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AI in the news
March 2008
March 19, 2008: The Technology That Toppled Eliot Spitzer - Anti-money-laundering software scrutinizes bank customers' every move, no matter how small. By John Borland. Technology Review News. "If there is a lesson from former New York governor Eliot Spitzer's scandal-driven fall (aside from the most obvious one), it is this: banks are paying attention to even the smallest of your transactions. For this we can thank modern software, and post-9/11 U.S. government pressure to find evidence of money laundering and terrorist financing. Experts say that all major banks, and even most small ones, are running so-called anti-money-laundering software, which combs through as many as 50 million transactions a day looking for anything out of the ordinary. ... Most of the systems follow fairly simple rules, looking for anomalies that trigger heightened scrutiny. ... But banks, and law enforcement, are also looking for things that they can't predict and thus can't write rules for. ... FinCen [Financial Crimes Enforcement Network] spokesman Steve Hudek says that automated pattern-analysis software also runs on the Bank Security Act database, helping to spot patterns of activity or links between individuals that humans might miss. ... Technologists say that future software will be even better at spotting anomalies, analyzing customers' social networks, tapping into the vast databases of information held by companies such as LexisNexis and ChoicePoint, and using that outside information to help make judgments about customer transactions. This might be a privacy advocate's nightmare, but it helps keep banks safe from fraud and regulatory fines."
March 18, 2008: Sci-fi guru Arthur C. Clarke dies at 90. msnbc.com. "Arthur C. Clarke, a visionary science fiction writer who won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future, died Wednesday in his adopted home of Sri Lanka, an aide said. He was 90. ... His most famous novel, '2001: A Space Odyssey,' was the basis of the 1968 film of the same name, co-written and directed by Stanley Kubrick. The film and the book elevated the plot's mentally unbalanced computer, HAL 9000, into the pantheon of great fictional characters."
- Also see: Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke dies at 90 in Sri Lanka. The Associated Press via the International Herald Tribune (March 19, 2008). "The 1968 story '2001: A Space Odyssey' -- written simultaneously as a novel and screenplay with director Stanley Kubrick -- was a frightening prophesy of artificial intelligence run amok."
March 18, 2008: Unmanned flight. The Engineer Online. "Scientists at British Antarctic Survey (BAS) in collaboration with the Technical University of Braunschweig (TUBS), Germany have completed the first ever series of flights by autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in Antarctica. ... 'Apart from take-off and landing, when the UAVs are controlled by radio, they are completely autonomous, flying on their own according to a pre-programmed flight plan. Each flight lasts for 40 minutes, covering around 45km and taking 100 measurements a second,' said Dr Phil Anderson of BAS."
March 18, 2008: Turning to Avatars to Improve Service. Evan Haning. WTOP Radio. "Web sites for the U.S. Army and Alaska Airlines feature online avatars who answer questions in real time and provide accurate information. ... Their online faces -- and personalities -- were created by Next IT, a Spokane, Wash., firm that believes artificial intelligence can provide better around-the-clock service than people can. Because many people find that idea spooky, Next IT has given its avatars personalities and background stories."
March 18, 2008: Face of the future. By Maria Moscaritolo. The Advertiser | AdelaideNow.com. "An artificial 'thinking head', developed in part at Flinders University, will be on show in Beijing during the Olympic Games. The artificial intelligence computer program is in its first year of development, but by the end of the five-year project it is expected to read lips, recognise faces, give emotional responses, hold conversations and teach foreign languages. ... The University used the news to announce five new Bachelor of Engineering courses beginning next year. [Associate Professor David Powers, head of Flinders Uni School of Informatics and Engineering Thinking Head research team] said the technology had many potential uses, from a museum guide to a language teacher. ... When it is on show at the National Art Museum of China, psychologists will monitor the reaction of the public to see which version of the face - with varying degrees of expressiveness and realism - the public likes most."
March 18, 2008: Robot nation. By Pat Pilcher. Fairfax Media | press.co.nz. "With robots shifting out of the realm of sci-fi and into the mainstream, they are finally becoming the household helpmates we’ve always dreamed of. Here are a few of the best robotic helpers on the market, and some that will be around in the future."
March 17, 2008: Education Plus - Q&A. By Jayaprakash Gandhi. The Hindu. "[Q] I am studying Plus-Two (computer science). I would like to know about a career in games technology and the institutes available for study in the U.K. [A] ... In a games technology programme, you will study game design and development, programming games on the PC and XBox, games mathematics, console game development and artificial intelligence for games. ..."
March 14, 2008: Wave goodbye to the nine to five, and say hello to virtual enterprise - Executives predict exodus from traditional workplace to more home-working. By John Carvel. The Guardian. "Within a decade millions of workers will be at home juggling their careers with caring for children and older relatives, Britain's leading management institute forecast yesterday. ... In a list of scenarios drawn up by the Chartered Management Institute and launched at a seminar in London yesterday by Sir John Sunderland, chairman of Cadbury Schweppes, companies were warned to prepare for a range of more remote possibilities.... Brave new world: Surprise scenarios for the future - Businesses are urged to prepare for 16 'surprise scenarios' that could change their future. The report acknowledges these may not be the most accurate predictions of the world in 2018, but says businesses should be ready for possibilities including: ... A world run by robots: Robots with artificial intelligence will be put into management positions. They will not necessary have heads and arms. Software decision-making - already used in financial management - will increase dependence on systems. 'Regular updates on such developments and building up a knowledge base about the use and misuse of them may be an appropriate precaution,' the institute said."
March 14, 2008: Yahoo makes semantic search shift. BBC News. " Yahoo has announced its adoption of some of the key standards of the 'semantic web'. The technology is widely seen as the next step for the world wide web and it involves a much richer understanding of the masses of data placed online. The company said it would start to include some semantic web identifiers when indexing the web for Yahoo search. The move could mean a big boost for semantic web technologies which have struggled to win a big audience. ... Instead of returning a long list of links, a semantic web search engine would be able to understand what type of object, such as a person, was being sought and aggregate information around that."
March 13, 2008: With New Program, The Writing's On The Web. By Greg Bordonaro. Courant.com. "Artificial intelligence is invading the classrooms of the town's high school. But teachers don't need to be worried, school officials say -- they won't be replaced anytime soon. The town has received a $65,000 grant from the state Department of Education to start a computer-assisted writing program that will give 110 freshmen immediate feedback on writing assignments, said Erin McGurk, director of educational services. ... The Web-based writing software, known as Criterion, allows students to write their paper directly into an online word processor. The program evaluates a student's writing skills by providing instant feedback on organization, grammar and structure. It also provides a grade for each assignment submitted. ... The program also collects data from the entire class, to identify common mistakes. 'It gives a teacher the ability to see where students need to improve,' McGurk said. 'School districts that have used it have found that kids become more engaged with their writing.'"
