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news indexed by topic - cognitive science archive - cognitive science - general index by topic to ai in the news the topics ai in the news ai overview agents applications cognitive science education ethical/social expert systems faqs games & puzzles history interfaces machine learning natural language philosophy reasoning reference shelf representation resources robots science fiction speech systems & languages turing test vision what's left? quick start tips ai overview a - z index ai in the news aaai video archive doing a report for school site map reference shelf how to use this site search engine directory how to use this site a - z index site map reference shelf search engine contact ai topics notices disclosures copyright ai topics home aaai home aaai video archive xml/rss news feed   ai topics home aaai home aaai video archive search engine     general index by topic to ai in the news main menu related pages current news archive of previously featured ai in the news articles news column in ai magazine ai newstoons more news sources & collections including ai-generated collections news faq ai alert search engine copyright: please respect the rights of the copyright holders. notices & disclaimers: just because we mention something on this page, you should not infer that... september 26, 2004: crick's other goal - unlocking riddle of the mind. scientists continuing study of consciousness. by bruce lieberman. san diego union-tribune & signonsandiego.com. "francis crick focused on looking for an area of the brain that might be critical to human consciousness. as a young scientist in 1940s england, francis crick decided to devote his life to unraveling two mysteries: the foundation for all living things and how the brain gives rise to the mind. ... tomorrow, when the salk institute in la jolla hosts a public memorial for crick, who died july 28 at 88, that unfinished business will most certainly be talked about. how billions of brain cells interpret sensations, draw on memory and association to make sense of them, and create conscious thoughts about the world is unknown. 'it's inconceivable to us, but somehow it happens,' said terry sejnowski, a computational neurobiologist at the salk institute who studies how computers can be used to understand the brain. 'consciousness is elusive,' he said. 'it's hard to pin down.' ... illuminating how the brain creates consciousness would profoundly change the way humans view themselves, scientists say. ... engineers could build machines that truly think, bringing artificial intelligence out of science fiction and into the real world. ... [c]onsciousness is really about how all the parts come together to create the thinking mind. 'being reductionist is a good way to start, but at some point you have to . . . put together the pieces and see how they work together,' sejnowski said. he calls the effort to assemble the big picture of consciousness 'the humpty dumpty project.'" >>> cognitive science, philosophy, neural networks & connectionist systems, events (@ resources for students), machine learning september 21, 2004: a little stroke of genius. a one-day symposium explores the link between neuroscience and music. by arminta wallace.the irish times (subscription req'd.). "another speaker at the symposium will be prof paul robertson, a musician who has acquired a considerable amount of expertise on the medical front. for many years as leader of the medici string quartet, he developed an interest in neuropsychiatry and presented a series called music and the mind for channel 4. 'it was a fantastic opportunity to talk to people who were doing fascinating work - the most fascinating aspect of which was that none of them knew about each other,' he says. 'so, for example, there are people doing work with brain-damaged children using music therapy but there's very little contact between them and the people doing brain mapping. and there's virtually no connection between either of those groups and the people doing artificial intelligence in computing. but it doesn't take a mastermind to see that a huge cross-fertilisation is possible in those areas.'" >>> cognitive science, music september 16, 2004: children create new sign language. by julianna kettlewell. bbc news. " a new sign language created over the last 30 years by deaf children in nicaragua has given experts a unique insight into how languages evolve. the language follows many basic rules common to all tongues, even though the children were not taught them. it indicates some language traits are not passed on by culture, but instead arise due to the innate way human beings process language, experts claim. the us-led research is detailed in the latest issue of science magazine. ... [c]hildren instinctively break information down into small chunks so they can have the flexibility to string them back together, to form sentences with a range of meanings. interestingly, adults lose this talent, which also suggests there is an innate element to the language learning process." >>> cognitive science, natural language processing, representation september 8 / 15, 2004: automatic icons organize files. by kimberly patch. technology research news. "researchers from the university of southern california, the massachusetts institute of technology, and esc entertainment are aiming to improve the lost-in-cyberspace problem with a tool designed to tap people's facility with pictures. the system, dubbed visualid, automatically generates detailed icons for specific files. it assigns similar icons to related files by mutating the original icon in a series. the degree of mutation depends on the degree of similarity of the file names, which gives the user an approximate visual sense of saliency, according to j.p. lewis, a researcher at the university of southern california. ... beyond file management, the icons system could be used for systems like air-traffic control, said lewis. ... the system 'exploits the fact that appearance is efficiently learned, searched and remembered, probably more so than file names,' said lewis. 'psychological research has shown that searching for a picture among other pictures is faster than searching for a word among other words.' the bottom line is that interfaces need scenery, said lewis." >>> interfaces, cognitive science, applications september 4, 2004: brain research? pay it no mind. mystery of consciousness still outwitting scientists. by philip marchand. the toronto star. "scientists who have been trying to understand the brain have recently tried to measure neural activity of republicans and democrats to see if political affiliations had anything to do with brain chemistry. the results were inconclusive. ... what really caught my eye about a new york times magazine article on the topic was the following statement: 'one of the most celebrated insights of the past 20 years of neuroscience is the discovery -- largely associated with the work of antonio damasio -- that the brain's emotional systems are critical to logical decision-making. people who suffer from damaged or impaired emotional systems can score well on logic tests but often display markedly irrational behaviour in everyday life.' i'm sure damasio has done good work, rooting around the neocortex. but what does it say for neuroscience that one of its 'most celebrated insights' is something we've known for three or four millennia? ... the bravest of the neuroscientists are trying to tackle the toughest nut of all, the mystery of consciousness. ... a professor named howard gardner, for example, whose 1985 book the mind's new science helped to popularize the field of cognitive science, told horgan that questions such as consciousness and free will were 'particularly resistant' to the scientific habit of trying to break down a subject into its most elemental parts, like neural pathways in the brain. ... the human brain is so complex it simply defies the same kind of analysis that scientists devote to subatomic particles or human immune systems. 'like neuroscientists, researchers in evolutionary psychology and artificial intelligence are both bumping up against the humpty dumpty dilemma,' [john] horgan writes. 