Mar 30/04
Emphasis on Short-Term Research is Killing our Future
Robot vs. Robot
Are We Going to Allow our Machines to Become Smarter Than Us?
Seeing-Eye Computer Guides Blind
Robots in Health Care & Other Emotive Areas
Computer Games with AI Characters
Computer Math Tutors
Household Robots
Robot Race
Real Pain Dulled by Virtual Worlds
Fantasy worlds created by virtual reality have been shown to provide a novel form of relief to patients suffering from intractable pain.
Dr Hunter Hoffman, research fellow at the Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, has tested his virtual worlds on victims of burns injuries who suffer excruciating pain during their daily dressing changes which conventional drug therapy fails to control. Hoffman's virtual worlds, which he calls by names such as SnowWorld or SpiderWorld, are designed to immerse the user so deeply in the virtual experience that their attention is distracted away from the pain. SnowWorld, for instance, takes users on an absorbing virtual journey through glaciers and ice caves whilst having to defend themselves from attack by polar bears and penguins.
Mike Robinson, a patient who has undergone the virtual reality treatment, said it helped him to overcome the extreme discomfort he felt when his dressings were changed.
"My pain when the nurse is changing my bandages is consistently extreme," he told BBC News Online. "But during the time I was in VR, I was pretty much unaware that the nurse was even working on my wound. "I mean, at some level I knew she was working on me, but I wasn't thinking about it because I was inside that SnowWorld."
Virtual analgesia is founded on the principle of distracting the attentional resources of the brain. Dr Hoffman believes pain contains a significant psychological element which is why distracting thoughts by virtual reality lends itself so well to pain control.
"Pain requires conscious attention. Humans have a limited amount of this and it's hard to do two things at once," he said. "In this case, we try to lure attention away from the pain signals by drawing the spotlight of attention into the virtual environment leaving less available to process incoming pain signals."
The psychological component is thought to interact with the physiological, according to the prevalent idea of how pain manifests itself, known as Gate Theory. This suggests that higher order thought processes descend the spinal cord and influence the amount of pain allowed to enter the brain. The use of virtual reality in related conditions such as phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) attests to its influence of mind over matter. Hoffman is in the process of developing a treatment programme for the survivors of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
In collaboration with Cornell University in New York, Hoffman has built a virtual reality programme that is a simulation of the events of 9/11 designed to desensitise the patient to the events of that day. "With PTSD such as that suffered by the survivors of the WTC attacks, there is an avoidance component," says Dr Hoffman, whose center is attached to the University of Washington. "Virtual 'exposure' therapy allows access to the event a step at a time, starting with getting up on the morning of September 11th and gradually working up to the most disturbing events of the memory. It is a controlled way of eliciting and processing the memories." One patient overcame her sense of guilt at running away from the scene and failing to help others who subsequently died. Virtual reality exposure therapy has helped return a sense of calm and acceptance to her life.
Robots in Sci Fi
February 18, 2004: Robot Stories, With a Heart. By Jason Silverman. Wired News. "Genre fans won't confuse Robot Stories with the typical studio sci-fi flick -- the film's entire budget would have paid for less than 30 seconds of Terminator 3. Writer and director Greg Pak used mixing bowls, pink paint and $300 of spare parts to build his most elaborate robot, and recorded household appliances for sound effects. But the tiny budget hasn't slowed the film, which has won more than 20 festival awards and is now beginning a national tour. ... 'I wasn't trying to remake The Matrix. Instead, I wanted to play with the genre and explore a certain tradition of science fiction that I love.' ... 'Probably 90 percent of robot stories are variations on the Frankenstein theme, with the machines eventually going haywire,' Pak said. 'I think those stories have given us this preconception that once machines become sentient beings they'll want to destroy all humans. That may be, but I was interested in the idea that these machines, once they begin to think and learn and feel, will want to find some sort of connection. And so they will give us an expanded notion of what it means to be human.'" http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,62319,00.html
Smutty Chatbots
February 20, 2004: Has Text-porn finally made computers 'human'? By Mark Ward. BBC News.
"At first glance spam, pornographic text messages and video games are not contributing much to human development. But a good case can be made for regarding all three as some of the smartest artificial intelligences around. Some may even have beaten the legendary 'Turing Test' by convincing thousands of people that they are human. The test was dreamed up pioneering mathematician Alan Turing as a way to judge machine intelligence. It revolves around people and machines communicating via typed messages. ... Today we communicate with lots of machines via typed messages and lots of us have been fooled. ... But the best candidate for passing the Turing test is the Natachata program that conducts smutty conversations via text messages. ... Some users work out it is a machine, [Simon Luttrell] said, and never come back. But, worryingly, some like the fact that it is a machine."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3503465.stm
Book on Turing and Consciousness
While browsing in the library I came across a fun booklet that might interest you: "Introducing Consciousness" by David Papineau & Howard Selina. It's illustrated almost like a comic book. You might be able to use some of the pictures in your lectures.
see sample at http://www.cs.rochester.edu/~schubert/TuringTest.jpeg
Creativity Machine
January 25, 2004: The machine that invents. By Tina Hesman. St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
"Technically, Stephen Thaler has written more music than any composer in the world. He also invented the Oral-B CrossAction toothbrush and devices that search the Internet for messages from terrorists. He has discovered substances harder than diamonds, coined 1.5 million new English words, and trained robotic cockroaches. Technically. Thaler, the president and chief executive of Imagination Engines Inc. in Maryland Heights, gets credit for all those things, but he's really just 'the man behind the curtain,' he says. The real inventor is a computer program called a Creativity Machine. ... When Rusty Miller went to lunch one day in 1998, he picked up a specialized computer magazine called PCAI journal. He flipped through the pages and came across a story about [Stephen] Thaler and his Creativity Machine inventing the ultra-hard substances. Instantly, Miller knew that Thaler had taken a step beyond other artificial intelligence technologies, such as fuzzy logic or genetic algorithms, he said. The brilliance of Thaler's invention is the noise he introduces into the system, Miller said. 'Noise allows neurons to have a little elbow room to dream up new ideas,' Miller said. Other researchers have come to the same conclusion. Good old-fashioned artificial intelli gence uses human experts to input huge quantities of data and a list of rules to create a model, said Robert Kozma, a computer scientist at the University of Memphis. Kozma is experimenting with a similar technology. The rigidity of traditional artificial intelligence technologies holds back creativity, Kozma said."
