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<< Headlines are listed according to date posted <-> Articles are organized by date published >>
DECEMBER 2003 December 31, 2003: Japan
develops robot that can translate English, Japanese. Press Trust of
India / available from the Hindustan Times. "Japan's NEC Corp has
succeeded in developing the world's first interactive robot capable of
translating Japanese to English and vice versa. The robot, PaPeRo, has
a built-in voice-recognition system that can distinguish among the voices
of several thousand people and a regulatory system that identifies the
correct meaning of words despite differences in pronunciation, local daily
Yomiuri reported on Tuesday." December
30, 2003: Computer
games learn new tricks. Yves Guillemot is boss of French game studio
Ubisoft and has been involved in the games industry since its earliest
days. Here he gives his views on the way that the industry has to change
to keep players interested. By Mark Ward. BBC. "'You should at least
have the same game experience even if you are not as good,' he says. Ubisoft
is working on ambient AI that watches what a player does and adapts the
game and how the plot plays out to their skill levels, he says. 'We should
be able to improve the game for particular kinds of people,' he says.
'It is about making sure you can understand the reactions of the players
to give them the things that will really work for them. It is about AI
reacting to your abilities. If you cannot do something after 20 tries
it makes sure you still progress.'" December 30, 2003: Toyota
to develop workman humanoid robot by 2005. Agence France Presse /
available from Channelnewsasia.com. "Japan's top car maker Toyota
will develop a humanoid robot designed to help factory workers and provide
assistance in nursing care and rescue operations. Toyota will announce
details of the project in January and plans to unveil the as-yet-unnamed
robot at the 2005 World Exposition in Japan, the business daily Nihon
Keizai Shimbun said. ... Toyota aims to develop motion and sound sensor
technology for the robot and then apply it to automobiles as a device
to avoid collisions, the report said. Toyota hopes the new robot can help
factory workers conduct physically demanding work and provide assistance
in nursing care and rescue operations...." December 29, 2003: The
Fantasy and Reality of 2004. By Michelle Delio. Wired News. "So
we asked a dozen experts in fields that are apt to touch all our lives
this year -- privacy, defense, spam, security, open source, technology
development, life online and human rights -- to answer this question:
"What do you wish would happen in 2004, and what do you think will actually
happen?" ... Craig Silverstein, director of technology, Google: 'I wish
computer search engines would become as intelligent as human searchers
in 2004. ...'" December 29, 2003: 'Robot
Tarzan' helps forest work. By Jo Twist. BBC. "The hi-tech Tarzan
of the robot world, nicknamed Treebot, is the first of its kind to combine
networked sensors, a webcam, and a wireless net link. It is solar-powered
and moves up and down special cables to take samples and measurements
for vital analysis. Treebot has been developed by scientists at the US
Centre for Embedded Network Sensing in California. ... Eighteen months
in development, the main difference between Treebot and other fixed sensors
is its autonomous nature and its ability to communicate with other devices
and sensors." December 29, 2003: No
rest for the apostle of training. By Larry Werner. Star Tribune. "Michael
Allen has spent a career tying to wipe out boredom in education. He felt
so strongly about his crusade that he came out of a comfortable early
retirement to start a company that attempts to make corporate training
fun and effective. ... His programs use the techniques of video games
to teach subjects that can be dry as rice cakes. ... 'Training can be
very effective, if done right, and it's a competitive advantage,' he said.
The persuasive tone in his voice is one of the things his latest product
-- DialogCoach -- attempts to teach. Using voice-recognition and artificial-intelligence
software, Allen Interactions has developed an interactive program that
can role-play with a user who might be a sales person, a customer-service
agent or anyone who could benefit from rehearsing a conversation. In sales
training, for example, the fictitious sales prospect on the computer screen
is programmed to cut off the sales pitch if the trainee doesn't use the
right words to make a sale." December 29, 2003: Complex
system watches insiders - Stock exchanges, regulators hunt for illegal
trades. By Andrew Countryman. Chicago Tribune (no fee reg. req'd.) "In
today's stock market, detecting illegal insider trading is a complex business,
with elaborate surveillance techniques, artificial-intelligence programs--and
some old-fashioned detective work. ... Market officials are reluctant
to discuss details of their surveillance efforts publicly, so as not to
tip their hand. But they use sophisticated computer monitoring, cross-referencing
trades with thousands of company news announcements each day, looking
for any connections. A new system at the NASD, honored this year by the
American Association for Artificial Intelligence for its innovation, has
generated more than 180 cases referred to federal authorities in less
than two years." December 28, 2003: Try
sci-fi books on for size. By Sharon Wootton. The Olympian. "'Singularity
Sky' ... Charles Stross' debut novel presents an information plague on
a backward colony, faster-than-light travel, relocation of billions of
Earthlings, artificial intelligence turned sentient, time-travel problems,
and ringing telephones falling out of the sky with an alien voice asking
only for information. Go figure." December 28, 2003: Mother
of Invention - Virtual cow fences and self-reconfiguring automatons
are just two of MIT roboticist Daniela Rus's futuristic visions. By Rich
Barlow. The Boston Globe /available from Boston.com. "[Daniela] Rus,
who last year won a MacArthur 'genius' grant at age 39, invests her work
with quasi-spiritual purpose as well. Inventing machines that build scaffolding
and rescue victims -- in short, that act like people -- 'means to study
life, to get an understanding of how we're made up,' she says. 'Understanding
life is a great and noble quest, because that's how we understand ourselves.'
... Some roboticists are 'absolutely aghast' when critics question their
brave new world, [Rodney] Brooks says. Rus invited students to pause and
ponder it. The mechanics of building robots are fine, she says, but arguing
big philosophical issues revs students' passion, so that they just don't
'passively sit back and suck all the information you give to them.' The
climactic project of her artificial-intelligence classes at Dartmouth
(one she hopes to continue at MIT) assigned debate teams to duel over
such topics as whether robots might rule the world someday, or the urgency
of enacting writer Isaac Asimov's 'Three Laws of Robotics,' mandating
that robots never harm humans. Student Carl Stritter's topic was whether
artificial-intelligence research would benefit humanity. 'Never before
had I heard a professor,' he says by e-mail, 'after teaching us a subject
for 10 weeks, ask the class whether or not it had been, in essence, a
waste of time.'" December 26, 2003: Federal
surveillance technology to be tested at T.F. Green. Associated Press
/ available from USA Today. "T.F. Green Airport has been chosen to
test the latest in government-sponsored security technology... Two systems
are being tested at the regional airport, located in Warwick. One is software
that could alert authorities when the airport's 3-to-4 mile perimeter
has been breached. ... The test software is seen as a step forward in
the ASDE-X system's development. It uses artificial intelligence to detect
any intrusion on airport grounds and identify where the breach occurred." December 25, 2003: 'Get
Me Rewrite!' 'Hold On, I'll Pass You to the Computer.' By Anne Eisenberg.
The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "In the famous sketch from
the TV show'Monty Python's Flying Circus,' the actor John Cleese had many
ways of saying a parrot was dead, among them, 'This parrot is no more,'
... Computers can't do nearly that well at paraphrasing. English sentences
with the same meaning take so many different forms that it has been difficult
to get computers to recognize paraphrases, much less produce them. Now,
using several methods, including statistical techniques borrowed from
gene analysis, two researchers have created a program that can automatically
generate paraphrases of English sentences. The program gathers text from
online news services on specific subjects, learns the characteristic patterns
of sentences in these groupings and then uses those patterns to create
new sentences that give equivalent information in different words. The
researchers, Regina Barzilay, an assistant professor in the department
of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, and Lillian Lee, an associate professor of computer science
at Cornell University, said that while the program would not yield paraphrases
as zany as those in the Monty Python sketch, it is fairly adept at rewording
the flat cadences of news service prose. ... Such programs might even
be an aid to writers who want to adapt their prose to the background of
their readers. Dr. Lee said the researchers had thought about using it
'as a kind of 'style dial'' to rewrite documents automatically for different
groups - adapting articles on technical subjects for a children's encyclopedia,
for example. December 25, 2003: Puzzles
provide brain insight. Column by Walter Witschey. Richmond Times-Dispatch.