'they can break the mind into pieces, but they have no idea how to put it back together again.'" >>> emotion, creativity, cognitive science, reasoning, philosophy, neural networks, machine learning august 26, 2004: science at the edge, edited by john brockman. book review by paul nettleton. the guardian. "a stellar cast of thinkers tackles the really big questions facing scientists in a book developed from pieces that first appeared on the web forum edge (www.edge.org). betraying that they were written for the screen, a leading role is given to the computer and the potential for machine intelligence. brockman, whose big black hat gives away his day job is as literary agent to scientists-turned-bestselling authors, argues in his introduction that his contributors have broken down the barrier of cp snow's two cultures and found - echoes of tony blair - a third way. a number of chapters also echo the writers' latest books." >>> cognitive science august 3, 2004: mapping the physical and mental universes. editorial by narayani ganesh. the times of india. "if the manual of life is encoded in our dna, where do we look to find the blueprint of consciousness? this was a subject that fascinated francis crick, who, along with james watson, discovered the double-helix structure of dna 50 years ago. ... this is the information age, thanks to the giant leaps we've made in computer chip technology. david chalmers, of the department of philosophy, university of arizona, raises a complex futuristic question: if the precise interactions between our neurons could be duplicated with silicon chips, would it give rise to the same conscious experience? can consciousness arise in a complex, synthetic system? in other words, can consciousness some day be achieved in machines?" >>> philosophy, cognitive science july 14, 2004: computer brains. e4engineering.com. "a team of computer scientists and mathematicians at palo alto, ca-based artificial development are developing software to simulate the human brain's cortex and peripheral systems. as a first step along the way, the company recently disclosed that it has completed the development a realistic representation of the workflow of a functioning human cortex. dubbed the ccortex-based autonomous cognitive model ('acm'), the software may have immediate applications for data mining, network security, search engine technologies and natural language processing." >>> neural networks & connectionist systems, machine learning, natural language processing, cognitive science, data mining, information retrieval, networks, applications july 4, 2004: programming doesn't begin to define computer science. by jim morris ["professor of computer science and dean of carnegie mellon university's west coast campus']. pittsburgh post-gazette. "the tech meltdown affecting computer jobs as well as stock prices, and the stories about off-shoring of programming jobs, have caused a decline in computer science enrollments at colleges and universities across the country. this wouldn't happen if people understood the real goals of computer science. ... the current approaches to computer science education fail to teach the science of computing. as a result, they fail to inspire the very best and brightest young minds to enter the field. computer science is faced with scientific challenges that rival any in history, yet are relevant to practical problems of today. computer science involves questions that have the potential to change how we view the world. for example: what is the nature of intelligence, and can we reproduce it in a machine? ... or, how can one predict the performance of a complex system? ... or, what is the nature of human cognition.... or, does the natural world 'compute'? ... computer science education is not just training for the computer industry. a computer science program is a great preparation for many careers: business, law, medicine, biology -- any field touched by computing. ... how does computing fit into the world? the computer is becoming the interface between people and their world. computer scientists must know enough history and social science to chart and predict the impact of computers on the intersecting worlds of work, entertainment and society. to do this, they must understand the modern world and its roots. to participate in today's debates about privacy, one must understand both computers and society." >>> computer science, resources for students, ai overview, ethical & social implications, cognitive science, applications june 14, 2004: computing needs a grand challenge. by lucy sherriff. the register. "sir tony hoare - british computing pioneer and senior scientist at microsoft research - believes the computer industry needs a "grand challenge" to inspire it. in the same way that the lunar challenge in the 1960s sparked a decade of collaborative innovation and development in engineering and space technology, or the human genome project united biologists around the globe, so too must computer scientists pull together on such a scale to take their industry to its next major milestone. ... one of the grand challenges, then, is to re-write the basic foundations of the science, to find a theory of computation that is 'more realistic than the turing model, and can take into account the discoveries of biology, and the promise of the quantum computer'.... 'an ultimate joint challenge for the biological and the computational sciences is the understanding of the mechanisms of the human brain, and its relationship with the human mind,' he says. '... this challenge is one that has inspired computer science since its very origins, when alan turing himself first proposed the turing test as a still unmet challenge for artificial intelligence.'" for more information see: grand challenges for computing research - sponsored by the uk computing research committee, with support from epsrc and nesc. >>> ai overview, systems, cognitive science, artificial life, turing test, alan turing (@ namesakes) june 14, 2004 [issue date]: innovators / artificial intelligence: forging the future - rise of the machines - these visionaries are making robots that can perform music, rescue disaster victims and even explore other planets on their own. by dan cray, carolina a. miranda, wilson rothman, toko sekiguchi. time magazine. "the bionic engineer - driving school on mars. television critics will tell you that the bionic woman was just another cheesy '70s sci-fi series, but for ayanna howard it was a springboard to a career. when she was 12 years old, she became so captivated by the show's cyborg premise that she started reading books that reaffirmed the concept of integrating machines with humans. a thousand reruns and an electrical-engineering ph.d. later, she's creating robots that think like humans for nasa's jet propulsion laboratory. ... three years ago, hoping to encourage others to follow in her footsteps, howard launched a math-and-science mentoring program for at-risk junior high school girls. ... howard hopes the program will help steer more young women into robotics, a field she says that within a decade will produce robots that mimic human thought processes. ... the swarm keeper - metal insects on wheels. when james mclurkin was a high school junior on long island, n.y., he built his first robot: a toy car that he rigged with a keypad, an led display and a squirt gun. ... now a graduate student in computer science at m.i.t., the young scientist is on the forefront of developing 'swarmbots'--packs of dozens of small robots that communicate with one another and work in harmony to complete an assignment. they have no centralized command system and can cover vast terrain; if one is destroyed, others fill in. ... rescuer by remote - need help? send in the robot. within 24 hours of the 9/11 attacks on the world trade center, robin murphy was on the scene with a team of robots to help sort through the debris. it was the first real-world test of the center for robot-assisted search and rescue in tampa, fla., the only unit of its kind on the planet. ... the mimic maker - the android who learned to dance. mitsuo kawato is fascinated with the brain -- so he helped build one. the biophysics engineer and computer researcher led a team at the advanced telecommunications research institute international in kyoto, japan, that spent five years constructing a humanoid equipped with artificial intelligence. completed in 2001, the 6-ft. 2-in., 175-lb. robot was named dynamic brain, or db for short. says kawato: 'we built an artificial brain hoping that it'll help us understand the real one.' ... so far, the robot has acquired about 30 skills, including juggling, air hockey, yo-yoing, folk dancing and playing the drum." >>> ai overview, space exploration, neural networks, reasoning, robots, multi-agent systems, artificial life, military, hazards & disasters, applications, machine learning, cognitive science, careers in ai (@ resources for students) june 10, 2004: christopher longuet-higgins - cognitive scientist with a flair for chemistry. obituary by chris darwin.the guardian. "christopher longuet-higgins, who has died aged 80, was not