March 13, 2008: The glasses that can find anything (except, of course, your missing glasses) - Now where did I leave my . . . ? By Leo Lewis. The Times (London). "'Where on earth did I leave my car keys?' Now a team of Japanese scientists claim to have come up with the answer. And the secretive artificial intelligence project codenamed Smart Goggle does not stop at elusive keys. With Yasuo Kuniyoshi’s invention balanced on your nose, nothing – be it the remote control, mobile phone or iPod – should ever go missing again. Simply tell the glasses what you are looking for and it will play into your eye a video of the last few seconds you saw that item. ... The hardware itself is not extraordinary: what has taken Professor Kuniyoshi several years to perfect is the computer algorithm that allows the goggles to know immediately what they are seeing. It is, he says, a problem that has always vexed the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence. But working in a team with Tatsuya Harada, one of Japan’s masters of the science of 'fuzzy logic', Mr Kuniyoshi believes he has cracked the problem."
March 13, 2008: The future's in the wink of an eye - Facial features are being mined to replace the keyboard and the mouse. By David Graham. TheStar.com (Toronto). "Put your hands down. In the future your face will do the work. In fact, if the latest generation of computer technology picks up any more steam, your arms, hands and fingers may go numb from lack of use. Breakthroughs in computerized facial expression and voice recognition technology are heralding a new era in communications that requires virtually no physical exertion whatsoever.... To add emotional nuance to the customarily cool computerized communications, researchers at the Department of Artificial Intelligence of the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid's School of Computing in conjunction with Madrid's Universidad Rey Juan Carlos are developing new facial expression technology, still in the prototype stage. The software is capable of processing 30 images per second to recognize a person's facial expressions in real time and categorize them as one of six prototype expressions...."
March 13, 2008: Brain Wave Will Descend on Banff. By Dean Bennett. CP via Edmonton Sun. "Get ready for the Rumble in the Rockies. About 300 computer-elite students from around the globe are coming to Banff next month in the 32nd annual Battle of the Brains -- a high-pressure, high-stakes clash of grey matter that is, quite simply, the industry's Cyber Super Bowl. 'This is a way to get access to the absolute best and brightest in the entire world,' said Doug Heintzman of computer giant IBM, which sponsors the competition, known formally as the Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest. ... 'It's more problem-solving than programming,' added Kevin Waugh, a 23-year-old computing grad student on the University of Alberta team. The teams are not just computer programmers. Some are engineers or mathematicians. Each is chosen for areas of expertise: grid series, deep math, deep physics, algorithms, programming, data structures, numerical computations, artificial intelligence, text processing or pattern recognition."
March 12, 2008: Real-life Transformers : Shape-changing robots could help save lives. By David Derbyshire. The Daily Mail. "It sounds like something straight from a children's comic. But British scientists will today take the first steps in an astonishing project to create the first real-life Transformers - the science fiction robots which can change shape at will. The £4.6million experiment will attempt to build swarms of tiny robots, each the size of a sugar cube, that move around on their own and connect together to form larger, intelligent machines. ... 'They could be used in medicine, in space exploration and in search and rescue missions,' said a spokesman for scientists at the University of the West of England in Bristol and the University of York. ... The Symbrion project, announced to mark National Science and Engineering Week, is funded by the EU. The robots will also be able to manage their own hardware and software and will be 'self-healing and selforganising', the researchers say. Professor Alan Winfield, of the University of the West of England, denied that they could pose a threat to humans. 'The robots have functionality on their own, but they can also combine together or adapt and change as the situation requires,' he said."
- Watch this video of the swarm in action: Engineering robot swarms. CNN.com (March 13, 2008). ITN's Nick Thatcher reports on European engineers working to create tiny robots that can join together to perform tasks.
- Also see: 'Sugar-cube' robots could team up and change shape. By Ian Sample. The Guardian (March 13, 2008). "Swarms of tiny robots that join forces to tackle the job at hand, and repair themselves when they are damaged, are being built by a team of British scientists. The motorised, sugar cube-sized robots are designed to communicate with one other, and will be able to assemble themselves into much larger machines to carry out specific tasks when required. Scientists at the University of the West of England in Bristol are experimenting with the swarms as part of a €10m (£7.5m) project called Symbrion, to build highly-adaptive machines that can transform themselves to suit very different tasks and environments. ... The scientists are developing computer software that will give each robot some basic instincts, such as the urge to find others and communicate with them."
March 12, 2008: Researchers Show Off Laser - Guided Robot. The Associated Press via The New York Times. "[U]nlike android movie stars, the El-E isn't designed to behave like a human. Rather, its focus is interacting with us. It simply grabs stuff you point at with a laser. 'The entire world becomes a point and click interface. Objects become buttons. And if you point at one, the robot comes to grab it,' said Charlie Kemp, the director of Georgia Tech's Center for Healthcare Robotics and the robot's designer. 'It creates a clickable world.' The robot, which was unveiled Wednesday at an Amsterdam conference, will be tested this summer in a real-world setting involving patients with a degenerative disease. Its creators -- from Georgia Tech and Emory universities -- won't disclose the robot's cost, but there's hope it could be cheaper than service animals such as dogs or monkeys. ... 'It will give these folks at least a level of independence,' said Dr. Jonathan Glass, director of the Emory ALS Center and a part of the team developing the robot. 'You don't have to feed it, and you can train it to do anything you want to do.'"
- Also see: An Assistant Who May Need the Occasional Battery. By Anne Eisenberg. The New York Times (March 16, 2008). "Point-and-click devices have long controlled computer screens. But soon they may also control some household robots that can trundle around living rooms, doing useful jobs. One robot in development at an Atlanta laboratory is commanded by humans with an ordinary laser pointer, the same kind used by lecturers presenting slide shows. Here, though, the pointer tells a robot what to fetch. ... [Professor Charlie Kemp] named his one-armed robot El-E (pronounced 'Ellie'), because, among other reasons, her lifting style reminded him of an elephant using its trunk. ... Andrew Y. Ng, an assistant professor in computer science at Stanford who is developing robot technology for people to use at home, said Professor Kemp’s use of the laser pointer was highly effective. 'It is simple, elegant and clever,' he said, 'one of those solutions that many of us wish we had thought of ourselves.' ... Another point-and-click household robot offers a two-way voice and video system that lets Mom and Dad visit with their children even when the parents are in a faraway hotel. ... The robot, called ConnectR and not yet on the market, is being tested by its manufacturer, iRobot, said Colin Angle, chief executive."