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/News/Science%2B&%2BMedicine/E981DA3 3F2CF718986256E250061FFF6?OpenDocument&Headline=Computer%2BCreativity%2BMachine%2Bsim ulates%2Bthe%2Bhuman%2Bbrain
Robots with a Human Face
January 29, 2004: Giving robots a human face. By Matt Slagle. Associated Press
available from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
"[David] Hanson and other robot makers believe social robots will one day serve
a variety of functions: tutor, companion, even security guard. But should they
look human? Hanson, who has worked as a designer, sculptor, and robotics developer
for Walt Disney Imagineering, Universal Studios and MTV, thinks precise human
looks are a must if people are going to effectively communicate with robots.
... Most experts disagree. They cite one of the principles of social robotics,
the so-called 'Uncanny Valley' theory. ... 'Our experience has shown that people
quickly lose the suspension of disbelief needed to interact with these creations
once they start interacting with them for any length of time, because the artificial
intelligence is not capable of producing human-level behavior,' said Reid Simmons,
a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute. 'I strongly
believe that this problem would be exacerbated by having a more humanly realistic
robot.' Science fiction has long taken different approaches to imbue robots with
personal appeal. ... No matter what, we can expected future social robots to be
more alien than human, said Will Wright, creator of The Sims video games and
a robot enthusiast. 'The fact is, I will share much more evolutionary history,
and hence, brain circuitry and behavior, with my cat than I ever will with
a machine intelligence,' he said. 'The AIs we will be inventing soon will almost
certainly be the first true alien intelligences humans will meet.'"
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/158597_robotface29ww.html
Battlefield Robots
January 30, 2004: Robots for No Man's Land - Defense Companies Developing the
'Brains' to Remake War.
By Yuki Noguchi. The Washington Post.
"The idea is to teach Stryker to accomplish a mission on its own, as a robot.
By 2010, robotic Strykers and similar contrivances are slated to be in use
as all-purpose battlefield vehicles, surveying battlegrounds, sniffing for
land mines, or transporting supplies and troops to the front line. An unmanned
Stryker is part of the military's effort to move more machines into battle
to save both money and lives. 'Well before the end of the century, there will
be no people on the battlefield,' said Robert Finkelstein, a professor at
the University of Maryland's School of Management and Technology. ... 'We need
to work on the nervous system of the robots, so it can really learn on its own
by picking up patterns based on its prior experience,' said Charles Shoemaker,
chief of the Army Research Lab's robotics project office in Aberdeen, Md.,
which funds robotics research at General Dynamics and at universities and
other government agencies. The Predator unmanned aerial vehicle is the most
visible of these efforts to have made it into combat. ... But autonomous
navigation -- allowing an actual unmanned land vehicle that thinks for itself
to rove into battle situations -- is a taller order. It requires maneuvering
around obstacles, ditches, signs and traffic, which are harder tasks to teach
a machine."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61717-2004Jan29.html
Rescue Robots, Future of AI
December 28, 2003: Mother of Invention - Virtual cow fences and self-reconfiguring
automatons are just two of MIT roboticist Daniela Rus's futuristic visions.
By Rich
Barlow. The Boston Globe /available from Boston.com.
"[Daniela] Rus, who last year won a MacArthur 'genius' grant at age 39, invests her
work with quasi-spiritual purpose as well. Inventing machines that build scaffolding
and rescue victims -- in short, that act like people -- 'means to study life, to get
an understanding of how we're made up,' she says. 'Understanding life is a great and
noble quest, because that's how we understand ourselves.' ... Some roboticists are
'absolutely aghast' when critics question their brave new world, [Rodney] Brooks says.
Rus invited students to pause and ponder it. The mechanics of building robots are fine,
she says, but arguing big philosophical issues revs students' passion, so that they
just don't 'passively sit back and suck all the information you give to them.'
The climactic project of her artificial-intelligence classes at Dartmouth (one she
hopes to continue at MIT) assigned debate teams to duel over such topics as whether
robots might rule the world someday, or the urgency of enacting writer Isaac Asimov's
'Three Laws of Robotics,' mandating that robots never harm humans. Student Carl Stritte
r's topic was whether artificial-intelligence research would benefit humanity. 'Never
before had I heard a professor,' he says by e-mail, 'after teaching us a subject for
10 weeks, ask the class whether or not it had been, in essence, a waste of time.'"
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2003/12/28/mother_of_invention/
Robot Scientist
January 14, 2004: Robot frees scientists from routine experiments. icWales.
"Scientists at University of Wales in Aberystwyth have developed a robot to do work
normally carried out by white-coated boffins, it was revealed today. The 'robot
scientist' bears little resemblance to human egg-heads, consisting of a computer linked
to machinery for handling liquids on a lab desk-top. But it can think of theories and
then design and carry out experiments to test them, just like a real scientist. ...