"The first modern crossword puzzle appeared 90 years ago in the New
York World Sunday paper. ... Solving crosswords has been a test of artificial-intelligence
programs since 1977. Recently, researchers wrote a program to solve a
crossword based on its clues as well as its diagram structure. Researchers
at Duke created a program called 'Proverb' for 'probabilistic cruciverbalist.'
A cruciverbalist is a crossword-puzzle solver, and probabilistic refers
to using a computer to calculate how probable or likely a given answer
is among many choices. ... There doesn't seem to be anything artificial
about intelligence such as this. In fact, if we are ever to have robots
and machines around us that respond as intelligently as humans, working
crossword puzzles is a dandy first step." December 23, 2003: Bots
sniff out trouble. By Jennifer Foreshew. Australian IT. "Odour-sensing
robots may be used in place of sniffer dogs to detect drugs, explosives
and gas leaks in the future. A project headed by Associate Professor Andy
Russell, from Monash University's Intelligent Robotics Research Centre,
is developing a new generation of 'snifferbots'. Dr Russell has created
a more advanced version of a robot known as RAT (reactive autonomous testbed),
which is able to sniff its way through a maze of tunnels to track down
a chemical odour." December 23, 2003: Caution
over 'computerised world.' By Alfred Hermida. BBC. "'The idea
of pervasive computing is that you are no longer aware of the electronics,'
explained Dr Hilty, Professor of Computer Science at the Swiss Federal
Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research, EMPA. ... But before
we get there, we should consider the risks of blindly stumbling into a
technological advanced future, they say. 'People should be critical of
technology,' said Professor Hilty told BBC News Online. 'We are not saying
don't use it, but there should be a public discourse.'" December 23, 2003: Are
you a bot or not? By Chan Lee Meng. The Star Online (Malaysia). "You
could call it the attack of the clones. Major websites such as Yahoomail,
Hotmail, Altavista and Ticketmaster are being inundated by malicious automated
programs pretending to be humans. The main objective of these programs
or "bots" is to gain access to the websites' services and send spam, harass
users, gather personal information or hog resources. To ward off these
bots, webmasters are increasingly turning to a technology called Captcha,
an acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers
and Humans Apart. A Captcha is essentially a 'human verification test'
installed on websites to confirm that a user at the other end is actually
human, and not a program. Besides helping to weed out insidious programs,
Captcha is also instrumental in advancing the fields of artificial intelligence
and optical character recognition (OCR). Chan Lee Meng takes a look at
Captcha the origin, overviews of research in the creation and cracking
of Captcha and the impact of Captcha on visually-impaired web users." December 23, 2003: Artificial
Intelligence To Help Prevent Vector-borne Diseases. By Bv Mahalakshmi.
The Financial Express eFW. "Artificial Intelligence, or AI, a term
made popular by a number of science fiction movies, has become the latest
buzzword amongst scientists. The Indian Institute of Chemical Technology
(IICT), Hyderabad, and the University of California, Davis, are collaborating
to adopt this 'artificial intelligence' model for preventing the outbreak
of vector-borne diseases such as malaria, filariasis and Japanese encephalitis.
... The project is the first of its kind in India and will tackle the
hardcore problems of dreaded diseases using AI. Apart from Envis, AI techniques
are being applied in several fields like medicine, drug design, e-commerce
and e-governance. These techniques, which have been worked out over the
past 50 years, have succeeded in making computers classify ideas." December 23, 2003: Companies
get into a biometrics groove. The Sydney Morning Herald. "Cars
and hand-helds have it and now kids chatting to toys are activating it.
Biometrics is moving into the consumer world, which will help push the
technology into the mainstream, an expert has predicted. The founder of
the Biometrics Institute, Ted Dunstone, said the technology - which uses
voice, facial, iris and fingerprint recognition systems for identification
- had been limited to the aviation, finance and government sectors. ...
'At the consumer level we will start to see the benefits and it will percolate
upwards to other applications,' Dunstone said. Last month, he was recognised
for his role in developing the infant biometrics industry in Australia
by the Trevor Pearcey Foundation, which awarded him its NSW state medal.
Long before September 11 and the boom in biometrics security to combat
terrorism, Dunstone was researching the use of artificial intelligence
in airports." December 22, 2003: From
high tech to mall tech. By Peter J. Howe, Robert Weisman and Chris
Gaither. The Boston Globe /available from Boston.com. "Let's call
it trickle-down technology: the tendency of high-end renovation, and even
military research, to eventually work its way down to mundane, even tacky
consumer items. ... So what technologies have recently reached the inevitable
mall level? Three technology reporters ventured out into holiday traffic
to find out. ... Creating robots of the future - Researchers at the MIT
Media Lab are working on ways to let robots interact emotionally with
humans. But in the Mall at Chestnut Hill, humans already are interacting
emotionally with robots. A small crowd of shoppers gathers around a pair
of bright red and blue Boxing Robots in the window of the Sharper Image....
And while the boxing robots use wireless controls, light-emitting diodes,
and artificial intelligence pioneered in labs for automotive or industrial
applications.... A couple of aisles down, a sales clerk is showing off
the latest model of iRobot's Roomba floor vacuum cleaner.... Just a few
miles away, across the Charles River, the Media Lab's Robotic Life Group
is creating the robots of the future: Kismet, a robotic head that changes
expressions in response to human visual and voice cues; and, Leonardo,
a fuzzy-eared robot that makes eye contact and twitches when his ears
are tickled." December 22, 2003: Some
colleges toy with video game design classes. Multibillion-dollar computer
gaming industry gets more attention in higher education. By Rebecca James.
The Post Standard / available from Syracuse.com. "Once a boy avidly
playing Nintendo in Rochester, Vaughan is now a Cornell University senior
living his dream. This semester, he helped develop a game with 3-D spaceship
battles set in a post-apocalyptic world in the year 2758. And he's getting
credit for it. An experimental course on computer game design drew about
50 students this semester, even though mastering the programming, physics
and artificial intelligence needed to create a game in 10 weeks demands
technical skill and many, many hours. Gaming is a multibillion-dollar
industry, but until recently, colleges and universities have largely ignored
the subject. Game design is just beginning to make it into course catalogs." December 21, 2003: Aussie
awards worth RM700,000 for innovative student researchers. The Star
Online (Malaysia). "A research proposal on machine vision, image
processing, pattern recognition and artificial intelligence won student
Chin Tat Jun the AustraliaAsia (Malaysia) Award this year. The Universiti
Teknologi Malaysia graduate was amongst two recipients who were presented
with the award by Deputy Education Minister Datuk Abdul Aziz Shamsuddin
and Australian High Commissioner to Malaysia James Wise." December 21, 2003: Science
reshaping notion of humanity. December 20, 2003: Invasion
of the Centibots. Army of Test Robots Drills for Military Duty. By
Elise Ackerman. Mercury News / available from Bayarea.com. "Charlie
Ortiz, who oversees the Centibots project at SRI's Artificial Intelligence
Center in Menlo Park, said the effort represents a step forward in getting
robots to work together autonomously and as a team. 'They represent a
major contribution in distributed robotics,' he said. Researchers have
built robots that vacuum rooms, explore shipwrecks, manufacture microchips,
imitate puppy dogs and fly around hunting for Osama bin Laden. But for
the most part, modern robots act alone. DARPA wanted machines that could
coordinate with each other to create a map of an area. The Centibots communicate
with a human commander who tells them where to search and reviews the
information they send back. However, the commander doesn't need to give
detailed instructions to each machine. 'They autonomously decide where
to go,' said Regis Vincent, a computer scientist who helped build the
Centibots. 'Nobody is controlling them.'" December 20, 2003: Bookish
Math - Statistical tests are unraveling knotty literary mysteries.
