Showing posts with label artificial intelligence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label artificial intelligence. Show all posts

Friday, December 11, 2009

Science Goes Back To Basics On AI

From the BBC:

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has begun a project to re-think artificial intelligence research.

The Mind Machine Project will return to the basics of AI research to re-examine what lies behind human intelligence.

Spanning five years and funded by a $5m (£3.1m) grant, it will bring together scientists who have had success in distinct fields of AI.

By uniting researchers, MIT hopes to produce robotic companions smart enough to aid those suffering from dementia.

Read more ....

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

MIT Plans To Rebuild Artificial Intelligence From The Ground Up

Artificial Intelligence: It's not what we think.

From Popular Science:

After 50 years and countless dead ends, incremental progress, and modest breakthroughs, artificial intelligence researchers are asking for a do-over. The $5 million Mind Machine Project (MMP), a patchwork team of two dozen academics, students and researchers, intends to go back to the discipline's beginnings, rebuilding the field from the ground up. With 20/20 hindsight, a few generations worth of experience, and better, faster technology, this time researchers in AI -- an ambiguous field to begin with -- plan to get things right.

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Optimism As Artificial Intelligence Pioneers Reunite

INTELLIGENCE John McCarthy, seated center, who ran the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, at a reunion last month with Bruce Buchanan to his left and Vic Scheinman on the right. Standing, from left, are Ralph Gorin, Whit Diffie, Dan Swinehart, Tony Hearn, Larry Tesler, Lynn Quam and Martin Frost. John Markoff

From The New York Times:

STANFORD, Calif. — The personal computer and the technologies that led to the Internet were largely invented in the 1960s and ’70s at three computer research laboratories next to the Stanford University campus.

One laboratory, Douglas Engelbart’s Augmentation Research Center, became known for the mouse; a second, Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, developed the Alto, the first modern personal computer. But the third, the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, or SAIL, run by the computer scientist John McCarthy, gained less recognition.

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Monday, November 30, 2009

Human Brains Emulated In The Computer World

From Alpha Galileo:

Researchers at LuleƄ University of Technology have created a computer-based architecture that mimics a pair of human brain functions. System that detects and compensates for their own shortcomings is a possible application, another is to reduce the impact of noise. The research takes a significant step forward because the research group has recently doubled.

We have developed a model of how the various sources of information that complement each other, can get a better idea of what is happening. Better to the extent that we may see more than what the different parts look, "says Tamas Jantvik researcher at LuleƄ University of Technology.

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Saturday, November 28, 2009

A.I. Anchors Replace Human Reporters In Newsroom Of The Future

A.I. Anchors Engineers at Northwestern have created an entire newsroom operation using artificial intelligence, even using avatars to anchor the evening news.

From Popular Science:

In the great media reshuffling ushered in by the Internet Age, print journalists have suffered the most from online journalism’s ascent. Broadcast journalists, however, may be the next group to feel technology’s cruel sting. Engineers at Northwestern University have created virtual newscasts that use artificial intelligence to collect stories, produce graphics and even anchor broadcasts via avatars.

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Saturday, November 7, 2009

How Much Power Does The Human Brain Require To Operate?

Neurogrid 65,536 artificial neurons packed onto just
one of Neurogrid's chips Rodrigo Alvarez 2009


From Popular Science:

Simulating the brain with traditional chips would require impractical megawatts of power. One scientist has an alternative.

According to Kwabena Boahen, a computer scientist at Stanford University, a robot with a processor as smart as the human brain would require at least 10 megawatts to operate. That's the amount of energy produced by a small hydroelectric plant. But a small group of computer scientists may have hit on a new neural supercomputer that could someday emulate the human brain's low energy requirements of just 20 watts--barely enough to run a dim light bulb.

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Friday, November 6, 2009

Wearable Artificial Intelligence Could Help Astronauts Troll Mars for Signs of Life

Cyborg Eyes Tests on the cyborg astrobiologist suit involve real-time color-based novelty detection using a field-capable digital microscope. An AI integrated spacesuit using the technology could help a manned mars mission search for sign of life on Mars' hostile surface. P.C. McGuire, arXiv:0910.5454.

From Popular Science:

Not since RoboCop has being a cyborg seemed so very cool. University of Chicago geoscientists are developing an artificial intelligence system that future Mars explorers could incorporate into their spacesuits to help them recognize signs of life on Mars' barren surface.

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Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Better To Live In Country With Rights-Possessing Robots?

Photo: Female Cylons from Battlestar Galactica

From The Future Pundit:

Robin Hanson doesn't want to live in a country where robots are held back from full sentience and autonomy.

On Tuesday I asked my law & econ undergrads what sort of future robots (AIs computers etc.) they would want, if they could have any sort they wanted. Most seemed to want weak vulnerable robots that would stay lower in status, e.g., short, stupid, short-lived, easily killed, and without independent values. When I asked “what if I chose to become a robot?”, they said I should lose all human privileges, and be treated like the other robots. I winced; seems anti-robot feelings are even stronger than anti-immigrant feelings, which bodes for a stormy robot transition.

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Wednesday, October 7, 2009

The Faces of Singularity: Are You Ready For The Human-Robot Merge?

Singularity Summit Crowd David Orban/Flickr

From Popular Science:

We asked an assortment of the Singularity Summit's brilliant minds how they're looking forward to a life merged with artificial intelligence

The Singularity Summit drew a wide range of people from around the globe. There were technology companies hoping to spread brand recognition, quasi-spiritual sojourners looking for a new clue to the secret of immortality, and serious academics interested in cutting edge in artificial intelligence.

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Friday, September 4, 2009

The Singularity And The Fixed Point -- A Commentary

From Technology Review:

The importance of engineering motivation into intelligence.

