AI ALERT

22 September 2005

  
 

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The Headlines:

The Articles:

September 10, 2005: Who coined. Philip Woodward Malvern's letter to the Editor. New Scientist (Issue 2516; page 23).
"My letter of 28 May (website letters) has stirred up some discussion with John McCarthy of Stanford University, who has proof of having used the phrase 'artificial intelligence' in 1955, the year before I thought I had invented it. Oddly enough...."

  • The letter of 28 May appeared in the 9 June 2005 AI ALERT: I invented AI.

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September 11, 2005: Robo-justice - Do we have the technology to build a better legal system? By Drake Bennett. The Boston Globe.
"Computer judges, of course, aren't going to be ascending to the bench in the foreseeable future. 'Nobody thinks that's a good idea,' says Carole D. Hafner, a Northeastern University computer scientist and pioneer in using artificial intelligence to study the law. Judging, and most especially Supreme Court judging, is a complex and subtle mix of imagination, acuity, and political calculation. Still, at a time when doctors are starting to use software to aid in their diagnoses and when hedge funds are using computer models to make multibillion-dollar investment decisions, there is growing interest -- even in an American legal establishment usually resistant to change -- in finding ways to incorporate artificial intelligence into the law. ... Put simply, artificial intelligence is the branch of computer science that deals with getting machines to think like human beings. Its application to the law dates, in its earliest form, to the 1950s, when mathematicians first tried to use formal logic to model legal reasoning. ... Some of the fruits of this fascination, however, have been decidedly practical, from intelligent document retrieval systems that use fuzzy logic to search not just by keyword but by concept (the only AI application widely used in American law firms) to programs that predict the outcomes of court cases or evaluate potential clients."

  • Also see: Divorce? Let the computer be the judge. By Adele Horin. The Sydney Morning Herald. September 21, 2005. "After a marriage breaks down, couples can spend a fortune in legal fees wrangling over property and custody. But a new computer program called Family Winner may short-circuit the court battles. Developed by Emilia Bellucci, a lecturer at Victoria University's school of information systems, and John Zeleznikow, professor of information systems, the program requires a couple to prioritise their demands.... A second program called SplitUp, developed with Andrew Stranieri of the University of Ballarat, calculates the likely results of property settlements in Family Court proceedings, Professor Zeleznikow said."

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September 12, 2005: Ontologies for e-business. IST Results.
"With e-business becoming increasingly dynamic and complex, companies offering real-world services require business and service models that take full advantage of these new opportunities. Now tools for smart, collaborative e-business are on hand to help. 'OBELIX is the first ontology-based e-business system of its kind in the world to provide smart, scaleable integration and interoperability capabilities,' explains project coordinator Iñaki Laresgoiti at Labein in Spain. ... The project's interdisciplinary approach draws not only from computer science and artificial intelligence but also from economics, systems theory and current business practice. The system is a first step toward automating e-business services in a Semantic Web environment, relying on machine-understandable semantics in e-business data and processing systems."
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September 12, 2005: Robot cars aim to kick up dust - University, industry teams race to build fastest driverless vehicle on wheels. By Tom Abate. San Francisco Chronicle & SFGate.com.
"The Berkeley Blue Team is one of dozens of academic and industrial teams that will send driverless vehicles racing across the Mojave Desert on Oct. 8 in hopes of winning the $2 million first-place prize being offered by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Darpa -- the outfit that spawned the Internet and promoted a betting Web site to predict terrorist attacks -- held a similar desert race in March 2004 to spark research on future unmanned military vehicles. ... While just 15 teams competed last year, 118 hopefuls entered what Darpa calls its Grand Challenge 2005. In June, the agency winnowed the field down to 40 semifinalists. A late September elimination round is scheduled to choose the 20 robotic vehicles that will vie to finish an undisclosed course expected to traverse nearly 150 miles of desert not far from Las Vegas."

