It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Interviews

Hal Abelson. The Grill - MIT Professor Hal Abelson on the Hot Seat. The maverick professor talks about giving away MIT courseware, de-fossilizing computer science and wearing the 'nerd' label proudly. By Gary Anthes. Computerworld (August 6, 2007). " [Q] OpenCourseWare, which offers free online access to MIT courses, is another big movement that you helped launch. [A] In 2000, there was going to be this $2 trillion market for material on the Web, and universities were wondering, “How are we going to charge for it?” So when MIT said, 'We are going to put these things up and make them free,' that was wildly countercultural. I was one of about six people who came up with this weird idea: Why don’t we give this stuff away? [Q] What’s the status of it today? [A] It’s been surprisingly more successful than we predicted. We have about 1,600 MIT courses up, and sometime next fall, we’ll hit 1,800. That’s virtually all MIT courses. But this was not an MIT-only operation. It really was the vision that lots of universities put up collections of what’s now called “open educational resources.” There’s now the OpenCourseWare Consortium, with more than 100 members. [Q] Who uses MIT’s courseware? ... [Q] Why are fewer and fewer people, especially women, going into CS? ..."

• See our sample of what can be found at OpenCourseWare.

Colin Angle

• The Mechanical Manager. By Hannah Clark. Forbes.com (September 20, 2006). "It's been a long time since Rosie, the robotic maid, had her TV debut on The Jetsons in 1962. Since then, robotic butlers have gone the way of bus trips to the moon. The high-tech society that many people envisioned 40 years ago has faded from our cultural consciousness, replaced with growing skepticism, says Colin Angle, co-founder and CEO of iRobot. ... Angle spoke with Forbes.com about The Jetsons, Blade Runner and the bionic future of teenage rebellion. ... In 20 years, what tasks will robots be doing? Our true mission is to make homes that can take care of themselves. It's imperative that our aging population be able to live independently for more years than they currently do. Will robots take over the world? The line between robot and human is going to blur. Already today you've got people hearing with cochlear implants, and there's early work with artificial eyes... "
• Newsmaker - My friend, the robot. By Tom Krazit. CNET News.com (May 24, 2006). "iRobot Chief Executive Officer Colin Angle often fields questions about the Roomba robot vacuum, which is probably one of the more widely used consumer robots, with over 2 million units sold. But Angle is just as proud of his company's PackBots, which U.S. soldiers are using in Iraq to detonate roadside improvised explosive devices. ... Q: I wanted to ask you a little bit more about this notion of robots and companionship. How much of that is people projecting things onto robots, and how much of that is robot designers building in cues that will allow people to do that? Angle: With the iRobot Roomba, we explicitly tried not to make it cute. The idea was, this is a serious appliance, we want people to take it seriously, and yet the personification happens anyway. ... [Q:] Do you think people would buy a robot that was created for that purpose, though? Do you think people buy them because they want a friend or they want a pet? Angle: Do you mean, would they admit to themselves they're buying it because they want a friend? I actually have heard people say 'yes,' older people saying, 'I wanted a Furby because they give me something to talk to.' They are often careful not to suggest that this would be a replacement for human friends, but this is a nice thing, and the way they describe it is interesting. ..."
• Robots: Today, Roomba. Tomorrow... iRobot CEO Colin Angle says the robotic vacuum cleaner "is insanely cool because it retails for $200" -- and more products like it are on the way. BusinessWeek Online (May 6, 2004). "Angle recently talked to Adam Aston, BusinessWeek's Industries editor, about what iRobot has learned from the Roomba and what the future holds for its descendants."
• The robots are coming. By Larry Dignan. (October 8, 2002). "CNET News.com recently spoke to Colin Angle, co-founder and CEO of iRobot, to talk about the future of robotics and how robots will infiltrate people's lifestyles."

Michael Arbib. USC's Michael Arbib. By Eric Smalley. Technology Research News (October 3, 2005). "Technology Research News Editor Eric Smalley carried out an email conversation with Michael Arbib, the Fletcher Jones Professor of Computer Science and a Professor of Biological Sciences, Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of Southern California (USC) in September 2005. ... Throughout his career Arbib has encouraged an interdisciplinary environment where computer scientists and engineers can talk to neuroscientists and cognitive scientists. ... TRN: Context -- the body, the physical environment, society -- seems to play a critical role in shaping consciousness and intelligence. What does this mean for building artificial intelligences? Will we be able to relate to truly intelligent machines? Arbib: ... I do think that there will be future robots that indeed have emotions -- as high-level indicators of process state that set an overall bias on decision making and condition patterns of communication with others. However, I also think that emotions that are useful (but sometimes harmful) for robots interacting with other robots (imagine a team of autonomous robots responsible for spaceship maintenance on a decades long mission, or a team of agents monitoring the whole Earth for ecosystem evaluation) need not necessarily be similar to the "mammalian humans" that are so much part of human life. TRN: One of the big challenges in robotics is simply giving machines the ability to accurately perceive their surroundings. What will it take to build machines that can operate effectively in unfamiliar, dynamic environments? Arbib: One part of the answer, clearly, is that learning will be necessary. ... TRN: Is there a particular image (or images) related to science or technology that you find particularly compelling or instructive? Why do you like it; why do you find it compelling or instructive? ... "

Ronald Arkin. Georgia Tech's Ronald Arkin (September 12, 2005). "Technology Research News Editor Eric Smalley carried out an email conversation with Georgia Institute of Technology professor Ronald C. Arkin in August of 2005 that covered the economics of labor, making robots as reliable as cars, getting robots to trust people, biorobotics, finding the boundaries of intimate relationships with robots, how much to let robots manipulate people, giving robots a conscience, robots as humane soldiers and The Butlerian Jihad. ..."

Ruth Aylett. An Interview with Artificial Intelligence expert Ruth Aylett. The Science Teacher (the National Science Teachers Association's journal for high school science teachers). January 2003; page 52. "In this month’s special issue on math and science, a particular article, Field Trips Online , describes the use of solar-powered robots to sample and analyze water in lakes. This example of the increasingly important role robots have in our lives led us to sit down with Ruth Aylett, Professor of Intelligent Virtual Environments at the University of Salford in the U.K. She has been involved in the vast field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) -- the study of how computer systems can simulate intelligent processes -- for 20 years now, and robotics specifically for the past 14 years. She recently published Robots: Bringing Machines to Life." Interview questions include: What inspired you to become involved in AI?; What educational background is needed to design robots?; and, What advice would you give to high school students interested in AI?

Benjamin B. Bederson. Checking in with Ben Bederson. Ubiquity (October 13 - 19, 2004; Volume 5, Issue 32). "Benjamin B. Bederson is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. His work is on information visualization, interaction strategies, and digital libraries. UBIQUITY: Why don't we start by talking a little about the Human-Computer Interaction Lab. Tell us something about its history. BEDERSON: I believe we're the oldest center in the country focusing on research in Human Computer Interaction. We were started just over 21 years ago by Ben Shneiderman. He's still happily continuing to work here, but about four years ago, he asked me to take over as Director. We've chosen to remain a relatively small group, with a half-dozen faculty, about ten full-time researchers, and about thirty students, mostly working towards their PhDs. Our focus is thinking about the user experience: how can we improve people's lives using computers. I see our lab goals being to design, implement and evaluate novel interaction technologies that are universally usable, useful, efficient and appealing."

Tim Berners-Lee:

• The Web's Father Expects a Grandchild - Tim Berners-Lee is working on the "Semantic Web," with its richer information links that unlock the power of "unplanned reuse of data." Interviewed by Andy Reinhardt. BusinessWeek online (October 22, 2004). "Q: You're working now on the Semantic Web, which will allow richer associations among data and, as the name implies, start to create a sense of "meaning" in online information. Where are things heading? A: The impact of the Semantic Web will be different from [today's] hypermedia Web. ... The Semantic Web is different. It's a space of data. It's all the information which is now in databases, spreadsheets, and application-specific files, like calendar files or photo metadata. What's exciting about the Semantic Web is its potential for serendipity, the unplanned reuse of data. The effect will be even more powerful for the Semantic Web because you won't have to be a person following the links. A machine will be able to follow links. Q: Can you give me an example? ..."
• Net guru peers into web's future - The inventor of the web, Tim Berners-Lee, outlines his ideas for a more "intelligent" web in an interview with the BBC programme, Go Digital (September 25, 2003).

Albert Borgman. An interview/dialogue with Albert Borgmann [Holding On to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium (1999)] and N. Katherine Hayles [How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (1999)] on humans and machines. From the University of Chicago Press. "Q: It sounds like you two disagree about the extent to which artificial intelligence could mimic human intelligence. But you both seem to be saying that's not the central issue anyway. The real issue is not whether a machine will be built that can replicate human behavior, but whether humans will begin (or continue) to think of themselves as machines. Is that right?"