By Erica Klarreich. Science News (Vol. 164, No. 25). "Stylometry
['the science of measuring literary style'] is now entering a golden era.
In the past 15 years, researchers have developed an arsenal of mathematical
tools, from statistical tests to artificial intelligence techniques, for
use in determining authorship. ... For decades, computers have supported
the work of experts in stylometry. Now, computers are becoming experts
in their own right, as some researchers apply artificial intelligence
techniques to the question of authorship. ... In 1993, Robert Matthews
of Aston University in England and Thomas Merriam, an independent Shakespearean
scholar in England, created a neural network that could distinguish between
the plays of Shakespeare and of his contemporary Christopher Marlowe.
A neural network is a computer architecture modeled on the human brain,
consisting of nodes connected to each other by links of differing strengths.
... A couple of years later, Holmes and Richard Forsyth of the University
of Luton in England used the Federalist Papers to test another artificial
intelligence technique. They applied genetic algorithms, which use Darwinian
principles of natural selection. The idea is to create a set of rules
for determining authorship and then let the most useful, or fit, rules
survive. ... Yet another analysis of the Federalist Papers was presented
at a computer science conference in October. Glenn Fung of Siemens Medical
Solutions in Malvern, Pa., used one of artificial intelligence's newest
tools, a pattern-recognition technique called support-vector machines." December 19, 2003: FCC
investigates smart radios. By Joab Jackson. Government Computer News.
"FCC chairman Michael Powell, in a statement accompanying the notice,
said that smart radio technologies will become necessary. There is a shortage
of spectrum for new wireless services, while much of the spectrum already
allotted goes unused. ... The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
has also funded a number of technologies that use dynamic frequencies.
DARPA has funded cognitive radio work by Joseph Mitola, a consulting scientist
for Mitre Corp. of McLean, Va. Mitola coined the terms software radio
and cognitive radio. Cognitive radio draws on artificial intelligence
to automatically negotiate the best transmission path based on factors
it evaluates internally, such as what space other radios are using." December 18, 2003: New
robot brain takes to the skies. By Heather Catchpole. ABC Science
Online. "A new robot 'brain', based in part on the workings of the
human inner ear, has enabled the production of the world's first small
robotic helicopter that can see and think for itself, say Australian researchers.
The 'brain' and helicopter - called 'Mantis' - was announced this week
by CSIRO Complex Systems Integration. Autonomous helicopter flight is
characterised by helicopters that can fly without a human pilot or guidance
from a remote-controlled device. ... 'The major task in developing Mantis
was to produce an inertial sensing system and a computer vision system
to control and provide flight stability and to guide the aircraft,' said
[Dr Peter] Corke. ... Corke says that new sensing equipment developed
for the Mantis opens up a large number of applications for rescue and
surveillance work. ... Other applications include traffic monitoring,
security and military applications, and inspecting and reporting on faults
in high-rise building facades or even underneath bridges." December 18, 2003: Diamond
Dance recalls legendary ballroom. By Mae G. Banner. The Saratogian.
"New York City's legendary Savoy Ballroom closed in 1958, but the
spirit of 'stompin' at the Savoy' is alive and well in Saratoga Springs,
thanks to David Wolf and Keira Lemonis, co-owners of Saratoga Savoy. ...
Teaching dance is a second career for Wolf, though he always danced for
fun. 'I used to be an artificial intelligence (AI) programmer and I taught
at universities. My love of teaching and my love of dance led me to open
Saratoga Savoy. The only jobs now in AI are designing weapons systems.
I decided not to do that. Teaching dance, I affect more people's lives
positively,' he said. Wolf's programming skills account for Saratoga Savoy's
well-designed, informative Web site." December 18, 2003: Kalam
dreams of polls via e-governance. The Hindu. "President A P J
Abdul Kalam today said he visualised a scenario in which e-governance
is used in the election process right from the stage of candidate verification
to voting through virtual polling booths. ... He said there could even
be an Artificial Intelligence Software which analyses the candidate's
credentials and gives ratings on how successful he would be as a politician.
'This is my dream. Is it possible? If possible when shall we have it.
Can we provide good governance to our one billion people,' Kalam asked
the audience." December 18, 2003: A
Robotic Assistant in Need of Legs Gets Some Wheels. By Julie Flaherty.
The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "'Mobility is really complicated
in a humanoid,' said Dr. [Una-May] O'Reilly, a research scientist and
a principal investigator on the Cardea project, as she lifted her own
leg in front of her and tried to balance on one foot. 'It becomes an endeavor
unto itself.' So when she and Rodney A. Brooks, director of the M.I.T.
computer science and artificial intelligence laboratory, were offered
a Segway Human Transporter to serve as Cardea's mode of mobility, they
took it." December 18, 2003:
Sony shows
off jogging robot. A small step for a Sony robot could turn out to
be a giant leap for robotkind. BBC. "Sony has showed a new version
of its Qrio robot that can jog at a top speed of 14 metres per minute.
Running is a much more difficult task for a robot to perform as both of
the machine's feet must be off the floor at the same time." December
17, 2003: 'Lord'
Effects Rock - See how amazing special effects help make 'Return of
the King' an epic film. By Tracey Marx. TechTV. "Weta Digital's most
impressive piece of technology is simply called Massive. Director Peter
Jackson, who helped create Weta in 1993, demanded battles and armies beyond
the size of anyone's imagination. 'All tribute has to be given to a young
guy called Steven Regelous, who realized Peter's vision through a piece
of code writing,' says Richard Taylor, FX supervisor, Weta Workshop. Weta
Digital designed Massive, software that 'teaches' characters to fight
other characters using artificial intelligence. The software, a work-in-progress
for more than three years, gives characters a repertoire of military moves
pre-taught through motion capture. The AI would determine their ability
to win or lose a given battle." December 17, 2003: A
Christmas wish list - Now Santa, take a deep breath and get your techie
hat on. Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense column. silicon.com. "Dear
Santa, I have worked hard all year, honoured all customers, agreements
and contracts, and mostly delivered more than was originally asked for,
ahead of schedule. ... So I thought you may have something a little extra
for me this year! Not that I expect all of it, you understand, just a
few items on my wish list would be a real treat and they would make everyone
else's life just a little easier too. ... A level of AI - artificial intelligence
- would go a long way to help us navigate an increasingly difficult IT
world and is probably the one and only thing that can improve my work
rate and efficiency which seems to be stalling after a steady year-on-year
progression since the arrival of the PC. What I need is sort of a Miss
Moneypenny -or rather Michaela (my PA) - inside, if you see what I mean.
It would be an agent capable of anticipating my next want and action,
an entity willing to vet and test all my decisions and actions against
a real world model of me, other people, companies and society." December 17/24, 2003:
PDA
translates speech. By Kimberly Patch. Technology Research News. "As
speech recognition technology gets better, and as handheld computers get
more powerful, audio translators are becoming a more practical proposition.
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, Cepstral, LLC, Multimodal
Technologies Inc. and Mobile Technologies Inc. have put together a two-way
speech-to-speech system that translates medical information from Arabic
to English and English to Arabic and runs on an iPaq handheld computer.
... The effort is one of a series of projects aimed at providing the armed
forces with automatic translation for medical and force protection situations
and making automatic translation in a wider set of subject areas available
for tourists during the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, said [Alex] Waibel.
... The prototype also has a camera attachment that translates text like
that on street signs, said Waibel." December 17, 2003: A
washing machine that talks in Tamil. News Today (India). "Electrolux
Kelvinator Limited (EKL), a global major in the production of appliances
and equipment for kitchen, cleaning and outdoor use, is launching the
Tamil version of Washy Talky, the world's first talking washing machine.