  • Also see: Robotic Vehicles Race, but Innovation Wins. By John Markoff. The New York Times (registration req'd.). September 14, 2005. "It has been almost 18 months since the Pentagon's research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, first attracted a motley array of autonomous vehicles with a prize of $1 million for the first to complete a 142-mile desert course from Barstow, Calif., to Las Vegas. The most successful robot, developed by a Carnegie Mellon University team, managed all of seven miles. With the next running scheduled for Oct. 8 - and this time a $2 million purse for the winner among 43 entries - it is clear that many of the participants have made vast progress. For some researchers, it is an indication of a significant transformation in what has been largely a science fiction fantasy. 'Computers are starting to sprout legs and move around in the environment,' said Andy Rubin, a Silicon Valley technologist and a financial backer of this year's Stanford Racing Team, which produced Stanley. ... The Pentagon agency, known as Darpa, struck upon the idea of a race - calling it the Grand Challenge - as a way to stimulate innovations useful in battlefield applications like unmanned logistics vehicles. For the two Stanford scientists, however, the Grand Challenge is about something larger. 'The military are interested in more potent weapons, and by itself that's a bad answer,' said Mr. [Sebastian] Thrun, a roboticist and director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. His broader goal is to advance robotics as a science and explore applications ranging from aids for the elderly to basic advances in intelligent computerized systems."

    • Be sure to see the accompanying mulimedia audio slide show, Rolling Roboticists, via a sidebar link.

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September 12, 2005: Georgia Tech's Ronald Arkin. By Eric Smalley. Technology Research News.
"Technology Research News Editor Eric Smalley carried out an email conversation with Georgia Institute of Technology professor Ronald C. Arkin in August of 2005 that covered the economics of labor, making robots as reliable as cars, getting robots to trust people, biorobotics, finding the boundaries of intimate relationships with robots, how much to let robots manipulate people, giving robots a conscience, robots as humane soldiers and The Butlerian Jihad. ... TRN: Tell me more about what ever-increasing computational power is likely to enable and how supercomputing will enable fundamentally new approaches to problems. Arkin: Some of my colleagues feel more strongly than I do on this subject, e.g., interpreting Hans Moravec; it would seem that it's simply a matter of time that advances in computational speed will enable human-level intelligence in machines. My tack is somewhat different... I believe that now with better tools, we can explore our understanding, development and implementation of intelligence in novel ways, perhaps, for example, by creating highly efficient distributed and parallel machines that can enable us to better understand and recreate intelligence. The end result will be new paradigms. What specifically they will be remains to be seen, but just as better ships enabled man to voyage further on his expeditions, even into space, so will better computational engines facilitate new discoveries of this sort. TRN: Tell me about trends in robotics. What are the pluses and minuses of the technologies as they exist today? What do you see as the most urgent needs in robotics research and development? Arkin: ...."
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September 13, 2005: Six degrees. The Engineer Online.
"University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers have invented a new algorithm that solves a network-searching conundrum that has puzzled computer scientists and sociologists for years. The scientists created an algorithm that helps explain the sociological findings that led to the theory of 'six degrees of separation,' and could have broad implications for how networks are navigated, from improving emergency response systems to preventing the spread of computer viruses. ... Dubbed expected-value navigation, the algorithm describes an efficient way of searching a particular class of networks.... The work was inspired by research pioneered in the late 1960s that focused on navigating social networks, explains [Ozgur] Simsek."
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September 13, 2005: MOD to sponsor underwater competition. Ministry of Defence News.
"In the first competition of its kind in the UK, teams of students from universities will have the chance to win £10,000 in prize money for building the ultimate unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV). The challenge, sponsored by the MoD's Research Acquisition Organisation (RAO) and Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), is to design and build an autonomous UUV capable of carrying out a specified in-water 'mission'. ... The integration of sensors, artificial intelligence/autonomy, navigation, propulsion, and special materials with the associated tactics is the key systems problem in evolving UUVs into a viable military force."
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September 13, 2005: NSF panel to assess U.S. robotics technology. By R. Colin Johnson. EE Times.
"The World Technology Evaluation Center (WTEC) will release its International Study of Robotics on Friday (Sept. 16) at a National Science Foundation conference. During the NSF conference, 'Robots: An Exhibition of U.S. Automatons from the Leading Edge of Research,' WTEC will compare Asian and European robotic technology with U.S. robots exhibited at an NSF workshop last year. Since then, a six-member panel has toured 50 robot facilities in Japan, South Korea and Western Europe to assess the status of international research. ... Six different robot types will be studied: robotic vehicles, space robots, industrial and personal robots, humanoid robots, robotics in biology and medicine and networked robots."