Ron Brachman

• Q & A: Ronald J. Brachman, Head, Worldwide Research Operations Yahoo! Research: ‘Yahoo research uses artificial intelligence everywhere.’ Interviewed by BV Mahalakshmi. The Financial Express (January 22, 2007). "[Q] Why is there is so much talk on artificial intelligence (AI) globally? How does this system of learning help in developing intelligent systems? [A] Artificial intelligence is about understanding intelligent behaviour in machines and converting them to natural languages. We want to produce PCs that can perform natural language conversations. Moreover, it helps in planning ahead for the human activities in various applications. ... AI is a form of science having a potential for long-term aspirations like making computers more intelligent. ... "
• Q&A: Yahoo's Ron Brachman - Yahoo hires the former director of one of DARPA's most important units to expand its research team. Red Herring (December 15, 2005). "Many, especially in the academic community, look to artificial intelligence as a key factor in the evolution of search. Mr. Brachman shared his views on this subject and others with Red Herring. Q: People in the academic search community often say companies don't use AI enough to improve search. Do you agree? A: Companies like Yahoo are already using AI technologies. They don't make a public fuss about it. For example, with expert systems, such as those which can help in data mining … or in search, aspects of AI matter. Q: Could you give us an example of where AI could improve search? ..."

Cynthia Breazeal

• Profile - Cynthia Breazeal: A daring engineer designs robots to communicate and interact the way people do. NOVA scienceNOW (broadcast date: November 21, 2006). "Thinking outside the box of traditional engineering, Breazeal designs these robots with theories of child development and parent-child interactions in mind, equipping her creations with an ability to learn and giving them expressive, human-like features. And if, as Breazeal hopes, robots are to become our partners, they need to develop the same social skills as people, including emotions. NOVA scienceNOW joins Breazeal in her lab and introduces viewers to some of her seminal inventions: the famous toddler- like robotic head named Kismet; Leonardo, a million-dollar joint project with Stan Winston, legendary in Hollywood for The Terminator robots; and a touch-sensitive teddy bear called the Huggable, which may someday comfort patients and assist caregivers in hospital pediatric wards."
• A Conversation with Cynthia Breazeal (March 1 , 2005; available as a web feature of Scientific American Frontiers' Robot Pals). "The elderly are often reticent about picking up a new technology, so it can't be something too confusing or esoteric. It probably has to be something that they see as genuinely helpful, but in the big picture people should actually really enjoy having these robots around as well. In many ways I think about a blind person's relationship with a seeing eye dog. The seeing eye dog performs a very critical function for that person, a very pragmatic, useful function. But on the other hand, people adore having their dog! So my vision was to use this social form of interaction to really address the needs of a person on a holistic level, not just about helping them with their cognitive and physical abilities, but also appreciate that people are social and emotional creatures and they have pleasure in interacting with things in this way. ... There are still a lot of social barriers to women pursuing math and science. We're not encouraged as much at an early age as boys, that's just a fact. ... I think it's important to appreciate that there are outstanding women scientists and there are outstanding men scientists, this isn't a gender thing. It has much more to do with trying to encourage and foster a person to do the best work they can in their chosen field of study." Other topics covered in this interview include: "her first interest in robots," "how she got started on her career path," and "recommendations for those interested in following in her footsteps."
• A Conversation with Cynthia Breazeal - A Passion to Build a Better Robot, One With Social Skills and a Smile. By Claudia Dreifus. The New York Times (June 10, 2003; no fee reg. req'd.) / also available from CNET. "Dr. Cynthia L. Breazeal of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is famous for her robots, not just because they they are programmed to perform specific tasks, but because they seem to have emotional as well as physical reactions to the world around them. They are 'embodied,' she says, even 'sociable' robots -- experimental machines that act like living creatures. ... Q. What is the root of your passion for robots? ... Q. How did you get into robot building?"

Rodney Brooks

• More Than Meets the Eye (podcast). The Leonard Lopate Show. WNYC, New York Public Radio (July 30, 2007). "Robots with artificial intelligence have been a science fiction staple for decades, but now some researchers might be close to making them a reality. New York Times contributing writer Robin Marantz Henig and Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Rodney Brooks describe new machines that can make eye contact, read social cues, and even help out around the house. Are they too good to be true?"
• Newsmaker interview with Rodney Brooks, director of MIT's CSAIL and CTO of iRobot: Sizing up the coming robotics revolution. By Candace Lombardi. CNET News.com (May 15, 2007). "When it comes to robots, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab is one of the places in the world where the magic happens. Rodney Brooks is the Panasonic professor of robotics at MIT and the director of CSAIL. He is also the co-founder and chief technology officer of iRobot and one of the principal architects of iRobot's Roomba vacuum. On Tuesday, RoboBusiness 2007, an international conference showcasing consumer, commercial and military robots, will convene in Boston. To gain insight on what's in the pipeline, CNET News.com sat down with Brooks, one of the leading experts on robots and artificial intelligence. From his office at CSAIL, Brooks shared his thoughts on the best AI readily available today and the four things it will take for the magicians of science to match science fiction fantasies."
• The Past and Future of Behavior Based Robotics (podcast interview). Talking Robots (April 27, 2007). "In this episode we interview Rodney Brooks on behavior based robotics. He talks about how mosquitoes in Thailand caused a fundamental shift in artificial intelligence, how to build robots that sell, and how 50 years from now you'll be fighting with your robot for spare parts."
• Read his responses to questions posed by viewers after the airing of the Scientific America Frontiers special Robots Alive! Among the questions asked are: I'm curious to know what ideas you have for the future - and - I am interested in a career like yours, designing and building robots. What courses would I have to take in college? Do you have any other helpful information to help me get started in the field of robotics?
• Robot risk 'is worth it.' HARDtalk's Lyce Doucet interviews Rodney Brooks. BBC (August 19, 2002). Visit the site and watch the television interview.
• Designed for life. Duncan Graham-Rowe interviews Rodney Brooks. New Scientist (June 1, 2002). Among the questions posed are: Some critics might accuse you of getting religious when you talk about this mystical 'stuff' out there; Will these robots still be driven by conventional computing; Can we have these machines without creating a new slave trade; and, AI and robotics have a long history of military funding. Are you worried about what happens to your research?
• Rodney Brooks. Interviewed by Terry Gross for Fresh Air (radio program). WHYY-FM / available from NPR (March 4, 2002). "His new book is called Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us. Brooks offers a vision of the future of humans and robots."
• Two interviews from EDGE/Third Culture:
  • Beyond Computation - A talk with Rodney Brooks. (June 5, 2002). "Maybe there's something beyond computation in the sense that we don't understand and we can't describe what's going on inside living systems using computation only. When we build computational models of living systems—such as a self-evolving system or an artificial immunology system—they're not as robust or rich as real living systems. Maybe we're missing something, but what could that something be?
  • The Deep Question - A talk with Rodney Brooks. Interviewed by John Brockman. (November 19, 1997). "He was going to become a pure mathematician, and then discovered that research assistantships were availalbe in American universities. He received a Ph.D. at Stanford in computer science, in John McCarthy's artificial intelligence lab, and then came to MIT where he thinks about biological systems and their interaction with the world. Rod Brooks is director of the AI Lab at MIT."
• Also see this debate below.

Bruce Buchanan see:

• These oral histories: 1 & 2
• Text of a 1999 e-mail interview in which a college student asked questions such as: Q: What is your definition of Artificial Intelligence? and, Do you believe that AI is morally correct?

Curt Carlson. The best of times in science and tech. Newsmaker interview by Stefanie Olsen. CNet News.com (April 3, 2006). "Curt Carlson will gladly tell you he's gone to heaven. Technologist heaven, that is, thanks to his dream job as CEO of SRI International, a veritable Willy Wonka factory of science and tech R&D. Once known as Stanford Research Institute for its home at the prestigious university from 1946 to independence in 1970--SRI is a nonprofit that's been instrumental to the development of everyday marvels like the computer mouse, the PC, the cell phone and high-definition television." [Also be sure to see related photo gallery, Innovation on display at SRI.]

Nicholas Carr. When Google Grows Up. By Andy Greenberg. Forbes.com (January 11, 2008). "For those who haven't been paying attention, it's time to stop thinking of Google as just a search engine. ... In fact, argues Nicholas Carr, the former editor of the Harvard Business Review and author of the new book The Big Switch, those Web applications are signs of a fundamental change, a shift from the desktop to the Web that could redefine computing--and Google's business model. ... Forbes.com spoke with Carr about Google's ambition to become the world's computer, the evolution of search into artificial intelligence and Google co-founder Sergey Brin's plan to read our minds. ... [AG] Looking further ahead at Google's intentions, you write in The Big Switch that Google's ultimate plan is to create artificial intelligence. How does this follow from what the company's doing today? [NC] It's pretty clear from what [Google co-founders] Larry Page and Sergey Brin have said in interviews that Google sees search as essentially a basic form of artificial intelligence. ... [AG] What would an ultra-intelligent Google of the future look like? ... [AG] You don't seem very optimistic about a future where Google is smarter than humans. ... "

David Cavallo. 'Hard fun' yields lessons on nature of intelligence. By Chappell Brown. EE Times Online (July 11, 2005). "It's what [MIT's] Future of Learning co-director David Cavallo calls 'hard fun' -- creative yet disciplined and purposeful uses for technology." Interview questions include: What was your first encounter with computers and digital technology, and how did it influence your intellectual development? ... The computer and AI have been compared to the mind in some ways, but they are also very different from how the mind works. Is the computer the appropriate instrument for that type of work? ... What would you say is a seminal idea that has come out of this that was not known before? ... So what is the future of learning?

