JULY 2003

July 31, 2003: Why are real-life robots so lame? By Ian Sample. The Guardian. "Delve into the world of 21st-century robotics and prepare to be disappointed. ... Roboticists admit they are not making robots that are as smart as people may have been led to believe they would be by the year 2003. Much of the problem is perception, says Paul Newman, a robotics expert at the University of Oxford. Just because something is easy for us to do, we often think it should be a cinch for a robot too. 'People massively underestimate how hard the simplest of cognitive tasks are,' says Newman. 'If you really think what a cricket player has to do, you'll realise these are unbelievable feats. But just because we're hard-wired to have these amazing abilities, it doesn't mean they're easy to do.' ... Many robotics researchers think the way to make robots a little less stupid is artificial intelligence (AI). The idea of AI is to give a robot, or other machine, the capability to interpret and react to its environment without having to programme it to deal with every eventuality. But again there are hurdles that are proving tough to clear."
>>> Robots, AI Overview
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July 31, 2003: Insect may jump-start robotics - Study on spittlebugs' explosive leaping ability deemed an advancement for designers. By David Perlman. San Francisco Chronicle. "At UC Berkeley, zoologist Robert J. Full studies animal locomotion as a model for building robots and works in collaboration with Stanford engineer Mark Cutkosky to design robots with legs instead of wheels. The legged versions, they believe, should prove much more agile and versatile wherever terrain -- on Earth or other planets -- is far too rough for wheels. Burrows' discovery of the spittlebug's spectacular jumping ability, Full said in a phone interview Wednesday, 'should give us new insights for our robot designs. Nature is a much better teacher, and studying insects like the spittlebug will revolutionize robotics one day.'"
>>> Robots
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July 31, 2003: It Mulches, Too? Robotic Mowers Gain in Appeal. By John R. Quain. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). " For many, such gadgets are more than just a novelty. "It's the first time since I lost my sight 20 years ago that I've been able to handle the yard by myself," said Rick Wells, a RoboMower owner in Kernersville, N.C. Mr. Wells and his wife, Alysia, are blind, and until he bought a robotic mower they had to rely on neighbors to cut their grass. ... 'We're also looking at robotic snowblowers,' said Dennis Willis, Friendly's director of marketing for North America, 'and robotic garbage caddies that roll out your bins to the curb on pickup day.'"
>>> Autonomous Vehicles, Assistive Technologies, Robots, Applications
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July 31, 2003: The Age of Automation. By Michael Kanellos. CNET News. "The '60s and '70s were the decades of the mainframe. The '80s made up the decade of client-server computing. The '90s were the Internet years. Now we're entering the decade of the electronic butler. Instead of developing computers that we can use to solve complex problems, researchers are dedicating themselves to the task of inventing machines that will solve problems for us. ... Have we really become so lazy that we need this kind of help? Not entirely. These new machines are part of a trend toward what I call 'extroverted computing.' ... Robots and automation technology essentially take much of the risk and drudgery out of the daily grind. If a robot existed that could weed out junk mail, rearrange furniture or drive into combat carrying a bomb on your behalf, you'd buy it."
>>> Applications, AI Overview
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July 31, 2003: Medical informatics - A promising future. By Prof Dr Mohan Bansal. Express Healthcare Management. "Medical Informatics (MI) provides a comprehensive survey of current work performed to develop information technology for the clinical workplace. It deals with the acquisition of data from patients, processing and storage of data in computers, and the transformation from data into information data. Some topics pertain to methodological aspects of medical informatics and others are intended to be used for more advanced or specialised education. They contain the methodology for information systems and their processing. The future of MI as a profession is very promising. ... The rapid evolution of technology and clinical research makes it difficult even for the specialist to keep up. In the light of this 'information explosion', it has been demonstrated that physicians do not always make optimal decisions. A computer-assisted diagnostic support system (CAD) generates diagnostic hypothesis from a set of patient data. It can be used simultaneously with the doctor-patient consultation. The knowledge-based system (KBS) is designed to meet the knowledge gaps of the individual physician with specific patient problems. KBS and such other expert systems (ES) can be a boon to the rural health centres because even the general medical practitioners can operate the systems. Computer-assisted medical decision making and knowledge- based systems are ideal examples of artificial intelligence."
>>> Applications, Medicine, Expert Systems, Vision, Robots, Knowledge Management, Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students)
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July 31, 2003: Practice management solution for cardiologists. Express Healthcare Management. "Mumbai-based Ketan Software Ltd has designed a specialized software solution for all cardiologists called Cardio-ket. It is a Patient Information System which acts like doctor's assistant and secretary as well. It has built in integrated utilities like scheduler, reminder, dialer, address book, inventory control, account maintenance etc. to make life much more easier for doctors and help him plan and work. Further with its unique Artificial Intelligence, software starts thinking the way doctor diagnoses, prescribes, advices, etc. and then acts like a parallel doctor which is completely trained by the doctor himself."
>>> Agents, Applications, Medicine
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July 31, 2003: Software stunts put on a show - Soon virtual stuntmen could be carrying out the physical feats too dangerous for people to take on. BBC. "Oxford-based Natural Motion has developed a simulation system that lets them swiftly generate action sequences that would ordinarily demand the skills of a stuntman. The AI system controlling the bodies of the simulated stuntmen means they fall, run, move and react like real people."
>>> Applications
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July 31, 2003: The Right and Wrong Stuff of Thinking Outside a Box. By Christopher Marquis. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "The Pentagon branch responsible for developing technology and techniques for warfare stumbled badly this week by devising a plan for people to bet on future terrorist attacks. Yet in pressing an idea that senators quickly denounced as absurd, the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, is doing what it is supposed to do -- think outside the box. Over five decades, Darpa has had some standout triumphs. It developed the model for the Internet and came up with the stealth technology that renders American jets undetectable by radar. ... Another project that is seeking researchers is Lifelog. ... Lifelog is part of a broader effort to find ways to make computers adapt more to people, instead of the other way around. For all the progress in processing information, Darpa experts say, computers are still unable to learn, explain their reasoning or fix themselves. Ronald Brachman, a Darpa expert in artificial intelligence, said it was time to view computers in a dramatically different way. He expressed annoyance at his 'stupid PC,' which cannot, in any real sense, learn. ... Another busy field involves unmanned air vehicles, or U.A.V.'s, which can conduct especially hazardous missions, including striking enemy targets, without endangering American forces. Two models, the Predator and Global Hawk, were used successfully in Afghanistan."
>>> Applications, Ethical & Social Implications, Military, Autonomous Vehicles, Agents
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July 30, 2003: Inventor constructs 'ethical' artificial intelligence. By Chappell Brown. EE Times. "As the 22 labs that have received initial funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency work out the thorny artificial intelligence (AI) issues to realize the agency's vision, a critical piece of the puzzle may already be in place, in the form of a patent granted last month to author and inventor John E. LaMuth for an 'ethical' AI system. ... The inventor believes his system addresses a crucial facet of any human-oriented automated personal assistant: an understanding of human motivation and ethics. ... The system is based on affective language analysis, a branch of linguistics in which language is characterized in terms of goals, preferences and emotions. LaMuth has automated this aspect of linguistics using conventional ethical categories drawn from Western religion, philosophy and ancient Greek thought."
>>> Natural Language Processing, Agents, Interfaces, Customer Relations, Applications, Emotions, Cognitive Science; also see a related article

July 30 - August 6, 2003: Eyes off, screen off. By Kimberly Patch. Technology Research News. "If a computer screen is on, but no one is watching, it still consumes energy. Researchers from Duke University have devised a detector that determines if a person is present and looking at a computer screen, and keeps the screen on only when it is being watched. ... The researchers' prototype uses a wireless motion sensor and a WebCam. When the motion sensor is triggered, indicating that someone is present, the WebCam turns on and takes pictures, and the pictures are analyzed by a face detection algorithm to determine if anyone is looking at the display."
>>> Vision, Interfaces
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July 30, 2003: Royal Mail hopes IT overhaul will deliver productivity. By James Watson. Computing. "'We're in the process of changing from being a big government organisation into a functional commercial entity that can compete strongly,' Royal Mail chief information officer David Burden told Computing in an exclusive interview. For Burden, IT will be used to improve every part of the organisation's business, from sorting mail more efficiently to delivering digital services such as electronic stamps. ... A leading-edge mail sorting facility is being built near Heathrow to handle international post; the company is working with Lockheed Martin to implement a new mail sorting system for scanning and interpreting mail (Computing, June 5); and artificial intelligence is being used to optimise mail delivery routes."
>>> Applications, Business, Planning & Scheduling
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July 30, 2003: Avaya CEO Don Peterson looks ahead. Interview by Matthew Hamblen. Computerworld. "In this interview, Peterson, 53, spoke with Computerworld about Avaya's need for greater visibility and efforts to grow revenue, as well as its plans for capitalizing on voice as a means to browse the Web. ... 'We spend a reasonable amount of R&D in support of service offerings. We have systems actually based on artificial intelligence-type technologies.' ... 'Voice is a great interface, and people have preferred voice forever. They didn't draw pictures first; they spoke first. Michael Dertouzos, the head of MIT's Computer Lab until he died last year, had the view that the perfect computer was a voice interface and some kind of holographic projection device, maybe in a pair of glasses.'"
>>> Interfaces, Natural Language Processing, Speech, Information Retrieval, Customer Service, Systems, Applications
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July 30 - August 5, 2003: Cyborg Liberation Front. By Erik Baard. The Village Voice. "Yeats's wish, expressed in his poem 'Sailing to Byzantium,' was a governing principle for those attending the World Transhumanist Association conference at Yale University in late June. International academics and activists, they met to lay the groundwork for a society that would admit as citizens and companions intelligent robots, cyborgs made from a free mixing of human and machine parts, and fully organic, genetically engineered people who aren't necessarily human at all. ... [T]he purpose of the Yale conference was direct, with no feinting at other agendas. The crowd there wanted to shape what they see as a coming reality. From the first walking stick to bionic eyes, neural chips, and Stephen Hawking's synthesized voice, they would argue we've long been in the process of becoming cyborgs. A 'hybrot,' a robot governed by neurons from a rat brain, is now drawing pictures. Dolly the sheep broke the barrier on cloning, and new transgenic organisms are routinely created. The transhumanists gathered because supercomputers are besting human chess masters, and they expect a new intelligence to pole-vault over humanity -- in this century. ... 'I would say if a creature is both sentient and intelligent, and has a moral sense, then that creature should be considered a human being irrespective of the genesis of that person,' says Rabbi Norman Lamm, chancellor of Yeshiva University. He finds agreement at the Catholic-run Georgetown Medical Center. 'To err on the side of inclusion is the loving thing to do,' concludes Kevin FitzGerald, a Jesuit priest who happens to be a molecular geneticist and bioethicist."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Philosophy, Conferences (@ Resources for Students), Robots, SciFi
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July 29, 2003: Robotics to play major role in future warfighting. By JO1(SW) Ron Schafer. U.S. Joint Forces Command. "Project Alpha, a U.S. Joint Forces Command rapid idea analysis group, is in the midst of a study focusing on the concept of developing and employing robots that would be capable of replacing humans to perform many, if not most combat functions on the battlefield. The study, appropriately titled, 'Unmanned Effects: Taking the Human out of the Loop,' suggests that by as early as 2025, the presence of autonomous robots, networked and integrated, on the battlefield might not be the exception, but, in fact, the norm. ... 'We call them tactical autonomous combatants because they'll operate largely autonomously with some limited human supervision,' explained [Gordon] Johnson. 'We're talking about, where we can and where we have the capability of replacing humans. We're not talking about the operational level or strategic level, but at the tactical level, still using humans where we need to. Using adjustable autonomy or supervised autonomy, humans will still have to interact with the machines and help guide them.' ... They will have faster reaction times and have more and superior sensing capabilities. They don't have fear, they don't get hungry, sleepy, or tired, and they take humans out of danger. And, from an economic perspective, they are cheaper than humans. 'The robots will take on a wide variety of forms, probably none of which will look like humans,' explained Dr. Russ Richards, Project Alpha's director."