March 12, 2008: Bug-spotting radar saves aircraft from bird strikes. By Phil McKenna. NewScientist.com news."New radar software can quickly and accurately differentiate signals from birds and swarms of insects, a problem that stumped previous efforts to automatically tell the two apart. The findings could aid air-traffic controllers and help biologists better track avian migrations. ... [Serge Zaugg of the Swiss Ornithological Institute in Sempach] and colleagues at research institutions in France, the Netherlands and Germany combined data-mining techniques, statistical analysis, and artificial intelligence to create a computer algorithm that learned to spot birds nearly every time. The team fed the program thousands of bird and insect radar signals that had already been identified by human experts and verified with visual observations. ... After the training, the program can identify signals it has never seen before with 93 to 98% accuracy."
March 12, 2008: Bank transactions put focus on Spitzer. By Josh Meyer and Erika Hayasaki. Los Angeles Times. "The investigation that allegedly caught New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer paying a call girl for sex was triggered by an elaborate financial surveillance system that was expanded after the Sept. 11 attacks to snare terrorists, drug traffickers, international organized-crime figures and white-collar criminals, federal law enforcement officials said Tuesday."
- Podcasts:
- Banks Scrutinize Even Routine Transactions. By Adam Davidson. NPR's Morning Edition (March 12, 2008). "Federal investigators have been looking into money transfers made by New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who's been tied to a prostitution ring. Bank officials noticed frequent cash transfers from several accounts and it triggered a money laundering investigation. Banks use software to spot patterns in routine transactions. "
- IT's role in the Eliot Spitzer mess. By CNET News.com Staff (March 11, 2008). "The prostitution scandal involving New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer is big news, but the lesser-known tale is how an information system--the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network--played a role in his downfall. ZDNet Editor in Chief Larry Dignan [see his blog below] talks with News.com's Leslie Katz."
- Also see:
- Eliot Spitzer’s software nightmare. Posted by Michael Krigsman to the IT Project Failures blog at ZDNet.com (March11, 2008). "New York State’s governor, Eliot Spitzer, got caught in a prostitution probe largely because of financial reporting rules emphasized in the post 9/11 era. Let’s take a brief look at the somewhat-arcane subject of money laundering and the technology designed to stop it."
- How an information system helped nail Eliot Spitzer and a prostitution ring. Posted by Larry Dignan to the Between the Lines blog at ZDNet.com (March 11, 2008). "But what really snared Spitzer was a money laundering investigation that was flagged by suspicious activity reports (SARs) that banks have to file with the Treasury to surface everything from money laundering to terrorist activity. ... Here’s what’s known about the FinCEN system [link to BNET resources], which is enabled by the Bank Secrecy Act and to a lesser extent the Patriot Act."
March 11, 2008: Robot Coach Helps You Lose Weight. Ivanhoe News via redOrbit. "When it comes to losing weight, most everyone can use a helping hand. But imagine if you had a weight-loss coach around to help you 24-7? Now -- imagine if that coach was a robot!"
- Also see the related article from Ivanhoe Newswire: Diet by Robot (reported March 25, 2008). "'The robot is designed to always be supportive and helpful. It's not going to chastise me if I haven't done well,' says Cory Kidd, Ph.D., from MIT, inventor of the diet robot and Founder and CEO of Intuitive Automata, Inc. in Boston."
March 11, 2008: BBN is awarded $13 million for language project. By Chris Reidy. The Boston Globe | Boston.com. "GALE's [Global Autonomous Language Exploitation] goal, BBN said, is to develop and apply software technologies to transcribe speech and translate both speech and text in multiple languages with better than 90 percent accuracy."
March 11, 2008: Embedded systems get smarter, tougher. ICT Results. " A European research team has achieved the twin, and apparently contradictory goals, of making embedded systems both smarter and tougher. The RobuCab, an autonomous vehicle about the size of a golf cart, trundles at 10kph along a quiet French street. Alarmingly, it looks like it is driving itself. Surprisingly, that is more or less true. ... Thus far, embedded systems were programmed using very simple instructions but, while these are powerful, hundreds of simple instructions are required to drive the more complex tasks of emerging systems. More instructions mean an exponential growth in the risk of error. ... As they become more sophisticated, they can do more complex tasks but the risk of failure grows. So Embounded began with two apparently paradoxical goals: establish precise controls to enhance safety and create a more sophisticated programming language at a higher level of abstraction. One that tells the system what goal to achieve, but does not tell it precisely how to do it. ... Embounded tackled this by first developing a new, more sophisticated programming language for embedded systems, called Hume."
March 11, 2008: Local Area Network Droids - IRobot is developing communications robots for the military. By Duncan Graham-Rowe. Technology Review. "Expendable robots that can be tossed into a building or over a wall, much like a hand grenade, are being developed for the U.S. military by iRobot, the maker of the popular Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner. But rather than exploding, these new bots will be used to set up communications networks to assist soldiers in urban battlefields. The robots, called LANdroids, are being funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as part of a $3 million three-year research program. The aim is to create expendable robots that will be able to overcome the communications problems that soldiers currently face in built-up areas. ... The LANdroids will be designed to overcome this problem using an autonomous positioning system that will help the robots adapt the communications networks as needed."
March 10, 2008: Educating the computer - Lockheed pushes the edge of machine learning for combat-ready systems. By Doug Beizer. Washington Technology (Vol. 23 No. 04). "Lockheed Martin Corp. is working on the Generalized Integrated Learning Architecture (GILA), which is a type of machine learning, said Ken Whitebread, the company’s program manager. DARPA’s goal for GILA is to create new computer-learning capabilities that let systems learn complex workflows by observing warfighters performing their regular duties. ... The learning technology should make it possible to create many types of military decision-support systems that learn by watching experts rather than relying on hand-encoded knowledge, which is expensive and error-prone. ... 'This is fairly new ground in the sense that it’s an approach to using machine learning that hasn’t really been pursued to a great degree by researchers,' [Ken] Whitebread said. ... 'The point is to be able to get the system to learn the task on its own without having to do extremely expensive development of the program.'"
March 10, 2008: Fly neurons fire much faster than thought. United Press International (UPI).
"U.S. scientists have discovered neurons in the visual system of the common blowfly generate electrical impulses at a rate 10 times greater than thought. ... The research is expected to advance neuromimetic approaches to the development of artificial intelligence, in which computers are designed to mimic biological processes occurring in the brain."