Andrew Chien. The Future of Computing, According to Intel - Massively multicore processors will enable smarter computers that can infer our activities. By Kate Greene. Technology Review (September 26, 2007). "Andrew Chien, the director of Intel Research, is looking beyond eight-core chips and into the range of terascale computing, in which machines with tens or hundreds of cores perform trillions of operations every second. Chien is working with computer scientists at Intel and at universities around the world to find the best uses for these future machines. ... Technology Review: What are the major projects at Intel Research? Andrew Chien: One of the things that we're very focused on is this idea of inference and understanding the world. The big idea is all about this question of whether inference and sensors are really the missing piece to make ubiquitous computing come to fruition. We can build small devices that fit into our pocket, but the things we're falling short on are inference, making the devices work together well, and making them interact with us in natural ways. ... TR: Why would anyone want their gadgets to infer their behavior? Walk me through an example. AC: One of the initial steps is to build systems that understand what we're doing and understand the importance of different activities in our lives. ... TR: The idea that you have sensors that record your activities raises quite a few privacy concerns. How is Intel addressing that? AC: One of the things Intel is driving hard is [figuring out] how to build platforms with integrity. ... TR: Why is inference possible now?  AC: One thing is that computing systems are now able to tap into all the data that's available on the Internet and learn from it. ..."

Harold Cohen. "Watch a video clip from The Age of Intelligent Machines, Ray Kurzweil's award-winning 1987 film, where Harold and Ray discuss AARON's abilities and explore machine creativity."

Mark Cutkosky. Is it a cockroach? A robot? Artificial intelligence takes a new form when Stanford researchers mix robotics with biology. By Jessica Lin. The Stanford Daily Online Edition (January 11, 2004). "Stanford researchers in the Engineering Department are looking at other creatures to model in their artificial intelligence projects, specifically insects. ... This sprawl project is led by Engineering Prof. Mark Cutkosky. The Daily took an opportunity to chat with this innovative robotics researcher to find out more. ... The Daily: Why are you designing robots that imitate animals as opposed to humans? Mark Cutkosky: There are some things that animals can do much better than humans.... TD: Where did the idea of biomimetic robots originate --- and when did you get involved? MC: I think that robots have always, to some extent, been inspired by animals or humans. That’s part of what the historical dream behind having robots is all about. What is new is that we can start to build and control them more as nature does. The days of 'tin men' robots are over."

The Deep Blue Team. The Deep Blue Team Plots Its Next Move. Scientific American (1996). "It was a classic match of man versus machine: In February 1996, world champion chess player Gary Kasparov pitted his wits against Deep Blue, a computer designed by a team of computer scientists from IBM. Deep Blue took the first game, but Kasparov recovered and ended up winning the match 4 games to 2. Three weeks later, John Horgan of Scientific American interviewed the Deep Blue team...." (And then check out our CHESS page for information about the rematch.)

Johan de Kleer. Inside PARC. Ubiquity; Volume 3, Issue 34 (October 8-14, 2002). "UBIQUITY: You've been in the artificial intelligence field for 25 years now. What changes have you seen over that period of time? DE KLEER: Twenty-five years ago, we thought that we would have an artificial mind by now. It turned out to be harder and further beyond our reach than we ever imagined. One of the biggest changes in artificial intelligence has been the realization of how hard and how long-term this project is going to be."

Daniel Dennett

• Scientific American Frontiers with Alan Alda: I, Robot segment from the Life's Really Big Questions television broadcast (December 19, 2000). "Philosopher and author Dan Dennett marvels at the human machine and its unique ability to wonder."
• Also see the related Frontiers Profile: Daniel Dennett.
• Interviewed by Harvey Blume. The Atlantic Unbound (December 9, 1998). Can robotics shed light on the human mind? On evolution? Daniel Dennett -- whose work unites neuroscience, computer science, and evolutionary biology -- has some provocative answers. Is he on to something, or just chasing the zeitgeist?"

J. Presper Eckert. Q&A - A lost interview with ENIAC co-inventor J. Presper Eckert. On the the 60th anniversary of the unveiling of ENIAC, a newly discovered interview with "Pres" Eckert explodes some ENIAC myths. Q&A by Alexander Randall 5th. Computerworld (February 14, 2006). "[Q:] So it's a myth that ENIAC could only add, subtract, multiply and divide. [A:] No, that's a calculator. ENIAC could do three-dimensional, second-order differential equations. We were calculating trajectory tables for the war effort. In those days. The trajectory tables were calculated by hundreds of people operating desk calculators -- people who were called computers. So the machine that does that work was called a computer."

Douglas H. Fisher. Podcast - Artificial intelligence and machine learning; Now and the future. Vanderbilt News Service (March 24, 2006). "Doug Fisher, associate professor of computer science and computer engineering at Vanderbilt University, talks about the state of the art in artificial intelligence and robotics in this [March 19th] interview by Adelyn Jones of WRLT FM radio in Nashville." Also available from the Internet Archive.

Dario Floreano. Podcast interview from Talking Robots (September 15, 2005). "In this first episode we talk to Dario Floreano, the initiator and editor in chief of Talking Robots, about his motivations for this podcast, and about the roots, the current trends and the future of robotics and artificial intelligence.Dr. Floreano is a professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland and the head of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems (LIS)."

Anne Foerst

• Why robots are scary--and cool. By Jonathan Skillings. CNET News.com (April 12, 2005). "For early researchers in artificial intelligence who were out to play God, it turned out the devil was in the details. ... The newer generation of AI researchers is taking a more humble approach to the cognitive conundrum, according to Anne Foerst, who's a rare combination of computer scientist and theologian--two types that don't always see eye to eye. ... In her new book, 'God in the Machine: What Robots Teach Us About God and Humanity,' Foerst draws on her experience at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory to paint a picture of how people and robots can and should interact--and whether, at some point down the road from today's Aibo and Asimo contraptions, the human community might confer 'personhood' on robots. ... She spoke recently with CNET News.com about changes in the field of AI, social learning for robots and the need for embodied intelligence--that is, the ability for thinking creatures, and machines, to interact with and survive in the real world. Q: How does a theologian end up at the MIT AI Labs?... What did you find out about the people who study AI--what makes somebody want to study AI?... Are there classes of robots? ... What's the distinction between computers and robots? ... I want to ask you about the ethics of people working with robots, using robots. Should we build robots to do our dirty work? If we're going to think about according them personhood, are we ready to send them into combat to do mine sweeping and things like that?"
• The theological robot. By Joshua Glenn. The Boston Globe (February 6, 2005). "[S]elf--described robotics theologian Anne Foerst ... seeks to bridge the divide between religion and AI research--by arguing that robots have much to teach us about ourselves and our relationship with God. Foerst spoke with me from St. Bonaventure University in upstate New York, where she teaches theology and computer science. ... FOERST: What I learned from the AI Lab's robots, which were designed to trigger emotional and social responses, is that we can bond with them. So although they can't be human--to be human, I think, means needing to participate in the mutual process of telling stories that make sense of the world and who we are--humanoid robots can still be considered persons. Personhood simply means playing a role, if only a passive one, in that mutual narrative process. Like babies, or Alzheimer's patients, humanoid robots don't tell their own stories, but they play a role in our lives so we include them in our narrative structures. This suggests that perhaps we ought to think about treating robots right."
• Q&A with Anne Foerst. Sidebar to Sari Kalin's article, Are You There, God? (It's Me, HAL) - Science Meets Spirituality. Darwin Magazine (December 2001). Questions include: How do you start a dialogue between AI and theology? ... Are AI researchers trying to play God? ... Will humanoid robots ever be conscious, and will they ever have souls? ... What are the business implications of your research?
• Do Androids Dream? M.I.T. Working on It. By Claudia Dreifus. The New York Times (Science, page D3; November 7, 2000). "Dr. Foerst, a Lutheran minister who supported herself by repairing computers during eight years of higher education in Germany, serves as the theological advisor to the scientists building Kismet and the robot's brother, Cog." She's also the director of MIT's God and Computers project.

Heinz von Foerster. '''Interviewed by Stefano Franchi, Güven Güzeldere, and Eric Minch. From Constructions of the Mind: Artificial Intelligence and the Humanities, a special issue of the Stanford Humanities Review. Volume 4, issue 2 (1995). "Heinz von Foerster, in an interview with the editors, and in his accompanying essay, examines an alternative approach to the scientific exploration of human cognitive functions. He speaks about cybernetics, a scientific discipline created by Norbert Wiener and augmented by himself that inaugurated a new scientific approach to the study of the mind. Unfortunately, cybernetics fell into disgrace in the wake of AI's meteoric ascendance to intellectual stardom. Von Foerster explains the intellectual, institutional, and political reasons motivating such an historical evolution." (This passage is taken from the Introduction to the special issue.)