only a brilliant scientist in two distinct areas - theoretical chemistry and cognitive science - but also a gifted amateur musician, keen to advance the scientific understanding of the art. ... in 1967, as a result of a growing interest in the brain and the new field of artificial intelligence, christopher made a dramatic change in direction and moved to edinburgh to co-found the department of machine intelligence and perception, together with richard gregory and donald michie. it was christopher who, in 1973, was the first to name this field more broadly as 'cognitive science'. ... as time went on, tensions arose between the founding members of the department at edinburgh - partly a reflection of intellectual differences regarding the future direction of artificial intelligence - which resulted in a contentious review of the field by christopher's old wykehamist colleague sir james lighthill. at the instigation of stuart sutherland, christopher made the decision to move to the experimental psychology department at sussex university. there, he continued his work in cognitive science and made major contributions in vision, language production and music perception." >>> cognitive science, tributes, history, academic departments (@ resources for students) june 10, 2004: brain learns like a robot - scan shows how we form opinions. by tanguy chouard. nature science update. "researchers may have pinpointed the brain regions that help us work out good from bad. and their results suggest that humans and robots are more alike than we may care to admit, as both use similar strategies to make value judgements. ... the team also plotted brain activity on a graph to give a mathematical description of processes that underlie the formation of value judgements. the patterns they saw resembled those made by robots as they learn from experience. 'the results were astounding,' says study co-author peter dayan. 'there was an almost perfect match between the brain signals and the numerical functions used in machine learning,' he says. this suggests that our brains are following the laws of artificial intelligence." >>> cognitive science, machine learning, robots june 7, 2004: brain-mimicking circuits to run navy robot. by charles choi. united press international. "researchers in new york city are teaming with the u.s. navy and scientists in russia to build electronic circuits that mimic the brain, producing an agile controller that can maneuver robot vehicles with speed and precision. the devices are based on a circuit in the cerebellum, the part of the brain that helps organize the body's motions. specifically, the new technology imitates the olivocerebellar circuit, which controls balance and limb movement. ... 'controls in robotics are for the most part algorithmic,' [rodolfo llinas] explained. 'it's basically software, and the software instructions are written in a particular order -- you follow a particular set of steps.' in addition, the computations are contained in a system that is distinct from the one it controls. 'the nervous system, on the other hand, is not algorithmic,' llinas said. the same cells that gather the sensory data from the muscles also have a key role in operating the muscles as well, so both sensory and motor systems are wedded together, 'unlike what happens in digital computers.' so the researchers are developing analog circuits.... the new controller, like the olivocerebellar circuit, is made up of clusters that interact electronically with one another." >>> autonomous vehicles, cognitive science, robots, applications june 7 - 14, 2004 [issue date]: the ultimate remote control - one day, our brains might be able to beam our very thoughts wirelessly to the machines around us by carl zimmer. newsweek (international edition) / available from msnbc. "where computers use zeros and ones, neurons encode our thoughts in all-or-nothing electrical impulses. and if computers and brains speak the same language, it should be possible for the two to speak to each other. ... imagine a quadriplegic person able to operate a robotic arm mounted on a wheelchair with merely a thought. imagine a digital stream flowing from a microphone into a deaf person's auditory cortex, where it could become the perception of sound. these dreams have an official name: brain-machine interfaces. ... at the center for neuroengineering at duke university, monkeys with electrodes surgically implanted in their brains move robotic arms with their minds alone." >>> cognitive science, interfaces june 4, 2004: programs of the mind. review by gary marcus. science magazine (subscription required). "eric baum's what is thought? [mit press, cambridge, ma, 2004], consciously patterned after [erwin] schrödinger's book [what is life?], represents a computer scientist's look at the mind. baum is an unrepentant physicalist. he announces from the outset that he believes that the mind can be understood as a computer program. much as schrödinger aimed to ground the understanding of life in well-understood principles of physics, baum aims to ground the understanding of thought in well-understood principles of computation. in a book that is admirable as much for its candor as its ambition, baum lays out much of what is special about the mind by taking readers on a guided tour of the successes and failures in the two fields closest to his own research: artificial intelligence and neural networks. ... advocates of what the philosopher john haugeland famously characterized as gofai (good old-fashioned artificial intelligence) create hand-crafted intricate models that are often powerful yet too brittle to be used in the real world. ... at the opposite extreme are researchers working within the field of neural networks, most of whom eschew built-in structure almost entirely and rely instead on statistical techniques that extract regularities from the world on the basis of massive experience." >>> ai overview, cognitive science, philosophy, neural networks, machine learning may 26, 2004: small world networks key to memory. by philip cohen. new scientist news (also appears in the may 22nd issue of new scientist magazine: memories are made of small worlds, page 12). "if you recall this sentence a few seconds from now, you can thank a simple network of neurons for the experience. that is the conclusions of researchers who have built a computer model that can reproduce an important aspect of short-term memory. the key, they say, is that the neurons form a 'small world' network. small-world networks are surprisingly common. human social networks, for example, famously connect any two people on earth - or any actor to kevin bacon - in six steps or less. ... 'the philosophical conclusion is that connectivity matters,' says [northwestern university] team member sara solla. 'our model uses only a simple caricature of neurons, yet this network shows this working memory-like behaviour.' ... they found that when 10 to 20 per cent of the neurons participated in short cuts, the network formed self-sustaining loops of activity." >>> neural networks, cognitive science, machine learning may 20, 2004: a design epiphany - keep it simple. by jessie scanlon. the new york times (no fee reg. req'd.). "dr. [john] maeda says the solution is not better design or better technology but a better partnership between the two. hence the simplicity design workshop, which could leverage the lab's understanding of emerging technologies and the real-world experience of the designers into a series of concrete, well tested principles. ... in january mr. [bill] moggridge of ideo met with a media lab group led by cynthia breazeal, an assistant professor of media arts and sciences, to try to define simplicity. it was easy to embrace the concept, with its connotations of beauty and elegance and its promise of a better way, but what did it mean in practical terms? ... 'we started with the big picture: what does simplicity mean in the context of our work?' said dr. breazeal, a pioneer of social robotics whose current project is building a learning companion robot called roco. 'but the real value is to see how bill approaches the problem of design.'