  • Also see:
    • Robot Exhibition to Highlight WTEC International Study of Robotics. NIH News press release. September 14, 2005. "On September 16, 2005, the National Science Foundation (NSF) will host more than a dozen robots and their creators for a showcase of advanced robotics technology from across the nation. The robotic exhibition will highlight the release of a new report: the World Technology Evaluation Center International Study of Robotics, a two-year look at robotics research and development in the United States, Japan, Korea, and Western Europe."
    • American robots face spirited competition abroad. By Byron Spice. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. September 19, 2005. "Though still a leader in areas such as health care robotics, the United States faces strong, and in many ways superior, competition from abroad, [George Bekey] added. Summarizing the report's findings at a workshop hosted by the National Science Foundation, he noted that Japan, Korea and Europe all have mounted concerted, coordinated efforts to develop robots. While U.S. robotic research has been driven primarily by the Defense Department, Asian and European research is much more oriented to commercial products. ... But Matt Mason, director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, expressed reservations about adopting the models of coordinated research such as those used in Japan and Korea. Though those programs are effective -- both countries are clearly preeminent in the development of walking, humanoid robots and robots to help care for the elderly and infirm -- their uniform approach to problems would not mesh well with U.S. culture. 'I actually value our tradition of independent thought,' Mason said. 'I think it would be a big mistake for us to seek the kind of unity of purpose that we see there.' A diversity of ideas is one of the strength's of the U.S. research community, he argued."
    • Bot Builders Scramble for Cash. By Michael Grebb. Wired News. September 21, 2005. "With the exception of military and space applications, the United States is falling behind Europe and Asia in robotics research, according to an international study by the World Technology Evaluation Center. ... [George] Bekey said that robotics research funding has been dropping in the United States for at least the last decade, with NSF's funding now at less than $10 million per year. In contrast, he said Japan's government will spend nearly $100 million in 2005."

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September 14, 2005: 'Brilliant' minds honored. By Marissa Newhall. USA Today.
"Examining ancient trees, probing black holes and observing cannibalistic spiders are all part of the job for young researchers honored in Popular Science's fourth annual 'Brilliant 10' feature. The list recognizes young minds who have pushed their fields in innovative directions but remain virtually unknown to the public. ... Sebastian Thrun, 38 - As director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Stanford University.... Doug James, 33 - Thanks to James' software tools and research at Carnegie Mellon University.... "

  • See the September 2005 Popular Science article: PopSci's Fourth Annual Brilliant 10 - Meet the extraordinary scientists whose innovations are bringing us robot cars, new cures and vaccines, the fastest-ever computer animations, and much, much more.

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September 15, 2005: Robots can be lifesaving rescue workers - Robotic aircraft play a role in assessing Katrina's damage. By Marsha Walton, with Daniel Sieberg contributing. CNN.
"They look like big, high-tech toys. But robotic airplanes and helicopters with cameras, microphones and sensors can provide crucial information for emergency responders in the aftermath of disasters like Hurricane Katrina. 'You don't even have to wait until dawn the next morning to start flying to get a view of where the damage is, what areas have been hit hardest, what roads are still open, and how to get access to them,' said Robin Murphy, director of the Center for Robot Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR). Murphy, a professor in the department of computer science and engineering at the University of South Florida, used the unmanned aerial vehicles in Pearlington, and Bay St. Louis, Mississippi a couple days after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. ... Search robots earned credibility after the 9/11 attacks in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania. 'At the World Trade Center we saw the first use of ground robots, they could go underneath, go into places that people and dogs simply couldn't fit into or that were still on fire. They could do things that people just couldn't or shouldn't do,' she said. But each disaster, natural or manmade, is different."