Ken Ford. Amplified Intelligence. Astrobiology Magazine (July 28, 2004). "Astrobiology Magazine (AM): The IMHC [Interdisciplinary Study of Human & Machine Cognition] research agenda broadly seems to cover robotics, cognition and simulations. Are there parts of machine intelligence that your research institute doesn't cover today, but that you see as growth areas? Ken Ford (KF): Don't forget that second letter is 'H'. Although a lot of our research could be categorized as AI, and five of our researchers are AAAI (American Association for Artificial Intelligence) Fellows, IHMC is not a traditional machine intelligence laboratory. The focus and theme of our research is what has become known as human-centered computing which, in a nutshell, is about fitting technology to people instead of fitting people to technology. The human is part of the system, and it is the performance of the whole system, including the human, that we are interested in. This requires that machines should be designed to fit us physically, cognitively, and perhaps even socially. We think of AI as meaning 'Amplified Intelligence.' The interesting thing is that many traditional AI technologies in fact are being used in just this way.

Chris Forsythe. Interviewed by BusinessWeek Online Reporter Olga Kharif (The Ghost in Your Machine, August 25, 2003). "At their most benign, smart computers seem like executive secretaries for those of us who can't afford one -- offering tremendous advances in productivity. Yet some fear that the concept suggests an ominous encroachment out of a sci-fi movie. Cognitive psychologist Chris Forsythe, who leads the Sandia team, insists that the machines are designed to augment -- not replace -- human activity. ... Q: How would you characterize the current state of human-machine interaction? A: The biggest problem is that if you're the user, for the most part the technology doesn't know anything about you. The onus is on the user to learn and understand how the technology works. What we would like to do is reverse that equation so that it becomes the responsibility of the computer to learn about the user. The computer would have to learn what the user knows, what the user doesn't know, how the user performs everyday, common functions. It would also recognize when the user makes a mistake or doesn't understand something."

Ernest J. Friedman-Hill. Rule Engines and Java: Jess in Action: Interview with Dr. Ernest J. Friedman-Hill of Sandia National Laboratory [excerpt]. By Jason Morris. PC AI (17.3). "JM: Considering your background in chemistry, how did you become involved with artificial intelligence and expert systems? EJF: My Ph.D. is in physical chemistry - very mathematical, very computational - so I've always been around computers. I've been interested in AI since I read Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach in college...."

John Funge. AI - the smart way to go. By Paul Hyman. HollywoodReporter.com (August 26, 2005). "Artificial intelligence -- or 'AI' -- is the Rodney Dangerfield of video game design. It gets no respect when it's working great, as when it contributed to 'Halo 2' and 'Half-Life 2' becoming the hugely successful games that they are. But when game characters start walking into walls, everyone knows to blame the AI. According to John Funge, high-quality graphics may be what attracts a player to a game, but it's the AI and the gameplay that holds their attention. ... In a chat with Hollywood Reporter columnist Paul Hyman, Funge talks about why designers ought to think about AI when turning their IP into games, and how AI has the potential to become the new driving force behind video game innovation."

Bill Gates

• Newsmaker - Gates explains why Microsoft needs Yahoo. By Ina Fried. CNET News.com (February 20, 2008). " ... [Q] What are some of the big technical challenges to getting to the type of technology that you talk about? When you think of the top two or three technical hurdles that we're working against today, what are some of the things that jump to mind? Gates: Obviously, natural user interface requires software. I was just reviewing the next version of Windows and the great advance they make in that. Will that be enough that everybody will obviously want to use it? Well, it didn't happen last time except in modest numbers, a few million, but that's still not mainstream. We've got vision software in the Surface, and we're trying to get that not just into retail stores but into homes and offices. You've got touch, which is going to come in, and that's fairly inexpensive. We worked with some partners to do some really great things on the touch technology. So, I think that can move mainstream fairly quickly. (In) speech recognition, it's many decades of work and building up the databases and just learning where the mistakes happen to get made. That was part of the great thing TellMe had. They had been doing directory assistance for a lot of the big phone companies, so their database of information of how people utter things was quite broad. And applying machine learning to improve the quality of that was a great synergistic opportunity. So, there are huge software improvements, and, of course, we need our chip guys to give us the memory and speed to be able to execute these natural interface things. ... [Q] Will the next version of Windows move natural language interface beyond the niche thing, or do you think it will still be a niche thing when we're talking about whatever comes after Vista? Gates: The version after Vista is a big step forward in terms of speech. ..."
• Newsmaker - Gates still finding his voice. By Ina Fried. CNET News.com (October 19, 2007). "Bill Gates has been saying for years that one day soon we will use handwriting, voice and touch to control our computers. He's still saying that. In an interview with CNET News.com, Gates talks about some of the ways that speech recognition has already made inroads and discusses some of the places it will eventually go."
• Also watch the related CNET video: Everything will be a computer, Gates says.
• Our Sixty Minutes with Bill Gates. Steve Rubel's Micro Persuasion blog (December 14, 2006). "Q) What would you be looking at today if you were an independent entrepreneur? A) Something dramatic like artificial intelligence. Biology. Energy."
• Q&A - Bill Gates On Supercomputing, Software In Science, And More. By Aaron Ricadela. InformationWeek (November 18, 2005). "InformationWeek: What would you say the percentage of hires today in the research and development part of Microsoft is from non-computer science or non-computer engineering disciplines? Do you see that proportion changing over the next few years?Gates: Well, you're never going to be very statistical about that, because the very brightest people often study in multiple fields. I never took any of the computer science classes at Harvard that most people take, because I'd had exposure to computers before I got there. I never went near the people; I was like, 'Hey, I already did that stuff years ago.' So I was taking physiological psychology and economics. I never got a degree, but if you look at my course sign-up, you wouldn't think I was a software person at all."
• Talking to Bill. Interview by Gary Stix. Scientific American (May 24, 2004). "On the occasion of the fourth TechFest at Microsoft Research--an event at which researchers demonstrate their work to the company’s product developers--Bill Gates talked with Scientific American’s Gary Stix on topics ranging from artificial intelligence to cosmology to the innate immune system. A slightly edited version of the conversation follows. ... SA: One of the things that some critics have said is that while there is an unbelievable collection of talent here, there have not been achievements on the order of things like the transistor or some other major breakthrough. Do you do you see any validity in that? ... SA: Do you see a continued relevance to the idea of artificial intelligence [AI]? The term is not used very much anymore. Some people say that's because it's ubiquitous, it's incorporated in lots of products. There are plenty of neuroscientists who say that computers are still clueless. BG: And so are neuroscientists, too. No, seriously, we don't understand the plasticity of the neurons. How does that work? There's even this recent proposal that there is, you know, prion-type shaping as part of that plasticity. We don't understand why a neuron behaves differently a day later than before. What is it that the accumulation of signals on it causes? So whenever somebody says to me, 'Oh, this is like a neural network,' well, how can someone say that? We don't really understand exactly what the state function is and even at a given point in time what the input-to-output equation looks like. So there is a part of AI that we're still in the early stages of, which is true learning. Now, there's all these peripheral problems--vision, speech, things like that--that we're making huge progress in. If you just take Microsoft Research alone in those areas, those used to be defined as part of AI. Playing games used to be defined as part of AI. For particular games, it's going pretty well, but we did it without a general theory of learning. And the reason we worked on chess was really not because we needed somebody to play chess with other than humans; it was because we thought it might tell us about general learning. But instead we just did this minimax, high-speed static evaluation, a minimax search on trees. Fine. I am an AI optimist. We've got a lot of work in machine learning, which is sort of the polite term for AI nowadays because it got so broad that it's not that well defined. But the real core piece is this machine-learning work. We have people who do Bayesian models, Support Vector Machines, lots of things that we think will be the foundation of true general-purpose AI. ... SA: Why is it the most exciting time to be in computer science? BG: ... it's not clear whether we're getting the best and brightest in the U.S. to go into these programs and contribute to solving these problems. SA: Why is that? BG: Oh, it's partly that the bubble burst. It's partly articulating the benefits of the field and the variety of jobs. People have to know that these are social jobs, not just sitting in cubicles programming at night. Our field is still not doing a good job drawing in minorities or women, so you're giving up over half the potential entrants just right there. Carnegie-Mellon has done probably the most on some of these areas, where they do outreach programs down to the high school where they show people what the computer sciences do, they show women and it's actually women who often go out and give these talks. ..."

David Gelernter. Interviewed by Harvey Blume. The Atlantic Unbound (January 29, 1998). "[Q:] You have written, 'The drive to make a machine-person' is irresistible; you say it's the 'culminating tour de force of the history of technology and the history of art, simultaneously.' [A:] That's true, and it's the motivating force behind artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence has already come up with a lot of powerful and valuable work and will come up with a lot more. But there's a difference between saying that and saying ultimately software and culture will run together. Physical stuff is too important."