March 10, 2008: Mind over body: new hope for quadriplegics. ICT Results. "Intelligence meets artificial intelligence: A person using the MAIA BCI [brain-computer interface] to control a wheelchair, for example, only has to think about going straight ahead or turning left and the chair follows their command. However, they do not have to worry about colliding with obstacles – even moving ones such as people – because the wheelchair itself monitors and reacts to its environment. 'A user can tell the chair to go straight ahead, but it will not just randomly roll in that direction if there is a wall or a flight of stairs in the way,' [MAIA project coordinator José del R. Millá] notes. 'What we have done is combine the intelligence of the person with the artificial intelligence of the device.' In a sense, the artificial intelligence embedded in the chair acts much like a human’s subconscious. People, for example, do not consciously send commands to every muscle in each leg in order to walk and do not think where to step to avoid an obstacle – they do it subconsciously. Similarly, a wheelchair-bound user of the MAIA BCI simply has to send the signal to go in a certain direction and the chair figures out how to get there."
March 10, 2008: Bringing Second Life To Life: Researchers Create Character With Reasoning Abilities of a Child. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute press release. "Today’s video games and online virtual worlds give users the freedom to create characters in the digital domain that look and seem more human than ever before. But despite having your hair, your height, and your hazel eyes, your avatar is still little more than just a pretty face. A group of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is working to change that by engineering characters with the capacity to have beliefs and to reason about the beliefs of others. The characters will be able to predict and manipulate the behavior of even human players, with whom they will directly interact in the real, physical world, according to the team. At a recent conference on artificial intelligence, the researchers unveiled the 'embodiment' of their success to date: ‘Eddie,’ a 4-year-old child in Second Life who can reason about his own beliefs to draw conclusions in a manner that matches human children his age. … Such characters can only be engineered by coupling logic-based artificial intelligence and computational cognitive modeling techniques with the processing power of a supercomputer, according to [Selmer Bringsjord, head of Rensselaer’s Cognitive Science Department and leader of the research project]."
- Watch the embedded video, False Belief in Second Life, and these additional videos from the Rensselaer Artificial Intelligence and Reasoning (RAIR) Laboratory: False Belief Demo in Second Life (automated mature subject). Conversation demo with background knowledge, and False Belief Demo in Second Life (non-automated mature subject).
- Also see:
- Child-like intelligence created in Second Life. By Liz Tay. iTnews Australia (March 14, 2008). "Four-year-old Eddie might behave like a typical young boy. Outside of the Second Life virtual world, however, he is anything but. The child is a product of logic-based artificial intelligence and complex modelling techniques, and operates on what has been said to be the most powerful university-based supercomputing system in the world. "
- AI researchers think 'Rascals' can pass Turing test. By R. Colin Johnson. EE Times (March 12, 2008). "Passing the Turing test--the holy grail of artificial intelligence (AI), whereby a human conversing with a computer can't tell it's not human--may now be possible in a limited way with the world's fastest supercomputer (IBM's Blue Gene), according to AI experts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. RPI is aiming to pass AI's final exam this fall, by pairing the most powerful university-based supercomputing system in the world with a new multimedia group designing a holodeck, a la Star Trek."
- Virtual child passes mental milestone. By Celeste Biever. NewScientist.com news (March 11, 2008). "A virtual child controlled by artificially intelligent software has passed a cognitive test regarded as a major milestone in human development. It could lead to smarter computer games able to predict human players' state of mind. Children typically master the "false belief test" at age 4 or 5. It tests their ability to realise that the beliefs of others can differ from their own, and from reality. The creators of the new character -- which they called Eddie -- say passing the test shows it can reason about the beliefs of others, using a rudimentary 'theory of mind'. 'Today's [video game] characters have no genuine autonomy or mental picture of who you are,' researcher Selmer Bringsjord of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, told New Scientist. ... His team are now attempting to make characters that can lie, which also requires reasoning about other people's mental states."
March 9, 2008: Trumpets vs. Crumpets in a Robot Duel. By Dennis Normile. The New York Times. "Developing a robot to greet corporate visitors may seem a frivolous use of Honda’s busy research teams, but Asimo is actually part of a larger program the company has started to build practical robots as programmable assistants. Honda, like other automakers, has plenty of experience in the field: the industry is one of the world’s biggest users of robots. Automotive News, a trade publication, recently reported that North American carmakers and suppliers bought more than 10,000 robots, worth an estimated $753 million, in 2007. ... Among automakers, Honda and Toyota have been the most ambitious in making a business of building humanoid helpers. The companies said that developing humanoid robots required advances in mechanics, sensors, computer chips and artificial intelligence, all of which will advance automotive technology as well. But their different corporate cultures have led to differing approaches to humanoids. Pragmatic Toyota envisions humanoid robots at work in hospitals and aiding the elderly. ... A few humanoid technologies are creeping into cars and manufacturing. Honda’s automotive engineers borrowed visualization technology from the humanoid program for the company’s Lane Keeping Assist System, a safety system in which a camera monitors lane lines, allowing steering assistance to keep the car centered."
March 9, 2008: Robots that love too much: the perils of the silicone spouse. Opinion by Graham Phillips. The Age. "Will we soon be marrying robots? Artificial intelligence researcher David Levy has just published a book claiming human-robot sex will be a happening thing in the next few decades. … It will be relatively easy to form strong attachments to machines, because the human mind is quite easily fooled. It loves to anthropomorphise: to ascribe human attributes to other creatures -- even objects. For example, researchers in San Diego recently put a small humanoid robot in with a toddler playgroup for several months. The bot knew each child because it was programmed with face and voice recognition, and it giggled when tickled. The children ended up treating it as a fellow toddler. When it lay down because its batteries were flat, the kids even covered it with a blanket. … The next question, then, is whether there is anything wrong with loving a machine. Even today there are people who form deep attachments to their pets and use them as substitutes for friends or even children. Few consider that unethical. But a sophisticated robot will be far more alluring."
March 7, 2008: Rookie robot joins shuttle crew. By Traci Watson. USA Today. "Space shuttle Endeavour is scheduled to blast off Tuesday carrying seven astronauts and an eighth passenger that is in some ways superior: a robot that will take the astronauts' place for many jobs in outer space. Dextre, as the robot is known, has two arms, each with seven joints that allow the limb to twist and bend more than a human arm. Each of its two hands has pincers to grip objects and built-in socket wrenches to drive bolts. Dextre will be able to handle items as small as a phone book and as big as a phone booth. Never before has such a sophisticated robot flown in space. … ‘He's almost like Spot the Pet Robot,’ says Endeavour astronaut Rick Linnehan, who will help put Dextre together. ‘He's going to go out there and get lots of important work done for you so you don't have to worry about it.’"
- Also see:
- Dextre the robot ready for space adventure. CNET News.com Photo Gallery (March 10, 2008).