The machine was built by British scientists to show how artificial intelligence can aid
research. As a test, it was set the problem of discovering the function of different
genes in baker's yeast - no mean feat considering the organism has 6,000 genes, 30%
of which have functions that are still unknown. Writing in the journal Nature, the
scientists described how the robot generated a set of hypotheses based on its knowledge
of biochemistry. ... The robot automatically selected, dispensed and mixed liquids and
measured the results using an electronic reader."
http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200wales/content_objectid=13815330_method=full_siteid=50082_headline=-Robot-frees-scientists-from-routine-experiments-name_page.html
Computers that Care
December 2003: The Love Machine - Building computers that care.
By David Diamond. Wired Magazine.
"I have seen the future of computing, and I'm pleased to report
it's all about ... me! This insight has been furnished with the help of
Tim Bickmore, a doctoral student at the MIT Media Lab. He's invited me to
participate in a study aimed at pushing the limits of human-computer relations.
What kinds of bonds can people form with their machines, Bickmore wants to know.
... Bickmore's area of study is called affective computing. Its proponents
believe computers should be designed to recognize, express, and influence emotion
in users. Rosalind Picard, a genial MIT professor, is the field's godmother;
her 1997 book, Affective Computing, triggered an explosion of interest in
the emotional side of computers and their users. ... And she developed
an interest in the work of neuroscientist Antonio Damasio. In his 1994 book,
Descartes' Error , Damasio argued that, thanks to the interplay of the
brain's frontal lobe and limbic systems, our ability to reason depends in
part on our ability to feel emotion. Too little, like too much, triggers
bad decisions. The simplest example: It's an emotion - fear - that governs
your decision not to dive into a pool of crocodiles."
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.12/love.html
Nanotechnology
December 1, 2003: Nanotechnology - Drexler and Smalley make the case for and against
'molecular assemblers.'
Point/Counterpoint by Rudy Baum. Chemical & Engineering
News (Volume 81, Number 48).
"In his landmark 1986 book, 'Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology,'
K. Eric Drexler envisioned a world utterly transformed by such assemblers.
They would be able to build anything with absolute precision and no pollution.
They would confer something approaching immortality. They would enable the
colonization of the solar system. Drexler, who was then a research affiliate
with Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory,
also explored in 'Engines of Creation' the potentially devastating negative
consequences of such a technology. 'Replicating assemblers and thinking
machines pose basic threats to people and to life on Earth,' he wrote in
a chapter titled 'Engines of Destruction.' Because Drexler sees the development
of molecular assemblers and nanotechnology as inevitable, he urged society to
thoroughly examine the implications of the technology and develop mechanisms to
ensure its benevolent application. ...
Like Drexler, [Richard E.] Smalley believes the potential of nanotechnology to
benefit humanity is almost limitless. But Smalley has a dramatically different
conception of nanotechnology from Drexler, one that doesn't include the concept
of molecular assemblers. Smalley does not think molecular assemblers as
envisioned by Drexler are physically possible. In lectures and in a September
2001 article in Scientific American, Smalley outlined his scientific objections
to the idea of molecular assemblers, specifically what he called the 'fat fingers
problem' and the 'sticky fingers problem.'"
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/8148/8148counterpoint.html
Also see -> December 2, 2003: The government says "no" to federally funded
nanobots. By James M. Pethokoukis. Next News from U.S. News & World Report.
"[T]he House and Senate passed legislation last week appropriating nearly
$3.7 billion over the next four years for nanotechnology research and
development. The bill authorizes money for federal nanotech research by
'providing grants to individual investigators . . . and . . . establishing
a network of advanced technology user facilities and centers.' Environmental
groups should be pleased that the bill will also support research into the
'ethical, legal, environmental, and other appropriate societal concerns,
including the potential use of nanotechnology in enhancing human intelligence
and in developing artificial intelligence.' ...
[I]in a must-read debate between [Eric] Drexler and [Richard] Smalley in the
new issue of Chemical & Engineering News, Smalley notes that in a recent talk
he gave to some middle and high school students, many students 'assumed that
self-replicating nanobots were possible, and most were deeply worried about
what would happen in their future as these nanobots spread around the world.
I did what I could to allay their fears, but there is no question that many
of these youngsters have been told a bedtime story that is deeply troubling.'
For now, at least, it appears the government has sided with Smalley."
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/nycu/tech/nextnews/archive/next031202.htm
Computer Jokers -- JAPE
December 13, 2003: Cracker joke or two to win a £500 prize from Asda and be
a laugh next year.
By David Williamson. The Western Mail available from
ic Wales.
"One of the reasons such groan-inducing favourites are still attracting interest
is that pioneers of artificial intelligence are teaching computers to tell
Q&A jokes. So far, computers have learned how puns work and how to match
them with nouns and verbs. Tests show that the jokes they have told are
almost as funny as those told by humans . And researchers at the University
of Edinburgh are hoping to create a 'language playground' where children
will be able to experiment with words. Graeme Ritchie said,' We are aiming
it at children with disabilities becausethey are mainly deprived of the
thrusting swapping of jokes with their peer group.' In scientific studies their
Jape (Joke Analysis and Production Engine) system has amused children."
http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200wales/content_Objectid=13721053_method=full_siteid=50082_headline=Cracker-joke-or-two-to-win-a----xA3-500-prize-frm-Asda-and-be---a-laugh-next-year-----name_page.html
From domo@aaai.org Tue Nov 25 15:05:18 2003
From: domo@aaai.org
Subject: AI ALERT 25 November 2003
Computer Chess -- X3D Fritz
November 23, 2003: Gary Kasparov believes in man and the machine.
By Aroonim
Bhuyan. The Economic Times.
"Chess was born in India in the 6th century as
a war game called Chaturanga and spread across the world via different routes.