Some futurists such as Ray Kurzweil have hypothesized that we will someday soon pass through a singularity--that is, a time period of rapid technological change beyond which we cannot envision the future of society. Most visions of this singularity focus on the creation of machines intelligent enough to devise machines even more intelligent than themselves, and so forth recursively, thus launching a positive feedback loop of intelligence amplification. It's an intriguing thought. (One of the first things I wanted to do when I got to MIT as an undergraduate was to build a robot scientist that could make discoveries faster and better than anyone else.) Even the CTO of Intel, Justin Rattner, has publicly speculated recently that we're well on our way to this singularity, and conferences like the Singularity Summit (at which I'll be speaking in October) are exploring how such transformations might take place.

Read more
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Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Are We On The Brink Of Creating A Computer With A Human Brain?

Professor Markram claims he plans to build an electronic human brain 'within the next ten years'

From The Daily Mail:

There are only a handful of scientific revolutions that would really change the world. An immortality pill would be one. A time machine would be another.
Faster-than-light travel, allowing the stars to be explored in a human lifetime, would be on the shortlist, too.
To my mind, however, the creation of an artificial mind would probably trump all of these - a development that would throw up an array of bewildering and complex moral and philosophical quandaries. Amazingly, it might also be within reach.

Read more ....

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man

This personal robot plugs itself in when it needs a charge. Servant now, master later?
Ken Conley/Willow Garage


From The New York Times:

A robot that can open doors and find electrical outlets to recharge itself. Computer viruses that no one can stop. Predator drones, which, though still controlled remotely by humans, come close to a machine that can kill autonomously.

Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society’s workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone.

Read more ....

Friday, April 24, 2009

Artificial Intelligence Cracks 4,000-Year-Old Mystery


From Wired News:

An ancient script that's defied generations of archaeologists has yielded some of its secrets to artificially intelligent computers.

Computational analysis of symbols used 4,000 years ago by a long-lost Indus Valley civilization suggests they represent a spoken language. Some frustrated linguists thought the symbols were merely pretty pictures.

"The underlying grammatical structure seems similar to what's found in many languages," said University of Washington computer scientist Rajesh Rao.

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Saturday, April 4, 2009

'Eureka Machine' Puts Scientists In The Shade By Working Out Laws Of Nature

From The Gaurdian:

The machine, which took only a few hours to come up with Newton's laws of motion, marks a turning point in the way science is done

Scientists have created a "Eureka machine" that can work out the laws of nature by observing the world around it – a development that could dramatically speed up the discovery of new scientific truths.

The machine took only hours to come up with the basic laws of motion, a task that occupied Sir Isaac Newton for years after he was inspired by an apple falling from a tree.

Scientists at Cornell University in New York have already pointed the machine at baffling problems in biology and plan to use it to tackle questions in cosmology and social behaviour.

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Friday, April 3, 2009

Building A Brain On A Silicon Chip

Image: A smart chip: Scientists in Europe are using conventional chip production techniques to create circuits that mimic the structure and function of the human brain. This early prototype has just 384 neurons and 100,000 synapses, but the latest version contains 200,000 neurons and 50 million synapses. Credit: Karlheinz Meier

From Technology Review:

A chip developed by European scientists simulates the learning capabilities of the human brain.

An international team of scientists in Europe has created a silicon chip designed to function like a human brain. With 200,000 neurons linked up by 50 million synaptic connections, the chip is able to mimic the brain's ability to learn more closely than any other machine.

Although the chip has a fraction of the number of neurons or connections found in a brain, its design allows it to be scaled up, says Karlheinz Meier, a physicist at Heidelberg University, in Germany, who has coordinated the Fast Analog Computing with Emergent Transient States project, or FACETS.

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Robot Achieves Scientific First

A robot called ADAM can hypothesize, conduct experiments, and plan next steps without human input, researcher Ross King (left) and colleagues announced in April 2009. ADAM is the first—but maybe not the last—robot to make a new scientific discovery. Photograph courtesy Arthur Dafis, Aberystwyth University

From Financial Post:

A laboratory robot called Adam has been hailed as the first machine in history to have discovered new scientific knowledge independently of its human creators.

Adam formed a hypothesis on the genetics of bakers’ yeast and carried out experiments to test its predictions, without intervention from its makers at Aberystwyth University.

The result was a series of “simple but useful” discoveries, confirmed by human scientists, about the gene coding for yeast enzymes. The research is published in the journal Science.

Professor Ross King, the chief creator of Adam, said robots would not supplant human researchers but make their work more productive and interesting.

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More News On This Robot First

Robot scientist 'Adam' solves genetic problems -- Times Online
First Robot Scientist Makes Gene Discovery -- National Geographic
Self-directed robot scientist makes discovery -- MSNBC
Robot Scientist Becomes First Machine To Discover New Scientific Knowledge -- Science Daily
Robot Makes Scientific Discovery All by Itself -- Wired Science
Robot scientist makes discoveries with no human help -- New Scientist
Job Swap: This Robot Is the Scientist -- Live Science

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Rise Of The Robots--The Future Of Artificial Intelligence

Photo: PYTAK

From Scientific American:

By 2050 robot "brains" based on computers that execute 100 trillion instructions per second will start rivaling human intelligence

Editor's Note: This article was originally printed in the 2008 Scientific American Special Report on Robots. It is being published on the Web as part of ScientificAmerican.com's In-Depth Report on Robots.

In recent years the mushrooming power, functionality and ubiquity of computers and the Internet have outstripped early forecasts about technology’s rate of advancement and usefulness in everyday life. Alert pundits now foresee a world saturated with powerful computer chips, which will increasingly insinuate themselves into our gadgets, dwellings, apparel and even our bodies.

Read more ....