>>> Robots, Military, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications
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July 29, 2003: CU team wins 'Robocup' championship in Italy. By Jessica Keltz. The Ithaca Journal. "This summer, for the fourth time in five years, Cornell University's robot soccer team won an international championship. Known as 'Robocup,' the competition mixes artificial intelligence and engineering in pitting robots against each other in a soccer game. The teams of five robots each are not directly controlled by the students, but by a computer system the students build. ... Jeremy Miller, a 2002 Cornell graduate who worked on the team for the second time, said paying attention to engineering as well as artificial intelligence is what sets Cornell's team apart."
>>> Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Robots
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July 29, 2003: Students seek the knowledge. By Steve Pain. ic Birmingham. "Students from the University of Birmingham's school of engineering are checking out a new mobile 'knowledge management' system developed by BT's research, technology and IT operations business, BT Exact, it has emerged. The trial allows students to access personalised information and to contact people based on their personal profiles. The project was set up to help students with their studies and is part of research at BT and Birmingham in mobile technology to transform learning. ... At the heart of the trial is the intelligent personal agent technology developed by BT Exact that can reliably and accurately select information from a range of sources to match a particular user’s profile of interests."
>>> Agents, Filtering, Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Education, Applications
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July 29, 2003: Virtual humans edge closer. By Spencer Kelly. BBC. "Looking good is important, but if an avatar is to be totally life-like, it will have to sound good too. How do you give a computer a human voice? ... It was a problem faced by Jonathan Jowitt, when he invented the news reading avatar Ananova. 'Most avatar systems that are on the market today use a process of converting written text into audio,' said Mr Jowitt. 'In previous times, a text-to-speech engine would look at how are the words are constructed, and try to reassemble that in an audio domain, using short phonetic sounds. Things have moved on, so that engines these days know combinations of letters and word clusters. Our new text-to-speech engine apparently has the word 'the' in 700 times, which is impossible to believe, but some of the pronunciations of 'the' are very short.' Just as the key to looking human is the imperfections, it is important that the avatar does not sound too perfect either."
>>> Speech, Video Games, Customer Service, Applications
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July 29, 2003: Helping Machines Think Different. By Noah Shachtman. Wired News. "In recent months, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has launched a series of seemingly disparate programs -- all designed, the agency says, to help computers deal with the complexities of life, so they finally can begin to think. 'Our ultimate goal is to build a new generation of computer systems that are substantially more robust, secure, helpful, long-lasting and adaptive to their users and tasks. These systems will need to reason, learn and respond intelligently to things they've never encountered before,' said Ron Brachman , the recently installed chief of Darpa's Information Processing Technology Office, or IPTO. ... 'LifeLog is about forcing computers into the real world,' said leading artificial intelligence researcher Doug Lenat, who's bidding on the project. What LifeLog is not, Brachman asserts, is a program to track terrorists. By capturing so much information about an individual, and by combing relationships and traits out of that data, LifeLog appears to some civil libertarians to be an almost limitless tool for profiling potential enemies of the state. ... Human beings don't dump their experiences into some formless database or tag them with a couple of keywords. They divide their lives into discreet installments -- 'college,' 'my first date,' 'last Thursday.' Researchers call this 'episodic memory.' LifeLog is about trying to install episodic memory into computers, Brachman said. It's about getting machines to start 'remembering experiences in the commonsensical way we do -- a vacation in Bermuda, a taxi ride to the airport.'"
>>> Commonsense, Reasoning, Representation, Ethical & Social Implications, Applications; also see the following article ->
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July 29, 2003: AI Depends on Your Point of View. By Noah Shachtman. Wired News. "Even the dumbest people can look at a situation from several different angles. But that's still a problem for even the smartest computer systems. The Real-World Reasoning project, a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program, is designed to get computers to start examining situations in more than one way. It's part of a larger effort, spearheaded by the Agency's Information Processing Technology Office, or IPTO, to move toward machines that can think for themselves. ... The project also is supposed to help computers learn from their experiences. If machines are ever going to have minds of their own, they must put what they know into context, as people do. When human beings learn things, [Ron] Brachman said, 'we don't just stick it into a database. It's got to jive with what we know already. Or we've got (to) adjust our previous understanding.'"
>>> Reasoning
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July 29, 2003: Robots Rumble at Annual Expo. By Kari L. Dean. Wired News. "Robots played soccer, wandered around like big creepy spiders and generally beat the metal out of one another at the Robotics Society of America's Summer Robot Games & Expo, which took place here Sunday. Billed as the largest amateur robotics show in America, the event attracted hundreds of spectators who displayed their homemade robot creations alongside retailers hawking their bot-programming wares."
>>> Events (@ Resources for Students), Robots
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July 29, 2003: Robo-nurse could help cope with future Sars outbreaks. Ananova. "China has developed a 'robo-nurse' to treat patients in the event of future Sars outbreaks, according to reports. It can monitor patients, dispense medication, dispose of medical garbage, and deliver meals and other daily necessities."
>>> Public Health & Welfare, Hazards & Disasters, Assistive Technologies, Robots, Applications
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July 22, 2003: France offers grants for games. By Alfred Hermida. BBC. "The French Government is offering four million euros (£2.9m) to help aspiring game developers turn their ideas into reality. ... Around 80% of sales for French game makers come from abroad. Analysts say the French Government is eager to encourage more people to get into computers and gaming. 'The government has tried to push broadband and the internet,' said Philippe Poutonnet, Jupiter Research analyst in Paris, 'and it is now trying to do the same with the game sector.'"
>>> Video Games, Software Development, Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students)
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July 22, 2003: Brave new future - What will IT have achieved, five years from now? "Computer Weekly approached some of the more creative corporate research and development establishments and asked them to preview their most interesting projects. Andy Favell highlights a few that caught our eye. ... [#1] Scientists at BT Labs are working with 'haptic' interfaces that allow people to touch and feel something remotely. ... [#3] It is not the coolest name, but the Knowledge Extraction from Document Collections (KXDC) team at the Palo Alto Research Center has a bold, long-term vision 'to build computers that can acquire and reason with information that is expressed in natural language, and can communicate in natural language on a par with human peers'. ... [#4] Suffice to say BT has picked up an algorithm from the fly that could help these self-organising networks to organise themselves. ... [#5] There is a theory at Bell Labs that putting more intelligence into the network is the key to cutting the inefficiencies and restrictions of modern network security. ... [#6] The most common future scenario for the sensor network is the treatment of elderly or infirm patients in their own homes. Hundreds of sensors around the home could monitor the patient's behaviour, suggest action to the patient or report back to someone of the patient's choosing if there is an alteration from the usual pattern of events. ... Intel's research effort is geared to adding more capability to each sensor and to adding intelligence to the network to process masses of data automatically at a local level and only pass on correct and important information or alerts."
>>> Applications, Networks, Telecommunications, Information Retrieval, Assisitve Technologies, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, Multi-Agent Systems, Interfaces
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July 22, 2003: Founder of Web-based grocery store tries again with online newsstand. By Kevin Maney. USA Today. "[Louis]Borders got his start in Ann Arbor, Mich., in 1971. Then 23, Borders and his brother Tom opened a used book store, according to the book eBoys by Randall Stross. Louis Borders had a degree in math from the University of Michigan. At his store, he went to work designing artificial intelligence software for managing the inventory of a super-size bookstore, and by doing so made those bookstores possible. For the next 15 years, he and his brother operated Borders Books in Ann Arbor and sold the software to other stores. Then Borders Books started opening more stores. In 1992, Kmart bought what was then a 21-store chain for an estimated $200 million-plus. Louis Borders looked for something else to do."
>>> Business, Applications
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July 22, 2003: AI is not a difficult concept for them. The Hindu. "If anyone thought that students of ninth and 10th standards cannot comprehend the artificial intelligence (AI) concept, they should have been at a programme organised by The Hindu, in association with 'Intel-Involved in India', here on Tuesday. ... They also learnt that career prospects in the computer field were increasing, and that about one million more professionals would be needed in the next few years."
>>> Events, Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students)
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July 22, 2003: NASA, Carnegie Mellon Inspire Future Robotics Engineers. SpaceDaily. "As NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers journey toward the red planet, 36 high school students are honing their engineering and programming skills during an intensive, seven-week robotics course called 'RoboCamp-West.' ... 'One of the ideas behind a summer with Carnegie Mellon, is to engage students in understanding both the science and engineering challenges of space exploration,' said Daniel Clancy, acting director of NASA Ames' Information Sciences and Technology Directorate. 'The premise is that space is cool, robots are cool and the combination of both is really cool. We believe that robotics and space exploration is a way to motivate, challenge and encourage students.' ... The NASA Ames Equal Opportunity Programs Office provided scholarships for 20 minority students in the course. The scholarships supply each student with a laptop computer, a PDA and a two-week training course in JAVA taught at San Jose State University, San Jose, Calif. ... 'The scholarships opened the eyes of many of the students to the world of programming and robotics,' said Horacio Alfaro, director of San Jose State's MESA Engineering Program."
>>> Summer Camps, Courses, Programs & more, Equality & Diversity, Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Robots, Space Exploration, Autonomous Vehicles, Applications
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July 21, 2003: MIT's tablet tech gets a look-see from Microsoft. By Jeff Miller. Mass High Tech. "For Randall Davis, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, one of the worst accidents ever to occur in computer engineering was the day someone hooked up a typewriter to a computer. 'It's been about 25 years since the mouse came out,' Davis said. 'It's time for another breakthrough.' To that end, Davis and his team of graduate students in the MIT department of electrical engineering and computer science are developing sketch interpretation software, which would allow a computer to recognize shapes drawn by a user within the context of other shapes. ... 'I wanted smart paper,' Davis said. 'Paper is easy, fast and familiar, but it's appallingly dumb.'"