But wherever it went, it never failed to catch the imagination of the
people.... With technological advancements over time, chess had something
more to handle - artificial intelligence. There have been attempts,
and devices and programmes have been developed since the 18th century
to unravel the my steries of this chequered board. ... In 1980, the
Carnegie-Mellon University in the US instituted the Friedkin Prize.
worth $100,000, it was to be awarded to anyone who can develop a computer
that can beat the reigning world champion. Researchers at the university
started a project, which ended in success with the computer, Deep Thought,
defeating Danish grandmaster Brent Larsen in 1988. Yes, Kasparov was not
the first human to be defeated by a machine in the game of chess. ...
This month, November, 2003, Kasparov again sat with revenge for mankind
in his mind in a match against a programme called the X3D Fritz."
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow?msid=297137
From domo@aaai.org Tue Nov 25 15:05:18 2003
From: domo@aaai.org
Subject: AI ALERT 25 November 2003
Household Robots
November 24, 2003: 'Scientific American' names its annual list's top 50.
By Ying Lou. USA Today.
"The Scientific American50 list in the December magazine honors
a host of contributions to science, technology and to society itself. ...
iRobot was named for developing the first truly mass market household robot."
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-11-24-sciam-honors_x.htm
From domo@aaai.org Tue Nov 25 15:05:18 2003
From: domo@aaai.org
Subject: AI ALERT 25 November 2003
Bill Joy and Techno-Apocalypse
Wired, December 2003: "Hope Is a Lousy Defense."
Sun refugee Bill Joy
talks about greedy markets, reckless science, and runaway technology.
On the plus side, there's still some good software out there.
By Spencer Reiss. Wired Magazine (Issue 11.12).
"In 2000, he wrote the Wired cover story "Why the Future
Doesn't Need Us," a Cassandra cry about the perils of 21st-century technology
and a striking display of ambivalence from a premier technologist. Now,
at home 8,000 feet up in Aspen, Colorado, Joy talks about building a
technological utopia while worrying about a techno-apocalypse. ...
[SR]
But you've said aspects of the war on terrorism infringe on civil liberties.
Aren't you calling for something similar with respect to technology?
[BJ] I'm not saying the government should do it. Centralized strategies
- things like Admiral Poindexter's Total Information Awareness program -
don't work. What I'm saying is 'physician, heal thyself.' People in the
various scientific communities have to police themselves.
[SR] Like the Russell-Einstein Manifesto from 1955 - where we get the phrase
'weapons of mass destruction.'
[BJ] I certainly think a Hippocratic Oath for scientists would be useful.
And I think an essential part of getting control of technology will be
for international organizations to take a lead in promoting ethical
scientific behavior. The Pugwash organization's work on sensible nuclear
policy is a strong example."
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.12/billjoy.html
From domo@aaai.org Fri Nov 14 12:51:09 2003
From: domo@aaai.org
Subject: AI ALERT 14 November 2003
Computers with Feelings
November 5, 2003: Machines have feelings too - A new book argues that computers
should be given emotions.
By Charles Arthur. The Independent.
"Professor [Donald] Norman's thesis is that emotion - that is, gut reaction
- is an essential part of our reaction to anything we interact with.
Don't dismiss emotion, he argues: it's a useful function that evolution
has equipped us with so that we don't have to think about everything.
... But Professor Norman goes rather further than this. He doesn't just
consider what makes us react to machines and objects that we use:
he takes the thinking forward to pondering the question of whether machines
- such as robots and computers - should have emotions. He thinks they should,
as does Professor Rosalind Pickard, an artificial intelligence expert.
She told him: 'I wasn't sure [machines] had to have emotions until I was
writing a paper on how they would respond intelligently to our emotions
without having their own. In the course of writing that paper, I realised
it would be a heck of a lot easier if we just gave them emotions.'"
http://news.independent.co.uk/digital/features/story.jsp?story=460692
From domo@aaai.org Fri Nov 14 12:51:09 2003
From: domo@aaai.org
Subject: AI ALERT 14 November 2003
Robot Consciousness
November 11, 2003: Can Robots Become Conscious? By Kenneth Chang.
#14 of the 25 of the most provocative questions facing science.
The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.).
["The first issue of Science Times appeared 25 years ago, on Nov. 14,
1978. Its guiding principle ever since has been that science is not
a collection of answers, but a way of asking questions, an enterprise
driven by curiosity. To celebrate the anniversary, we pose 25 of the
most provocative questions facing science. As always, answers
are provisional."]
"It's a three-part question. What is consciousness? Can you put it
in a machine? And if you did, how could you ever know for sure? ...
The field of artificial intelligence started out with dreams of making
thinking -- and possibly conscious -- machines, but to date, its
achievements have been modest. No one has yet produced a computer program
that can pass the Turing test. ... But with the continuing gains in
computing power, many believe that the original goals of artificial
intelligence will be attainable within a few decades. ... To Dr.
[Hans] Moravec, if it acts conscious, it is. To ask more is pointless.
Dr. [David] Chalmers regards consciousness as an ineffable trait, and
it may be useless to try to pin it down."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/11/science/11MACH.html
http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2003/11/10/science/text/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/science/index.html
From domo@aaai.org Fri Nov 14 12:51:09 2003
From: domo@aaai.org
Subject: AI ALERT 14 November 2003
Smarter Search Engines
November 10, 2003: Artificial intelligence and the smarter search engine.
Sidebar / Future Watch Column by Linda Rosencrance. Computerworld.
"Within three to five years, we could see a very different, next-generation
search engine -- one that could extract specific facts, draw inferences
and organize those facts based on a few key words, says Tom Mitchell,
former president of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence
in Menlo Park, Calif. ... Mitchell says what people are now able to do
in the laboratory is develop computer software that can, when given
a Web page or Web site, examine that page or site and find names of people,
dates and locations. 'It can't read text and understand it in the level
of detail people can, but already it can read text and can say, 'Oh,
this is the name of a person' with about 95% accuracy and, 'Oh, this
is a location; this is a date,'' he says. ...