... The washing machine had several unique features. It was equipped with
among other things, a 'Digital Vigilante' feature comprising an Interactive
Voice Response System to guide the user step by step during the entire
wash process. ... Using artificial intelligence through 'Intelli Clean
Logic', the machine can sense the load weight and choose the optimum programme." December 16, 2003: AI
think, therefore I am. Virtual agents feature - Computerised characters
that look, sound, move and seemingly think like real people are emerging
from the realms of science fiction into everyday life. Superguide by David
Braue. apcmag.com. "Making computers human is an idea as old as computers
themselves, and what was initially a wild science fiction fantasy is gradually
turning into fact. From the chilling 2001: A Space Odyssey's HAL 9000
to robotic newsreader Ananova and Jar Jar Binks, virtual creatures have
become part of our collective culture. Much more than entertainment is
at stake, of course. The potential of computerised agents or entities
that are autonomous, self-directed, reactive and social -- just like humans
-- can be estimated only in the realm of the imagination. Already, such
agents have been built to present the weather on mobile phones, drive
trucks, monitor environments designed to support life on other planets
and perform many other sophisticated tasks. Computers are good at doing
what they're told, but in this field they're required to reach their own
conclusions. The complex computer code beneath their 'skins' is designed
to make them react to situations like real people do -- unpredictably.
Just how far we have come was evident in Melbourne earlier this year when
more than 450 researchers from 29 countries attended the second annual
Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems conference. ... 'We have agents
embedded in trucks, excavators and individuals [robots] in order to mine
the right material at the right time,' says Hugh Durrant-Whyte, research
director at CEAS [Centre of Excellence in Autonomous Systems]. 'We do
not approach it at all from a human point of view -- robots are really
physical embodiments of agents. They won't discuss Plato with you, but
they can work 24 hours a day and have cooperation and negotiation strategies
[to interact with each other].'" December 15, 2003: Blossoming
business. Mark Fox generates ideas - then pursues them to fruition.
By Nicolle Wahl. News @ University of Toronto. "Westinghouse took
an interest in his work and asked him to create a role for robotics and
artificial intelligence in their complex manufacturing process. Fox identified
a lack of awareness of what was happening on the factory floor as interfering
with the company's ability to develop accurate manufacturing schedules
and decided to build an 'expert' system that used artificial intelligence
to represent the knowledge of a human scheduler. He realized that the
computer needed to view the scheduling in terms of constraints such as
the availability of a material, worker or tool, and preference (as in
preferring to meet a due date). Fox called this approach 'knowledge-based
simulation.' His growing expertise caught the attention of the U.S. army,
which was looking for ways to schedule the movement of available resources
before the first Gulf War. ... His research now looks at enterprise modelling,
which includes designing systems involving both terminology and the meaning,
or semantics, of that terminology. 'The Holy Grail for us in that area
is to create a computer-based description of an enterprise -- the terminology
along with the semantics -- with a natural language front end where any
person in an organization can type in a question about the enterprise.'" December 15, 2003: Ariana
Pharmaceuticals extends its exclusive deal with the CNRS. "Ariana
Pharmaceuticals, a drug discovery company combining artificial intelligence
and experimental methods to predict the behavior of novel molecules, today
announced an extension of its collaboration with the CNRS (Centre National
de Recherche Scientifique, France's premier research organization). Under
this collaboration the company has negotiated exclusive access, in the
life sciences field, to use the AI technology developed jointly by Ariana
and the Laboratoire d'Informatique, de Robotique et de Micro-électronique
de Montpellier (LIRMM), the CNRS lab in Montpellier France." December 15, 2003: Young
scientists take robotic challenge. By Nick Anthony. The Herald. December
15, 2003: Lego
competition builds up in area; 48 teams participate. Students learn
to apply science, technology skills. By J.E. Espino. Post-Crescent. "Kurt
Schweitzer likes to think he's getting a second chance at childhood this
time of year. As adviser to a group of children ages 9 to 14 in the Hortonville
and Greenville area involved with the annual First Lego League competition,
he's watching children get a hands-on approach to science and technology,
sometimes wishing he could get his hands on those Lego robots himself."
December 15, 2003: Digital,
P.I. - They can pick you out in a crowd, track what you buy -- and
maybe save your life. By Mark Halper, with reporting by Adam Pitluk and
Chris Taylor. Time Magazine. "Pamela Lipson can be forgiven for sounding
a bit like the announcer in that classic comedy sketch who praises a new
miracle foam: Shimmer is a floor wax! And a dessert topping! Get Lipson
going, and the 36-year-old co-founder and president of Imagen will gush
about how her product can distinguish faces in a crowd, recommend makeup,
diagnose diseases and spot imperfections on a circuit board. What Lipson's
six-year-old company -- a spin-off of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(M.I.T.)--really does is make software that can find subtle similarities
and differences in images of, well, just about anything. Imagen, based
in Cambridge, Mass., is part of a group of this year's World Economic
Forum Technology Pioneers. Collectively they could be called the digital
detectives: firms that are developing technologies that can monitor everything
from TV dinners to terrorists by analyzing digital signals and data about
them. The applications for these sleuthing technologies range from deciphering
buying trends in retail outlets to identifying dangerous chemicals. ...
Imagen's software is programmed to recognize patterns in much the same
way the human brain learns to distinguish classes of objects (say, faces)
as well as specific objects in that class -- like your best friend's face.
That's done by teaching the software, through trial and error, the common
patterns that all faces share plus the specific patterns that make your
best friend's face unique and then by training it to recognize those patterns
in different conditions like varying light." December 14, 2003: Hit
Song Science. By Clive Thompson. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.).
"When Norah Jones released her first album, she was a long shot at
best. 'Come Away With Me' was filled with mellow, sultry tunes -- precisely
the opposite of the histrionic diva pop crowding the charts. Virtually
no one expected Jones to score a major hit. No one, that is, except for
a piece of artificial intelligence called Hit Song Science, a program
that tries to determine, with mathematical precision, whether a song is
going to be a Top 40 hit. ... At the heart of the program is a 'clustering'
algorithm that locates acoustic similarities between songs, like common
bits of rhythm, harmonies or keys. The software takes a new tune and compares
it with the mathematical signatures of the last 30 years of Top 40 hits.
... ... [Mike McCready] can foresee a day when most major hits will have
been vetted by algorithms." December 13, 2003: Cracker
joke or two to win a £500 prize from Asda and be a laugh next year.
By David Williamson. The Western Mail / available from ic Wales. "One
of the reasons such groan-inducing favourites are still attracting interest
is that pioneers of artificial intelligence are teaching computers to
tell Q&A jokes. So far, computers have learned how puns work and how to
match them with nouns and verbs. Tests show that the jokes they have told
are almost as funny as those told by humans. And researchers at the University
of Edinburgh are hoping to create a 'language playground' where children
will be able to experiment with words. Graeme Ritchie said, 'We are aiming
it at children with disabilities becausethey are mainly deprived of the
thrusting swapping of jokes with their peer group.' In scientific studies
their Jape (Joke Analysis and Production Engine) system has amused children." December 12, 2003: Educator
predicts future robot rescuers, warriors. By David Rogers. Palm Beach
Daily News. "Robots are a part of our lives, though they hardly resemble
the humanoid variety depicted in Star Trek and The Jetsons. Robotic devices
paint cars on assembly lines, mow lawns and vacuum carpets. In the future,
more complex robots will likely be performing a wider array of tasks,
from rescuing people in dangerous environments to aiding military missions,
said Yoram Halevi, a mechanical engineering associate professor at The
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. 'You have machines that in maybe
20, 30, 40 years from now, will do everything that human beings can do,
even study,' Halevi said." December 11, 2003:
Man's
best electronic friend. Column by Jonathan Van Fleet. The Telegraph
of Nashua. "[T]he new robot is far more than a toy to the Swamys.