>>> Machine Learning, Engineering, Applications, Interfaces
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July 21, 2003: Science communication under scrutiny - Peer review process to be examined in Royal Society consultation. By Helen Gavaghan. The Scientist. "The Royal Society is to launch a wide-ranging consultation among scientists, the media, and the public next month, into the best way to communicate the results of original research. ... The reports will identify ways in which peer review can be improved to increase public confidence in research. They will also consider alternatives to peer review for assessing the quality of research results released to the public. ... 'Some have even said the system of peer review is so flawed, why not simply do away with it,' [Patrick Bateson] added. Yet alternative methods of ensuring the quality of research findings also have drawbacks. An example is preprint publication, in which unpublished findings are openly subjected to the wider criticism of peers. This currently happens in some fields of physics, in artificial intelligence, and in larger, specialized institutions. In branches of the biomedical sciences, however, such an approach could be counterproductive."
>>> Reference Shelf, AI Overview
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July 21, 2003: Local school gets grant - A&M-CC will receive $1.35 million. By Icess Fernandez. Caller-Times. "A recently awarded $1.35 million grant will help Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi recruit more students, specifically Hispanic students, to computers, math and science programs. About 38 percent of students in the Computer and Math Sciences Department are Hispanic, [Carl] Steidley said. Steidley said he would like to see that percentage increase. The grant is from the National Science Foundation to the College of Science and Technology. In addition to recruitment, the money will be used to buy lab equipment, pay student researchers, support faculty research and help establish the foundations for a future doctoral curriculum in computer science. ... The money will also go to buying equipment for different labs, Steidley said. The artificial intelligence lab will receive computers and robots."
>>> Academic Deparments (@ Resources for Students)
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July 21, 2003: IIIT to set up robotics and artificial intelligence centre. The Hindu. "After introducing several under-graduate and post-graduate courses, the industry-driven International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, has now embarked on setting up a robotics and artificial intelligence centre to support a whole range of man-machine interface."
>>> Academic Deparments (@ Resources for Students)
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July 21, 2003 (issue date): Machine vs. Man - Checkmate. We are sharing our world with another species, one that gets smarter and more independent every year. By Steven Levy. Newsweek / available from MSNBC. "Garry Kasparov's head is bowed, buried in his hands. Is he in despair, or just stealing a minute of rest in his relentless quest to regain the world championship, promote chess and represent humanity in the epic conflict between man and machine? He professes the latter. But no one could blame the greatest grandmaster in history if he did succumb to bleakness. His own experiences indicate the end of the line for human mastery of the chessboard. In the sport of brains, silicon rules. Still, Kasparov is preparing to throw himself into the breach once more. In November he will play his third computer opponent in a highly touted match. ... Next up will be X3d Fritz, a world-class program modified to 'play in the third dimension,' where his 3-D glasses will create the illusion that a virtual chessboard is floating between Kasparov and the screen. ... There's a scary lesson in these contests between the grandmaster and his soulless opponents. We are sharing our world with another species, one that gets smarter and more independent every year. ... Could we ever face anything akin to the horrendous sci-fi nightmares that we see in 'Terminator 3'? In the long run, it's well worth worrying about." An audio interview is also available.
>>> Chess, Games & Puzzles, Cognitive Science, Interviews, SciFi, Newstoons; also see this recent interview
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July 18, 2003: US snooping plan blocked. BBC. "A controversial computer surveillance project that would comb through the personal records of Americans in the search for suspected terrorists has suffered a severe setback. The US Senate has voted to cut funding for the programme, known as Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA), despite pressure from the White House to back it. Civil liberties activists have been vocal in their opposition to the plan, arguing it would impose a Big Brother state and intrude into the privacy of Americans. ... The aim was to used advanced data-mining tools to look for patterns of terrorist activities in the electronic data trails left behind by everyone."
>>> Law Enforcement, Ethical & Social Implications, Machine Learning, Applications
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July 17, 2003: Picking Up the Pieces. By Douglas Heingartner. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "Advanced scanning technology makes it possible to reconstruct documents previously thought safe from prying eyes, sometimes even pages that have been ripped into confetti-size pieces. And although a great deal of sensitive information is stored digitally these days, recent corporate scandals have shown that the paper shredder is still very much in use. ... Some of the companies competing for the job concentrated on the shape, color and perforations of the shreds, while other contenders opted for semantically driven systems, which looked for keywords and likely text matches. The Fraunhofer plan is to combine its smart scanning software with the know-how of the Zirndorf archivists, who have amassed years of experience working with these tiny pieces of history. After all the shreds have been scanned (at 200 dots per inch), the interactive software will suggest possible matches, which an operator can accept or reject. While Fraunhofer IPK eventually plans to use a similar technique, several companies say they can do so already. ChurchStreet's software analyzes the graphical patterns that go to the edge of each piece. First, workers paste the random shreds onto standard sheets of paper, which takes three to seven minutes per page. The pages are scanned, and software analyzes the shreds for possible matches."
>>> Pattern Recognition, Image Understanding, Machine Learning, Expert Systems, Natural Language Processing, Vision, Law Enforcement, Applications
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July 17, 2003: Panhandle cognition institute statewide status. The Associated Press / available from the Herald-Tribune. "The Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, formerly under the University of West Florida, has become one of three state-sponsored, statewide research institutes. Gov. Jeb Bush signed legislation Wednesday giving the institute its own board of trustees and chief executive officer although it will maintain a relationship with West Florida. ... 'When you get to that level of recognition, there is an increased capability to partner with government and private entities,' said state Rep. Holly Benson, R-Pensacola, who sponsored the bill. ... With about 100 researchers and other staffers, the institute has become a national leader in artificial intelligence and human-centered computing."
>>> Academic Deparments (@ Resources for Students), Interfaces, Web-Searching Agents, Information Retrieval
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July 17, 2003: Japanese scientists invent dancing robot. Ananova. "Japanese scientists have developed a dancing robot that can follow a human dancer's lead. ... The MS DanceR (Mobile Smart Dance Robot) predicts the dancer's next move through hand pressure applied to its arms and back."
>>> Robots
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July 17, 2003: University robot ruled too scary. By Tim Radford.The Guardian. "Meet Morgui, the new robot constructed at the University of Reading, which has been deemed so scary it has been banned from interacting with anyone aged under 18. The x-rated robot is a disembodied head with five senses and big bright eyes and is able to follow people around the room. ... The metal head, a bit like a cadaverous automaton from Star Wars or a Terminator, is the creation of Kevin Warwick, a University of Reading cybernetics professor with a long record in attention-seeking robots. 'We want to investigate how people react when they first encounter Mo, as we lovingly like to call the robot,' said Prof Warwick. ... In Europe, Japan and the US, researchers have been looking for robots that will respond 'naturally' to humans. It therefore follows that the robots must also study how humans respond to them."
>>> Interfaces, Robots
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July 17, 2003: CMU team to develop a software 'secretary.' By Byron Spice. Post-Gazette. "Computer scientist Dan Siewiorek spent six hours this week compiling an interim report on one of his research projects for a government agency. It was a necessary chore, but in terms of what he thinks is productive work, it also represented six hours down the hole. Siewiorek will never get those six hours back, but he and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University are getting $7 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to begin developing the type of smart software that someday might compile such a report automatically. They'll develop what might be called a 'personalized cognitive assistant,' sort of a personal secretary in the form of computer software. ... 'It's a very ambitious effort,' said Ron Brachman, director of DARPA's Information Processing Technology Office, which has launched the new effort, called Perceptive Assistant that Learns, or PAL. Designing office software that has the ability to learn, to remember its user's personal preferences, to reason and to understand everyday communications between humans is so ambitious, he acknowledged, that it will be at least a couple more years before researchers really know what they'll be able to accomplish and when. ... Although it's a new program, PAL already has received brickbats from New York Times columnist William Safire, who last month suggested that some of the capabilities DARPA is talking about could impinge on the user's privacy. Brachman countered that PAL isn't intended to snoop on users, but to learn enough of their preferences and circumstances so that it can be more helpful to them."
>>> Applications, Agents, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Reasoning, Ethical & Social Implications
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July 17, 2003: Software helps police draw crime links. By Gareth Cook. Boston Globe. "The Boston Police Department is rolling out a powerful new computer program built to find hidden connections among people and events almost instantly, allowing detectives to investigate murders, rapes, and other crimes far faster than they can today. ... Designed in an Arizona artificial intelligence lab, Coplink searches through arrest records, incident reports, and emergency phone calls to identify potential suspects and compile all possible leads on them, including past addresses, weapons they have owned, and even the arrest records of people with whom they have been stopped in a car. In Boston, it will search only through city police records, though it could later be expanded to stretch far more broadly. ... It reflects a growing recognition in law enforcement that many significant clues may be overlooked because they are lost in a maze of isolated computer databases."
>>> Law Enforcement, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications
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July 17, 2003: MSU offering training to boost computer security. The Clarion-Ledger. "Catching cyber criminals is the goal of programs at Mississippi State University to develop experts in detecting and halting computer security problems. ... Over the past five years, Vaughn and department colleague Susan Bridges -- an authority on the application of artificial intelligence to computer security problems -- have secured nearly $5 million in government and private industry grants. 'We use artificial intelligence to detect activities by unauthorized intruders in computer systems,' said Bridges, an Elkins, Ark., native who holds a doctorate in computer science from the University of Alabama in Huntsville."
>>> Networks, Law Enforcement, Applications
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July 15, 2003: Ralph Etienne-Cummings -Envisioning the Future of Robotics. By Bruce E. Phillips. US Black Engineer Magazine. "At [The Johns Hopkins University], Dr. Etienne-Cummings is known for his work in the relatively new field of 'neuromorphic engineering' -- how biology solves problems and creates engineering solutions. For example, how do a fly's eyes work so effectively that they can see obstacles -- like you with a swatter -- so quickly and at any angle? What if a device could be engineered to help machines -- or people -- see in the same way? ... His special interest today is finding ways to improve visual systems for robotics. For example, he has worked on developing a handheld device with sensors that give verbal cues to identify objects in its 'visual' range. For the blind, this device is like another set of eyes. After a short learning phase, the device, which resembles a flashlight, can recognize objects such as a favorite coffee cup, a hairbrush, or other household objects and tell the user when it is in front of her or him. ... Dr. Etienne-Cummings collaborates with a biologist at the University of Maryland, where he also holds an appointment, to study the primitive spinal cord of lampreys. ... 'We hope to take what we learn from fish and then make robots that can move the same way,' Dr. Etienne-Cummings says."
>>> Vision, Robots, Assisitive Technologies, Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Applications
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July 15, 2003: Take The Right Business Decision With The Help Of AI. Financial Express. "Artifical intelligence (AI) has always been a fascinating subject. It has also been the theme of many best selling novels and blockbuster movies. But can AI find its feet in the real world and form a core part of business applications? AI, as one of the many definitions goes, is the science of putting intelligence into machines so that they can carry out the activities of human beings. ... AI is beginning to make significant inroads into the world of business. Automated trading systems have been able to beat a team of human beings in commodity trading. ... There are many new applications of AI which are being constantly developed. Like virtual reps who can handle a range of queries in natural language to robots who can mimic human behaviour in diverse ways." Also published in this issue: Artificial Intelligence For Business Apps Is Back With A Bang! By G. V. N. Apparao. "Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been used in business applications since the early eighties. As with all technologies, AI initially generated much interest, but failed to live up to the hype. However, with the advent of web-enabled infrastructure and rapid strides made by the AI development community, the application of AI techniques in real-time business applications has picked up substantially in the recent past."