... a third arm of research focuses on making computers smarter. one method, a new branch of artificial intelligence, aims to give computers common sense in the form of a vast database of mundane truths about the world (the sky is blue, coffee wakes you up). a second approach, affective computing, gathers information about the state of the user through a range of sensors, enabling the computer to adapt by, say, holding delivery of all but high-priority e-mail when it detects stress." >>> robots, interfaces, commonsense, emotion, cognitive science, reasoning, representation may 5, 2004: united states senate committee on appropriations, defense subcommittee hearing with public witnesses - testimony of christopher sager, american psychological association. "although i am sure you are aware of the large number of psychologists providing clinical services to our military members here and abroad, you may be less familiar with the extraordinary range of research conducted by psychological scientists within the department of defense. ... office of naval research (onr) the cognitive and neural sciences division (cns) of onr supports research to increase the understanding of complex cognitive skills in humans; aid in the development and improvement of machine vision; improve human factors engineering in new technologies; and advance the design of robotics systems. an example of cns-supported research is the division’s long-term investment in artificial intelligence research. this research has led to many useful products, including software that enables the use of 'embedded training.' many of the navy’s operational tasks, such as recognizing and responding to threats, require complex interactions with sophisticated, computer-based systems. embedded training allows shipboard personnel to develop and refine critical skills by practicing simulated exercises on their own workstations. once developed, embedded training software can be loaded onto specified computer systems and delivered wherever and however it is needed." >>> education, intelligent tutoring systems, military, vision, cognitive science, robots, applications may 5, 2004: robot sex - sure, they're only machines. but the more they interact with us humans, the more important their apparent gender becomes. the net effect column by simson garfinkel. technology review. "is your roomba a boy or a girl? ... 'it’s a girl,' says my wife. 'it’s round. it’s close to the floor. it ends with an ‘a’. i always think of it as a ‘wom-ba.’' but if the roomba is a girl, then asimo is definitely a boy. ... whether or not you think that gender belongs in our mechanical creations has a lot to do with your vision of how these creatures will fit into our future. it certainly takes more effort to make a robot that’s gendered than one that’s asexual. but engineers just want to have fun. building gender into robots might be a way for the robots’ designers to express their own playfulness and creativity. dig a little deeper, though, and you’ll discover another reason why gender might be a good thing for our robot servants: gender will make robots more compatible with their human masters. as human beings, we constantly try to layer emotions, desires, and other human qualities onto our machines. ... [i]f you are interested in building an effective interface between humans and computers, you might just be better off creating a machine that projects a simulated emotional response. ... can you have sociability without gender?" >>> robots, interfaces, emotion, cognitive science, history may 5, 2004: brain fingerprinting. the washington post hosted an online discussion with neuroscientist lawrence a. farwell, ph.d., filmmaker michael epstein and series producer jared lipworth to discuss the pbs innovation documentary. "[question from] laurel, mont.: how much from the brain can we learn to help us develop artificial intelligence? jared lipworth: much work is being done in various parts of the world to use what we know about the brain for the development of artificial intelligence. some researchers are trying to build ai machines from the bottom up--using simple processes to perform complex tasks. others take the opposite approach, trying to build machines that can mimic the brain. these efforts are still a long way from producing a machine with the compexity of the human brain, but everything researchers learn about the brain helps. artificial intelligence is an area innovation is following closely, so some time in the near future you may see a program that delves into exactly the question you asked." >>> cognitive science, ai overview, neural networks may 3, 2004: facing facts in computer recognition. the elements of a face can be hard for computers -- and for some people -- to recognize. by byron spice. pittsburgh post-gazette. "neuropsychologists debate whether people have an inborn ability to recognize faces, or whether it is a skill that develops from earliest infancy. it is a task of such difficulty and importance, however, that the brain has one area that is largely devoted just to faces. ... [henry] schneiderman said computers have less trouble telling the difference between faces than they do simply picking out faces from other objects in an image. in developing a face detection program, schneiderman and other computer vision researchers, such as former robotics institute director takeo kanade, can't tell the computer precisely what a face is supposed to look like. so part of the development process involves showing the computer examples of faces and non-faces and letting the computer program gradually develop its own statistical rules for determining what constitutes a face. no one knows how the human brain represents images, but computers use numbers, with each number representing one point, or pixel, in an image. in black and white images, the larger the number, the brighter the pixel. ... schneiderman's face detector has been exhibited at the science museum of minnesota and next week will be one of the technologies featured at wired magazine's nextfest exhibition in san francisco. the face detector is being exhibited as a security technology; presumably it might be used to detect people who are in secure areas, or to pick out faces for identification in crowds. but schneiderman noted its first use was in photo processing. ... eventually, schneiderman envisions it being used to organize and search images produced by digital cameras." >>> vision, cognitive science, image understanding, pattern recognition, law enforcement, information retrieval, applications, machine learning, exhibits (@ resources for students) april 17, 2004: the semantic engineer - profile: daniel dennett. by andrew brown. the guardian. "it was at oxford, too, that he first became interested in computers and the brain. the oxford philosopher john lucas had published a paper - still famous - arguing that gödel's theorem disproved any theory that humans must be machines, and that human thought could be completely simulated on a computer. this is the position dennett became famous for attacking. ... the essential doctrine that dennett took from quine was that knowledge - and philosophy - had to be understood as natural processes. they have arisen as part of the workings of the ordinary world, which can be scientifically studied, and are not imposed or injected from some supernatural realm. so there is nothing magical about human brains - no ghost in the machine, to use ryle's phrase. when we talk about 'intelligence' we are describing behaviour, or a propensity towards certain behaviour, and not the exercise of some disembodied intellect. how these propensities arise is an empirical question, to be answered by looking at the engineering involved in brains (or computers) and philosophers who don't do this can't be serious.... he's famous among philosophers as an extreme proponent of robot consciousness, who will argue that even thermostats have beliefs about the world. ... 'somehow, you've got to reduce the [inner] representation, and the representation understanders, to machinery. and a computer can do that. that's the great insight. turing saw that ai [artificial intelligence] might not be the way the brain did it in many regards. but it was a way of reducing semantic engines to syntactic engines. our brains are syntactic engines. they have to be, because they're just mechanisms. but what they do is they extract meaning from the world. hence they're semantic engines. well, how can they be semantic engines? how could there be a semantic engine?' ... what matters to him is that consciousness arises from what the brain does - its work as a 'syntactic engine' - not from what it is made of. ... 