- A Space Robot With Arms to Make R2D2 Jealous. By Warren E. Leary. The New York Times (March 11, 2008). "The International Space Station is finally getting its robot. Anyone who has followed science fiction knows that a good long-duration spacecraft has to have a robot. The space shuttle Endeavour takes off for the space station on Tuesday with a large, Canadian-made robot named Dextre in its cargo bay. ... Assembled, Dextre resembles a human form with hips, torso, shoulders, upper body and two long, seemingly ape-like arms. The 3,400-pound robot stands 12 feet tall, and each of its multijointed arms can extend 11 feet."
- Astronauts Will Assemble Robot in Space. By Marcia Dunn. The Associated Press via Wired News (March 9, 2008). "Astronauts bound for orbit this week will dabble in science fiction, assembling a ‘monstrous’ two-armed space station robot that will rise like Frankenstein from its transport bed. … Dextre - which cost more than $200 million - was created by the same Canadian team that built the space shuttle and space station robot arms. Equipped with a tool holster, Dextre is designed to assist spacewalking astronauts and, ultimately, to take over some of their dangerous outdoor work."
- Space Station Ready for New Robot, Room. By Dave Mosher. Space.com (March 7, 2008). "Canada's two-armed robot, named Dextre for its nimble capabilities, should give astronauts a break from basic repair and maintenance tasks outside of the growing space station. … Each of Dextre's seven-jointed arms will possess a ‘hand’ -- an orbital replacement unit -- backed by a sensor sensitive to less than 1 pound (0.5 kilogram) of force, or about the weight of a small water bottle. The device will use a suite of tools to replace burned-out components outside the ISS, as well as assist spacewalkers with their duties."
- And watch this Associated Press video, available from Yahoo!: Astronauts will assemble robot in space (March 10, 2008).
March 7, 2008: IT pioneer Joseph Weizenbaum dies. By Christoph Hammerschmidt. EE Times. "Computer pioneer and philosopher Joseph Weizenbaum (85) has died in Berlin. The scientist and MIT professor emeritus was known for his critical position towards the impact of information technology to society. … Among his major achievements were studies over the SLIP programming language and research on basic software technologies which today are in widespread use such as garbage collection algorithms. One of his most influential works was the development of the natural language processor ELIZA which is said to be one of the early breakthroughs for Artificial Intelligence. In this context, he developed a program simulating a conversation between a physician and a patient. … He co-founded the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility group."
- Also see:
- Joseph Weizenbaum, 85, MIT professor, humanist. By J.M. Lawrence. The Boston Globe | Boston.com (March 16, 2008). "One of his four daughters, Sharon Weizenbaum, recalled playing with the Eliza program in her father's study at her childhood home in Concord. 'Eliza was something that was fun to fool around with,' she said. 'It was like a game but we didn't know these amazing things were happening.. ... He programmed Eliza to respond to users as a psychotherapist might, reframing statements as questions, and to otherwise use a person's responses to craft replies. When users began to confide in Eliza, now known as a simple chatterbot program, Mr. Weizenbaum was shocked and began questioning the explosion of technology as a solution to human problems. By 1976, he authored 'Computer Power and Human Reason,' spurring debate about human relationships with machines and separating himself from promoters of artificial intelligence. ... Mr. Weizenbaum advised outlawing 'all projects that propose to substitute a computer system for a human function that involves interpersonal respect, understanding, and love.' ... According to his daughter Miriam Weizenbaum of Providence, Mr. Weizenbaum embraced the internet and other consumer technology in his later years, but became increasingly outspoken about the use of technology in war to create longer distances between humans and the consequences of their decisions."
- Joseph Weizenbaum, Famed Programmer, Is Dead at 85. By John Markoff. The New York Times (March 13, 2008). "Joseph Weizenbaum, whose famed conversational computer program, Eliza, foreshadowed the potential of artificial intelligence, but who grew skeptical about the potential for technology to improve the human condition, died on March 5 in Gröben, Germany. ... Eliza, written while Mr. Weizenbaum was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1964 and 1965 and named after Eliza Doolittle, who learned proper English in 'Pygmalion' and 'My Fair Lady,' was a groundbreaking experiment in the study of human interaction with machines. ... The seductiveness of the conversations alarmed Mr. Weizenbaum, who came to believe that an obsessive reliance on technology was indicative of a moral failing in society, an observation rooted in his experiences as a child growing up in Nazi Germany. ... Mr. Weizenbaum also believed that there were transcendent qualities in the human experience that could not be duplicated in interactions with machines. He described it in his book as 'the wordless glance that a father and mother share over the bed of their sleeping child,' Ms. [Sherry] Turkle said. The book drove a wedge between Mr. Weizenbaum and other members of the artificial intelligence research community."
- Joseph Weizenbaum, professor emeritus of computer science, 85. MIT News (March 10, 2008). "Joseph Weizenbaum, professor emeritus of computer science at MIT who grew skeptical of artificial intelligence after creating a program that made many users feel like they were speaking with an empathic psychologist, died March 5 in Berlin. ... In 1955, Weizenbaum became a member of the General Electric team that designed and built the first computer system dedicated to banking operations. Among his early technical contributions were the list processing system SLIP and the natural language understanding program ELIZA, which was an important development in artificial intelligence and cemented his role in the folklore of computer science research. ELIZA was perhaps the first instance of what today is known as a chatterbot program."
March 7, 2008: 3-D Modeling Advance - A single photo can be reconstructed into a 3-D scene with Make3D. By Brittany Sauser. Technology Review News. "Researchers at Stanford University have developed a Web service called Make3D that lets users turn a single two-dimensional image of an outdoor scene into an immersive 3-D model. This gives users the ability to easily create a more realistic visual representation of a photo--one that lets viewers fly around the scene. To convert the still images into 3-D visualizations, Andrew Ng, an assistant professor of computer science, and Ashutosh Saxena, a doctoral student in computer science, developed a machine-learning algorithm that associates visual cues, such as color, texture, and size, with certain depth values based on what they have learned from studying two-dimensional photos paired with 3-D data. … Larry Davis, a professor and chair of the computer-science department at the University of Maryland, in College Park, says that turning a single image into a 3-D model has been a hard and mathematically complicated problem in computer vision, and that even though Make3D gets things wrong, it often produces remarkable results. … Make3D is not the first site to extract a 3-D model from a single image. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) launched Fotowoosh in May 2007. … CMU's [Alexei] Efros says that the work provides a new perspective on the computer-vision problem and will hopefully result in a deeper understanding of how human vision functions."
- Three related videos (a 3-D model of a building in Amsterdam, a 3-D model of the Trevi Fountain in Rome, and a 3-D model of the Pyramids, all created by Make3D) can be accessed via a sidebar menu.