  • Also see:
    • China, Japan jointly develop disaster relief robot. Xinhua News Agency & China View. September 14, 2005. "An underwater robot in a flood rescue effort? A snake-shaped robot penetrating debris to search for survivors of an earthquake? A flying robot monitoring fire danger in forest? The common dream of mankind of a world aided by robots may soon become a reality. The Shenyang Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the International Resure System Institute of Japan jointly set up a Sino-Japan Rescue and Safety Robot Technology Research Center Monday to conduct research and development into robots for disaster relief purposes."
    • Robot rescue - These guys go where human searchers can't . A bay area company takes its technology to Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina, to show a team where it didn't need to look. By Dave Gussow. St. Petersburg Times. September 19, 2005. "Mark Micire makes it very clear: His robot did not rescue any victims of Hurricane Katrina. But it did come in handy. 'We saw inside structures that would not have been able to be searched by a human,' said Micire, 29 and president of American Standard Robotics in St. Petersburg. 'It's as important to find where not to search as it is where to search.' ... While many consumers think of robotic pets such as the Sony Aibo, appliances such as the Roomba vacuum cleaner or industrial robots, search and rescue wants a different image. 'This is something that has a little stronger humanitarian undertone,' Micire said. 'We're trying to build robots that serve people, that really have an impact when we need assistance the most.' Micire was part of a USF team that went to the World Trade Center after 9/11, which was a major learning event for the robotics field."

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September 19, 2005: Milestones. By Ruth Browning. The Daily Citizen. (The milestones for the week of September 17-23 were posted on September 16, 2005.)
"Sept. 19, 1982, at 11:44, Scott Fahlman, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, sent a message in which the first 'smiley' or 'emoticon' was used. At least, he is credited with the first time one was used with the suggestion that they can express emotions; there is some dispute about this. ... He is a fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence."
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September 19, 2005: Intelligence in the Internet age - It's a question older than the Parthenon: Do new innovations and technologies make us more intelligent? [This is the first installment in a 3 part series.] By Stefanie Olsen. CNET News.com.
"Today, terabytes of easily accessed data, always-on Internet connectivity, and lightning-fast search engines are profoundly changing the way people gather information. But the age-old question remains: Is technology making us smarter? Or are we lazily reliant on computers, and, well, dumber than we used to be?"

  • Part 2: From ape to 'Homo digitas'? By Stefanie Olsen. CNET News.com (September 20, 2005). "[U]ntil computers can think for us, or thread ideas together, we will still need to rely on our own brains to do the work. The Internet may be vast, but it can't do the critical thinking for us. 'The Internet is information-rich, but it is flat,' said John Davidson, a partner at venture capital firm Mohr Davidow who has specialized in investments in artificial intelligence. 'The notion of technology taking over the world is false. It may be frustrating when the power goes out, but there are not going to be smart computers taking it over; it might (be) dumb computers. The ubiquity of stupid computers might be more dangerous.' ... In his book, 'On Intelligence,' [Jeff] Hawkins presents a theory of the brain that argues that intelligence is measured by the ability to make predictions by seeing patterns in the world. He's attempting to make computers intelligent by teaching them to find and use patterns in specific trades. ... 'A real inflection point that's going to happen in the next three or four years will be when humans aren't the only ones exhibiting intelligence,' Hawkins said. ... But what happens if the power goes off? E.M. Forster's 'The Machine Stops,' published in 1909, is about a society that's heavily dependent on a machine, which among other things, cleans house and provides the food. One day, the machine stops...."
  • Part 3: Are we getting smarter or dumber? By Stefanie Olsen. CNET News.com (September 21, 2005). "CNET News.com spoke with [Mike] Merzenich about how technology is affecting human intelligence. ... [Q] Will we be smarter with computers that can do abstract thinking for us? Or will that exacerbate a potential problem? Merzenich: This is a difficult question to answer because it is difficult to see just how this will evolve. Personally, I see this triumph of technology, if it occurs on a broad scale, as a rather astounding defeat of its inventors, don't you? I suppose our abstract thinking abilities will be substantially superseded by machines. One can imagine a future when the machine is consistently relied on for the answer, and in which, outside of setting up the question, the human is relatively redundant in this process. Of course, one can also imagine quite a few other scenarios. In general, the brain needs to learn, to reason, to act. Without it, it deteriorates. ..."