'conscious robot is not an oxymoron - or maybe it was, but it's not going to be for much longer. how much longer? i don' t know. turing [50 years ago] said 50 years, and he was slightly wrong, but the popular imagination is already full with conscious robots.'" >>> philosophy, nature of intelligence, cognitive science, ai overview, representation, turing (@ namesakes), robots april 11, 2004: machine rage is dead ... long live emotional computing. consoles and robots detect and respond to users' feelings. by robin mckie. the observer. "computer angst - now a universal feature of modern life - is an expensive business. but the days of the unfeeling, infuriating machine will soon be over. thanks to break throughs in ai (artificial intelligence), psychology, electronics and other research fields, scientists are now creating computers and robots that can detect, and respond to, users' feelings. the discoveries are being channelled by humaine, a £6 million programme that has just been launched by the eu to give europe a lead in emotional computing. as a result, computers will soon detect our growing irritation at their behaviour and respond - by generating more sympathetic, human-like messages or slowing down the tempo of the games they are running. robots will be able to react in lifelike ways, though we may end up releasing some unwelcome creations - like hal, the murderous computer of the film 2001: a space odyssey . 'computers that can detect and imitate human emotion may sound like science fiction, but they are already with us,' said dr dylan evans, of the university of the west of england and a key humaine project collaborator. ... a key breakthrough has been the discovery that cool, unemotional decision-making is not necessarily a desirable attribute. in fact, humans cannot make decisions unless they are emotionally involved. 'the cold, unemotional mr spock on star trek simply could not have evolved,' said artificial intelligence expert professor ruth aylett of salford university, another humaine project leader." >>> emotion, interfaces, applications, cognitive science, assistive technologies, robotic pets, video games, robots, reasoning, systems march 27, 2004: the isaac newton of logic - it was 150 years ago that george boole published his classic the laws of thought, in which he outlined concepts that form the underpinnings of the modern high-speed computer. by siobhan roberts. the globe and mail (page f9). "it was 150 years ago that george boole published his literary classic the laws of thought, wherein he devised a mathematical language for dealing with mental machinations of logic. it was a symbolic language of thought -- an algebra of logic (algebra is the branch of mathematics that uses letters and other general symbols to represent numbers and quantities in formulas and equations). in doing so, he provided the raw material needed for the design of the modern high-speed computer. his concepts, developed over the past century by other mathematicians but still known as 'boolean algebra,' form the underpinnings of computer hardware, driving the circuits on computer chips. and, at a much higher level in the brain stem of computers, boolean algebra operates the software of search engines such as google. ... the most basic and tangible example is the machinations of boolean searches, which operate on three logical operators: and, or, not. algebra gets factored in to this logical equation when boole designates a multiplication sign (x) to represent 'and,' an addition sign (+) to represent 'or,' and a subtraction sign (-) to represent 'not.' ... the same 'and' gates and 'or' gates drive computer circuitry, with streams of electrons performing boole's algebraic operations -- a computer's bits and bytes operate on the binary system, as does boole's algebra. he employs the number 1 to represent the universal class of everything (or true) and 0 to represent the class of nothing (false). ... with his phd in artificial intelligence, it might appear that ['geoffrey hinton, a computer-science professor at the university of toronto and his great-great-grandson'] followed after boole. but in fact, he says, 'i'm entirely on the other side.' the field of artificial intelligence, in its early years circa 1950-60, was committed to the boolean idea that symbols effectively represent human reasoning. since the eighties, however, artificial intelligence has come to see human reasoning as not purely logical. rather, it is more about what is intuitively plausible. 'boole thought the human brain worked like a pocket calculator or a standard computer,' prof. hinton says. 'i think we're more like rats.'" >>> systems & languages, history, logic, boole (@ namesakes), reasoning, web-searching agents, cognitive science, information retrieval march 23, 2004: fit speaker to discuss computers' intelligence. by alex mcpeak. daily helmsman. "one of the major challengers of artificial intelligence will speak in the zone at the fedex institute of technology at 1:30 p.m. wednesday. john searle, mills professor of the philosophy of mind and language at the university of california at berkeley, will discuss consciousness, causation, reduction and the symbol grounding problem -- tongue-twister concepts that confront whether a computer can ever understand what it is doing. ... the author of 13 books related to cognitive science, searle is best known for his chinese room thought experiment, which challenged the idea of a computer ever achieving true intelligence and understanding. the chinese room proposed that if a person were given chinese characters with which to interpret chinese writings in a room, that person could match characters to understand what was written on the walls. ... searle was the top pick for the cognitive science seminar this semester, [lee] mccauley said. the seminar will look at responses to searle's intellectual challenge and the systems that claim to answer it. ... the culmination of the cognitive science seminar this semester, he said, was to set up criteria to prove if artificial intelligence can really answer the chinese room challenge." >>> philosophy, turing test, cognitive science, ai overview march 18, 2004: a grand plan for brainy robots. by nick dermody. bbc news. "on a good day, lucy can tell a banana apart from an apple. and that's handy skill to have if you are an orang-utan. even a robotic one. it might not sound like much to a too-clever-to-know-it human like you or me, but it represents pioneering work in the field of artificial intelligence. ... by going back to first principles, this self-taught scientist[steve grand] has created one of the most advanced robot 'brains' in the world. his baby, lucy, may not be much to look at, but she represents perhaps the best example yet of how far we can get computers to 'think' for themselves - one of the most advanced artificial life-forms in existence. ... [h]e is still waiting for the key breakthrough, the one sentence or 'formula' for describing what the brain - and its intelligence - is actually for. 'until we've got that, we will never be able to make artificial intelligence,' he said." >>> robots, neural networks, cognitive science, machine learning march 5, 2004: robo doc. by jon excell. the engineer / e4engineering.com. "it is tempting to view the robot simply as a clever marketing tool, and as a sophisticated showcase for honda's technical skill its impact is undeniable. but the diminutive android is much more than an impressive branding exercise. prof edgar korner, the company's robotics and artificial intelligence (ai) supremo, insists that asimo represents a key step towards the era of the domestic robot. ... in the longer term, korner claimed, it is the technologies that we broadly define as ai that require the most work. 'asimo is a marvellous walking machine, a masterpiece of engineering,' he said. 'but the next stage is to enable it to develop the ability to 'think' for itself, to an extent where it can get on with its chores without bothering its owner.' ... the further development of ai will, claimed korner, be made possible by ongoing advances in the understanding of human and animal brains. ... in the shorter term, technology developed for asimo is already having some interesting spin-off applications. ... honda's work on machine intelligence is now being used to develop an accident-prevention system for cars. ... some have claimed that there is a sense in which humanoid robot development - and more specifically ai - occupies a similarly ambiguous moral space to genetic engineering or nanotechnology, with scientists developing technology that has the potential to completely change the way we think about the world. korner does not agree. 