March 6, 2008: From palmtops to brain cells - Jeff Hawkins, best known as the creator of the Palm Pilot, hopes his new theory will lead to more brain-like computer software. The Economist Technology Quarterly. "Many of the students and professors are carrying mobile devices descended from [Jeff Hawkins’] most famous creations: the Palm Pilot, a pioneering hand-held computer, and the Handspring Visor, an early smart-phone. A few people are holding copies of his book, ‘On Intelligence’, which outlines his new theory about the brain. Known for the devices that fit into people's hands, Mr Hawkins is now concentrating on the things that go on inside their heads. … The title of his speech –- ‘Hierarchical temporary memory: how a new theory of the neocortex may lead to truly intelligent machines’ -- encapsulates his ambition. … His aim is to get computers to work in a more brain-like way. … Mr Hawkins has now turned his model into software, in the form of the Numenta Platform for Intelligent Computing, a free software toolkit. He hopes it will form the basis for software that works in a more brain-like way, in fields including robotics, computer vision, data analysis and video games. Eight corporate partners are testing the platform; one of them, Electronic Arts, a big video-games publisher, has staged a competition to encourage game programmers to try it out, in the hope of producing more realistic in-game characters."
- Jeff Hawkins was one of the invited speakers at AAAI-05, The Twentieth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
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March 6, 2008: Robo-pet - Pleo's a toy. But, beware: He has a brain. This is artificial intelligence made commercial. e+ spoke to a few people who couldn't resist the urge to adopt a Pleo. Here's what they have to say. By Mubashera Asgher. Gulf News. "Brought into the UAE two months ago by Rizwan Ashraf, CEO of i robo, Pleo has taken the market by storm. Families and single people all over the country are eager to take a Pleo home. And here's why. Ali Al Qamzi, a UAE national, bought his Pleo about a month ago. Rex, as Ali's children named him, is the Al Qamzi family's pride and joy. …Soon, Rex became more than just the family pet. ‘It's a great learning curve for the children,’ says Ali. ‘They've been on about having a pet for ages, but they're allergic to cats. Now with Rex, everyone's happy.’ … T. Yorke, a British citizen, loves his Pleo for a different reason. 'For me, experimentation is key,’ says Yorke. ‘I bought my Pleo because I'm curious about gadgets. To me, he's a case study, albeit a cute one. As a concept, Pleo's pretty cool, but I'd say it's still the early stage of artificial intelligence. Like when the first mobile phone came out in the market. I think Pleo has the potential to go a long way.’"
- Also watch this video: Dinosaur wows the techies at CeBIT. Reuters (March 5, 2008), "Pleo the robotic dinosaur proves to be a star attraction at the CeBIT annual computer expo in Germany. Pleo was designed by its creators, the Californian company Ugobe, to emulate the appearance and behaviour of a week-old infant Camerasaurus. It's being marketed as a household pet. Helen Long reports."
March 5, 2008: Research company gets keys to library + an embedded video clip featuring Kenneth M. Ford, director of the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition.
By Rick Cundiff. OCALA.com | The Ocala Star-Banner. "The former downtown library is about to go high-tech as a new branch of a Pensacola-based research lab. The Ocala City Council voted 4-1 with no discussion Tuesday to approve the sale of the former library building and land at 15 S.E. Osceola Ave. to the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. … IHMC conducts advanced research on artificial intelligence, robotics and other high-tech projects, seeking ways in which the hardware and software can adapt to human needs. Its clients include the U.S. Defense Department, NASA, Lockheed Martin, Honda, Sun Microsystems and IBM, among others. [IHMC director Ken] Ford presented examples of IHMC's work at the EDC meeting, showing PowerPoint slides of the organization's work on advanced robotics, including a powered artificial leg, a proposed new lunar vehicle for NASA and robots capable of crawling over uneven or rocky ground for military purposes. IHMC is affiliated with four universities: the University of West Florida, Florida Atlantic University, the University of Central Florida and the Florida Institute of Technology. The institute plays a major role in Pensacola's cultural and educational life, offering science programs for students and a lecture series and other programs for the community. … IHMC will begin recruiting researchers for the Ocala expansion immediately, Ford said, noting it can sometimes take three to five years to recruit people from other research organizations."
- Also see this editorial: Much more than science. OCALA.com | The Ocala Star-Banner (March 6, 2008). "We suspect most Marion Countians are taking just such a wait-and see attitude toward the much ballyhooed arrival of the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition in Ocala. After all, the super high-tech robotics research outfit will create only a few dozen jobs at first, and they will be for highly specialized researchers with academic pedigrees. But make no mistake, landing IHMC is a coup of immeasurable proportions for Ocala. … Ford has surrounded himself with an impressive line-up of scientific talent. How impressive? Well, the list is long, but suffice it to say Florida is home to five fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, and all five are employed at IHMC. … But IHMC isn't just about science. Don't expect this bunch to be reclusive intellectuals who are aloof from the community. Ford told EDC members that besides undertaking some of the world's most cutting-edge research in 'rethinking the relationship between humans and machines,' IHMC wants to be part of the community through education and outreach -- especially by sharing their scientific know-how with children and schools -- and economic development. … Welcome to Ocala, Dr. Ford and IHMC. We can't wait to see what you do -- in the laboratory and out."
March 5, 2008: Mind-reading with a brain scan. By Kerri Smith. Nature News. "Scientists have developed a way of ‘decoding’ someone’s brain activity to determine what they are looking at. ‘The problem is analogous to the classic "pick a card, any card" magic trick,’ says Jack Gallant, a neuroscientist at the University of California in Berkeley, who led the study. But while a magician uses a ploy to pretend to ‘read the mind’ of the subject staring at a card, now researchers can do it for real using brain-scanning instruments. ‘When the deck of cards, or photographs, has about 120 images, we can do better than 90% correct,’ says Gallant."
- Listen to this episode of Nature Podcast (March 6, 2008): "A 'doomsday' seed bank in Svalbard, the last pieces of the CERN jigsaw puzzle, a new method for brain-reading and Creationism in Texas."
- Also see:
- "Brain Reading" Device Can Predict What People See. By Ker Than. National Geographic News (March 5, 2008). "A new computer program can match brain activity with visual images and even predict what people are seeing, a study has shown. … The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure activity in the visual cortices of participants' brains as they looked at photographs of animals, food, people, and other common objects.The fMRI technique is a relatively new way to measure changes in the brain's blood oxygen levels, which have strong links to neural activity. The collected data were used to ‘teach’ a computer program to associate certain blood flow patterns with particular kinds of images. Participants were then asked to look at a second set of images they had never encountered before. The model was programmed to take what it had learned from the previous pairings and figure out what was being shown in the new set of images."