Steve Grand

• Machines Like Us interviews - Steve Grand. By Norm Nason. Machines Like Us (August 27, 2007).
• The emotional machine. By Suzy Hansen. Salon.com (January 2, 2002). "Steve Grand designer of the artificial life program Creatures, talks about the stupidity of computers, the role of desire in intelligence and the coming revolution in what it means to be 'alive.'"
• Interview from Generation5 (August 13, 2000). "G5: You have an incredibly interesting concept of life; atoms and human beings are not things, they are patterns that have learned how to survive. This surely has huge implications when applied to computing and ALife. But surely the idea also extends outwards -- is the society intelligent? Indeed, is the world or universe intelligent?... G5: When do these 'patterns' take on a conciousness? ... G5: Are you best known for your work with Norns and your claims that they are not artificial life, they are really alive. Where is the line drawn between a virtual lifeform and a lifeform living within a computer? Is there a difference between alive and conscious? ... G5: Your newest research project is Lucy, a robotic baby orangutan. What goals do you have for Lucy? How close are you to achieving these goals? ... "

Helen Greiner

• Audio interview with Helen Greiner, Co-founder and Chairman of the Board, iRobot Corp. (February 29, 2008 | 15:30). Women in Technology audio interview series from The National Center for Women in Technology (NCWIT). "Helen Greiner is co-founder and Chairman of the Board of iRobot Corp., maker of the Roomba® Vacuuming Robot (over 2M units sold) and the iRobot PackBot® Tactical Mobile Robot, which deactivates mines in Iraq and Afghanistan."
• Robots join the fight. C4ISRJournal.com (January 4, 2007). "In six years, iRobot and its co-founder, Helen Greiner, have established themselves as poster children for defense transformation. ... Q: How long before you field autonomous sentry robots? A: Not that long. The work we’re doing with autonomous systems allows you to do perimeter security, like going around a building, and when it’s inside, it can map what it sees. Imagine what will happen in a few years: You will be able to send a team of robots into a building to do reconnaissance and clear it and report back what they see. Then your soldiers decide whether they should go in there or not. Q: But isn’t it hard to build an autonomous robot that can quickly adapt to new surroundings? A: Not really. The program is called SLAM -- Simultaneous Localization and Mapping. ..."
• Is There a Robot in Your Future? Helen Greiner Thinks So. Knowledge@Wharton (April 5, 2006). "Greiner recently gave a presentation at Wharton sponsored by the School's entrepreneurship and technology clubs, after which she sat down with Knowledge@Wharton to talk about her fascination with robots and what impact robots have, and will have, on our everyday lives. ... You have talked about having robots work in industry, in the consumer area, in the military -- what about for academia? Greiner: There are robot labs in every major university across the country. I now see this moving down into high schools. Robots are a great way to have kids learn because they can get excited about it; it's new, it takes a lot of innovation, and there are so many applications that haven't been addressed yet. It's a great place to teach kids because they can learn while they are actually doing something that's state of the art. The University of Southern California is looking at our Roombas [as a way to help] develop a curriculum in robotics. With the Roomba's open interface, you can make it into a teaching tool."
• Conversation with iRobot Founder. Radio broadcast of Talk of the Nation - Science Friday, hosted by Ira Flatow (February 4, 2005). "FLATOW: How did you get interested in this? Have you always been interested in robots? GREINER: I saw Star Wars when I was 11. ... FLATOW: And if somebody wants to get into robotics, what would you tell them? GREINER: I would say, study engineering or sciences, and one of the things we look for when we interview people ... people who have built robots before, like whether as a hobbyist ... because then you can tell it's their passion."

David Hanson. Interview with David Hanson. Ubiquity (May 9 - 15, 2006; Volume 7, Issue 18). "As CEO of Hanson Robotics, Inc, David Hanson creates robot faces that have been dubbed 'among the most advanced in the world' by the BBC, and inspired Science to label Hanson 'head of his class' in social robotics. ... UBIQUITY: So what would your definition of social robotics be and how does it differ from other kinds of robotics? HANSON: Social robotics is comprised of robots meant to engage people socially. ... UBIQUITY: Where do you see your research going? HANSON: I'm interested in making these robots easily custom-designed and mass producible -- in other words, easily designed using low-cost hardware, so that very inexpensive facial expressions can go with inexpensive walking robot bodies, as well as easily customized software. Therefore, we will be improving the software, improving the quality and rate of the speech recognition. The ability to design a custom personality and animation for the robots and to tweak and tune those things needs to get better. I see these as practical tools for bringing social robots into our lives, be they human-like or cartoon-like. These tools will be useful for artificial intelligence development. In an essay a couple of years ago AI pioneer Marvin Minsky lamented the fact that the graduate students and the AI lab at MIT had spent most of their time soldering instead of developing artificial intelligence. ... UBIQUITY: Look back on the history of artificial intelligence and social robotics and help us see it as a unified history. You remember Eliza, right? Start from Eliza, and tell us what's happened since then. ..."

Jeff Hawkins. Q&A. Interviewed by Jason Pontin. Technology Review (October 13, 2005). "Jeff Hawkins, the chief technology officer of Palm, was the founder of Palm Computing, where he invented the PalmPilot, and also the founder of HandSpring, where he invented the Treo. But Palm and creating mobile devices are only a part-time job for Hawkins. His true passion is neuroscience. Now, after many years of research and meditation, he has proposed an all-encompassing theory of the mammalian neocortex. 'Hierarchical Temporal Memory' (HTM) claims to explain how our brains discover, infer, and predict patterns in the phenomenal world. JP: Is the higher consciousness -- what philosophers sometimes call 'self-consciousness' -- a byproduct of HTM? JH: Yes. I think I understand what consciousness is now. There are two elements to consciousness. First, there is the element of consciousness where we can say, 'I am here now.' This is akin to a declarative memory where you can actively recall doing something. Riding a bike cannot be recalled by declarative memory, because I can't remember how I balanced on a bike. But if I ask, 'Am I talking to Jason?' I can answer 'Yes.' So I like to propose a thought experiment: if I erase declarative memory, what happens to consciousness? I think it vanishes. But there is another element to consciousness: what philosophers and neuroscientists call 'qualia:' the feeling of being alive. ..."

N. Katherine Hayles. Author of How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (1999). See: An interview/dialogue with Albert Borgmann and N. Katherine Hayles on humans and machines. From the University of Chicago Press.

Robert Hecht-Nielson. Understand the cogs, understand AI - The future of AI is here and it's cognitive. Robert Hecht-Nielson, professor at the University of California and vice president of the fair Isaac Corporation, has discovered the universal mechanism of animal cognition and is now developing automated conversational customer service systems with human-level capabilities for use in a variety of industries. Interviewed by Justin Richards, British Computer Society (October 2007). "[H-N] ... since 1968 my passion has been understanding how cognition works and this is something I got into as a mathematics student, so I've always been leaning in the direction of trying to understand these things from underlying mathematical principles as implemented by neural tissue. ... [JR] Can you explain your theory?[H-N] ... The first part of it is that we have to have someway of representing the world in the brain, so it explains how that works exactly and it explains how those representations are used to carry out cognition. It also explains how knowledge arises and what knowledge is, specifically. ... The fact is that if you have a detailed comprehensive theory of how that works then you should be able to take that theory and apply it to information outside of the brain using a computer simulation. ... [JR] What sort of experimentation have you done to assess your theory? ... [JR] How does this relate to AI? ... " [JR] Particularly in this country the IT industry is looked upon as being quite geeky. There are certain areas which are looked upon as being more cool - the games industry, for example, and also artificial intelligence. How do you think the industry could improve its image or do you think by emphasising things like artificial intelligence you will pull more students into the field? ... [JR] Who within the IT industry has inspired you the most - who's a role model for you? ..."

James Hendler. A Chat about the Future of Artificial Intelligence with Professor James Hendler. Provided by CNN. Interview date: December 16, 1999. "Dr. James Hendler, Program Manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, joined CNN.com to chat about artificial intelligence as part of as our @2000 chat series with leading authors, historians and experts to contemplate life at the turn of the century."

Danny Hillis

• Thinking Machines - Danny Hillis talks about the real-world challenges of creating artificially intelligent machines. By Jason Pontin. Technology Review (November 14, 2006). "In 1982, when he was still a student at MIT, Danny Hillis cofounded Thinking Machines, one of the most famous failures in the history of computing. A hive of wayward and brilliant researchers, Thinking Machines tried to build the world's first artificial intelligence. But if the company did not succeed in 'building a machine that will be proud of us' (its corporate motto), its Connection Machine demonstrated the practicality of parallel processing, the foundation of modern supercomputing. ... TR: Why is creating an artificial intelligence so difficult? Hillis: We look to our own minds and watch our patterns of conscious thought, reasoning, planning, and making analogies, and we think, "That's thinking." Actually, it's just the tip of a very deep iceberg. When early AI researchers began, they assumed that hard problems were things like playing chess and passing calculus exams. That stuff turned out to be easy. But the types of thinking that seemed effortless, like recognizing a face or noticing what is important in a story, turned out to be very, very hard. ... TR: How is your philosophy of artificial intelligence different from Marvin Minsky's famous "society of mind"?"

Douglas Hofstadter

• In the end, we are all part of one another. New Scientist (March 10, 2007; Issue 2594). "Nearly thirty years after his best-selling book Gödel, Escher, Bach, cognitive scientist and polymath Douglas Hofstadter has returned to his extraordinary theory of self in his latest book. Mike Holderness caught up with him recently."
• By Analogy - A talk with the most remarkable researcher in artificial intelligence today, Douglas Hofstadter, the author of Gödel, Escher, Bach. By Kevin Kelly. In WIRED (3.11 - Nov 1995). "In 1979, Douglas Hofstadter burst into public consciousness with a book so out of the ordinary it won a Pulitzer Prize for its young first-time author. Titled Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid ... Now, after 15 years, Hofstadter has published another major book."