'from the point of ethics honda was very careful to stress from the beginning that this is a machine. this is not intended to copy a human. the message is that we don't want to copy humans, we want to create a useful machine for serving humans.'" >>> cognitive science, machine learning, nature of intelligence, ethical & social implications, robots, assistive technologies, transportation, applications february 29, 2004: artificial emotion. by sam allis. boston globe / available from boston.com. "sherry turkle is at it again. this friday, she's hosting a daylong powwow at mit to discuss 'evocative objects.' ... over the past two decades, the founder of the mit initiative on technology and self has been watching how our relationships with machines, high tech and low tech, develop. turkle is best known for her place at the table in any discussion of how computers -- and robots in particular -- will change our lives. this makes her an essential interlocutor in the palaver, sharpened two years ago by a piece written by sun microsystems cofounder bill joy, that robots are going to take over the world, soon. 'the question is not what computers can do or what computers will be like in the future,' she maintains, 'but rather, what we will be like.' what has become increasingly clear to her is that, counterintuitively, we become attached to sophisticated machines not for their smarts but their emotional reach. 'they seduce us by asking for human nurturance, not intelligence,' she says. ... the market for robotics in health care is about to explode, turkle says. the question is: do we want machines moving into these emotive areas? 'we need a national conversation on this whole area of machines like the one we're having on cloning,' turkle says. 'it shouldn't be just at ai conventions and among ai developers selling to nursing homes.'" >>> ethical & social implications, robotic pets, emotion, assisitive technologies, cognitive science, robots, applications february 8, 2004: mind over gray matter - york philosopher's new book explores controversial relationship between culture and consciousness. book review by olivia ward. toronto star. "[david martel] johnson's newly published book, how history made the mind, goes to the heart of a scientific controversy between those who believe the physical brain is the most important factor in development of the mind, and those who believe culture is the determining factor. ... johnson's theory takes its place in the relatively new discipline of cognitive science, the study of the mind and how it works. launched only 50 years ago, the field is a catch-all for mathematicians, psychologists, linguistics specialists, anthropologists, biologists and artificial intelligence experts as well as philosophers. ... in johnson's view, it took some 100,000 years or more before mankind first formed the kind of abstract thoughts that led to painting on cave walls, fashioning jewellery and designing complicated tools. 'before that time people thought in very concrete terms, not in symbols,' he says. 'they hunted prey, mastered survival and buried their dead, just as the neanderthals did.' it's a theory opposed by strict followers of charles darwin, who believe that because of their large brains, the first humans were capable of the same thought processes we know today as soon as they evolved from apes. ... according to [julian] jaynes, a new kind of thought arose because all the accumulated experience of the past wasn't enough to help people cope with the increasingly sophisticated societies that were taking root at that time. a new kind of thinking was required, one that looked at the world objectively. the greeks rose to the challenge and developed 'conscious thought.' however, says johnson, 'it's an exciting theory, but it's wrong. after all, a dog has consciousness. so did early man. he may have been different from us, but he wasn't that different.' johnson's historically based theories may be less popular than some of the prevailing ones -- such as noam chomsky's 'computationalism,' that the brain is a kind of genetically determined computer." >>> cognitive science, nature of intelligence, philosophy, emotions, reasoning, machine learning february 4, 2004: pentagon kills lifelog project. by noah shachtman. wired news. "the pentagon canceled its so-called lifelog project, an ambitious effort to build a database tracking a person's entire existence. ... lifelog's backers said the all-encompassing diary could have turned into a near-perfect digital memory, giving its users computerized assistants with an almost flawless recall of what they had done in the past. but civil libertarians immediately pounced on the project when it debuted last spring, arguing that lifelog could become the ultimate tool for profiling potential enemies of the state. ... lifelog would have addressed one of the key issues in developing computers that can think: how to take the unstructured mess of life, and recall it as discreet episodes -- a trip to washington, a sushi dinner, construction of a house. 'obviously we're quite disappointed,' said howard shrobe, who led a team from the massachusetts institute of technology artificial intelligence laboratory which spent weeks preparing a bid for a lifelog contract. 'we were very interested in the research focus of the program ... how to help a person capture and organize his or her experience. this is a theme with great importance to both ai and cognitive science.'" >>> applications, cognitive science, representation, reasoning, agents, data mining, ethical & social implications january 30, 2004: u of m starts new company for research inventions. by scott shepard. memphis business journal. "as artificial intelligence goes from science fiction to an everyday tool, the scientists who are at the center of it aim to keep it closer to home. ... that's the intent of iidsystems, a business being developed at the university of memphis in conjunction with the technology resources foundation to commercialize the university's technology and encourage small businesses to form in memphis. ... or, iidsystems could own a suite of integrated products. one candidate for that is epal, which will integrate several forms of artificial intelligence to create a personal teaching mentor, with a talking head on the computer screen. 'maybe we can combine all of our intelligent systems, and not just those for learning,"'[eric] mathews says. ... the u of m is on the cusp of churning out a wide array of learning tools in the next few years. there are concepts that teach critical, creative thinking, and systems that can read and react to human emotion. technology development is beginning to slip out of the hands of technocrats, [art] graesser says, and that's good. 'we already know that when you put a cd in your computer and you hit a glitch and get stuck, 98% of the time you stay stuck right there and that cd ends up on a pile,' he says. 'it's counterintuitive, but cognitive psychologists now develop a lot of software. we're not all freudians; if you're going to design something that people use, you have to know a lot about how people think.'" >>> applications, education, intelligent tutoring systems, emotion, cognitive science january 16, 2004: yale holds discussion on computers, emotions, and artificial intelligence. by laura young. the yale herald (volume xxxvii, number 1). "laura is part of an endeavor to push the limits of human-computer relations -- a computerized personal trainer designed to build a longterm, social-emotional relationship with her user as she jokes, coaches, and converses with him. she's the next step in the attempt to build emotional computers -- machines capable of having relationships with human beings. laura was just one of the programs demonstrated by rosalind w. pickard in her workshop on wed., jan. 15. 'towards computers that recognize and respond to human emotion' was part of a series sponsored by the technology and ethics working group, devoted to the question of computers' capability for emotional intelligence. ... picard feels that the interaction between humans and computers is natural and social, but that its current state is more frustrating than anything else. she likened the human-computer relationship to the relationship between a driver and an annoying passenger who just cannot understand how the other person feels." >>> emotion, interfaces, cognitive science, natural language processing january 15 -21, 2004: my service bot. techsploits column by annalee newitz. metro. "[peter] plantec's book is a guide for creating what he calls v-people: social bots that businesses can use to replace service workers or game players online. programmed ask jeeves-style to answer questions in a way that sounds natural and to deploy friendly facial expressions at the right moments, v-people are the bank tellers and customer-service reps of the future. according to plantec and researchers like cory kidd at mit, people warm up to v-people fairly quickly after their initial moment of disbelief that the person talking to them and smiling is just a program. kidd conducted a series of psychological experiments last year showing that people