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September 20, 2005: Brit's bot chats way to AI medal. BBC News.
"A British computer chat program, called George, has won an international prize for holding the most convincingly human-like conversation. George and its creator Rollo Carpenter competed against three other talkative bot finalists in New York. Reigning three-time winner, Alice, came fourth in this year's Loebner Prize. The competition is based on the Turing Test, which suggests computers could be seen as 'intelligent' if their chat was indistinguishable from humans. ... Mr Carpenter told the BBC News website that the win was a first for such a learning type of AI (Artificial Intelligence). ... George is a 'character' which has learned its conversation skills from the interactions it has had with human visitors to the Jabberwacky website."

  • Also see: Okay George, have you got a girlfriend? By Oliver Burkeman. The Guardian. September 21, 2005. "[Rollo] Carpenter, [George's] creator, has just won the 2005 Loebner prize, awarded each year for the program that can hold the most convincingly human conversation with a real person. In the New York apartment of the philanthropist Hugh Loebner, a panel of judges held a series of exchanges with unseen conversation partners, communicating via screens and keyboards. Some of the entities they were talking to were programs; the others were humans. This is the so-called Turing test, devised in the 1950s by the computer scientist Alan Turing. ... When I struck up a conversation with George yesterday, he felt it necessary to begin with a clarification. 'I am not George Bush,' he said. 'Fair enough,' I replied. ... Carpenter has found that people converse online with George for up to seven hours. People act, then, as if George thinks. Does he? ..."

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September 20, 2005: Telling You What You Like - 'Preference engines' track consumers' choices online and suggest other things to try. But do they broaden tastes or narrow them? By Alex Pham and Jon Healey. Los Angeles Times.
"Preference engines emerged in the earliest days of e-commerce to boost sales -- the Internet equivalent of 'Would you like a belt to go with that?' -- but they have improved with technology and incorporated human feedback to more precisely predict what someone might like. Their spread worries some who fear that preference engines can extract a social price. As consumers are exposed only to the types of things they're interested in, there's a danger that their tastes can narrow and that society may balkanize into groups with obscure interests. ... The most common recommendation tools involve collaborative filtering, a technique that suggests products based on what other people with similar tastes have bought. These tools keep tabs on what people purchase, what items they browse or whether they put items into their shopping carts. Some take a further step by asking people how well they liked their purchases."
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September 20, 2005: NASA Announces Prize for Digging Moon Dirt. SPACE.com.
"NASA announced Tuesday a $250,000 prize for the team that can win a lunar dirt-digging contest that will take place here on Earth. The competition will pit robots to see which can excavate the most lunar regolith (a fancy word for soil) and deliver it to a collector. The challenge will be held in late 2006 or early 2007. ... 'This challenge continues NASA's efforts to broaden interest in innovative concepts,' said Brant Sponberg, NASA's Centennial Challenges program manager."
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September 22, 2005: A Sci-Fi Future Awaits the Court. By Bruce Schneier. Wired News.
"At John Roberts' confirmation hearings last week, there weren't enough discussions about science fiction. Technologies that are science fiction today will become constitutional questions before Roberts retires from the bench. The same goes for technologies that cannot even be conceived of now. And many of these questions involve privacy. ... Privacy questions will arise from government actions in the 'War on Terror'; they will arise from the actions of corporations and individuals. They will include questions of surveillance, profiling and search and seizure. And the decisions of the Supreme Court on these questions will have a profound effect on society. ... That story illustrates a number of technologies that might become commonplace over the next several decades. Automatic face recognition will allow police, businesses and individuals to identify people without their knowledge or consent. Data-mining programs will sift through mountains of data, both real-time and historical, and select people for further investigation. And people might even be accused of conspiracy based on nothing more than a nebulous pattern of events."