Owen Holland: Robot Consciousness. Podcast from Talking Robots (January 19, 2007). "In this episode we interview Owen Holland about his rediscovery of the first autonomous robot ever built, his research in artificial consciousness and his life-size 'anthropomimetic' humanoid robot which closely copies human muscular and skeletal structure. Owen Holland is a professor at the University of Essex, UK with an interdisciplinary background in psychology and engineering. He is well known for his early work in biologically inspired behavior based robotics, including collective robot systems inspired by social insects, and his attempts to build an energy autonomous robot predator (slugbot) that hunted slugs and used them as its power supply.More recently he has reconstructed examples of W. Grey Walter's tortoise robots originally built in 1948, which are widely considered the first examples of electronic autonomous robots. His main current research area is artificial consciousness, for which he has built an 'anthropomimetic' robot that copies the human body very closely, with realistic 'bones' and 'muscles'. He is also working on a networked swarm of miniature helicopters, the Ultraswarm."

Feng-Hsiung Hsu: Chess, China, and Education - An interview with Feng-Hsiung Hsu. Ubiquity (July 27 - August 2, 2005; Volume 6, Issue 27). "Feng-Hsiung Hsu, whose book 'Behind Deep Blue' told the story of world chess champion Garry Kasparov was defeated by the IBM computer known as Deep Blue, is now a senior manager and researcher at Microsoft Research Asia."

Hiroshi Ishiguro. The shape of android robots to come.By Alun Anderson. New Scientist (Issue 2614; July 25, 2007: subscription req'd). "Hiroshi Ishiguro made waves last year when he built a robot twin of himself. He had previously built equally realistic android copies of his daughter and of a TV announcer. Less publicly, he is working on a raft of other ideas, including sensor networks to give robots better data about the world. So where is robotics headed? Even Ishiguro doesn't know yet, but he loves exploring as many ideas as Japan will fund - and being surprised as often as possible. ... [Q] If robots are to integrate into society, surely you'll need massive artificial intelligence inside their heads as well as making them more human-like? [A]Not inside their heads. I'm running two kinds of project: one is the robot, the other is the sensor network. There are many artificial intelligence studies in computer vision but they are not close to providing robots with human-level perception. Our idea of a robot brain takes a different, distributed-cognition approach. ..."

Bill Joy

• How much do we need to know? Interview with Bill Joy. By Gregory T. Huang. New Scientist (June 17, 2006: Issue 2556; subscription req'd). "Technology doesn't make everyone happy. Just ask computer scientist Bill Joy, who has pioneered everything from operating systems to networking software. These days the Silicon Valley guru is best known for preaching about the perils of technology with a gloom that belies his name. Joy's message is simple: limit access to information and technologies that could put unprecedented power into the hands of malign individuals (what is sometimes called asymmetric warfare). ... [Q:] Do you think your fears about technological abuse have been proven right since your Wired essay? ..."
• "Hope Is a Lousy Defense." Sun refugee Bill Joy talks about greedy markets, reckless science, and runaway technology. On the plus side, there's still some good software out there. By Spencer Reiss. Wired Magazine (December 2003; Issue 11.12).

Takeo Kanade

• I, Coach - What's in Store in Robotics. Someday, robots will do more than vacuum your floors. They'll train you and advise you -- and maybe even help out with the cooking. Gary Anthes interviews Takeo Kanade. Computerworld (May 21, 2007). "Takeo Kanade is a roboticist, but his work extends far beyond the C3PO-like humanoids that often come to mind when one thinks of robots. He has been a pioneer in computer vision, smart sensors, autonomous land and air vehicles, and medical robotics. Kanade, a professor of computer science and robotics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, recently told Computerworld that people’s notions of what robots can and should do will change. Robots will serve as coaches and advisers, not so much replacing human labor as enhancing it. ... [Q] What’s coming in human-computer inter­faces? ...[Q] How could a computer know someone’s intent? [TK] What I’m advocating right now is what I call inside-out vision. ... [Q] Where else might computer vision be applied? ... [Q] What’s next for robotics in manufacturing? ... [Q] What’s the biggest challenge in developing these home robots and the quality-of-life robots? ..."
• Toward a More Human Robot - Carnegie Mellon's Takeo Kanade explains why making smarter systems requires better understanding about how people really act. Interview by Cliff Edwards. BusinessWeek Online (November 24, 2004). "Q: What's ripe for innovation? A: Certainly, I'd like to comment on my own area, that is robotics, artificial intelligence [AI], and the like. My own thinking today is that I think we should understand how humans act and use that [insight] to develop a better system that serves for human. You can call it AI. I'm more interested in, and I believe it's useful and enormously valuable to understand, how humans function, not necessarily how humans are made. ... Q: What are the hurdles that robotics and AI need to overcome? A: The hurdle is we do not know ourselves, how we are doing. In general, I call it an invisible robotics -- environmental robotics. The environment as a whole is a robot, not the human individual humanoid or arm or mobile robot. ... Q: Is there a problem in the U.S. of underfunding areas of research? A: I'm less familiar about that area. I'm mostly dealing with places like DARPA [the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency]. My concern is that we may be reducing what I call playfulness. In research, a large part of it is based on results. We're too result-oriented. The hallmark of the U.S., and I came from Japan and was very impressed with the difference I found, was what I call this playfulness -- people willing to pay money for those things which appeared to be somewhat ridiculous ideas. ..."

Garry Kasparov. Every move you make. New Scientist (July 12, 2003; page 40). "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?"

Joseph Konstan. on Human-Computer Interaction, Recommender Systems, Collaboration, and Social Good. Ubiquity (March 24 - April 1, 2005; Volume 6, Issue 10). "My takeaway message for the computer scientists here is there are some very interesting opportunities to collaborate with people solving big problems in the world, whether you're interested in AIDS and medical problems, or the kind of work that Negroponte was talking about with the hundred dollar computers for the developing world, or dozens of other things. There are a lot of opportunities there where you can make a difference."

Benjamin Kuipers. Making Sense of Common Sense Knowledge. Ubiquity; Volume 4, Number 45 (January 13 - 19, 2004). "A long time ago, I wrote the following definition: 'Commonsense knowledge is knowledge about the structure of the external world that is acquired and applied without concentrated effort by any normal human that allows him or her to meet the everyday demands of the physical, spatial, temporal and social environment with a reasonable degree of success.' I still think this is a pretty good definition (though I might remove the restriction to the 'external' world)."