respond to animated and automated creatures in almost exactly the same way they respond to humans. ... plantec writes in his book that his main concern about the ethics of using v-people in customer service situations is that users tend to credit machines with more honesty and innocence than they do their fellow humans. in trial runs of his v-people, he reports that users 'took what the v-person said as truth or error but never considered that the character was trying to deceive them. ... after all, how could a virtual human have ulterior motives ... how could they have any motives at all?'" >>> cognitive science, interfaces, customer service, chatbots (@ natural language processing), ethical & social implications, robots, applications january 2004: why machines should fear - once a curmudgeonly champion of "usable" design, cognitive scientist donald a. norman argues that future machines will need emotions to be truly dependable. by w. wayt gibbs. scientific american. "'the cognitive sciences grew up studying cognition--rational, logical thought,' he notes. norman himself participated in the birth of the field, joining a program in mathematical psychology at the university of pennsylvania and later helping to launch the human information­processing department (now cognitive science) at the university of california at san diego. 'emotion was traditionally ignored as some leftover from our animal heritage,' he says.' 'it turns out that's not true. we now know, for example, that people who have suffered damage to the prefrontal lobes so that they can no longer show emotions are very intelligent and sensible, but they cannot make decisions.' although such damage is rare, and he cites little other scientific evidence, norman concludes that 'emotion, or 'affect,' is an information processing system, similar to but distinct from cognition. with cognition we understand and interpret the world--which takes time,' he says. 'emotion works much more quickly, and its role is to make judgments--this is good, that is bad, this is safe.' ... 'i'm not saying that we should try to copy human emotions,' norman elaborates. 'but machines should have emotions for the same reason that people do: to keep them safe, make them curious and help them to learn.' autonomous robots, from vacuum cleaners to mars explorers, need to deal with unexpected problems that cannot be solved by hard-coded algorithms, he argues." >>> emotion, cognitive science, interfaces, robots january 7, 2004: the ultimate global network - within 20 years computers will be everywhere, and they'll all be talking to each other. daunting? not if we're prepared, says a group of british scientists. by richard sarson. the independent. "to ward off these evils and prepare for the future, [tony] hoare and [robin] milner are launching a series of 'grand challenges' to the uk's computer scientists. the seven challenges spin off in different directions from a single big idea: that all the computers in the world will become part of one global ubiquitous computer. hoare wants 'to understand these enormous artefacts, which have rather escaped the control of their original designers. at one time, the complexity may have been artificial, but now it is almost natural, rather like the complexity of organic chemistry.' ... the final challenge moves from basic biology to 'the architecture of brain and mind'. this will bring together biologists, brain physiologists, nerve scientists, psychologists, linguists, social scientists and philosophers to work out how the grey and white mush of our brain can constitute the most powerful and complicated computer on the planet: our mind. scientists have been trying to create intelligent robots for years, with little success. this grand challenge is having another go at understanding how to do this. ... the challenges will not end up as instant software tools to run the world. that, says hoare, is the 'job of the entrepreneur'. but the scientists can provide the theory behind those tools." >>> ai overview, systems, cognitive science, robots, ethical & social implications 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 stritter'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.'" >>> robots, cognitive science, ethical & social implications, philosophy, agriculture, hazards & disasters, scifi, applications 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." >>> emotion, reasoning, interfaces, natural language processing, cognitive science, image understanding, pattern recognition, intelligent tutoring systems, customer service, education, assistive technologies, robots, applications november 21, 2003: man vs. computer - still a match. opinion by charles krauthammer. the washington post. "to most folks, all of this man-vs.-computer stuff is anticlimax. after all, the barrier was broken in 1997 when man was beaten, kasparov succumbing to deep blue in a match that was truly frightening. frightening not so much because the computer won but because of how it won, making at some points moves of subtlety. and subtlety makes you think there might be something stirring in all that silicon. it seems to me obvious that machines will achieve consciousness. after all, we did, and with very humble beginnings. ... interestingly, in each game that was won, the loser was true to his nature. kasparov lost game 2 because, being human, he made a tactical error. computers do not. ... in game 3 the computer lost because, being a computer, it has (for now) no imagination. ... in the meantime, kasparov is showing that while we can't outcalculate machines, we can still outsmart them." >>> chess, neural networks, emotion, creativity, nature of intelligence, philosophy, games & puzzles, cognitive science; also see our related newstoon october 22, 2003: landmark invention. by scott warren and stephanie brooking. blue mountains gazette. "forget about the space age, artificial intelligence could be among us in the near future thanks to a glenbrook man who has developed a robot prototype able to perform up to 16 tasks at once. the technology, developed by glenbrook's dr peter hill, allows the robots to modify their behaviour according to the situation. the program also mimics a human approach to a problem, launching multiple tasks with any excess capacity, a problem solving trait commonly attributed to women. 'we deliberately chose mimic the female rather than the male mind. the distinct differences in the way women prioritise and work, in particular the ability to start new tasks while others are still in progress, is important in this field of producing new technology.' dr hill said." >>> robots, cognitive science, reasoning, applications, systems; also see our related news toon october 14, 2003: imagining thought-controlled movement for humans. by sandra blakeslee. the new york times (no fee reg. req'd.). "scientists at duke university reported yesterday in the first issue of the public library of science, a new journal with free online access at www.publiclibraryofscience.org, that a monkey with electrodes implanted in its brain could move a robot arm, much as if it were moving its own arm. ... the ability to make machines that respond to thoughts rests on some fundamental properties of the nervous system. the brains of monkeys plan every movement the body carries out fractions of seconds before the movements actually occur. motor plans are in the form of electrical patterns which arise from cells that fire at the same time, from various parts of the brain. the plans are sent to spinal cord neurons that have direct access to muscles. only then are movements carried out. to link brains and machines, researchers place electrodes directly into parts of the brain that produce motor plans. they extract raw electrical signals that can be translated mathematically into signals that computers and robots understand." >>> cognitive science, interfaces, robots, applications october 14, 2003: leading humanity forward. by a. asohan. the star (malaysia). "the whole idea of linking humans with machines has two aspects to it, says [professor kevin] warwick. 'first, we’re working with people with spinal injuries, like the stoke mandeville hospital in britain, to see if the kind of technologies that we deal with, can help people with one kind of disability or the other.' ... 