  • Also see:
    • Artificial Intelligence for Homeland Security. IEEE Intelligent Systems (Volume 20, Number 5). September / October 2005."In dealing with today's security problems, law enforcement, criminal analysis, and intelligence communities face information overload but tremendous opportunities for innovation. Many existing computer and information science techniques need to be reexamined and adapted for security applications. New insights from this unique domain could result in breakthroughs in data mining, visualization, knowledge management, and information security. This special issue reports on AI technologies, methods, and systems that are contributing to this important emerging field."
    • Judge Bork's Inkblot. Opinion by Glenn Harlan Reynolds [being one of five opinions - each proposing 5 questions - that constitute the Twenty-Five Questions - Play the Senator: What to Ask Judge Roberts?]. The New York Times. September 12, 2005 (no longer available to non-subscribers). "3. Could a human-like artificial intelligence constitute a 'person' for purposes of protection under the 14th Amendment, or is such protection limited, by the 14th Amendment's language, to those who are 'born or naturalized in the United States?'"

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September 22, 2005: Human genome expert at UCSC receives award. SantaCruzSentinel.com.
"David Haussler, the human genome expert at UC Santa Cruz, will receive a prestigious award from Carnegie Mellon University and a $50,000 prize. ... R&D Magazine named Haussler 'Scientist of the Year' in 2001. He has also been honored by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. ... His current project uses the genomes of living mammals to reconstruct by computer the entire genome of the common ancestor of all placental mammals."
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September 24, 2004 [issue date]: AI systems may blow weathermen away. New Scientist (Issue 2518; page 27).
"Weather forecasters could find themselves pushed out of a job by an artificial intelligence system designed to write clearer, less ambiguous reports. Computer scientists at the University of Aberdeen, UK, were asked to generate an 'artificial weatherperson' by operators of offshore oil rigs, who wanted more clarity in their forecasts. ... To remove such uncertainties, the team programmed a natural language generation (NLG) software package to transform data on the forecast weather into an unambiguous written bulletin (Artificial Intelligence, vol 167, p 137)."
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September 26 - October 3, 2005 [issue date]: A Female Sensibility - Videogame makers have ignored half their potential market. Now they're having a second look, and altering the possibilities of gaming. By Christopher Dickey and Nick Summers. Newsweek International / MSNBC.com.
"As broadband Internet access becomes commonplace and portable games link up wirelessly, players are interacting with each other and with their machines as never before. At the same time, experimental games using artificial intelligence raise the possibility that characters on the screen will take on a virtual life of their own. 'We're talking about relationships illuminated through conflict,' says Chris Crawford, whose career as a design guru goes back to Atari, in the Precambrian era of video recreations. Indeed, 'relationship' is the word that best defines the differing interests of men and women as they enter an on-screen adventure. ... Girl gamers were largely hidden from view until The Sims brought them out in the 1990s. ... Today, some of the most creative efforts to incorporate character, narrative and relationships into games go beyond the preprogrammed ironies of The Sims and the chat-room companionship of the Web to embrace the more unpredictable world of artificial intelligence. Characters have lives, ambitions and sensibilities. 'We're talking about personality -- about the human condition,' says Crawford. ... So far, only one game has moved into this arena. It's a free download called Facade...."
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