Ray Kurzweil

• Coming Soon to a Theater Near You: The Singularity. By Eliza Strickland. Wired News (November 13, 2007). "Ray Kurzweil has plenty of titles already: inventor, author, futurist, techno-optimist, artificial intelligence expert. Now he's adding a Hollywood gloss to that list by writing, directing, producing and acting in his first feature film. He's adapting his latest book to make a movie titled The Singularity Is Near: A True Story About The Future. ... Wired News talked to Kurzweil about the movie that he hopes will give us a glimpse into that world."
• The Grill - Ray Kurzweil talks about 'augmented reality' and The Singularity - The futurist and inventor talks about pervasive computing, augmented reality, and storage as a philosophical issue. By Ian Lamont. Computerworld (November 11, 2007). "[Q] How will hardware technologies evolve over the next 10 years? [A] If you go out 10 years, computers are not going to be these rectangular objects we carry around. They’re going to be extremely tiny. They’re going to be everywhere. There’s going to be pervasive computing. It’s going to be embedded in the environment, in our clothing. It’s going to be self-organizing. ... [Q] What’s your definition of artificial intelligence? [A] Artificial intelligence is the ability to perform a task that is normally performed by natural intelligence, particularly human natural intelligence. We have in fact artificial intelligence that can perform many tasks that used to require -- and could only be done by -- human intelligence. There are hundreds of examples today, and they are deeply embedded in our economic infrastructure. All communication is governed by intelligent algorithms that route and connect the information. Programs are embedded into computer-assisted design systems. AI flies and lands airplanes, guides intelligent weapons systems, places billions of dollars of financial transactions each day. These examples are narrow AI, in that they are performing specific tasks, very often sophisticated tasks that required human experts to perform. [Q] What could slow down the arrival of strong AI, or of the 'smarter than human' technologies you call the Singularity? [A] There are really two areas to think about. One is hardware and one is software. There’s a strong consensus that the hardware will be available. So, the key issue is how long it will take to get the software and science. I make the case that a 20-year horizon is a conservative estimate, based on the exponential progress we’re making in reverse-engineering the human brain. ..."
• Singularity - Ubiquity interviews Ray Kurzweil. Ubiquity (January 10 - 17, 2006; Volume 7, Issue 1). "Kurzweil: You may wonder: 'OK, what's the big deal with that? We already have human intelligence; in fact, we've got six billion human brains running around, so why do we need more?' One of the answers to that question is that it will be a very powerful combination to combine the subtle and supple powers of human pattern recognition with ways in which machines are already superior. Machines can think more quickly than we can. They're much better at logical thinking and much better at remembering things: a $1000 notebook computer can remember billions of things accurately whereas we're hard-pressed to remember a handful of phone numbers. And most importantly, machines can share their knowledge, their skills, and their insights at electronic speed, which is a million times faster than human language. My second point is that nonbiological intelligence, once it achieves human levels, will double in power every year, whereas human intelligence -- biological intelligence -- is fixed. ... Computers can't pass the Turing test today, but I'm predicting that they'll be able to do it in 2029. ... Ubiquity: Someone like H.G. Wells went from science and technology into world government and large social issues and such. Have you attempted to follow his example? Kurzweil: Well, I am involved with one important aspect, and that is to study the downside to these technologies. I'm not a utopian, and my view is not a utopian perspective. I've been articulating the dangers and downsizing of these technologies for a long time. Are you familiar with Bill Joy's 'Wired' cover story? ... "
• Caution - Merge ahead. Kurzweil sees a far different future, where biology and technology unite, and religion's role is transformed By Sandi Dolbee, Religion & Ethics Editor. The San Diego Union-Tribune and signonsandiego.com (January 12, 2006)
• Nanobots Will Help Battle Ills In Future. By Brian Deagon. Investor's Business Daily & Investors.com (October 21, 2005). "Ray Kurzweil wears many hats. He's a prolific inventor and businessman. He wrote a book on how to live forever. He speaks eloquently on technology, artificial intelligence, genetics and robotics. But he is best known as a futurist. His new book, 'The Singularity Is Near,' is a bold view of what the world could be like in 30 years and beyond. And just how might that world be? Well, your best friend might be one you build yourself. Kurzweil's view of the future includes computers that function just like a human brain, with emotions. ... Kurzweil recently spoke with IBD about this brave new world. IBD: How did you become a futurist? ... IBD: Couldn't a computer go bad, just like some humans do? Kurzweil: I discuss this promise vs. peril of technology in my book. One of the most daunting is pathological artificial intelligence. How do you protect yourself from an intelligent entity that's destructive? My response is that AI will not be off in one corner. It will be deeply integrated into our civilization, society, our bodies and brains. And we will have conflicts with our enhanced intelligence. The way to counteract that is to keep our values of openness, freedom, civil liberties and democracy alive in our civilization. Because we are going to merge with the machines. IBD: So we shouldn't worry about machines taking control? ..."
• Deciphering a brave new world. By Declan McCullagh. CNET News.com (September 29, 2005). "Ray Kurzweil was one of the most remarkable and prolific inventors of the late 20th century. Now Kurzweil, who can claim credit for developing the first text-to-speech synthesizer and the first CCD flat-bed scanner, is busy inventing a future in which humans merge with machines and the pace of technological development accelerates beyond recognition. ... CNET News.com spoke with Kurzweil on Wednesday about his book tour, his views of the melding of man and machine and the political ramifications of having hyper-intelligence initially available to the very wealthy." [audio available]
• Machine visionary - Author and inventor Ray Kurzweil is an authority on artificial intelligence. Interviewed by Hamish Mackintosh. The Guardian (February 6, 2003).
• Ray Kurzweil Speaks His Mind. Sidebar to Sari Kalin's article, Are You There, God? (It's Me, HAL) - Science Meets Spirituality. Darwin Magazine (December 2001). Questions include: Will robots ever become conscious? ... How would we ever prove that a machine is -- or isn't -- conscious? ... Are these computer-induced changes you predict a threat to human civilization as we know it?
• Q&A with Kurzweil's Ray Kurzweil. Interviewed by Paul C. Judge. BusinessWeek (updated February 12, 1998). "Q: How did you first get involved in speech-recognition technology?A: I started with an interest in pattern recognition, which was the science project that I developed to win the Westinghouse Science Award as a high school student. From there, I moved into optical character recognition. That was a solution in search of a problem. That's what led me into reading machines for the blind. It combined optical character recognition and a speech synthesizer, which took the text from a page that was scanned in and read it out loud in a synthesized voice."

Jennifer Lai. Superhuman Speech by 2010: An Interview with Jennifer Lai. By Paula Bach. Crossroads, The ACM Student Magazine. Fall 2007; Issue 13.4. "At IBM Research, Jennifer Lai has been a key player in speech technology research, holding thirteen patents, publishing chapters for several books, and having over thirty papers appear in peer-reviewed journals and conferences. Jennifer took time out of her busy schedule to answer some questions about speech technologies for Crossroads. In the interview, Jennifer shares her expertise on designing speech interfaces, her history at IBM, and advice for undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in working with speech technologies."

Doug Lenat

• Brainpower in a box - MSNBC.com's Tech Tour Across America stops in Austin, TX to learn about a machine that has common sense. Watch Gina Smith interview Cycorp's Doug Lenat (August 17, 2006).
• The Brain Behind Cyc. By Sid Moody. The Austin Chronicle (December 24, 1999).

David Levy. Humans Marrying Robots? A Q&A with David Levy. Is love and marriage with robots an institute you can disparage? Not to computer pioneer David Levy. Continuing advances in computers and robotics, he thinks, will make legal marriages between Homo and Robo feasible by mid-century. By Charles Q. Choi. A Scientific American Web Feature (February 19, 2008). "[Q] How did you first become interested in artificial intelligence (AI)? ... [Q] If people fall in love with robots, aren't they just falling in love with an algorithm? [A] If people fall in love with robots, aren't they just falling in love with an algorithm? It's not that people will fall in love with an algorithm, but that people will fall in love with a convincing simulation of a human being, and convincing simulations can have a remarkable effect on people.... [Q] How might human–robot relationships alter human society? ... [Q] What directions will you pursue now? [A] I'm writing an academic paper on the ethical treatment of robots. Not just the ethics of designing robots to do certain things -- people write about whether we should design robots to go into combat and kill people, for instance -- but should we be treating robots in an ethical way. ... "

• Also see the related article from the March 2008 issue of Scientific American: Not Tonight, Dear, I Have to Reboot.

Pattie Maes

• Pattie Maes on Software Agents: Humanizing the Global Computer. Interviewed by Charles Petrie and Meredith Wiggins. IEEE Internet Computing Online; Vol. 1, No. 4 (1994). "Traditional AI approaches, which use symbolic knowledge representation that embody fundamental "rules of thought," have been turned upside down by the new school, who write simple, small programs that are designed to let intelligence evolve as the programs interact. ... Maes and her Software Agents Group at MIT have taken this principle of interaction and married it to the Internet with the development of software agents that interact with other agents or humans to provide useful services, usually using a Web interface."
• Intelligence Augmentation - A Talk with Pattie Maes. Introduction by
  John Brockman. Edge / Third Culture (January 20, 1998). "I started out doing artificial intelligence, basically trying to study intelligence and intelligent behavior by synthesizing intelligent machines, I realized that what I've been doing in the last seven years could better be referred to as intelligence augmentation, so it's IA as opposed to AI. I'm not trying to understand intelligence and build this stand-alone intelligent machine that is as intelligent as a human and that hopefully teaches us something about how intelligence in humans may work, but instead what I'm doing is building integrated forms of man and machine, and even multiple men and multiple machines, that have as a result that one individual can be super-intelligent, so it's more about making people more intelligent and allowing people to be able to deal with more stuff, more problems, more tasks, more information. Rather than copying ourselves, I'm building machines that can do that."

John Markoff. What the Dormouse Said: An interview with John Markoff. Ubiquity (August 10 - 16, 2005; Volume 6, Issue 29). "UBIQUITY: Congratulations on 'What the Dormouse Said' --- it's a fascinating book. Tell us about it. MARKOFF: Well, I guess I'd call it a revisionist history. It about things that happened around Stanford University between roughly 1960 and 1975, and is a kind of pre-history of personal computing and the personal computer industry. What I was trying to do was to get at some of the culture through which the technology was developed. UBIQUITY: Why the cultural emphasis? MARKOFF: Because technology never happens in a vacuum. The book was an effort to try to pin down how personal computing first emerged around the Stanford campus at two laboratories in the 1960's: one was run by John McCarthy, and was called the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory; and the other was run by Doug Engelbart and known as the Augmentation Research Center or the Augmented Human Intellect Research Center. ..."

Matthew Mason:

• 9 Questions for Carnegie Mellon Robot Chief Matthew Mason. By Logan Ward. Popular Mechanics Tech News (January 10, 2008).
• Newsmaker interview with Matt Mason, director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University - Roboticist inspired by more than machines. By Candace Lombardi. CNET News.com (May 18, 2007). "[Q] You said at that ceremony for the Robot Hall of Fame induction that this is the first time real robots have outnumbered fictional robots as inductees and that this may be a sign you are finally fulfilling expectations? Can you explain what you meant by that? ... [Q] Are there a lot of Ph.D. students who then go out on their own and start companies from what they've done? ... [Q] What do you see as a less popular or unexplored area that you would like to see more research done in? ... [Q] What's the biggest AI achievement so far? ... [Q] Well, what's the most interesting work being done at CMU? ..."

Maja Mataric. From Scientific American Frontiers' Cool Careers in Science. "Maja is working on developing the next generation of intelligent robots! How cool is that?!"