>>> AI Overview, Applications, Cognitive Science, Machine Learning, Expert Systems, Reasoning, Systems, Natural Language, Industry Statistics
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July 15, 2003: Computer Simulations: Modeling the Future. By Gene J. Koprowski. TechNewsWorld. " Modeling and simulation have made momentous strides in recent years, and the military, medical science and other professions are on the verge of being able to use computing power to simulate reality for all kinds of applications. 'We are within sight of being able to create a large-scale, high-resolution battlefield environment detailed enough to let us experiment and see how a given system might perform,' Robert Lucas, director of the computational science division of the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute , told TechNewsWorld.' Advances in both AI software and in networked computing have made virtual environments of previously impossible realism possible.' ... Using artificial intelligence designed at USC, each of the simulated vehicles in the model was given autonomy, the ability to respond on its own to changes in its environment and the ability to travel over wide geographic areas -- just like real-world vehicles, be they cars, trucks, tanks or personnel carriers."
>>> Military, Medicine, Finance, Applications, Multi-Agent Systems, Agents
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July 15, 2003: Banking IT Spending Flat in '04 - A new Giga/Forrester report says regulatory compliance, risk management, and cost-cutting top the list of priorities. By Martin Schneider. destinationCRM. "According to [Penny] Gillespie, bank CIOs should increase their overall IT investments in 2003 and 2004 in areas that can help improve productivity and efficiency for employees, enforce compliance, and mitigate risk. Banks seeking to use new technologies for competitive advantage should invest in portals, Web services, Linux, and J2EE on the mainframe. Banks looking to reduce risk should invest in artificial intelligence. To improve productivity for employees, they should invest in employee-facing portals and advanced human resource applications for human capital management."
>>> Banking, Applications
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July 15, 2003: The Robot Won't Bite You, Dear. By Michelle Delio. Wired News. "Fear and loathing of potentially rabid robots and other supposedly sentient technology is exactly what motivated ArtBots ' organizers to host the show, which brought together 23 robots whose talents ranged from creating art to inspiring affection from passersby. 'I thought that there was an awful lot of attention focused on violent, competitive aspects of robotics,' said Douglas Repetto, one of the three curators of ArtBots: The Robot Talent Show. 'It's important to me to make the point that a given technology doesn't have a given purpose or application,' Repetto said. 'It's humans who decide what to use technology for ... who get to decide how this technology is applied to their life."
>>> Exhibits (@ Resources for Students), Robots
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July 14, 2003: Pill purveyor robot's in for the long haul. By Sondra Wolfer. NY Daily News. "This hospital staffer works the night shift seven days a week, never takes a coffee break and never calls in sick. What's more, it only takes about four hours every day to recharge her batteries to put her in shape for the next night's rounds. Meet Patsy 2, a robot that delivers medications from the pharmacy at the Weiler Division of Montefiore Medical Center to nurses' stations throughout the 11-story building. ... The robot also talks, alerting people in English and in Spanish when it is about to move and when its passage is blocked and it needs help."
>>> Robots, Applications
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July 14, 2003: Are intelligent tutoring systems the next wave in corporate training tech? By James Ong. Mass High Tech. "Artificial intelligence is making its way into intelligent tutoring systems (ITS), enabling automated instruction that produces measurable improvements in learning. ... Providing a personal training assistant for each learner is often beyond the training budgets of most organizations. However, a virtual training assistant that captures the subject matter and teaching expertise of experienced trainers provides a new option. This is the heart of the ITS concept, which has been pursued for more than three decades by researchers in education, psychology and artificial intelligence. Today, prototype and operational ITS systems provide practice-based instruction to support corporate, K-12, college and military training. The goal of ITS is to provide the benefits of one-on-one instruction automatically and cost effectively."
>>> Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Education
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July 14, 2003: Aussies edged out at robot soccer. ABC News. "World Cup United States and Australia facing off in the soccer World Cup final is an unlikely scenario in the world of flesh-and-blood football but not so in its robotic cousin. This month the Italian town of Padua, better known for frescoes than football, hosted the robotic World Cup and it was a nail-biting final. ... Then there were the humanoids - robots that really look like people. The technology is not yet advanced enough for them to play matches but they wowed the crowd with their ball skills and penalty kicks. ... The robot soccer tournament is now in its seventh year and RoboCup Federation President Minoru Asada said he was excited about the leaps and bounds robots had made. 'At the beginning people would press the button and then nothing, the robots would just stand there. But every year we have a better level of play and more teams keep coming,' the Japanese professor told Reuters. This year's event drew 1,200 humans and 500 robots from 35 countries and plans are afoot for the next three tournaments."
>>> Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Robots, Sports
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July 14, 2003: Pentagon Alters LifeLog Project. By Noah Shachtman. Wired News. "Monday is the deadline for researchers to submit bids to build the Pentagon's so-called LifeLog project, an experiment to create an all-encompassing über-diary. But while teams of academics and entrepreneurs are jostling for the 18- to 24-month grants to work on the program, the Defense Department has changed the parameters of the project to respond to a tide of privacy concerns. ... 'My father was a stroke victim, and he lost the ability to record short-term memories,' said Howard Shrobe, an MIT computer scientist who's leading a team of professors and researchers in a LifeLog bid. 'If you ever saw the movie Memento, he had that. So I'm interested in seeing how memory works after seeing a broken one. LifeLog is a chance to do that.' ... By capturing experiences, Darpa claims that LifeLog could help develop more realistic computerized training programs and robotic assistants for battlefield commanders. Defense analysts and civil libertarians, on the other hand, worry that the program is another piece in an ongoing Pentagon effort to keep tabs on American citizens. LifeLog could become the ultimate profiling tool, they fear."
>>> Cognitive Science, Law Enforcement, Ethical & Social Implications, Machine Learning, Applications
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July 14, 2003: Funding for TIA All But Dead. By Ryan Singel. Wired News. "Critics on the left and right have called TIA an attempt to impose Big Brother on Americans. The program would use advanced data-mining tools and a mammoth database to find patterns of terrorist activities in electronic data trails left behind by everyday life. The Senate bill's language is simple but comprehensive: 'No funds appropriated or otherwise made available to the Department of Defense ... or to any other department, agency or element of the Federal Government, may be obligated or expended on research and development on the Terrorism Information Awareness program."
>>> Law Enforcement, Ethical & Social Implications, Machine Learning, Applications
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July 14, 2003: All the world's a stage ­ even for computers. By Tom Cardy. Stuff. "PhD student Tony Meyer, based at Massey University's Albany campus, is six months into a three-year research project developing computer programs that would allow a computer-generated actor to interact with real actors in rehearsals and on stage. Mr Meyer said he hoped to work with a playwright and stage a play in 12 months that featured his 'synthetic actor'. The basic technology was available, he said. The computer programs would allow the computer-generated actor to 'see' and 'hear' a real actor and respond to it. ... Mr Meyer was aware of similar research in the United States, but no one was working on 'actors' that could behave slightly differently in each performance or learn a part in rehearsals like a real actor."
>>> Drama, Applications
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July 14, 2003: A Garden of Robotic Delights. By Anita Hamilton. Time Magazine. "Now showing at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City, through January 2004, Cyberflora Installation was created by [Cynthia] Breazeal, a professor of media arts and sciences at M.I.T. Media Lab, and a team of her students. 'So many robots are seen as mechanical drones that do physical labor,' says Breazeal. 'I wanted to communicate a more humane vision of technology and convey the notion of interactivity as a dance.'"
>>> Exhibits (@ Resources for Students), Robots
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July 13, 2003: Software to help English composition. The Yomiuri Shimbun. "Tokushima University aims to start selling from March artificial intelligence software it is developing with help from the private sector that helps users write in English. Using the software, one can type a keyword or short sentence in Japanese and the program will suggest several sentences in both Japanese and English from which the user can choose the one he or she was trying to compose. This project is based on a study of artificial intelligence by Prof. Fuji Nin of the university. ... The software has been designed to infer the user's intention and come up with the best examples. It also has been programmed to understand and suggest not only formal, but also colloquial language."
>>> Machine Translation, Natural Language Processing
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July 12, 2003: "Artificial intelligence" picks best AIDS therapy. The Pharmaceutical Journal (Vol 271. No 7257: p. 42). "Dr Brendan Larder, RDI Ltd, described the system at a workshop on HIV drug resistance in Mexico recently. RDI Ltd is a not-for-profit company that is building databases of clinical data relating to HIV drug resistance in practice. RDI has developed a 'neural network' using data from 350 heavily treated patients to predict how well patients will respond to different combinations of drugs. The neural network 'learns' as it analyses the relationships between HIV genotype, viral load and the patient's previous response to drugs."
>>> Medicine, Neural Networks, Machine Learning, Applications
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July 12, 2003: Virtual helper makes independence a reality. By Deborah L. Shelton. St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "Open the drapes. Brew the coffee. Prepare the shower. Ralph's routine is ordinary enough. But Ralph has an impressive work ethic, laboring 24 hours a day, seven days a week - year in, year out. Ralph moved in with Don Holbert, of Sedalia, Mo., over a year ago. Holbert, 59, contracted polio when he was 5. Though paralyzed below the waist, Holbert was able to manage for himself until his wife, Barbara, died in May 2001. Without her, even some of the simplest tasks around the home, like opening the blinds, became impossible. That's where Ralph comes in. Ralph now adjusts the thermostat, turns lights on and off and reads stories from the newspaper. Ralph is a helper. A housemate. A talkative companion. Ralph is a computer. To be more precise, Ralph is a voice-operated computer and home automation system, programmed to function using artificial intelligence. Ralph ... is an acronym for Real Assisted Living for the Physically Handicapped."
>>> Assistive Technologies, Smart Homes, Applications, Speech, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning
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July 12, 2003: On writing. By Florian M. Ptak. The Berkshire Eagle. "Science Fiction is a writing genre that, to paraphrase the nursery rhyme, when it is good it can be very, very good but when it is bad it is awful. Asimov's Science Fiction magazine, fortunately, almost always has good science fiction. ... In the July issue author Mike Resnick explores the extremes of artificial intelligence in a cleverly written story about man and robot called, 'Robots Don't Cry.'"