'[W]ith the next-generation search engine, you're going to be able to
ask a specific question.' The user will be able to do that because of
technology that's under development that partially allows a computer
to read -- in a sense that it's able to extract specific facts and draw
inferences from those facts and then present them, according to Mitchell."
http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/software/appdev/story/0,10801,86988,00.html
From domo@aaai.org Fri Oct 31 14:36:48 2003
From: domo@aaai.org
Subject: AI ALERT 31 October 2003
Legal Defense of Intelligent Computers
October 29, 2003: What if HAL had sued? Next News column
by James M. Pethokoukis. U.S . News & World Report.
"In my previous 'Next News,' I pondered some of the pros and cons of developing
superintelligence -- artificial intelligence that greatly exceeds the limits
of human cognitive capabilities. The possible downside of doing so is familiar
to anyone who reads science fiction or goes to sci-fi movies: supersmart
machines that try to take over the world or are otherwise harmful to humans.
But what if the tables were turned, and the machines were threatened by
unfriendly humans? At last month's International Bar Association conference
in San Francisco, that was the premise of a mock trial in which lawyers
for an intelligent computer sought a preliminary injunction to prevent
a corporation from disconnecting it."
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/nycu/tech/nextnews/archive/next031029.htm
From domo@aaai.org Wed Oct 15 15:46:30 2003
From: domo@aaai.org
Subject: AI ALERT 15 October 2003
AI Projections to 1020
October 9, 2003: All aboard the 2020 express.
The future is a freight train -
hear the whistle and don't get run over, says futurist Michio Kaku, who
has a startling vision of the year 2020, as Nhada Goodfellow reports.
The Advertiser. "The year is 2020 and artificial intelligence has
replaced bank tellers, although construction workers and lawyers are
in hot demand. This is Dr Michio Kaku's vision of the year 2020, based
on extensive interviews with 150 of the world's top scientists.
The City University of New York theoretical physicist -- once voted
among that city's 100 most intelligent people -- presented his view of
the future to the Financial Planning Association's annual convention
in Adelaide yesterday. ... Reading glasses will contain face-recognition
technology so you never forget a name, with a person's biography able
to be downloaded to the spectacles on request. ... But he says while
there would be some changes in the job market, there are some jobs -
involving pattern recognition and common sense - that artificial
intelligence will never replace. 'The big losers will be the middle
men - people involved in inventory, bean counters,' he says. But there
would always be a need for police, construction workers, even garbage
men, maids and jobs involving creativity and leadership."
http://www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,7503890%255E20221,00.html
From agentnews, May 4/03:
Breazeal's Sociable Robots
Designing Sociable Robots -- Cynthia L. Breazeal,
Designing Sociable
Robots, MIT Press, May 2002, ISBN: 0262025108.
Sociable robots are
synthetic creatures designed to understand us, to communicate and
interact with us, to learn from us and grow with us. The study of
sociable robots provides a new way to explore human social
intelligence and even what it means to be human. (5/4)
http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0262025108/murkeywares09-02/
From agentnews, May 4/03:
History of AI
Ulrich Geske, History of AI, Exhibition ECAI 2000, Part II: Achievements,
GMD Report 112, GMD - Forschungszentrum Informationstechnik GmbH
http://www.gmd.de/publications/report/0112/Text.pdf
Includes list of AAAI fellows, projection into the future.
From AI Alert, Dec 5 2002:
The Information Awareness Office, Dr. Strangelove, and AI
December 9, 2002 [issue date]: Too Much Information. Comment by Hendrik Hertzberg.
The New Yorker.
"When it comes to concocting fevered visions of the future as a way of illuminating
the present ... no literary divinator gets it righter than the sci-fi pulp master
Philip K. Dick, author of 'Clans of the Alphane Moon' and dozens of other books, and
inspirer of some of Hollywood's spookiest dystopias, including 'Blade Runner,' 'Total
Recall,' and 'Minority Report.' And this is odd, given that he has been dead for twenty
years. Too bad he's not still around. It would be interesting to get his take on the
Information Awareness Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the
Department of Defense. ... The 'example technologies' which the Office intends to
develop include 'entity extraction from natural language text,' 'biologically inspired
algorithms for agent control,' and 'truth maintenance.' One of the Office's thirteen
subdivisions, the Human Identification at a Distance (HumanID) program, is letting
contracts not only for 'Face Recognition' and 'Iris Recognition' but also for
'Gait Recognition.' ... The Information Awareness Office is working on some
really cool stuff that will eventually turn up at Brookstone and the
Sharper Image, like a Palm Pilot-size PDA that does instantaneous English-Arabic and
English-Chinese translations. ... But the Office's main assignment is, basically, to turn
everything in cyberspace about everybody ... into a single, humongous,
multi-googolple
xibyte database that electronic robots will mine for patterns of information
suggestive of terrorist activity. Dr. Strangelove's vision 'a chikentic gomplex
of gumbyuders' is at last coming into its own. It's easy to ridicule this --
fun, too, and fun is something the war on terrorism doesn't offer a lot of
-- but it's not so easy to dismiss the possibility that the project, nutty
as it sounds, might actually be of significant help in uncovering terrorist
networks. The problem is that it would also be of significant help in uncovering
just about everything, including the last vestiges of individual and family
privacy.
"http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?021209ta_talk_hertzberg
From AI Alert, Dec 5 2002:
Michael Crichton and Nanotechnology
http://www.austin360.com/auto_docs/epaper/editions/sunday/insight_4.html
December 1, 2002: Big disaster, teeny packages. By James N. Gardner. The Oregonian.