It's the latest tool they plan to use to get children excited about
using technology. Like the seven older AIBO robots the center owns,
the new one will be used for children to program and control. ... The
new generation ERS-7 robot has a built-in wireless network. It can send
and receive e-mail. It responds to touch and sound. It can take pictures
and play music. And perhaps most astounding is it autonomously finds
its charger when its batteries are low and recharges itself. ... The
Swamys founded the RoboTech Center on the belief that children, especially
young ones, can learn to use things that are designed for older users.
They want it to be like a technology academy for young people. Since
offering their first camp in the summer of 2002 at Rivier College, the
Swamys have opened a center at 110 Daniel Webster Highway. ... Getting
children involved with technology early in life gives them the power
to stay on top of the steep curve ahead and even become the leaders
of the future, the Swamys said." December 11, 2003:
UL
Lafayette to unveil robotic race challenger. By John Sullivan. The
Lafayette Daily Advertiser. "A six-wheeled robot that can think
for itself will be in the spotlight today at UL Lafayette as a team
of military officials come to the Hub City for an inspection. If CajunBot,
the name give the six-wheeled robot, passes muster today, it will be
allowed to take part in a 10-hour off-track race in March between Las
Vegas and Los Angeles. At stake: a $1 million cash prize for the winning
robot. ... 'The purpose of the challenge is to leverage American ingenuity
to accelerate the development of autonomous vehicle technologies that
can be applied to military requirements,' said Jeff Fortenberry with
C&C Technologies, a Lafayette company working with UL Lafayette on CajunBot." December 11, 2003:
Stock
exchange simulator.The Budapest Sun (Volume XI, Issue 50). "AITIA
Rt, a 100% Hungarian-owned software group, has launched a capital markets
and stock exchange interactive simulator and education internet portal
(IP) under the name vBroker. According to Róbert Markó, Director of
Marketing at AITIA, the IP is based on the latest international internet
technology and artificial intelligence research. ... One of the highlights
of the unique site is that users obtain their information from a 3D
'chatterbot' (a computer animated or virtual person) who holds dialogs
on several topics." December 11, 2003:
AI
software interactive robot gets recognition. By Hazimin Sulaiman.
New Straits Times Computines (Malaysia). "A little while back,
you might have remembered Aini (www.ainibot.com) which stands for 'Artificial
Intelligent Neural-network Identity'. In an earlier article I wrote
how this AI software robot could be used as a Web site portal ambassador
or even downloaded onto the Pocket PC devices for educational applications.
... Well, Aini has finally made it into the Malaysia Book of Records,
Gold Edition, for 'her' success in being the first 'Malaysian Robotic
Interactive Program'. This is probably the recognition and push to spark
interest and inspiration in the local artificial intelligence field."
December 10, 2003:
Technogadget
Lovers' Holiday Wish List. Report by Ed Curran. reports. CBS2 (Chicago).
"CBS 2'S Ed Curran runs down a few techno favorites from the inexpensive
to the luxurious, and it doesn't have to be high-priced to be high tech.
... How about a robot for Christmas? I love this little robotic vacuum
from The Sharper Image. 'What we've got here is the Roomba robotic floor
vacuum. This is a product that comes out of the commercial division
of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab,' explains Bill Dunbar of The
Sharper Image." December 10, 2003:
BCS
flap no digital divide. By Sam Ross Jr. Tribune-Review / 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. ... It seems that these people
have spent too much time watching the 1968 movie '2001: a Space Odyssey.'
For those of you who haven't, part of the plot involves a supercomputer
HAL taking control of a spaceship. It is a tour de force of artificial
intelligence not yet achieved in real life, even as 2003 fades toward
2004. Therein lies the basic flaw in those who play up the human vs.
computer angle. The BCS computer functions at the command of humans." December 10, 2003:
Rice
goes digital cooked the fuzzy logic way. Side-by-side tests show
appliance makes a difference. By Olivia Wu. San Francisco Chronicle
/ available from SF Gate. "And when [Chris Chen] says 'the fuzzy
logic cooker has wisdom,' he grabs your attention. ... As it turns out,
pioneer fuzzy logicians do evoke higher powers and a great deal of wisdom
when describing its function. Bart Kosko, professor of electrical engineering,
author and expert on artificial intelligence and neural networks, has
claimed that Buddha was really the world's first fuzzy theorist. Fuzzy
logic recognizes more than simple true and false values; it sees degrees
of truthfulness, for example, in the statement, 'There is a 25 percent
chance of rain today.' Fuzzy logic deals with complex real systems.
The Japanese learned exactly how well it worked when they used fuzzy
logic to operate subway cars, which then ran and stopped more smoothly
than when they were human-operated or automated. Fuzzy logic balanced
out the complex components of acceleration, deceleration and braking.
Rice cooks in basically four stages: It stands in water, it boils, it
absorbs (the "steamed stage") and then it rests. Heat is accelerated
or decelerated for each stage and in different ways for each variety
of rice." December 10, 2003: Meet Stelarc, the face of artificial intelligence. By Garry Barker. The Age. "The head is an interactive image about four metres high, projected on to a screen in a darkened theatre. It peers down on visitors who sit at a keyboard and type in questions. ... It is slightly eerie to be interacting with a huge computer database of words, experience and software on the edge of artificial intelligence. 'The head can do things I can't do - it can rap, and I think the time will come when I will not be able to be fully responsible for everything it might say,' says Stelarc, whose single moniker has been his legal name for 30 years. ... So, this being Melbourne, and Stelarc having grown up in Footscray, we asked the head which footy team it supported. ..."
>>> Natural
Language, Speech, Art
December 9, 2003: Computer to USC: 'I'm Afraid I Can't Do That.' Richard G. Broadie's Letter to the Editor. Los Angeles Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "The ESPN/USA Today and Associated Press polls, which both ranked USC No. 1, were determined by the votes of human beings with thousands of collective years of experience. Bowl championship series computers have overturned the decision of these mere mortals. Are we now living in a nightmare-like scenario where mankind is dominated by artificial intelligence, not unlike the script of a B sci-fi movie?"
>>> Applications,
Sports, Ethical &
Social Implications; also see a related article December 9, 2003: Young
IT lecturer selected to participate in NASA research project. Voice
of Vietnam News. " A lecturer from the HCM City University of Natural
Sciences has been selected to attend a space exploration programme,
held by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Twenty-five-year-old Dinh Ba Tien competed with hundred of candidates
around the world to win a position in NASA's Artificial Intelligence
programme, where he will research unmanned spacecraft and robotics software." December 9, 2003: To
be or not to be, that is the qwerty. Perspective by Graeme Philipson.
The Age. "I believe good poetry to be one of the finest achievements
of humankind. ... It is only natural that computer programmers would
be attracted to the poetic art form. There are clearly defined standards
of performance in most fields of human endeavour but not in poetry,
where mediocrity abounds. It is harder to get found out. Poetry is also
text-based, which means easy access to sources and less complex technical
challenges. Computer-generated poetry has been with us almost from the
beginning. The very first computer show I attended, in Sydney Town Hall
in 1979, featured a poetry generator running on an Apple II. ... But
unlike most modern poetry, my story leads somewhere. Last month, leading
artificial intelligence guru Raymond Kurzweil patented a computer program
called Poet Personalities. Kurzweil is author of The Age of Spiritual
Machines and a noted proponent of artificial intelligence. He has been
fiddling with computer-generated poetry for decades. This latest attempt
writes poetry largely indistinguishable from that written by humans
- it passes what Kurzweil calls 'a kind of a Turing test' (meant to
determine if a computer program has intelligence). It is especially
good at haiku...." December 8, 2003: Coetzee
says children shun books for TV. The Sydney Morning Herald. "Novelist
J. M. Coetzee, winner of this year's Nobel Literature Prize, believes
television has replaced books as a source of imagination for many children.