>>> SciFi
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July 12, 2003 [issue date]: Every move you make. An interview with Garry Kasparov. New Scientist (page 40). "Would you like to see all players work with computers during matches? Five years ago I introduced an idea I called Advanced Chess: man plus machine versus man plus machine. It's a totally new form of competition and it would be very exciting because it is a new game. In talking about man and machine, we have to look for this fight, this duel. But we could also try to figure out how to nourish human intuition and brute-force calculation, and how to create a mechanism that could come up with moves of the highest quality. I sensed, and I'm happy I was right, that computers would give chess new life. And it has something to add to scientific research because the way the game is designed we can compare human intuition and computer calculating power. ... Do you fear that computer intelligence will come to challenge humans in the long term? Machines use 95 per cent calculation and 5 per cent so-called 'positional understanding', which a machine inherits from its creators. Humans use 99 per cent intuition and 1 per cent calculation, but very often we come to the same conclusion. So does it mean that the machine's process is an imitation of human intelligence? Here, the game of chess raises an important issue: should we judge artificial intelligence by the machine's performance or by the result?"
>>> Chess, Games & Puzzles, Nature of Intelligence, Cognitive Science, Interviews, Newstoons
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July 12, 2003 [issue date]: Smart software linked to CCTV can spot dubious behaviour. By Jenny Hogan. New Scientist (page 4). "It could be the dawn of a new era in surveillance. For the first time, smart software will help CCTV operators spot any abnormal behaviour. If the trial due to go live in two London Underground stations this week is a success, it could accelerate the adoption of the technology around the world. The software, which analyses CCTV footage, could help spot suicide attempts, overcrowding, suspect packages and trespassers. The hope is that by automating the prediction or detection of such events security staff, who often have as many as 60 cameras to monitor simultaneously, can reach the scene in time to prevent a potential tragedy. ... [W]atching TV monitors also demands a higher level of concentration than many people can manage. The new software, called the Intelligent Pedestrian Surveillance system (IPS), could change all that.... Although some campaign groups see CCTV as an invasion of privacy, customers are likely to welcome technology that makes the stations safer, says Ian Brown, from the Foundation for Information Policy Research, a London-based IT think tank."
>>> Vision, Machine Learning, Law Enforcement, Ethical & Social Implications, Applications; also see the Fall 2003 AI in the news column
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July 12, 2003 [issue date]: New software allows you to log on by laughing. By Rachel Nowak. New Scientist (page 13). "If hot-desking is the bane of your life then software that automatically logs you onto the nearest computer could help. All you need to do is laugh. Computer scientists at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, wanted to make it easier for staff to log onto networked computers. So they came up with SoundHunters, a program that recognises someone's voice or laughter and works out which computer is nearest to them. It could then be used to automatically log them on to the computer."
>>> Interfaces, Biometrics (@ Image Understanding), Agents, Speech
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July 11, 2003: We hatelovelovehate machines - From cell phones to HAL to BlackBerrys to ATMs to 'Terminator,' our fascination with technology exists alongside our profound apprehension. By Julia Keller. Chicago Tribune (no fee reg. req'd.). "Don't look now, but that toaster has been squinting at you funny all morning. And the waffle iron? Wouldn't turn my back if I were you. The prospect of machines running amok -- of technological marvels suddenly morphing into weapons of mass destruction -- is a cheesy staple of science fiction plots, the creaky theme of a gazillion novels, short stories, movies, cartoons and the overheated dreams of chronic video game players. ... 'This fear, this almost palpable hatred of technology, is very curious,' says Richard Rhodes, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb' (1986) and 'Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb' (1995). 'Many, many more people have been saved by technology in the 20th Century than were killed in all the century's wars.' Yet Rhodes, who edited an anthology titled 'Visions of Technology: A Century of Vital Debate About Machines, Systems and the Human World' (1999), also knows that throughout history, many people have been deeply ambivalent about technology, acknowledging its positive results but fearing its byproducts. In 19th Century Great Britain, naysayers pointed out that the rise of industrialization -- which helped make the nation an economic power -- also caused pollution and overcrowding in cities. At the beginning of the 20th Century, Rhodes noted, American author Henry Adams gave voice to the uneasiness that many were feeling about the rapid rise of technology when he viewed an electricity-generating dynamo. ... But it was the deployment of the atom bomb that really changed humanity's mind about the unalloyed good of technology, Rhodes says. 'People used to think of technology as liberating, but after the atom bomb there was a much more energetic and active social concern about technology. Clearly, there has been a change in mentality.'"
>>> SciFi, Ethical & Social Implications
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July 11, 2003: What to do when your robotic dog won't behave. By Charles Storch. Chicago Tribune (no fee reg. req'd.). "Aibo is autonomous -- switch it on and it will entertain itself -- but its personality evolves and behavior alters in relation to its engagement with owners. ... Alan Beck, director of the Center for the Human-Animal Bond at Purdue University, is involved in separate studies of the interaction of Aibos with children and older adults. Among other things, researchers want to know whether such robots offer children a similar nurturing relationship to that from real pets and whether they can be practical, low-maintenance companions for elderly who are homebound or in a care center. His research so far has shown that young and old subjects, given a choice, would prefer having a real dog to an Aibo. But Beck says they soon tend to regard an Aibo as more than a machine. 'I was impressed, particularly with older people, how soon people started relating to the Aibos,' he says. 'People would smile and relax and talk to them with higher pitch and lower volume, as we do with little children and with pets.' Which is no surprise to [Richard] Walkus. 'It's more than a computer. It's not a pet, of course,' he says. 'But the ability of this thing to call for response and attention somehow builds an emotional bond.'"
>>> Robotic Pets, Assistive Technologies, Robots, Applications
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July 11, 2003: Gimme the blue pill - The Matrix films are about the affluent Western majority's collusion with the media in sustaining an unreal view of the world. By John Gray. New Statesman / available from the Australian Financial Review. "In the film The Matrix, Agent Smith asks: 'Did you know that the First Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world, where none suffered, where everyone would be happy? It was a disaster.' A computer-generated virtual environment, the Matrix is a system designed to control humans. ... The idea of a technology that can create virtual worlds is usually attributed to American computer scientists, who began writing about virtual reality in the 1980s and 1990s. But the Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem anticipated it some decades earlier. In his Summa Technologiae, published in 1964, Lem envisaged a Phantomat, a virtual reality machine that allows its users to exit the real world and enter a simulated environment of their own choosing. ... And like the Phantomat, the Matrix is a human invention. Even if they are devised by an artificial intelligence that has evolved far beyond humanity, these simulated worlds are ultimately by-products of human knowledge. They cannot escape the finitude and imperfection that go with their animal origins. They will inescapably contain errors and distortions. ... The Matrix films are amazing feats of technical wizardry. If they contain a message, however, it is that technology is not magic. It cannot alter the facts of human life."
>>> SciFi, Ethical & Social Implications
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July 11, 2003: More Machines on the Rise. By Laurel Graeber. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.). "O.K., so maybe there isn't a robot more thrilling -- or threatening -- than the shape-shifting, molecular-recombining villainess in 'Terminator 3.' But reality offers artificial intelligence that is almost as ingenious, and much more benevolent. Many of these lean (but never mean) machines can be seen starting tomorrow at 'Robot,' a free four-day festival at Eyebeam, a Chelsea gallery. The centerpiece is 'Artbots: The Robot Talent Show,' whose contestants range from BabyBott, which looks like a giant baby bottle and reacts when you cuddle it, to Lemur, an electronic orchestra with a multiarmed robot in the shape of the Hindu god Siva. Its function? To play drums, of course."
>>> Exhibits (@ Resources for Students), Robots
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July 9-15, 2003: Big Brother Gets a Brain - The Pentagon's Plan for Tracking Everything That Moves. By Noah Shachtman. The Village Voice. "CTS will keep watch by equipping each camera with a processor, like the one in your computer. The chips will have programmed into them 'video understanding algorithms' that can distinguish one car from another. At each checkpoint, the car's speed, time of arrival, color, size, license plate, and shape are all instantly passed on to a central server. If the early tests identifying cars go well, software that recognizes a person's face and style of walk could also be added. By sharing only this refined data -- instead of the raw video itself -- CTS should keep fragile computer networks from becoming overloaded with hours and hours of meaningless footage. Everybody knows how much of a pain it can be to get a video clip in your e-mail inbox, instead of a simple text message. Now imagine how much worse the problem would get if thousands and thousands of such clips were being sent back and forth, all day, every day. CTS would help government networks avoid that burden, with each camera transmitting a mere 8 kilobits per second, instead of the 200 or so kilobits needed for high-resolution video. CTS would also keep the snoops who stare at the monitors from being overwhelmed. 'We have enough cameras, but not enough people to watch the video feeds,' said Tom Strat, who's heading up CTS for DARPA's Information Exploitation Office."
>>> Biometrics (@ Image Understanding), Vision, Machine Learning, Law Enforcement, Ethical & Social Implications, Applications
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July 10, 2003: Honda's New President to Focus on Quality. By Yuri Kageyama. Associated Press / available from The Austin American-Statesman. "Honda Motor Co. is going to focus on creating quality cars rather than pursuing quick growth in sales, the new president of Japan's No. 2 automaker said Thursday. 'I'm not setting sales targets,' said Takeo Fukui, who took office as president and chief executive last month. 'All that may be convenient for the business but it's totally irrelevant to the customer.' ... Fukui said Honda will rely on technology to win back buyers although he refused to give details of what was in the works. Honda is setting up new research centers in Japan, the United States and Germany, where it will study lighter material for car bodies, fuel made from plants and artificial intelligence, the company said Thursday."
>>> Transportation, Business & Manufacturing, Applications
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July 10, 2003: Organic robot creates art in Australia - Artists, scientists and computer programmers have embedded rat neurons in a robot to create a 'hybrot' artist. By James Pearce. ZDNet Australia. "A Western Australian art and science collaboration is assisting U.S. neuroengineers with the development of distributed networks and artificial intelligence. The SymbioticA Research Group (SARG) is a collection of artists, computer programmers and scientists based at the University of Western Australia. It has collaborated with the Laboratory for Neuroengineering at Georgia Tech in the US, which recently hooked a few thousand rat neurons to a multi-electrode array to create a 'Hybrot' -- so named because it is a hybrid of living and electronic components. SARG had already done some research in creating art using fish neurons, so the two laboratories decided to collaborate in an attempt to bridge the gap between biological and artificial systems to produce a machine capable of matching the intelligence of even the simplest organism -- one that will over time evolve, learn, and express itself through art, according to Professor Steve Potter. ... The resulting robot is called 'MEART,' which stands for multi-electrode array art. [Oron] Catts said there was a feedback loop so the neurons could 'see' what they were drawing. ... Potter believes that the teams will be able to establish a cultured in vitro (literally 'in glass') network system that learns like the living brains in people and animals do. In effect, creating artificial intelligence by using the building blocks of living brains."