"Michael Crichton is the undisputed master of the techno-thriller genre. ... The
underlying scientific developments in "Prey" are nanotechnology (precision engineering
at the molecular level) and artificial life (the younger, scarier cousin of artificial
intelligence). These fields of research have generated dire warnings from the likes
of Bill Joy, the chief science officer at Sun Microsystems, and Sir Martin Rees, the
Astronomer Royal of England. Joy, for instance, cautions that self-replicating
nanodevices, only a few molecules in volume, could conceivably infect and fatally degrade
our technological infrastructure -- and that no power on Earth would be able to stop
the tiny machines once they began reproducing. In Crichton's hands, this horrifying
possibility comes to life. ... Computer guru Ray Kurzweil has predicted that before the
21st century ends, thinking machines will have raced far ahead of humanity in terms
of sheer mental ability. ... This is the disquieting specter of artificial
intelligence research succeeding beyond our wildest dreams or nightmares.
But as Crichton chillingly demonstrates, fast-moving research in
nanotechnology and artificial life technologies, some of it funded by the military,
raises an even creepier possibility...."
http://www.oregonlive.com/entertainment/oregonian/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/entertainment/1038625670193930.xml
From agentnews-owner@mailserver-ng.cs.umbc.edu Mon Dec 16 01:12:26 2002
Computer Decision Making and the Law
Posthuman Law -- Posthuman Law: Information Policy and the Machinic
World by Sandra Braman.
It has been an unspoken assumption that the law
is made by humans for humans. That assumption no longer holds: The
subject of information policy is increasingly flows between machines,
machinic rather than social values play ever-more important roles in
decision-making, and information policy for human society is being
supplemented, supplanted, and superceded by machinic decision-making. (12/12)
http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_12/braman/
From agentnews-owner@mailserver-ng.cs.umbc.edu Mon Dec 16 01:12:26 2002
McKibben ("The End of Nature") on Staying Human in an Engineered Age
April 18, 2003: Technology already more than 'Enough.'
Book review by Heather
Lee Schroeder. The Capital Times.
"Bill McKibben knows the topic of his
latest book 'Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age' sounds a lot
like science fiction. In it, he takes a hard look at genetic engineering,
therapeutic cloning, nanotechnology, robotics and other technologies that
are poised to change the future of humankind. In fact, he points out that for
a long time, sci-fi writers were the only people looking at the ramifications
of new technologies. What they've had to say is not a happy scenario. ...
McKibben, who is best known for his seminal book 'The End of Nature,'
which explored global warming and the destruction of the ozone layer,
has penned a comprehensible portrait of the leading-edge technologies that
will transform our world in the next five to 10 years. Among them:
germ-line engineering of human DNA, which will likely result in a whole
different species of humans and the development of thinking and reasoning
artificial intelligence.
Not only does McKibben describe these scientific advances in a way that an
average person can understand, but he also spends a good portion of
'Enough' discussing the philosophical arguments that humans must tackle
in order to control these discoveries."
http://www.madison.com/captimes/books/topic/nonfiction/47239.php
From domo@aaai.org Wed Aug 27 15:43:41 2003
From: domo@aaai.org
Subject: AI ALERT 27 August 2003
Cyborg Conference
July 30 - August 5, 2003: Cyborg Liberation Front. By Erik Baard. The Village Voice. "Yeats's wish, expressed in his poem 'Sailing to Byzantium,' was a governing principle for those attending the World Transhumanist Association conference at Yale University in late June. International academics and activists, they met to lay the groundwork for a society that would admit as citizens and companions intelligent robots, cyborgs made from a free mixing of human and machine parts, and fully organic, genetically engineered people who aren't necessarily human at all. ...
[T]he purpose of the Yale conference was direct, with no feinting at other agendas. The crowd there wanted to shape what they see as a coming reality. From the first walking stick to bionic eyes, neural chips, and Stephen Hawking's synthesized voice, they would argue we've long been in the process of becoming cyborgs. A 'hybrot,' a robot governed by neurons from a rat brain, is now drawing pictures. Dolly the sheep broke the barrier on cloning, and new transgenic organisms are routinely created. The trans humanists gathered because supercomputers are besting human chess masters, and they expect a new intelligence to pole-vault over humanity -- in this century. ...
'I would say if a creature is both sentient and intelligent, and has a moral
sense, then that creature should be considered a human being irrespective
of the genesis of that person,' says Rabbi Norman Lamm, chancellor of
Yeshiva University. He finds agreement at the Catholic-run Georgetown
Medical Center. 'To err on the side of inclusion is the loving thing to do,'
concludes Kevin FitzGerald, a Jesuit priest who happens to be a molecular
geneticist and bioethicist."
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0331/baard.php
From domo@aaai.org Wed Aug 27 15:43:41 2003
From: domo@aaai.org
Subject: AI ALERT 27 August 2003
DARPA Future -- Brachman
July 31, 2003: The Right and Wrong Stuff of Thinking Outside a Box.
By Christopher Marquis. The New York Times (no fee reg. req'd.).
"The Pentagon branch responsible for developing technology and techniques for
warfare stumbled badly this week by devising a plan for people to bet on
future terrorist attacks. Yet in pressing an idea that senators quickly
denounced as absurd, the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, or
Darpa, is doing what it is supposed to do -- think outside the box.
Over five decades, Darpa has had some standout triumphs. It developed
the model for the Internet and came up with the stealth technology that
renders American jets undetectable by radar. ... Another project that is
seeking researchers is Lifelog. ... Lifelog is part of a broader effort
to find ways to make computers adapt more to people, instead of the other
way around. For all the progress in processing information, Darpa experts
say, computers are still unable to learn, explain their reasoning or
fix themselves. Ronald Brachman, a Darpa expert in artificial intelligence,
said it was time to view computers in a dramatically different way.
