programming (Oregon State University School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; April 23, 2007)
• Also see: Y Did the Chromosome Cross the Road? Science Now (November 7, 2005)

• The Sterile Airport - Airport Security for the 9/11 Age (September 2002)
• Researchers see strides in biometrics (October 21, 2002)
• Twins crack face recognition puzzle (March 10, 2003)
• Someone to Watch over You (March/April 2003)

Also see see our collection of resources about BIOMETRICS.
[Why a duck? Click on the duck's eye to find out.
Here's a clue: Herbert Simon watched them to relieve stress. Is this an example of deducktive reasoning ???]

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Computer crack funnier than many human jokes. By Will Knight. New Scientist.com (December 20, 2001). "Jason Rutter, a research fellow at Manchester University, says: 'Humour is a very interesting way to look at artificial intelligence because at some point something has to have two meanings, which is not easy to do with a computer.'"

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