>>> Neural Networks & Connectionist Systems, Machine Learning, Art
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July 10, 2003: Danville pupils capture world robotics prize. By John-Erik Koslosky. Press Enterprise Online. "Three Danville High School students won the title of World Champs this past weekend when they took the top prize at an international robotics competition in Italy. ... There was no remote control for the robot. The students equipped it with light sensors and a compass to move through the course and recognize injured victims. The students beat out a team of high school girls from Germany and students from a New Jersey high school that included a student bound for CalTech University, said Danville Ironbots coach Tim Phillips. ... Phillips said if anyone asks what edge the Danville students had to finish so impressively, he's says, 'That's easy. They worked hard. I'm so impressed with the work ethic of these kids and the creativity of these kids and the problem-solving of these kids,' Phillips said. 'They just don't give up.'"
>>> Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Robots, Hazards & Disasters
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July 10, 2003: The New Card Shark. By Peter Wayner. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.) / also available from the Herald-Tribune. "Many players hone their craft with simulation software that allows them to test strategies by playing out thousands or even millions of hands. Some researchers are building software opponents that use sophisticated concepts from economics and artificial intelligence to seek out the best strategy, then use the knowledge to beat human players. The experience of playing thousands of games in roadhouses and casinos is being eclipsed by a cyborg-like intelligence produced by humans weaned on machine play. ... Darse Billings, a Ph.D. student at the University of Alberta, is working with his professors to build a bot capable of beating all human players. They currently operate a free poker room online where the bots routinely defeat most humans (games.cs.ualberta.ca/webgames /poker). The heart of their current method exploits game theory to build a good model to determine when it makes sense to bet or fold. This branch of mathematics gained wide recognition after a book about John Nash, a pioneer in the area, was made into the Oscar-winning movie 'A Beautiful Mind.' Building a complete model of a poker game is not feasible because there are billions of possible outcomes. Instead, the team tried to simplify the model by combining similar hands. They ended up with seven possible classes of hands and used this to create a plan of action for the bots. 'The program is the first decent approximation of a really balanced strategy,' Mr. Billings said. 'It does a really good job of bluffing with an appropriate frequency, as well as check raising and slow playing.'"
>>> Poker, Game Theory (@ Multi-Agent Systems), Games & Puzzles
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July 9, 2003: Ro Ro Ro Your Bot. By Jonathan Nicholas. The Oregonian. "Henry Hillman Jr. went home the other night, plopped in front of the TV, reached for the joystick . . . and mowed his lawn. Robot testing: It's tough work, but some wild-eyed, soft-spoken, designer-creased millionaire has got to do it. ... But what really gets Hillman going these days is artificial intelligence. This week he's trying to buy another robot company. His third. ... Hillman's sure we'll soon see nursing robots in hospitals and firefighting robots in cities. He hopes to unveil a search-and-rescue robot soon."
>>> Hazards & Disasters, Assistive Technologies, Applications, Robots, Autonomous Vehicles
-> back to headlines

July 9, 2003: Passings - USC computer scientist Jeff Rickel, 40, a 'rising star' in the field of artificial intelligence. By Eric Mankin. USC Today. "USC computer scientist Jeff Rickel, an expert in the field of artificial intelligence, died July 6, of complications of cancer. He was 40. ... 'Jeff was one of the leaders in a community of researchers connecting A.I. techniques to computer graphics human models - so-called 'embodied agents,'' said Norman Badler, director of the Center for Human Modeling and Simulation at the University of Pennsylvania. 'His work was seminal, and he was a rising star in this community.' Rickel was a program director in the intelligent systems division of ISI and a research assistant professor in the USC School of Engineering's department of computer science. He specialized in the design of robotic 'intelligent agents' designed to serve as instructors for humans." Also see: Obituary in the Los Angeles Times (July 10, 2003; no fee reg. req'd.).
>>> Tributes; also see this related article
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July 9, 2003: L.V. man patents 'ethical' artificial intelligence program. By Kimberly Corbett. Daily Press. "Years of drumming away on his laptop keys have finally paid off for Lucerne Valley inventor and author John E. LaMuth, 50, as the United States Patent Office recognized his efforts on July 1 and approved his patent for ethical artificial intelligence. 'I'm really stoked about finally getting it approved,' LaMuth said, who filed the patent in 1999. 'The sky's the limit.' LaMuth said his innovation represents the first language analyzer that incorporates ethical and motivational terms as part of a computer system. 'It enables a computer to reason and speak in an ethical fashion," LaMuth said. 'Nobody has made an application like this.' ... 'The main goal of AI is to have a computer and be able to converse with it to the point where you believe it has human values,' LaMuth said. 'Imagine a computer that could reason and talk to you.'"
>>> Natural Language Processing, Interfaces, Customer Relations, Applications, Turing Test, Emotions; see a related article
-> back to headlines

July / August 2003: Monitoring Mom - As population matures, so do assisted-living technologies. By Gregory T. Huang. Technology Review. "It's all part of a growing effort at Intel and other labs around the country to develop ways to help the elderly, and others who need assistance with everyday activities. Similar systems are in the works to monitor eating, sleeping, and medication habits in order to allow older people to live independently for longer. Researchers are even working on systems that analyze changes in behavioral patterns over time to provide early warning of aging diseases such as Alzheimer's. ... From the pattern of these signals, a computer can deduce what a person is doing and intervene -- giving instructions over a networked television or bedside radio, or wirelessly alerting a caregiver. [Eric] Dishman says Intel will install the first trial systems in the homes of two dozen Alzheimer's patients by early next year. ... Crucial to the most advanced systems is software. It's one thing to get raw sensor information, but quite another to figure out what the person in the home is actually doing, says Misha Pavel, a biomedical engineer at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, OR. Working with Intel, Pavel's team is developing artificial-intelligence algorithms that deduce a person's intent by building a statistical hierarchy of possibilities -- say, making tea, cooking, or doing dishes -- that is based on past experience."
>>> Assisitve Technologies, Applications, Machine Learning, Reasoning, Medicine, Smart Houses
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July 9, 2003: New computer science building seen as boost to UW program. By Robert Marshall Wells. Seattle Times. "A new $72 million building nearing completion at the University of Washington is expected to significantly heighten the profile of the school's respected Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) program. The Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science and Engineering is named for the Microsoft co-founder, who donated more than $10 million to the project. ... Faculty and students now will have room to perform cutting-edge research and design in emerging technologies, such as robotics, motion capture and artificial intelligence, Lazowska said. 'Computer science used to be more about pushing a pencil across a page,' Lazowska said, but increasingly 'it's not just a matter of writing software. Now it's more about building things. Students need space to build things.'"
>>> Academic Departments (@ Resources for Students), Computer Science
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July 9, 2003: Talking computers nearing reality. By Michael Kanellos. CNET News. "Machines that listen and talk like humans are becoming a reality, many researchers and executives say. The technical kinks, high costs and application misfires that have held back the acceptance of speech recognition and activation--one of computing's Holy Grails--are being ironed out, they say. As a result, companies are coming out with a variety of products that will let consumers access databases using voice commands, or transform e-mails into one- or two-way verbal exchanges. ... The dream of conversational computers has been around since the beginning of the digital age, and it's typically been a fitful one due to the inherent complexities. The Turing test--building a machine that can respond like a human via typed messages--was posed by World War II era computing pioneer Alan Turing. It's still unsolved. One challenge is that humans typically don't follow rigid rules when speaking. ... To date, voice recognition has made the most inroads in computing devices for those with mental or physical challenges, including epilepsy and carpal-tunnel syndrome. Now the directions of both research and marketing have changed. Rather than developing a machine that can converse, researchers are creating computers that can understand speech as a function of probability, the basis of much of Microsoft's artificial intelligence work. Yoda, a speech-to-text engine under development at Microsoft, can turn spoken word into coherent text e-mail messages by studying a user's habits, said Alex Acero, manager of the speech research group at Microsoft. Yoda doesn't look for an object to follow a verb, but it knows that a particular sound pattern ('meet') will likely be followed by a limited number of your now familiar sound patterns ('in the conference room' or 'tomorrow')."
>>> Speech, Natural Language Processing, Machine Translation, Discourse Analysis, Machine Learning, Customer Service, Assisitve Technologies, Applications, Interfaces, Telecommunications, Turing Test
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July 8, 2003: Researchers keep an eye on the future of security - The idea of checking physical characteristics to authenticate a person's identity has a long and distinguished history. By Karl Cushing. ComputerWeekly. "'One of the key problems is that there is no single biometric device that is reliable and accurate enough for all applications, and not everyone recognises that,' said Mike Fairhurst, a professor in [Kent] university's department of electronics. 'People need to be more flexible in their approach.' Fairhurst's team has developed an 'intelligent processing framework' that uses bespoke software to centrally manage multiple forms of biometrics, choosing the most appropriate for the job or combining different forms to increase accuracy and reliability. One such project is Iambic (Intelligent Agent for Multimodal Biometric Identification and Control), which is being run in collaboration with technology developer Neusciences."
>>> Biometrics (@ Image Understanding), Agents, Law Enforcement, Applications, Vision
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July 8, 2003: Robohawks miss national competition. By Joshua Myerov. The Daily News Tribune. "A Waltham High robotics team was unable to make a scheduled appearance at a national competition last week because it could not raise the money to fund the trip. The Robohawks, as the four-person team dubbed themselves, took second place in the Botball regional finals at UMass-Lowell in March. Their performance won them a shot in the Botball National Competition in Norman, Okla., last week. ... The 2004 Botball National Competition will be in San Jose, Calif. 'We'll take this year's money and put it to that,' [Ravi] Kotecha said. 'It'll be a lot more expensive than this year,' he said. It may cost as much as $1,000 per team member next year, Kotecha said. ... Their second-place finish in the regional competition won them a $375 grant from the American Association of Artificial Intelligence. Also, Watch City Appliance, Foster-Miller Inc. and Waltham Appliance donated cash or in-kind goods, said team member Nicholas Ristuccia. In the end, they were about $1,700 short, but Kotecha took the optimistic view, saying they would start fund raising immediately in the fall."
>>> Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Robots
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July 8, 2003: MEDai Inc. gets new offices. By Noelle Haner-Dorr. Orlando Business Journal. "The Orlando-based health care technology company has moved its corporate headquarters to Millennia Park One on Vineland Road along the Interstate 4 high-tech corridor. MEDai develops a clinical decision support system for health care providers. The system uses artificial intelligence to predict the probability, severity, effective treatment and outcomes of specific diseases and the costs associated with their prevention and control."
>>> Medicine, Applications
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July 8, 2003: DARPA seeks thinking computers. By Matthew French. Federal Computer Week. "Officials at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are hoping to find an individual or company that can develop a computer that thinks, a major stepping stone in the arena of artificial intelligence. DARPA's Information Processing Technology Office is engaging in a program called Real-World Reasoning, the objective of which is to 'explore and develop foundations, technology and tools to enable effective, practical automated reasoning of the scale and complexity required for computers to perform complex tasks in the real world requiring intelligence.'"