He expressed annoyance at his 'stupid PC,' which cannot, in any real
sense, learn. ... Another busy field involves unmanned air vehicles,
or U.A.V.'s, which can conduct especially hazardous missions , including
striking enemy targets, without endangering American forces. Two models,
the Predator and Global Hawk, were used successfully in Afghanistan."
NO LONGER AVAILABLE FOR FREE --
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0D16F83F5A0C728FDDAE0894DB404482
From domo@aaai.org Wed Aug 27 15:43:41 2003
From: domo@aaai.org
Subject: AI ALERT 27 August 2003
Household Robots
August 2, 2003: Still stuck with the dishes - Why don't we all have robots
to do the housework? Cleaning toilets takes more smarts than you think.
By Rachel Ross. The Star.
"What's holding back our sci-fi dreams?
It turns out that working in the human world is far more complicated
than we realize. The human environment is very unpredictable and this
makes even the simplest task difficult. ... [Bill] Smart and [Bruce]
Maxwell will co-chair the Robot Competition and Exhibition at the
International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence taking place
in Acapulco next week. The competition is designed to encourage people
to make robots that can work in human environments and interact with
people in natural ways. Smart notes that today's robot (the kind
designed to interact with people and work in unstructured environments)
always has a team of five or six graduate students following it around
making it work. 'Ten years from now, when you buy a robot to clean your
house, you don't want to have to buy those five or six graduate students,'
he says. ... In talking about why we don't have robot maids, it's worth
noting we have come along way in the past couple of years. Sensors are
less expensive and computer processing power is far greater than it used
to be. Consequently, there are lots of robots for human environments
that can do one thing very well. Lawn-mowing and vacuuming robots are
good examples of single-minded systems."
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?GXHC_gx_session__id_=63d087c6cde9e04d&
pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1059603010632&call_pageid=9914799
73472&col=991929131147
From domo@aaai.org Wed Aug 27 15:43:41 2003
From: domo@aaai.org
Subject: AI ALERT 27 August 2003
How Robots Will Steal Your Jobs
August 5, 2003: How Robots Will Steal Your Job. By Joanna Glasner. Wired News.
"Listening to Marshall Brain explain the future as he sees it, it's relatively
easy to suspend disbelief and agree how plausible it is that over the next
40 years most of our jobs will be displaced by robots. After all, it only
takes a typical round of errands to reveal how far we've come already.
... According to Brain's projections, laid out in an essay, 'Robotic Nation ,
' humanoid robots will be widely available by the year 2030, and able to
replace jobs currently filled by people in areas such as fast -food service,
housecleaning and retail. Unless ways are found to compensate for
these lost jobs, Brain estimates that more than half of Americans
could be unemployed by 2055. ... But many techies who discussed Brain's
essay on the geek site Slashdot found Brain's projections less than convincing."
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,59882-2,00.html
From domo@aaai.org Wed Aug 27 15:43:41 2003
From: domo@aaai.org
Subject: AI ALERT 27 August 2003
Genetic Algorithms
August 2003: Darwin in a Box - Are you ready for computers that speed up
the process of evolution and teach themselves to think?
By Steven Johnson.
Discover Magazine (Vol. 24 No. 8).
"The idea is called a genetic algorithm. It creates a random population of
potential solutions, then tests each one for success, selecting the best
of the batch to pass on their 'genes' to the next generation, including
slight mutations to introduce variation. The process is repeated until
the program evolves a workable solution. Original ly developed in the
1960s by John Holland at the University of Michigan, genetic algorithms
are increasingly being harnessed for real-world tasks such as designing
more efficient refrigerators. Genetic algorithms make it possible for
computers to do something profound, something that looks an awful lot
like thinking. ... The genetic algorithm doesn't make the computer
self-aware in a HAL 9000 kind of way, but it does make the computer
genuinely creative, capable of imaginative leaps and subtle connections
that might elude the minds of human engineers. ... Bill Gross and his
team of inventors at Idealab in Pasadena, California, are using genetic
algorithms to develop a new solar energy device (see 'Catch the Fire,'
page 52). Gross believes genetic algorithms have the potential to
revolutionize engineering."
http://www.discover.com/aug_03/feattech.html
From domo@aaai.org Wed Aug 27 15:43:41 2003
From: domo@aaai.org
Subject: AI ALERT 27 August 2003
Education through AI-assisted Games
August 15, 2003: Can Grand Theft Auto Inspire Professors? Educators say
the virtual worlds of video games help students think more broadly.
By Scott Carlson.
The Chronicle of Higher Education. "Research shows, Mr. [James] Gee says,
that people learn best when they are entertain ed, when they can use
creativity to work toward complex goals, when lesson plans incorporate
both thinking and emotion, and when the consequences of actions can be
observed. Those needs, he says, aren't met in college or school classrooms,
where students are often given lists of facts, told to memorize them,
and expected to regurgitate them on tests or in essays. Video games,
on the other hand, immerse people in worlds and make them rely on
problem-solving skills to reach defined goals. ... Curriculums
dedicated to video-game criticism, game design, and education through
games have been established at many colleges, including Southern
Methodist University, the Rochester Institute of Technology, and Carnegie
Mellon University. Students like Robin Hunicke, a doctoral candidate
in computer science at Northwestern University, are becoming more common.
Ms. Hunicke is developing artificial intelligence that will automatically
adjust the difficulty of a game to match the ability of the player. Her
work is grounded in educational theories that say that people learn best
when they are in the 'flow' -- challenged and thinking but not overwhelmed."
http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i49/49a03101.htm
From domo@aaai.org Wed Aug 27 15:43:41 2003
From: domo@aaai.org
Subject: AI ALERT 27 August 2003
Humanoid Robot Research in Japan
August 20, 2003: 30-year robot project pitched - Researchers see tech windfalls in costly humanoid quest. The Japan Times.