... Coetzee described his own academic career as 'haphazard', but said
he was now very happy at the Committee of Social Thought at the University
of Chicago in the United States where he spends part of each year teaching.
... 'If I had been born 20 or 30 years later, I would probably have
ended up studying theoretical linguistics and perhaps artificial intelligence,
something of that order, and perhaps have continued with a sideline
in poetry in the evenings.'" December 8, 2003: Cops
could hit the links soon - New search engine would catalog, interpret
data for investigations. By Jason Kandel. Los Angeles Daily New. "Los
Angeles Police Department Assistant Chief George Gascon is seeking $750,000
in grants and donations to purchase a new computer application that
consolidates nationwide crime data and arrest reports, which would aid
local detectives in solving criminal investigations. Coplink searches
through millions of pieces of data in various computer arrest reports,
crime records, field interviews and traffic citation reports, and delivers
a list of leads to detectives instantaneously. ... Coplink, developed
at an artificial intelligence lab at the University of Arizona in 1996
and procured through a $1.2 million grant through the U.S. Department
of Justice in 1998 is being implemented in cities, counties and federal
government agencies nationwide." December 8, 2003:
Guarding America's border. By Jerry Seper. The Washington Times.
"The investigation by The Times found that significant enhancements
have been put into place all along the northern border since September
11, including dramatic upgrades in manpower and technology. ... Along
with an array of seismic meters, infrared devices, magnetic sensors
and sophisticated software programs, some of the newest technology being
used or developed along the northern border includes: ... A state-of-the-art
video-surveillance system known as 'smart camera' installed at several
ports of entry along the northern border. The multimillion-dollar program,
developed by ObjectVideo of Reston, combines the use of artificial intelligence
with surveillance cameras to detect unusual movements along the border." December 8, 2003: Top
Managers See It All With Products that Prowl For Performance Data.
Company-wide view allows real-time analysis and action. By Tom Sawyer.
McGraw-Hill Construction / Engineering News Record. December 7, 2003: The
master critic - The late Hugh Kenner's theory of everything. By
John Wilson. The Boston Globe / available from Boston.com. "When
Hugh Kenner died on Nov. 24, a few weeks shy of his 81st birthday, the
first problem for writers of obituaries and tributes was how to categorize
him. ... He was himself a 'pattern recognizer,' as he described inventor
Raymond Kurzweil in the December 1990 issue of the pioneering personal
computer magazine Byte. ... This openness to experience, this confidence
that the patterns he saw derived from some ultimate coherence, must
have been owing in part to Kenner's faith, a subject about which he
was reticent in his writing. ... [W]hile some of his coreligionists
were wringing their hands about the implications of artificial intelligence
-- and while MIT's Marvin Minsky was proclaiming that human beings are
machines made out of meat -- Kenner was busy devising, with Joseph O'Rourke,
a computer program called TRAVESTY, which manipulates a text to create
odd effects of language. Later, with Charles Hartman, Kenner published
a volume of computer-generated poetry, 'Sentences.'" December-January 2003/2004:
Bioinformatics
moves into the mainstream - An explosion of data is being tamed
with new systems. By Jennifer Ouellette. The Industrial Physicist (Volume
9, Issue 6). "[G]enome mappings, those completed and those in progress,
have generated a vast amount of biological data, and now more than ever,
scientists need sophisticated computational techniques to make sense
of it. To meet those ever-increasing needs, bioinformatics is shifting
from software designed for a specific project in academic laboratories
to the commercial mainstream. Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary
research area loosely defined as the interface between the biological
and computational sciences. In practice, the definition is narrower,
according to Michael Zuker, a professor of mathematical sciences at
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York. For Zuker
and many others, the term applies to the use of computers to store,
retrieve, analyze, or predict the composition or structure of biomolecules.
These include genetic materials such as nucleic acids, as well as proteins,
the end products of genes. ... The need to manage and analyze this data
largely drives the current bioinformatics boom. 'Biology is awash in
data,' says [Eric] Jakobsson. 'We cannot exploit the body of data that
is currently out there -- we cannot mine it -- without computers, and
now we cannot even handle the data in our own individual labs without
sophisticated computation.'" December 5, 2003: Turing
test. By Quah Seng Sun. The Star Online. "There December 4, 2003: Thigh,
robot. Medical devices - Today's mobility aids could soon be replaced
by smarter, more active ones. The Economist. "[A] new generation
of active orthotic devices, capable of augmenting or replacing lost
muscle function, is in the works. These devices use an assortment of
complex computer and mechanical technology, borrowed from the field
of robotics, to help patients get around. They are being made possible
by the falling prices and improving performance of sensors, computer
control systems and battery technology." December 4, 2003: "Chickens
are Us" and other observations of robotic art. By Patricia Donovan.
University at Buffalo Reporter (Volume 35, Number 14). "Hundreds
of artists in all corners of the world -- a number of them at UB --
use emerging technologies as a tool for material and cultural analysis.
One of them is conceptual artist Marc Böhlen, assistant professor in
the Department of Media Study. His medium is not oil or bronze, but
robotics and site-specific data, and his practice combines the structured
approach of scientific investigation with artistic intuition, spiced
with a deliberate and effective dash of good or bad taste. ... Böhlen
considers the media arts in the context of the history of automation
technologies. They were invented with the hope of improving everyday
life, he notes, and in some ways they have. 'Our unquestioned pursuit
of efficiency, however, has made us slaves of automation,' he says,
a point made by artists from the mid-19th century on. 'Through our very
inventiveness and persistence, we have separated ourselves from the
constraints of our natural surroundings. In my work, I attempt to contradict
preconceptions of what technical mediation is by a practice that is
poetically inspired, radical and technically competent.' To this end,
Böhlen builds machines whose functions contradict their assumed utilitarian
purpose." December 4, 2003: Meet
Me in St. Louis -The 12th Annual St. Louis International Film Festival
Earns Garlands. By Brandon Judell. IndieWIRE.com. "The five
films eligible for the NFF [New Filmmakers Forum] were a mixed bag of
joys. ... Most creative of the quintet was Greg Pak's 'Robot Stories.'
Featuring a mostly Asian-American cast, these four moving, slightly
futuristic tales ponder how robots will change our lives and our nature.
The best is the opening episode in which a couple who wants to adopt
a human baby is forced to display their nurturing skills on a robotic
child." December 4, 2003: Students
learn to solve problems. By Kimberly Svatek. Herald Democrat. "It's
not often that students can talk and work out problems on a test together,
but at Dillingham Intermediate School these students are testing their
skills in the future problem solver competitions. ... Jamie Harvey,
sixth grade teacher, said the future problem solvers program forces
students to research topics as well as look at creative solutions to
those problems. Students meet after school to practice for the test
and research topics on the Internet and from information provided. ...
The next test taking place in January will discuss Artificial Intelligence.
'These are developing minds,' Harvey said. 'Because we are in a world
of technology, this contest prepares the students for things they may
face when they are older.'" December 3, 2003:
Robotics Revolution. By Lance Ulanoff. PC Magazine. "While
pundits were wringing their hands over whether the show was a dud and
if there even would be another Comdex, the robotics industry quietly
set up shop on the floor and at an adjacent restaurant. Comdex organizers
would prefer to paint the event as an all IT/enterprise experience,
but robotics stole the show, and the field could prove, one day, to
be what saves a still-struggling tech industry. With so much possibility
and potential in this bourgeoning market sector, I thought a guided
tour of some of the wonders I found would be worthwhile. ..." December 3, 2003: Humans
and computers compete in virtual creature game. By Will Knight.
New Scientist News. "An online game that lets contestants build
and race virtual beasts is being used to pit humans against a variety
of artificial intelligence algorithms. The objective of Sodarace, which
started at the end of November, is to construct a two dimensional creature
that can travel over a certain type of terrain in the shortest possible
time. ... It is relatively simple to construct a creature by hand. But
the game has been written so that a creature's key parameters can easily
be fed into another computer program and artificial intelligence (AI)
programmers are being invited to take part. So far, Sodarace has attracted
thousands of contestants from around the world. These include hobbyists
and professional AI researchers." December 3/10, 2003:
Software
paraphrases sentences. By Kimberly Patch. Technology Research News.