>>> Reasoning
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July 7, 2003: Software finds tunes you want to hear. By Matthew Daneman. Democrat and Chronicle. "Mitsunori Ogihara, chairman of the UR computer science department, has applied for a patent on a piece of software that would, in essence, 'listen' to songs and categorize them into specific genres and by emotional content. The result, Ogihara said, could be a future where a listener in the mood for happy jazz pieces or maudlin country tunes could send the program filtering through radio stations or among digital music files stored in a computer's memory to find what the listener wants. ... The software categorizes musical genres and emotional content by analyzing signals and patterns in songs. The ultimate goal, Ogihara said, is to create personalized software that recognizes signals and learns its owner's musical tastes. 'You have only to tell the software, 'This is what I think of as jazz; this is what I think of as rock,'''he said."
>>> Information Retrieval, Music, Machine Learning, Applications, Agents
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July 7, 2003: Local execs court Northrop Grumman - Low-profile meeting aimed at luring defense contractor. By Christopher Davis. Pittsburgh Business Times. "The meetings took place as Pittsburgh and defense industry officials are looking to cash in on the military's Future Combat Systems program, a Department of Defense collaborative involving the U.S. Army and the Defense Advanced Research Products Agency, or DARPA. The program, now in its $14.9 billion system development and demonstration phase, aims to develop unmanned robotic vehicles and weapons enhanced with artificial intelligence that would give the military more lethal and tactical capabilities, often without ever putting human troops in the line of fire. The Defense Department wants to have the new equipment ready for use in combat by 2010, according to the FCS Web site."
>>> Military, Autonomous Vehicles, Applications, Robots
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July 7, 2003: Camps zero in on gap - Companies hope to lure girls to tech fields. By Rachel Konrad. Associated Press / available from The South Bend Tribune. "The camps expose girls to a range of technical professions -- from industrial design to genetics -- and encourage them to pursue degrees in science, math and engineering. Proponents hope the girls will eventually return to the companies and narrow a growing gender gap in the male-dominated tech industry, though critics question such camps' effectiveness. The percentage of women in the tech work force dropped to 34.9 percent in 2002 from a high of 41 percent in 1996, according to the Information Technology Association of America. Women comprised about 47 percent of the U.S. work force in 2000, but earned just 22 percent of computer science and engineering undergraduate degrees, according to IBM research. ... IBM, which is expanding its 5-year-old 'Excite!' program to 30 cities worldwide this summer, runs one of the best known programs aimed at getting girls interested in technology. Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and other technology bellwethers sponsor similar educational and mentoring programs. Texas Instruments launched a camp this summer teaching advanced placement physics to 50 girls in Dallas. Intel's popular 'Geek Chic' program places third-grade girls with mentors for several days in the chipmaker's labs and offices near Portland, Ore."
>>> Summer Camps, Courses, Programs & more, Equality & Diversity (@ Resources for Students), Industry Statistics, Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students)
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July 7, 2003: Mars Needs Millionaires, British Astronomer Says. By Leonard David. Space.com. "Future space exploration should be left to rich thrill seekers. That's the view of Martin Rees, Britain's astronomer royal and a Royal Society research professor at Cambridge University's King's College. In the July/August issue of Foreign Policy magazine, Rees questions the case for sending people into space. As a scientist, he's against it. 'Most of what astronauts do in space can be done better and more cheaply now by computers and robots. Each advance in robotics and miniaturization only widens the efficiency gap between man and machine in space. ...'"
>>> Space Exploration, Robots, Applications, Newstoons, Summer 2003 AI in the news column
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July 7, 2003: Science Series Scheduled at Westerly Library. The Westerly Sun. "The Westerly Public Library and The Westerly Hospital are co-sponsoring a video and discussion series from July 15 through Aug. 19, that will encourage participants to investigate scientific issues that are now in the news. ... The library programs are as follows: July 15: Robotics. Are advances in machines the greatest thing since sliced bread, or are we undermining our own future by developing artificial intelligence and robotics technologies?"
>>> Events (@ Resources for Students), Ethical & Social Implications
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July 6, 2003: He and she -What's the real difference? According to a team of computer scientists, we give away our gender in our writing style. By Clive Thompson. The Boston Globe (page H3). "This summer, a group of computer scientists-including [Moshe] Koppel, a professor at Israeli's Bar-Ilan University-are publishing two papers in which they describe the successful results of a gender-detection experiment. The scholars have developed a computer algorithm that can examine an anonymous text and determine, with accuracy rates of better than 80 percent, whether the author is male or female. For centuries, linguists and cultural pundits have argued heatedly about whether men and women communicate differently. But Koppel's group is the first to create an actual prediction machine. ... To divine these subtle patterns, Koppel's team crunched 604 texts taken from the British National Corpus, a collection of 4,124 documents assembled by academics to help study modern language use. ... Then they fed the remaining text into an artificial-intelligence sorting algorithm and programmed it to look for elements that were relatively unique to the women's set and the men's set."
>>> Machine Learning, Cognitive Science
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July 5, 2003: Science faction. By Fiona Williams. The Sydney Morning Herald. "Set in the not-too-distant future, sci-fi films offer insights into what the world might be like and what impact evolving technologies might have on daily life, says Dean Economou, chief technologist of the CSIRO's Centre for Networking Technologies for the Information Economy (CENTIE). Economou says the fact that cloning, virtual reality and biometrics are commonplace concepts today is partly due to representations of the technologies in film and science-fiction literature and that scientists have taken many cues from what they've seen take place on screen. ... '[The films] mean people have a vocabulary about the future and you find a lot of the young researchers were very inspired by 2001, Star Trek, Blade Runner or The Matrix . In a very real way, the technologists are inspired by the sci-fi people and the sci-fi people are similarly inspired by the technologists.' More than merely being inspired by technologists, filmmakers are actively seeking out scientists for advice and input. ... Millions of dollars are spent each year on developing artificial intelligence by electronics companies such as Sony and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Consumer robots such as Sony's Aibo, a robotic dog that can be trained to recognise voice commands and the owner's face, are becoming more common."
>>> SciFi, Law Enforcement, Biometrics (@ Image Understanding), Applications, Robots, Robotic Pets, Interfaces, The AI Effect
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July 4, 2003: Civil Liberties After 9/11. Commentary by Robert H. Bork. FrontPageMagazine. "When a nation faces deadly attacks on its citizens at home and abroad, it is only reasonable to expect that its leaders will take appropriate measures to increase security. And, since security inevitably means restrictions, it is likewise only reasonable to expect a public debate over the question of how much individual liberty should be sacrificed for how much individual and national safety. ... The Terrorist Information Awareness program (TIA) is still only in a developmental stage; we do not know whether it can even be made to work. If it can, it might turn out to be one of the most valuable weapons in America's war with terrorists. In brief, the program would seek to identify patterns of conduct that indicate terrorist activity. ... Are there techniques that could be devised to prevent TIA from becoming the playground of [William] Safire's hypothetical supersnoop without disabling it altogether? In domestic criminal investigations, courts require warrants for electronic surveillances. As we have seen, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act also requires judicial approval of surveillances for intelligence and counterintelligence purposes. While there would be no need for a warrant-like requirement in initiating a computer search, other safeguards can be imagined for TIA. Among them, according to [Stuart] Taylor, might be 'software designs and legal rules that would block human agents from learning the identities of people whose transactions are being 'data-mined' by TIA computers unless the agents can obtain judicial warrants by showing something analogous to the 'probable cause' that the law requires to justify a wiretap.'"
>>> Data Mining, Machine Learning, Law Enforcement, Military, Ethical & Social Implications
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July 4, 2003: Computer fear factor in Hollywood. By Julie Moran Alterio. The Journal News. "Here's a quick quiz: As technology advances and computers get smarter, is it possible machines could one day take over the world? Pick an answer: . I think it is likely. . It could happen. . No way. If you're like 46 percent of the people who were asked this question at Blockbuster's Web site, you'll respond, 'It could happen.' If you're worrying that this puts you in the company of crackpots, consider Murray Campbell. The IBM scientist and co-creator of chess-playing supercomputer Deep Blue says it's only a matter of time before his peers create machines smart enough to take over the world. 'There's no fundamental reason there can't be intelligent machines, but I think it's a ways off,' Campbell says. ... Today, we're surrounded by technology that's beyond our comprehension, which makes movies such as 'Terminator 3' seem less far-fetched -- even to scientists such as Bill Joy. He's the chief scientist at Sun Microsystems -- a maker of the kind of computers that the Internet runs on -- and he's definitely in the camp of worriers. Joy wrote an essay titled, 'Why the Future Doesn't Need Us,' in Wired magazine in April 2000 that's become famous in technology circles for seriously considering whether today's computer scientists are writing the code of humanity's eventual doom." And be sure to check out the side-bar: FYI - More smart machines.

>>> Ethical & Social Implications, AI Overview, SciFi, History, Robots, Chess, Smart Houses, Industry Statistics
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July 4, 2003: Playing with disaster could save lives for real. By Richard Wood. The New Zealand Herald. "In a major disaster, it's one thing being able to put out fires efficiently and deal with medical emergencies on the spot, but you have to get your emergency vehicles there first. That's the dramatic challenge for two University of Auckland PhD students and their home-grown artificial intelligence systems. Cameron Skinner and Jonathan Teutenberg left on Monday for Padua, Italy, to compete against 20 other teams in the International RobocupRescue event. The competition, which begins tomorrow, runs alongside RobocupSoccer, which aims to have an artificial soccer team that can beat the world's best humans by 2050. The idea of RobocupRescue is to automate the emergency response when a city is hit by something like an earthquake. ... [Skinner] said the software agents had been built in the Java programming language using entirely new algorithms and involved about three months' programming time in total."
>>> Hazards & Disasters, Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Agents, Applications
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Spring 2003: Bruce Buchanan Retires. Interviewed by John Aronis for Links, the newsletter of The Department of Computer Science at the University of Pittsburgh (pages 2 - 4)." While working in the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Bruce and his collaborators made important contributions to artificial intelligence. Their assertion -- obvious in retrospect like most great ideas -- was that knowledge is important for intelligent behavior. They drove this point home with a series of programs that embodied the knowledge of scientific and medical experts -- sometimes rivaling or surpassing their abilities -- and the creation of an industry centered around expert systems."
>>> Expert Systems, History, Interviews, Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Medicine
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July 3, 2003: 'Sherlock Holmes' thinks lateral for murder cops. By John Leyden. The Register. "Scottish software developers have developed a program to help police consider all the possibilities in the investigation of suspicious deaths. 'Sherlock Holmes' is designed to highlight less obvious lines of inquiry that detectives might overlook. 'It takes an overview of all the available evidence and then speculates on what might have happened,' developer Jeroen Keppens, of Edinburgh's Joseph Bell Center for Forensic Statistics and Legal Reasoning, told New Scientist. ... A knowledge base within the program contains data of various causes of death and evidence that either supports or contradicts a particular explanation for a death. Investigators enter data into the program, which applies this database to indicate the likelihodd of each scenario. Forensic evidence, medical reports and eyewitness accounts can all be fed into the system."