John McCarthy. Getting machines to think like us. Newsmaker interview with John McCarthy. By Jonathan Skillings. CNET News.com (July 3, 2006). "In 1956, a group of computer scientists gathered at Dartmouth College to delve into a brand-new topic: artificial intelligence. ... It was [John] McCarthy who put the name 'artificial intelligence' to the field of study, just ahead of the conference. With Dartmouth hosting a 50th anniversary conference this month, McCarthy--now a professor emeritus at Stanford University--spoke with CNET News.com about the early expectations for AI, the accomplishments since then and what remains to be done. [Q;] You're credited with coining the term "artificial intelligence" just in time for the 1956 conference. Were you just putting a name to existing ideas, or was it something new that was in the air at that time? ... [Q;] And looking back, do you think that that's the right term? It seems fairly self-evident, but would there be a better way to describe this kind of research? ... [Q;] What are some of the big things that have been learned over the last 50 years that have helped shape research in artificial intelligence? ... [Q:] What's the next big thing, then, to accomplish? ... "

• Also see:
  • John McCarthy's oral history
  • the Lighthill Controversy Debate

Pamela McCorduck. Q & A with the author of Machines Who Think: 25th anniversary edition. Natick, MA: A K Peters, Ltd., 2004. Questions include: How long has the human race dreamed about thinking machines? What does it mean that a machine beat Garry Kasparov, the world's chess champion? Artificial intelligence - is it real? What so-called smart computers do -- is that really thinking? Shouldn't we just say no to intelligent machines? Aren't the risks too scary?, and What's ahead as AI succeeds even more?

Drew McDermott. Interviewed by Kentaro Toyama. In ACM Crossroads. "He's well-known in AI circles not only for his extensive work in logic, planning, and robotics, but also for his blunt public appraisals of the state of AI research." Question #1 is "What is AI?"

James McLurkin

• Almost Human - Robotics in the 21st Century. Watch this interview from the WGBH Thinking Big series. (Broadcast date: October 5, 2005). "James McLurkin, a robotics engineer at the Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, imagines a world filled with robots, where man-made intelligent machines do the work deemed too dangerous for people -- such as searching for survivors in the rubble of collapsed buildings or exploring the farthest reaches of space. McLurkin acknowledges that such sophisticated robots are a long way off, but he hopes to have a fun-filled career trying to make it happen."
• Profile: James McLurkin. NOVA Science NOW (Broadcast date: January 25, 2005) "James McLurkin of MIT is one of the world's leading designers of robot 'swarms' -- groups of robots that work together for a greater purpose. ... See the 10-minute broadcast segment chronicling McLurkin's personal and work life" and read this interview.

Donald Michie. The very early days. Interviewed by Michael Bain for the Computer Conservation Society's seminar, Artificial Intelligence - Recollections of the Pioneers (October 2002). "Q: What was your earliest contact with the idea of intelligent machinery? A: Arriving at Bletchley Park in 1942 I formed a friendship with Alan Turing, and in April 1943 with Jack Good. The three of us formed a sort of discussion club focused around Turing's astonishing 'child machine' concept. His proposal was to use our knowledge of how the brain acquires its intelligence as a model for designing a teachable intelligent machine." You can read the interview (PDF), or watch it (Quicktime, Realmedia) via links from the seminar page.

• Also see the Lighthill Controversy Debate.

Marvin Minsky

• This Week on Philosophy Talk - Artificial Intelligence (May 20, 2007 radio broadcast; audio available online). With Ken Taylor and John Perry of Stanford University. KALW, 91.7 FM, San Francisco. "At least some versions of artificial intelligence are attempts not merely to model human intelligence, but to make computers and robots that exhibit it: that have thoughts, use language, and even have free will. Does this make sense? What would it show us about human thinking and consciousness? Join John and Ken [and guest, Marvin Minsky] as they uncover the philosophical issues raised by artificial intelligence."
• It's 2001. Where Is HAL? A Dr. Dobbs podcast (in 3 parts) featuring a talk given by Marvin Minsky in 2001. Posted March 1, 2007. "To Marvin Minsky, Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT, it is clear that AI hasn't delivered on the promises made over 30 years ago. What happened? Minsky examines the failures of AI research and lays out directions for future development in the field." When you're finished with Part 1, go to Parts 2 & 3. [Also available from InformationWeek: Part 1 / 2 / 3 ]
• Once more with feelings. Marvin Minsky interviewed by Amanda Gefter. New Scientist (February 24, 2007, Issue 2592: pages 48 - 49; subscription req'd). "Even after decades of research into artificial intelligence, machines still don't think like human beings. Marvin Minsky, the discipline's founding father, refuses to give up hope. His solution is to make machines more emotional - and feelings, he says, are simpler to model than rational thought. He talks to Amanda Gefter about the need for emotional machines, the inner workings of the human brain, and the future of AI. [AG:] Many people are disappointed at the lack of progress in AI since the 1980s. Why so little headway? ... When do you foresee us having sophisticated AI? What will be the major forces driving the development of AI in years to come? ..."
• Minsky talks about life, love in the age of artificial intelligence. By Carey Goldberg. The Boston Globe (December 4, 2006). "Q: So a machine can be made to have emotional states if it is programmed with the right ways to think? A: Yes, that is the view I take in this book, but to actually build machines like ourselves, we'll need to develop more theories about the kinds of resources that human minds use. Researchers in the field called artificial intelligence have already developed ways to make separate machines that can do various things that people can do. What's new in this book is that it suggests a new way to combine those older ideas. However, there still is much more that we'll need to do before we can make machines that are as resourceful as we are, so this project will need some more years of support. ..."
• Marvin Minsky on Common Sense and Computers That Emote - As artificial intelligence research celebrates its 50th birthday, the MIT icon asks what makes the minds of three-year-olds tick. By Wade Roush. Technology Review (July 13, 2006). "Top computer scientists from around the world are meeting today at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH, to mark the 50th anniversary of 'artificial intelligence.' Back in 1956, John McCarthy, then a member of Dartmouth's mathematics faculty, invented the term for the field's seminal gathering, the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence. McCarthy and four other participants in the 1956 project, including MIT's Marvin Minsky, are participating in this week's meeting, which focuses on AI's next 50 years. ... Minsky, who will open the Dartmouth conference with McCarthy, admired [Terry] Winograd's work. But he's long eschewed reductionistic demonstrations in favor of exploring the real mechanisms behind human thought. Working with Seymour Papert in the MIT AI Lab, for instance, Minsky began in the 1970s to develop the 'Society of Mind' theory, which posits that consciousness arises from layers of purposeful yet mindless 'agents' that work together to generate consciousness. ... TR: So, what are your thoughts about the state of AI research today, compared to where it was in 1956? ... TR: Why do people shy away from the common-sense problem? ... TR: As people have realized how difficult it is to get a computer to understand even simple common-sense situations, would you say that some of the optimism around the possibilities for AI in the 1950s and 1960s has dissipated? ... TR: What are some of the main arguments or research recommendations in your upcoming book, The Emotion Machine? ..."
• Why A.I. Is Brain-Dead. Marvin Minsky sits in the "hot seat" and responds to a series of questions from Josh McHugh. Wired Magazine (August 2003).
• Marvin Minsky Wants Machines To Get Emotional. By Tom Steinert-Threlkeld, ZDNet/Interactive Week. (February 25, 2001). "Because the main point of the book [The Emotion Machine] is that it's trying to make theories of how thinking works. Our traditional idea is that there is something called 'thinking' and that it is contaminated, modulated or affected by emotions. What I am saying is that emotions aren't separate."
• Consciousness is a Big Suitcase. A Talk with Marvin Minsky. Introduction by John Brockman. Edge / Third Culture (February 27, 1998). "Marvin Minsky is the leading light of AI-that is, artificial intelligence. He sees the brain as a myriad of structures. Scientists who, like Minsky, take the strong AI view believe that a computer model of the brain will be able to explain what we know of the brain's cognitive abilities. Minsky identifies consciousness with high-level, abstract thought, and believes that in principle machines can do everything a conscious human being can do."
• Marvin Minsky: Scientist on the Set - An Interview with Marvin Minsky. A chapter from Hal's Legacy (MIT Press). "David G. Stork: You -- along with John McCarthy, Claude Shannon, Nathaniel Rochester, and others -- are credited with founding the field of artificial intelligence (AI) at the famous Dartmouth conference in 1956. A decade later, in the mid-sixties, when Clarke and Kubrick began work on 2001 where was the field of AI? What were you trying to do?"
• Also see this 1989 oral history interview from the Charles Babbage Institute.

Tom Mitchell

• Interview from the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science's Look Who's Talking series. "Tom Mitchell is the director of the Carnegie Mellon University Center for Automated Learning and Discovery (CALD) and Fredkin Professor of AI and Learning. ... [Q:] Learning the brain's algorithms for doing things is very difficult, and is not very well understood as yet. Do you ever find it frustrating trying to get computers to learn things that we ourselves don't know the inner workings of? [A:] That's actually a very interesting observation -- I actually don't get frustrated by that -- why? [Laughs] I don't know! Maybe it's odd, but it's true that much of the work in machine learning -- how to get computers to learn -- has been kind of unguided by anything we know about human learning. It just grew up on its own -- 'ok, how would we engineer this system to look at a lot of data and discover regularities?' -- so people engineered those instead of looking at how humans do it and then trying to duplicate it. But recently, because I've been looking at the brain, I've been starting to learn more about what people know about human learning -- and it's very different. For example, when we humans learn, a big part of what determines whether we succeed or not is all about motivation. And there's nothing in machine learning algorithms that even remotely corresponds to motivation. So it's just a very different phenomenon ... maybe in 10 years we'll understand it better, but right now, the two are very different."
• Watch this Interview with Tom Mitchell from the