- Mind Reading with Functional MRI - Scientists use brain imaging to predict what someone is looking at. By Emily Singer. Technology Review News (March 5, 2008). "[Jack] Gallant and his team plan to use this technology to better understand how the visual system works by building computational models of various theories and then testing their ability to interpret brain scans."
- Mind-reading machine knows what the eye can see. By James Urquhart. NewScientist.com news (March 5, 2008).
- And watch this video, from our AI Video collection, about other research being done in this field.
March 5, 2008: SENIOR project initiates ethical debate on ICT for the elderly. CORDIS News. "Dubbed Assistive Technologies (AT), these technologies aim to improve the day-to-day activities of the elderly, as well as people with disabilities, to supplement their loss of independence. However, while they hold great promise on the one hand, these technologies can also run the risk of further isolating the these population groups. ‘Technology can alleviate the burden of dependency by allowing people to live autonomously at home or in an assisted environment,’ Professor [Emilio] Mordini told CORDIS News. ‘Yet technology can also seriously threaten people's autonomy and dignity,’ he added. For these reasons the project will aim to provide a systematic assessment of the social, ethical and privacy issues involved in ICT and ageing. … Surveillance technology is just one area which is likely to undergo rigorous assessment by the project consortium."
March 5, 2008: New Science Ministry Will Focus on Fundamental Study. By Cho Jin-seo. The Korea Times. "The government should pay more attention to fundamental science research rather than spending money on already prospering applied science and technologies, said the new minister of education and science. … [Kim Doh-yeon] also said that Koreans should know that science can determine the future of a country. … The SERI [Samsung Economic Research Institute] report asked the government to focus on six fundamental science fields, while leaving the IT and other profitable sectors to the private sector. The six fields are smart logistics and energy infrastructure; bionomics and drugs; renewable energies; unmanned military equipment; nanotechnology; and artificial intelligence."
March 5, 2008: Supersmart machines have some sort of future. By Daniel Connolly. Commercial Appeal. "Dreams of godlike machines were in the air at the Artificial General Intelligence conference at the University of Memphis this week. … Their goal, as Ben Goertzel explained it, was to move the study of artificial intelligence away from building computers that excel at narrow tasks, like playing chess, toward building machines that can think for themselves much as people do. … The seminar featured 2 1/2 days of abstract and technical lectures, but finished with a session on the ethical and social implications of trying to create superintelligent machines."
- Watch the promotional video for The First Conference on Artificial General Intelligence, FedEx Institute of Technology, University of Memphis. In cooperation with AAAI, March 1-3, 2008.
March 5, 2008: Digital dogs. By Cho Hyun-wook. JoongAng Daily. "Dogs have lived among humans for millennia. … Nowadays they play a big role as pets, because as a friend and family member dogs show unswerving loyalty and love. Nonetheless, a challenger to the dog has suddenly surfaced: robots. Research has proven that in relieving the loneliness of old people, real dogs and robot dogs are nearly equally effective. These findings by researchers at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri were published in the latest Journal of the American Medical Directors Association. … AIBO is the first robotic dog that emulates a real dog¡¯s behavior. Sony began to sell it in 1999 at $2,000 apiece, recording 11,000 units in total sales. The company stopped producing it in 2006. But there are rumors that a new model with the ability to identify its owner will be on the market soon If artificial intelligence continues to develop at this rate, robot dogs will be able to do the same things as real dogs. Further, there will no misunderstandings, hypocrisy or betrayals, only loyalty. Still, if you can buy these qualities any time you want, then it can’t be the real thing."
- Also see: Robotic Dog Proves A Good Companion. Sky News (March 4, 2007). "A robotic dog has proved just as effective as a real animal in relieving loneliness in elderly people. Researchers in America introduced robotic dog Aibo and a lovable live pooch to residents at a St Louis nursing home - and each turned out to be as popular as the other. The study by Saint Louis University found the real dog, named Sparky, and the robotic hound, Aibo, were an equal match as man's best friend. The research builds on previous studies which showed that frequent dog visits decreased the loneliness of nursing home residents."
March 4, 2008: World-wise web? By Richard Waters. Financial Times | FT.com. "Imagine, for instance, being able to ask a computer, ‘Where should I go on holiday?’ and receiving an answer that is as suitable as anything you could have come up with yourself. That level of computer-generated reasoning is on the horizon, says Nova Spivack, one of the entrepreneurs involved. It may still take 15 years or more to be fully realised, but between now and then lies a series of breakthroughs that will revolutionise the way we draw information from the web, he adds. This technology draws its inspiration, and some of its techniques, from a field that has provided more than its fair share of disappointments over the years: artificial intelligence (AI). … The basic building block for this new technology movement is something known as the ‘semantic web’. This has become one of the most controversial, and misused, terms in the internet industry, conjuring up as it does a vague promise that meaning will somehow become part of the medium. … [T]he semantic web depends on a set of ‘ontologies’, or dictionaries that help to create common definitions that can be universally applied. These may oversimplify the great complexities of meaning, but they are designed to establish a basic common level of understanding about language to allow machines to do their work. … To create those common ways of looking at the world, however, means crossing some deep political, philosophical and cultural divides. … Meanwhile, technologies first developed for use in AI are being brought to bear. Chief among these is natural language processing, or teaching software to discern the meaning in a piece of text. … Further in the future, adding a degree of reasoning to the software may enable it to filter and select information. … This fuller version of artificial intelligence is still over the horizon but the path towards it is 'a continuum', says Mr [Danny] Hillis."
March 4, 2008: Guibas Receives ACM/AAAI Award for Algorithm Development - Ground-breaking research shaped the Computational Geometry field. Dr. Dobb’s Portal. "The ACM has named Leonidas John Guibas as the recipient of the 2007 ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award for his pioneering contributions in applying algorithms to a wide range of computer science disciplines. For 25 years, Guibas, professor of computer science and courtesy professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University, has been engaged in research on interactions with the physical world that have advanced the field of computational geometry and related areas. … The award, named for Allen Newell, a pioneer in artificial intelligence, is given to an individual selected for career contributions that have breadth within computer science, or that bridge computer science and other disciplines. The award is endowed by individual contributions and is jointly sponsored by ACM and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). Computational geometry emerged from the field of algorithms design and analysis in the late 1970s. Through the contributions of Guibas, who developed efficient algorithms for geometric problems motivated by sensing, modeling, reasoning, rendering, and acting on the physical world, computational geometry has grown into a recognized discipline with its own journals, conferences, and a large community of active researchers. … Guibas has been called the Miles Davis of computational geometry for his artistry and energy in applying concepts that transcend individual computer applications."