"We paraphrase all the time, often without thinking about it. Try
to give a computer the means to reword a sentence, however, and it becomes
apparent that figuring out how to say it differently is complicated.
Researchers at Cornell University have tapped a pair of unlike sources
-- on-line journalism and computational biology -- to make it possible
to automatically paraphrase whole sentences. The researchers used gene
comparison techniques to identify word patterns from different news
sources that described the same event. The method could eventually allow
computers to more easily process natural language, produce paraphrases
that could be used in machine translation, and help people who have
trouble reading certain types of sentences." December 3, 2003: Tribes
- Vengeance Designer Diary. Irrational hopes to make your enemies
seem smarter than the average bear. By Marc Atkin. IGN.com. "Artificial
Intelligence (AI) - the art of making computer controlled characters
look smart. In games, though, the goal isn't so much to give them human-like
intelligence (which is one of the Holy Grails of computer science research
and is what mad scientists are currently working on in their labs around
the world), but to make them entertaining to play with and against (which
is still 'difficult', but certainly more doable). ... Before I joined
Irrational, I actually used to be one of those aforementioned mad scientists,
and I'm intrigued by the idea that it might be possible to bring some
of the state of the art AI techniques currently being worked on in research
labs to our game. ... So why aren't AI's smarter? Well, there's the
obvious reason that it takes lot of effort to write good AI. There's
also the issue that even a reasonably sophisticated AI takes a lot of
CPU time - CPU time that is often desperately needed by the graphics
engine, for example. But a more fundamental reason is that when you
try to add all the special cases and events to the AI that you would
like it to react to intelligently, the code gets very complicated very
fast. ... I don't believe it has to be this way, though, and I spent
the first part of the project designing and implementing a general AI
engine that makes it easier to set up a lot of different behaviors for
an AI. One of its central features is that it allows our designers to
tell an AI not to do just one thing, but a large number of things." December 3, 2003: We've
had a bellyful of spam. By Gina Davidson. Evening News / available
from Scotsman.com. "[U]nsolicited e-mails - or spam as they have
been dubbed - now make up 60 per cent of all electronic mail sent in
the world, and that figure is set to rise. In October alone, one in
every four e-mails to financial services firms in Britain was spam.
And it's been claimed that this is costing businesses £20 billion worldwide
in slowdowns, lost productivity and extra work by company computer helpdesks
as workers hit away at the delete button every time another unwanted
e-mail crashes their inbox. ... One of the most successful anti-spam
firms is MessageLabs, which protects 7000 businesses worldwide, and
whose service was rated by PC Magazine to be the most effective solution
in the world, capturing 96.03 per cent of spam with only a 0.04 per
cent false positive rate. The company's technology, known as Skeptic,
uses artificial intelligence to analyse e-mail DNA for the purposes
of identifying and intercepting unsolicited or virus-bearing messages." December 2, 2003: Stottler
Henke To Develop Grid Software For DoE. By Paul Shread. Grid Computing
Planet. "Artificial intelligence firm Stottler Henke Associates
has been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy to develop 'smart
job recovery' software to improve the quality of service provided by
computer clusters and Grids. Stottler Henke has been awarded a $750,000
Small Business Innovation Research contract from DoE to develop the
Agent-Based High Availability (ABHA) system. The goal of the system
is to let computer clusters process long-running batch jobs more reliably
by detecting and diagnosing problems so that ABHA can determine how
best to restart those jobs and, if possible, continue executing them." December 2, 2003: Codebaby
grows up with 'Laura' - Virtual tour guide earns software company
its first major contract. By Paul Marck. The Edmonton Journal. "Laura
is a lithe young twenty-something with a sunny personality and a central
role in the fortunes of two companies. But as friendly and entertaining
as she is, Laura is not real. She's an animated, interactive, virtual
tour guide and tutor to help you navigate through a tax return. ...
For Codebaby, a three-year-old Edmonton software development company
that creates animated artificial intelligence applications to help e-commerce
customers negotiate through corporate websites, this is its first significant
sale using a virtual assistant. The inspiration for Laura came from
the estimated 60 per cent of website visitors who start an order form
and never complete it, says CEO Shaheel Hooda." December 2, 2003: Pentagon
explores turning scooters into robots. By Michael P. Regan. Associated
Press / available from USA Today. "It's called the Segway Human
Transporter, but the Pentagon is drafting the two-wheeled scooter as
part of a plan to develop battlefield robots that think on their own
and communicate with troops. ... So far, university researchers armed
with Pentagon funding have programmed Segway robots that can open doors,
avoid obstacles, and chase soccer balls -- all without human control." December 2, 2003: Energy
conservation firm wins UCD award. By Dick O'Brien. ElectricNews.net.
"Lightwave Technologies, a firm that designs system to cut office
energy costs, has scooped the top award from NovaUCD's Entrepreneurship
Programme. ... Lightwave Technologies uses artificial intelligence techniques
to make efficient decisions for controlling energy usage in commercial
buildings with the objective of saving up to 30 percent of energy costs
for clients. In order to meet this objective, Lightwave Technologies
is developing a system called ICE (Intelligent Control of Energy), which
adds intelligence to existing building management systems, learns how
buildings react from past experiences and makes effective decisions
on how to save energy. ... The system is designed to be predictive rather
than reactive, anticipating environmental changes and altering energy
use to match these patterns." December 2, 2003: The
government says "no" to federally funded nanobots. By James M. Pethokoukis.
Next News from U.S. News & World Report. "[T]he House and Senate
passed legislation last week appropriating nearly $3.7 billion over
the next four years for nanotechnology research and development. The
bill authorizes money for federal nanotech research by 'providing grants
to individual investigators . . . and . . . establishing a network of
advanced technology user facilities and centers.' Environmental groups
should be pleased that the bill will also support research into the
'ethical, legal, environmental, and other appropriate societal concerns,
including the potential use of nanotechnology in enhancing human intelligence
and in developing artificial intelligence.' ... [I]in a must-read debate
between [Eric] Drexler and [Richard] Smalley in the new issue of Chemical
& Engineering News, Smalley notes that in a recent talk he gave to some
middle and high school students, many students 'assumed that self-replicating
nanobots were possible, and most were deeply worried about what would
happen in their future as these nanobots spread around the world. I
did what I could to allay their fears, but there is no question that
many of these youngsters have been told a bedtime story that is deeply
troubling.' For now, at least, it appears the government has sided with
Smalley." December 1, 2003: Nanotechnology
- Drexler and Smalley make the case for and against 'molecular assemblers.'
Point/Counterpoint by Rudy Baum. Chemical & Engineering News (Volume
81, Number 48). "In his landmark 1986 book, 'Engines of Creation:
The Coming Era of Nanotechnology,' K. Eric Drexler envisioned a world
utterly transformed by such assemblers. They would be able to build
anything with absolute precision and no pollution. They would confer
something approaching immortality. They would enable the colonization
of the solar system. Drexler, who was then a research affiliate with
Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory,
also explored in 'Engines of Creation' the potentially devastating negative
consequences of such a technology. 'Replicating assemblers and thinking
machines pose basic threats to people and to life on Earth,' he wrote
in a chapter titled 'Engines of Destruction.' Because Drexler sees the
development of molecular assemblers and nanotechnology as inevitable,
he urged society to thoroughly examine the implications of the technology
and develop mechanisms to ensure its benevolent application. ... Like
Drexler, [Richard E.] Smalley believes the potential of nanotechnology
to benefit humanity is almost limitless. But Smalley has a dramatically
different conception of nanotechnology from Drexler, one that doesn't
include the concept of molecular assemblers. Smalley does not think
molecular assemblers as envisioned by Drexler are physically possible.