>>> Law Enforcement, Expert Systems, Applications
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July 2, 2003: Engineer's focus: accessible technology for all. By K. Oanh Ha. The Mercury News / available from Bayarea.com. "T.V. Raman is grateful that he didn't completely lose his eyesight until he was 13. Because of that, he says, he didn't get used to always receiving 'special' treatment. ... That's the same attitude Raman brings to his research in speech technology. While Raman, a software engineer, is a fervent proponent of making the Web and other technology accessible to the disabled community, he chooses not to work in the assistive technology field where products are designed specifically for people who are physically impaired. Instead, he works in developing mainstream products, such as cell phones and personal digital assistants that can be used with equal ease by people with disabilities and those without. ... After graduating with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and a master's degree in computer science in India, Raman came to Cornell University to study applied mathematics. It was then that he began using speech software. In his applied mathematics class, the software read back gibberish when it tried to read complex mathematical equations on the screen. So Raman designed his own software that could decipher the formulas. That project, which eventually turned into his doctoral thesis, launched his interest in speech technology."
>>> Speech, Assisitive Technologies, Applications, Natural Language Processing, Vision, Machine Learning
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July 2/9 2003: Light pipes track motion. By Eric Smalley. Technology Research News. "Researchers at Duke University have devised a simple tracking method that promises to dramatically reduce the computing resources needed for computer vision systems that allow computers and robots to sense their surroundings. The technique bridges the gap between full-blown computer vision systems, which precisely track moving objects but are computer-intensive, and simple, inexpensive motion detectors, which are much less precise. ... The researchers' method dispenses with the complicated software and lenses and instead maps the angles of light radiating from a source by channeling the light through set of pipes onto a set of light detectors. As an object moves across the field of view, light reflecting from the object triggers some detectors but not others."
>>> Vision, Robots
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July 2, 2003: Robotics tech can help reduce foreign workers. Daily Express (Sabah, Malaysia). "Switching from human power to robotics and automated technology can reduce the Government's dependency on foreign workers. Assistant Minister of Tourism, Culture and Environment, Datuk Karim Bujang, said this during the closing of the inaugural State-level Robot Football League (Robofest 2003) at Sirim Bhd, here Tuesday. 'We all know that the influx of foreign workers is important for the nation's development but at the same time it has also created social problems to us,' he said. '(Therefore) using robotics and automated technology may be an alternative for us to reduce dependency on foreign labour.'"
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Robots, Applications
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July 2, 2003: Spam-bot tests flunk the blind. By Paul Festa. CNET News. "An increasingly popular technique for preventing e-mail abuse is frustrating some visually impaired Net users, setting the stage for a conflict between spam busters and advocates for the disabled. Many companies have recently begun requiring users to pass a verification test in order to access their services--typically by typing into a Web form a few characters that appear on the form in a guise that prevents a computer or software robot from recognizing and copying them. ... Efforts to create tests aimed at distinguishing humans from machines go back decades, with the most famous formulation of the problem posed in 1950 by the English mathematician and World War II 'Enigma' code breaker Alan Turing. Turing's controversial hypothesis was that a machine could be defined as 'intelligent' if a questioner could be fooled into believing it was a person. Visual tests in a sense turn that theory on its head, assuming that a machine is defined by its inability to perform a task that is easy for most humans to accomplish. ... Some Web sites using visual tests provide work-arounds for the visually impaired; some don't."
>>> Turing Test, Filtering, Assisitive Technologies, Web-Searching Agents
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July 2, 2003: U.S. Develops Urban Surveillance System. By Michael J. Sniffen. Associated Press / available from the Times Union. "Dubbed 'Combat Zones That See,' the project is intended to help the U.S. military protect troops and fight in cities overseas. Scientists and privacy experts say the unclassified technology also could easily be adapted to keep tabs on Americans. The project's centerpiece would be groundbreaking computer software capable of automatically identifying vehicles by size, color, shape and license tag, or drivers and passengers by face. The proposed software also would provide instant alerts after detecting a vehicle with a license plate on a watchlist, or search months of records to locate and compare vehicles spotted near terrorist attacks, according to interviews and contracting documents reviewed by The Associated Press. ... The program 'aspires to build the world's first multi-camera surveillance system that uses automatic ... analysis of live video' to study vehicle movement 'and significant events across an extremely large area,' the documents state. ... DARPA told more than 100 executives of potential contractors in March that 40 million cameras already are in use around the world, with 300 million expected by 2005. U.S. police use cameras to monitor bridges, tunnels, airports and border crossings and regularly access security cameras in banks, stores and garages for investigative leads."
>>> Vision, Image Understanding, Military, Law Enforcement, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications
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July 2, 2003: 'Terminator 3 - Rise of the Machines' is a blast from the future. By Colin Covert. Star Tribune. "No one who saw 1991's 'Terminator 2: Judgment Day' (and who else would be reading this?) will need a plot summary of the new film. It is a beat-for-beat remake, more nearly 'T2.01' than 'T3.' The arrival of the good and evil robots from the future, their search for their human quarry, their automotive and mano-a-mano battles, the assault on the high-tech fortress housing the evil artificial intelligence known as SkyNet -- all are reproduced here with skill and diligence. ... It's in such small details that 'T3' finds its distinctive sense of humor. ... When Connor calls his futuristic bodyguard 'a robot,' the tin man retorts, 'I'm a cybernetic organism.'"
>>> SciFi
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July 2, 2003: Robot footballers descend on Italy. Ananova. "Over 200 teams from universities around the world are heading to the Italian city of Padua this week for the seventh robot football world cup. Two teams, the Bold Hearts from the University of Hertfordshire and the Essex Rovers from the University of Essex, will represent Britain in the RoboCup 2003."
>>> Competitions (@ Resources for Students), Robots
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July 1, 2003: Computer Vision Links How Brain Recognizes Faces, Moods. Newswise. "The human brain combines motion and shape information to recognize faces and facial expressions, a new study suggests. That new finding, part of an engineer's quest to design computers that "see" faces the way humans do, provides more evidence concerning a controversy in cognitive psychology. Were computers to become adept at recognizing faces and moods, they would be more user-friendly, said Aleix Martinez, assistant professor of electrical engineering at Ohio State University. They could also support intelligent video security systems and provide potentially hack-proof computer identification. Martinez developed a model of how the brain recognizes the faces of people we've seen before, and how we discern facial expressions. These two activities take place in different areas of the brain, and some scientists believe that the mental processes involved are completely separate as well; others believe that the two processes are closely linked. In a recent issue of the journal Vision Research, Martinez reported that the two processes are indeed linked -- indirectly, through the part of the brain that helps us understand motion. ... Martinez and his colleagues want to use this information to design a computer that recognizes people based on input from a video camera."
>>> Vision, Biometrics (@ Image Understanding), Cognitive Science, Law Enforcement, Applications
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July 1, 2003: Death to Cool - For years, iRobot designed stuff cool enough for the Sci-Fi Channel, but its new product sells on the Home Shopping Network. Here's how a boutique high-tech firm broke out by reinventing itself as an appliance company. By Leigh Buchanan. Inc. Magazine. "Unlike nature, the media adores a vacuum. Specifically, the media adores Colin Angle's vacuum, Roomba, a sleek silver saucer that last autumn whirred its way onto the year's best-products lists of Time, Business Week, and USA Today, among others. ... To prevent a mass case of the cultural bends, Angle seeded the consumer robotics group with five engineers from the toy division, and then had the team observe focus groups of ordinary people who clean things. As engineers worked their way through 20 versions of the product, they brought each iteration home for testing by spouses, friends, and neighbors. The marketing staff also auditioned Roomba in their houses and filled out surveys reflecting the average-joe perspective. ... The focus groups also reinforced the lesson that consumers don't like products that tax their wallets any more than ones that tax their brains."
>>> Robots, Applications, Smart Houses, Military, Toys, Ethical & Social Implications, Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students)
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July 1, 2003: Software takes the fall for movie stars. By Alan Cane. Financial Times. "NaturalMotion chief executive Torsten Reil says the software simulates an actor's body and brain. 'The virtual actors learn how to move and react using a form of artificial intelligence and artificial evolution. They sense and react to the environment and can be directed, just like real actors.' The virtual stuntman is making his debut in Troy, starring Brad Pitt, to be released next year."
>>> see this related article for more details
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July 1, 2003: Computers are getting better at poker. By Barbara Gengler. Australian IT. "An academic turned professional poker player is helping his former supervisor teach computers to play competitive poker. Poker is ideal for artificial intelligence research because decisions require very little, if any, hard data. The challenge has kept a research team at the University of Alberta, Canada, occupied for for more than 10 years. ... Some source code of PsOpti, written in Java, has been released to help others research poker, [Jonathan] Schaeffer says. The research team has released a Texas Hold'em communication protocol, allowing new computer programs and humans to play against each other online. Game theory research is a branch of mathematics that studies interactions between people and companies and in competition."
>>> Poker, Game Theory (@ Multi-Agent Systems), Games & Puzzles, Reasoning; also see a related article
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July 1, 2003: Robotics -Cognitive Machines. By Lance Ulanoff. One of PC Magazine's Future Tech - 20 Hot Technologies to Watch. "The prospect of robots that can behave in ways they were not hardwired to is grabbing the attention of companies from Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Meet Cog, an aluminum robot born in the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and a compelling experiment in robot cognition. ... Cog is just one example of experiments currently taking place to teach robots to navigate unfamiliar environments and interact with humans -- both of which represent daunting computer science challenges. Another experiment in social robots is Leonardo, a furry creation of Cynthia Breazeal, director of MIT Media Lab's Robotic Life Group."
>>> Robots, AI Overview
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July 2003: The High Cost of Efficiency - Computers make us more productive. Do they also slow us down? Viewpoint by J. Bradford DeLong. Wired (Issue 11.07). "Computers are tremendous labor-saving devices. They give us power to accomplish extraordinary amounts of work in extraordinarily short intervals of time: financial analysis, data mining, design automation. But they also give us the capability to do things like play solitaire. Or send instant messages. Fiddle with fonts. Futz with PowerPoint. Twiddle with images. Reconfigure link rollovers. ... From a historical perspective, it's not at all surprising that we are thrashing about, still trying to figure out how to use these new tools most effectively. As Stanford's Paul David was the first to point out, much the same thing happened a century ago when the electric motor came to American manufacturing."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Applications
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July - August 2003: Who's in Charge? In Freedom Evolves, Daniel C. Dennett integrates his views on consciousness and free will with his other great scientific interest, evolutionary theory. Book Review by Simon Blackburn. American Scientist (Volume 91, No. 4). "Scientists and philosophers need one another, he observes: Philosophers need to know the relevant scientific facts, and scientists need to know the history of philosophy. As Dennett says in commenting on Brockman's article, 'Scientists who think their up-to-date scientific knowledge renders them immune to the illusions that lured Aristotle and Hume and Kant and the others into . . . difficulties are in for a rude awakening.' Among the topics that show the need for interpretation are consciousness (with its curious habit of eluding science) and free will. As Leibniz remarked three centuries ago, if you could blow the brain up to the size of a mill and walk about inside, you would not find consciousness. Nor would you discover the spark of human agency."
>>> Philosophy
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