March 4, 2008: Party like it's 1969. By Graeme Philipson. The Sydney Morning Herald. "I nominate 1969 as the year the computer industry began. It's astonishing just how much happened that year. Much of it was not appreciated at the time, but with the benefit of nearly 40 years of hindsight we can view 1969 as the formative year of modern computing. … It was in 1969 that Xerox established its famous Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC), where many important advances in computing technology were subsequently developed, such as the Ethernet networking standard, and the graphical user interface (i.e. mice and windows). It was also a big year for the nascent science of robotics. Across the road from PARC, at the Stanford Research Centre, 1969 saw the development of Shakey, the first mobile robot with vision. In 1969 Alan Kay, a graduate student at the University of Utah, published his PhD thesis on the Dynabook, a ‘personal information system’ the size of a small book that would provide access to external data and provide users with a range of personal productivity tools."
March 4, 2008: Japan Looks to a Robot Future. By Hiroko Tabuchi. The Associated Press via Time. "Robots are already taken for granted in Japanese factories, so much so that they are sometimes welcomed on their first day at work with Shinto religious ceremonies. Robots make sushi. Robots plant rice and tend paddies.
There are robots serving as receptionists, vacuuming office corridors, spoon-feeding the elderly. They serve tea, greet company guests and chatter away at public technology displays. Now startups are marching out robotic home helpers.They aren't all humanoid. The Paro is a furry robot seal fitted with sensors beneath its fur and whiskers, designed to comfort the lonely, opening and closing its eyes and moving its flippers. For Japan, the robotics revolution is an imperative. With more than a fifth of the population 65 or older, the country is banking on robots to replenish the work force and care for the elderly. In the past several years, the government has funded a plethora of robotics-related efforts, including some $42 million for the first phase of a humanoid robotics project, and $10 million a year between 2006 and 2010 to develop key robot technologies.
The government estimates the industry could surge from about $5.2 billion in 2006 to $26 billion in 2010 and nearly $70 billion by 2025."
March 4, 2008: Some Observations on Mind Map and Ontology Building Tools for Knowledge Management. By Biplab K. Sarker, Peter Wallace and Will Gill. Ubiquity (Volume 9, Issue 9). "Ontology is found to be useful and efficient as a basis to capture the knowledge, model it in a structured way and disseminate it for further processing from various information sources. In this paper, we present a brief description on the role of ontology in e-learning and review the ontology building tools."
March 4, 2008: Tech Weekly - Online Safety and Artificially Intelligent Search (podcast). By Aleks Krotoski . guardian.co.uk. "Safe web surfing and a web search that means an end to inappropriate results."
- Visit True Knowledge, "an internet search company based in Cambridge, England. Our unique technology represents general knowledge in a form that computers can understand and process."
March 4, 2008: A Virtual Travel Agent With All the Answers. By Joe Sharkey. The New York Times. "I hate being addressed by machines. … So I was skeptical when I got a news release informing me that Alaska Airlines and its subsidiary, Horizon Air, had introduced on the Alaskaair.com Web site a ‘virtual assistant named Jenn.’ Jenn, it said, responds orally to typed questions, ‘asks follow-up questions when needed’ and also provides a written response and displays the site’s relevant page. Jenn also has a personality, it said, and ‘answers many personal questions. Jenn is not annoying. She is depicted on the Web site as a young brunette with a nice smile. Her voice has proper inflections. Type in a question, and she replies intelligently…. Jenn was designed by a technology company in Spokane, Wash., the Next IT Corporation (www.NextIT.com), which has a goal of simplifying interaction between people and computers, using natural-language communications to retrieve information and even ask follow-up questions to clarify intent. While the Next IT voice technology depends on typed questions to elicit oral responses, the field is evolving. In a recent speech at Carnegie Mellon University, Bill Gates said that Microsoft was committed to developing more sophisticated methods that used two-way speech technology to improve the give and take between users and databases. … Jenn learns from experience and interaction. ‘This technology is trained, but it gets smarter over time,’ Mr. [Fred] Brown said."
March 4, 2008: Children take part in robot wars. BBC News. "More than 100 primary school children are to take part in a robot building competition in Fife. … Science skills to help pupils with the event have already been taught in a touring ‘Robot Roadshow’ in schools."
- Also see: Teen brains are behind the robots. By Kathleen Carroll. NorthJersey.com (March 5, 2008). "Room 104 at Pascack Hills High School hums with activity around the clock -- from technology classes during the day to late-night engineering jam sessions after dinner. It's more clubhouse than classroom, and home to the Pascack Pioneers, the district's award-winning robotics club. … Such after-school robotics clubs are a growing trend in North Jersey and nationwide, as schools scramble to compete in a growing series of robot-building competitions. … ‘We want to inspire young adults to, if not to pursue a career in science, then understand how much it impacts everyone's daily life,’ said [Don] Rotolo, who volunteers hundreds of hours at the high school each year. ‘My inspiration is seeing the kids learn.’"
March 4, 2008: NZ's Massive Software exhibits in Germany. By Jon Valjean. Gameplanet News. "Massive software announced today that it will be exhibiting at CeBIT as part of the New Zealand Trade & Enterprise (NZTE) stand along with other exemplary New Zealand-based technology innovators. Academy Award-winning Massive is the revolutionary 3D animation system that incorporates procedural animation and artificial intelligence. Massive is used by animation and visual effects artists to explore the new world of creative opportunities that AI-enabled characters make possible. … As part of Massive’s exhibit, representatives from Hanson Robotics will be on hand to demonstrate Zeno, the first AI-driven robot using the breakthrough artificial intelligence (AI) software from Massive to reason and get smarter over time."
- Watch this related video from BBC News (March 2008): Robot toy can be your 'friend'. "At the Cebit technology fair, David Hanson of Hanson Robotics displays [Zeno] his ‘character toy’, a robot that can ‘become your friend’".
- And see: The robot that walks and talks like Gollum. By Stuart Turton. PC Pro (March 5, 2008). " The artificial intelligence (AI) technology which once told the Orcs which humans to hit in the Lord of the Rings is now finding its way into a myriad of other applications, and could even be bringing the next generation of robotics into our living rooms. … ’The genesis of the idea was to author an AI that could drive the behaviours, first of a virtual character that could act on their own behalf, and then drive the servos of something like Zeno - that was how it was conceived even at the beginning,’ says Diane Holland, chief executive officer of Massive. ‘The same technology that drove Gollum's movement is now driving Zeno's movement.’"
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Machine Learning, Banking, Law Enforcement, Ethical and Social Implications, Applications; also see these related articles