In lectures and in a September 2001 article in Scientific American,
Smalley outlined his scientific objections to the idea of molecular
assemblers, specifically what he called the 'fat fingers problem' and
the 'sticky fingers problem.'" December 1, 2003: Foundations
back educational program based on Apangea technology. By Patty Tascarella.
Pittsburgh Business Times. "Two of Pittsburgh's largest foundations
are bankrolling Project StepUp, a remedial tutoring program for high
school students. ... 'We call it hybrid tutoring,' said Mr. [Louis]
Piconi, 35, a veteran of several area tech companies and former managing
director of IT Networks at the Pittsburgh Technology Council. 'It combines
artificial intelligence with human tutors at the cost of $5 per hour.'
... 'We intend to deliver human tutors on the Internet with our artificial
intelligence system,' said Mr. Piconi. As an alternative to having a
tutor in the classroom, a tutor could be at a central site, accessible
to several classrooms via the Internet." December 1, 2003: ISU
researchers make artificial neural network discovery. By Courtney
Cobb. Pocatello Idaho State Journal. "Idaho State University computer
science researchers recently discovered a new algorithm to help train
artificial neural networks used by industries. What's that mean? Artificial
neural networks essentially operate like the nervous systems of a human
or animal and have artificial neurons inside. The networks are designed
much like computers, but whereas a person must tell a computer how to
solve a problem, an artificial neural network can solve the problem
on its own. '(The neural network) learns based on what's shown to do
and can approximate any function,' says Vitit Kantabutra, ISU associate
professor of computer science. ... For example, a network might be shown
2,000 variations of the letter A and after its training will be able
to determine if a letter is or is not A." December 1, 2003: Software
allows virtual veterinary lessons. By Ross Markman. The Augusta
Chronicle (no fee reg. req'd.). "Toiling alone amid robotic laboratories
and high-tech equipment in the University of Georgia's Artificial Intelligence
Center, graduate student Jason Schlachter is developing software that
will enable veterinary students to simulate clinical scenarios. Known
as the Virtual Vet Emergency Room, Mr. Schlachter's software will be
implemented next fall for first- and second-year students, according
to faculty members of UGA's College of Vet erinary Medicine. ... Scott
Brown, a physiology professor in UGA's vet school, said the software
might have far-reaching effects on teaching and could be invaluable
for vet students." December 1, 2003: Storage
Vendors Turn Focus to Disaster Recovery, Workflow Management. By
Evan Koblentz and Brian Fonseca. eWeek. "Major storage companies
are working on new management tools that focus on disaster recovery
and give users new options in workflow management, regulatory compliance
and database management -- all of which are tailored to specific hardware.
... 'At first, [we thought] we have all this storage, this ought to
last us forever. But every six months, it's gone,' [Steve] Stelzer said.
Adding artificial intelligence to the management software will help
minimize that, he said." December 1, 2003: How
Will Web Services Ultimately Change Business? The day will come
when automated machines don't just tell each other what to do but will
figure out how do it. Sound Off - Opinion by Art Jahnke. CIO Magazine.
"It may seem simplistic to suggest that when Web services and automated
machines hit their stride, there will be a lot fewer humans in the IT
department and corporate culture will change again, in ways larger than
we think. But according to speakers at the Symposium on the Coevolution
of Technology-Business Innovations, held this fall at IBM's Almaden
Research Center, the long-term potential of new technologies is often
very different from what we first imagine. For example, speaker Hal
Varian, economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley,
reminded the audience that radio was considered a new way for ship captains
to communicate with colleagues on shore. And it was that. But today,
that's a footnote in the evolution of radio from technological wonder
to world-changing industry." December 1, 2003: Making
surveillance cameras intelligent. By I.J. Hudson. nbc4.com. "As
I walk into the offices of ObjectVideo in Reston, Virginia, a camera
watches silently, but intelligently. Software analyzes what the camera
sees. It's software that replaces a guard watching a bank of monitors,
or motion-sensing cameras that often provide false alarms. It's artificial
intelligence to free up security forces to check out alerts." December 1, 2003: Humans
beat AI in robot wars. By Andy McCue. CNETAsia. "Virtual robots
created by computers have taken on human-designed opponents in an online
experiment. Human innovation has fought off competition from robots
created using artificial intelligence in an online experiment by boffins
at a London university. The online Sodarace competition, created by
the Queen Mary University of London, U.K. pitched virtual robots created
by humans against those designed by artificial intelligence." December 1, 2003: New
Microsoft goal - A computer in every car. Associated Press / available
from USA Today. "First Microsoft set out to put a computer in every
home. Now the software giant hopes to put one in every vehicle, too.
'We'd like to have one of our operating systems in every car on Earth,'
said Dick Brass, vice-president of Microsoft's automotive business unit.
... Cars with the Microsoft software will speak up when it's time for
an oil change. They'll warn drivers about wrecks on the road ahead and
scout alternative routes. They'll pay freeway tolls automatically. The
software running their brakes will upgrade itself wirelessly. ... Doug
Klunder, director of the Privacy Project at the American Civil Liberties
Union, asked Brass how Microsoft plans to protect individual information.
'We really, really, really understand the need for security and privacy,'
Brass said, suggesting that encrypting and not storing the information
are two ways to address some concerns." December 2003: The
Love Machine - Building computers that care. By David Diamond. Wired
Magazine. "I have seen the future of computing, and I'm pleased
to report it's all about ... me! This insight has been furnished with
the help of Tim Bickmore, a doctoral student at the MIT Media Lab. He's
invited me to participate in a study aimed at pushing the limits of
human-computer relations. What kinds of bonds can people form with their
machines, Bickmore wants to know. ... Bickmore's area of study is called
affective computing. Its proponents believe computers should be designed
to recognize, express, and influence emotion in users. Rosalind Picard,
a genial MIT professor, is the field's godmother; her 1997 book, Affective
Computing, triggered an explosion of interest in the emotional side
of computers and their users. ... And she developed an interest in the
work of neuroscientist Antonio Damasio. In his 1994 book, Descartes'
Error , Damasio argued that, thanks to the interplay of the brain's
frontal lobe and limbic systems, our ability to reason depends in part
on our ability to feel emotion. Too little, like too much, triggers
bad decisions. The simplest example: It's an emotion - fear - that governs
your decision not to dive into a pool of crocodiles." December 2003: The
Metaphysics of Philip K. Dick - Don't know Dick? Here's his philosophy
in capsule form. By Erik Davis. Wired Magazine (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." December 2003: "Hope
Is a Lousy Defense." Sun refugee Bill Joy talks about greedy markets,
reckless science, and runaway technology. On the plus side, there's
still some good software out there. By Spencer Reiss. Wired Magazine
(Issue 11.12). "In 2000, he wrote the Wired cover story "Why the
Future Doesn't Need Us," a Cassandra cry about the perils of 21st-century
technology and a striking display of ambivalence from a premier technologist.
Now, at home 8,000 feet up in Aspen, Colorado, Joy talks about building
a technological utopia while worrying about a techno-apocalypse. ...
[SR] But you've said aspects of the war on terrorism infringe on
civil liberties. Aren't you calling for something similar with respect
to technology? [BJ] I'm not saying the government should do it.
Centralized strategies - things like Admiral Poindexter's Total Information
Awareness program - don't work. What I'm saying is 'physician, heal
thyself.' People in the various scientific communities have to police
themselves. [SR] Like the Russell-Einstein Manifesto from 1955 -
where we get the phrase 'weapons of mass destruction.' [BJ] I certainly
think a Hippocratic Oath for scientists would be useful. And I think
an essential part of getting control of technology will be for international
organizations to take a lead in promoting ethical scientific behavior.
The Pugwash organization's work on sensible nuclear policy is a strong
example."
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