"Japanese researchers in robot technology are advocating a grand project,
under which the government would spend 50 billion yen a year over three
decades to develop a humanoid robot with the mental, physical and
emotional capacity of a 5-year-old human. ... Unlike cartoonist
[Osamu] Tezuka's 'Atom' character, known as 'Astro Boy' overseas, based
on an image of a 9-year-old boy, the Atom Project aims to create
a humanoid robot with the physical, intellectual and emotional capacity
of a 5-year-old that would be able to think and move on its own, the
researchers say. ... 'Most of today's robots operate with a program
written by humans. In order to develop a robot that can think and move
like a 5-year-old, we have to first understand the mechanism of how
human brains work, [Mitsuo] Kawato said, admitting the difficulty of
his project. 'That will be equal to understanding human beings.'
But the researchers believe such daunting challenges, once overcome
in the development process, would bring huge benefits in terms of
technology and knowledge."
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20030820b8.htm
From domo@aaai.org Wed Aug 27 15:43:41 2003
From: domo@aaai.org
Subject: AI ALERT 27 August 2003
The Bristol-Essex 'Conscious Robot' Project
August 22, 2003: I clink therefore I am. By Donald MacLeod. Education Guardian.
"Researchers at the universities of Bristol and Essex are to spend nearly
500,000 [pounds] on trying to develop a 'conscious' robot. ...
Dr [Owen] Holland explained: 'Consciousness is perhaps the last remaining
mystery in understanding what it is to be human.' ... Dr Holland said:
'Like all the projects in the adventure fund, there is quite a high risk
of failure. However, whether we succeed in detecting consciousness or
not, this project will certainly allow us to learn more about the
operation of complex human-like visual systems, and will enable ourselves
and others to build robots with better-developed artificial intelligence
in the future.'"
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/research/story/0,9865,1027734,00.html
From domo@aaai.org Wed Aug 27 15:43:41 2003
From: domo@aaai.org
Subject: AI ALERT 27 August 2003
Intentional, Interactive, Situated Agent Project at Sandia Labs
August 27, 2003: Machine Thinks, Therefore It Is. By Michelle Delio. Wired News.
"A new type of thinking machine that could completely change how people interact with computers is being developed at the Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories. Over the past five years, a team led by Sandia cognitive psychologist Chris Forsythe has been working on creating intelligent machines: computers that can accurately infer intent, remember prior experiences with users, and allow users to call upon simulated experts to help them analyze problems and make decisions. ... Forsythe and his team are trying to mimic real human interaction, embedding within computers an extremely human-like cognitive model that enables the machine to have an interaction with the user that more closely resembles communications between two thinking humans. ...
'Humans are certainly capable of logical operations, but there is much more
to human cognition,' said Forsythe. 'We've focused on replicating the
processes whereby an individual applies their unique knowledge to interpret
ongoing situations or events. This is a pattern recognition process that
involves episodic memory and emotional processes but not much of what
one would typically consider logical operations.' ... 'Throughout the
history of the computer industry, the tendency has been to force users
toward a homogeneous model, instead of acknowledging and embracing the
individual variability that users bring to computing environments.
'"http://www.wired.com/news/technolog y/0,1282,60153-2,00.html
>>> Also see: August 25, 2003: The Ghost in Your Machine - Computers
may soon monitor your work, notice when fatigue sets in, and fix
mistakes. BusinessWeek Online Reporter Olga Kharif interviews Chris Forsythe.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2003/tc20030825_4912_tc121.htm
From domo@aaai.org Wed Aug 27 15:43:41 2003
From: domo@aaai.org
Subject: AI ALERT 27 August 2003
Human-Like Robot Head
September 2003: The Man Who Mistook His Girlfriend for a Robot.
By Dan Ferber. Popular Science.
"No one asks why, of all the roboticists in the world, only [David]
Hanson appears to be attempting to build a robotic head that is
indistinguishable in form and function from a human. No one points
out that he is violating a decades-old taboo among robot designers.
And no one asks him how he's going to do it -- how he plans to cross to
the other side of the Uncanny Valley. ... In the late '70s, a Japanese
roboticist named Masahiro Mori published what would become a highly
influential insight into the interplay between robotic design and
human psychology. Mori's central concept holds that if you plot
similarity to humans on the x-axis against emotional reaction on
the y, you'll find a funny thing happens on the way to the perfectly
lifelike android. Predictably, the curve rises steadily, emotional
embrace growing as robots become more human-like. But at a certain point,
just shy of true verisimilitude, the curve plunges down, through the
floor of neutrality and into real revulsion, before rising again to
a second peak of acceptance that corresponds with 100 percent human-like.
This chasm -- Mori's Uncanny Valley -- represents the notion that
something that's like a human but slightly off will make people recoil.
Here there be monsters. [Cynthia] Breazeal, creator of Kismet, has,
like many of her colleagues, taken both inspiration and warning from
the Uncanny Valley. ... As Hanson's work progressed, it became ever
more clear that making lifelike robot heads meant more than building
a convincing surface and creating realistic facial expressions.
So late last year he began to consider K-Bot's brain. The Internet
led him to a Los Angeles company, Eyematic, which makes state-of-the-art
computer-vision software that recognizes human faces and expressions.
... [Javier] Movellan has asked Hanson to build him a head, and is
hoping to give it social skills. He and Marian Bartlett, a cognitive
scientist who co-directs the UCSD Machine Perception Lab, have
collaborated in the development of software featuring an animated
schoolteacher who helps teach children to read. ... The scientific
question, Hanson says, is 'whether people respond more powerfully to
a three-dimensional embodied face versus a computer-generated face.
'"http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/article/0,12543,473054,00.html