'the second aspect is looking at humans as we are now. can we take technology and by linking with it, create superhumans ­ give ourselves abilities that we don’t simply have at the present time? we’re looking at machines and how they are intelligent, and asking what kind of features they have that we humans do not, and questioning what we can gain by linking much more closely to machines,' says warwick inevitably, the most relevant technology in this idea is the computer. ... thus his quest to link the human brain to a machine mind. it’s not a wholly new idea, but certainly one that found new impetus in the 1980s with the cyberpunk literary movement. groundbreaking novels like william gibson’s neuromancer and the increasing pervasiveness of computer technology in our everyday lives had even the most sober of scientists asking where our increasing interdependence on technology, and possible integration with technology, might lead the human race to. ... warwick has been labelled a prophet of doom by the tabloids, quoted as saying that machine intelligence would overtake humans in the near-future. while he has been criticised heavily for it by some members of the scientific community, on the surface, his dire predictions are reminiscent of those expressed by others, not the least of whom is bill joy, previously the chief scientist of us network computer company sun microsystems inc. ... warwick argues that it all depends on how one defines 'intelligence,' a task he attempted in his book qi: the quest for intelligence. 'to me, intelligence is a very basic thing. in my book qi, we tried to look at what is intelligence - human intelligence, animal intelligence, machine intelligence ­ and tried to get the basics of it. the conclusion that i would come to now is that it’s the mental ability to sustain successful life.' ... of course, we humans like to pride ourselves on being conscious, self-aware beings. cogito, ergo sum ­ i think, therefore i am, said the 17th century philosopher and mathematician rene descartes. it’s our edge over the machine - it may process information much faster than us, but it is not aware of what it is it processes. that edge is no big deal to warwick’s way of thinking. indeed, he argues that there is no evidence that being conscious - the way humans are - is an effective protective mechanism." >>> ai overview, cognitive science, applications, ethical & social implications, emotions, scifi, philosophy, systems, nature of intelligence; also see our series but is it ai? and the summer 2003 & fall 2003 ai in the news columns september 26, 2003: the octopus as eyewitness. by michelle delio. wired news. "robots and people may soon be looking at the world through octopus eyes. albert titus, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the university at buffalo, new york, has created a silicon chip that mimics the structure and functionality of an octopus retina. his 'o-retina' chip can process images just like an octopus eye does. the chip could give sight to rescue or research robots, allowing them to see more clearly than human eyes can in dark or murky conditions. ... his ultimate goal is to build a complete artificial vision system, including a brain that mimics the visual systems of various animals, so humans can look at the world differently. ... 'the visual system is more than eyes,' titus said. 'an animal uses eyes to see, but the brain to perceive. yet, the retina is an extension of the brain, so where does the distinction between seeing and perceiving begin and end?'" >>> vision, robots, hazards & disasters, cognitive science september 23, 2003: computers' messages need poetic writers. column by desiree cooper. detroit free press. "i'm beginning to think that the science fiction writers were right: machines will take over the world. robotics is making it possible for cars to drive themselves. in the near future, police will use robotic dogs to sniff out drugs and biological weapons. robotic house-helpers now sweep the floor while guarding against intruders. machines do seem to have everything going for them: artificial intelligence, nerves of steel, a durable constitution. but they won't stand a chance at world domination until they improve their people skills. ... as far as i can tell, the e-mail about the haiku error messages is probably one of those cyber legends that has been circulating since late in the last century. still, it struck me as a marvelous idea. in addition to merging artificial intelligence with machinery, why not add some creative intelligence as well?" >>> poetry, creativity, robots, interfaces, applications, cognitive science september 11, 2003: beyond voice recognition, to a computer that reads lips. by anne eisenberg. the new york times (no fee reg. req'd.). "[t]eaching computers to read lips might boost the accuracy of automatic speech recognition. listeners naturally use mouth movements to help them understand the difference between 'bat' and 'pat,' for instance. if distinctions like this could be added to a computer's databank with the aid of cheap cameras and powerful processors, speech recognition software might work a lot better, even in noisy places. scientists at i.b.m.'s research center in westchester county, at intel's centers in china and california and in many other labs are developing just such digital lip-reading systems to augment the accuracy of speech recognition. ... at intel, too, researchers have developed software for combined audiovisual analysis of speech and released the software for public use as part of the company's open source computer vision library, said ara v. nefian, a senior intel researcher who led the project. ... iain matthews, a research scientist at carnegie mellon university's robotics institute who works mainly on face tracking and modeling, said that audiovisual speech recognition was a logical step. 'psychology showed this 50 years ago,' he said. 'if you can see a person speaking, you can understand that person better.'" >>> vision, speech, natural language processing, applications, software, cognitive science 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.'" >>> robots, education, vision, cognitive science, interfaces august 30, 2003: mind-expanding machines - artificial intelligence meets good old-fashioned human thought. by bruce bower. science news online ( vol. 164, no. 9). "when kenneth m. ford considers the future of artificial intelligence, he doesn't envision legions of cunning robots running the world. nor does he have high hopes for other much-touted ai prospects -- among them, machines with the mental moxie to ponder their own existence and tiny computer-linked devices implanted in people's bodies. when ford thinks of the future of artificial intelligence, two words come to his mind: cognitive prostheses. ... in short, a cognitive prosthesis is a computational tool that amplifies or extends a person's thought and perception, much as eyeglasses are prostheses that improve vision. ... current ihmc projects include an airplane-cockpit display that shows critical information in a visually intuitive format rather than on standard gauges; software that enables people to construct maps of what's known about various topics, for use in teaching, business, and web site design; and a computer system that identifies people's daily behavior patterns as they go about their jobs and simulates ways to organize those practices more effectively. such efforts, part of a wider discipline called human-centered computing, attempt to mold computer systems to accommodate how humans behave rather than build computers to which people have to adapt. ... just as it proved too difficult for early flight enthusiasts to discover the principles of aerodynamics by trying to build aircraft modeled on bird wings, ford argues, it may be too hard to unravel the computational principles of intelligence by trying to build computers modeled on the processes of human thought. that's a controversial stand in the artificial intelligence community." >>> interfaces, cognitive science, applications, ai overview, turing test, education 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." >>> robots, cognitive science, ai overview august 7, 2003: new uc program explores brain/actions. by roy wood. the cincinnati post "a new university of cincinnati undergraduate study track is aimed at helping future researchers understand the link between the brain and human behavior. the new brain and mind studies track for a bachelor's degree in interdisciplinary studies could help scientists find cures for neurological disorders, create artificial intelligence systems, or simply foster understanding of how we think and act, university officials say. ... many other universities offer degrees in cognitive science, which is focused in large part on how computers can replicate the mind and its functions, [michael] riley said. the uc program adds the neurological element to the mix, as well as philosophy." >>> cognitive science, academic departments (@ resources for students) july 28, 2003: a veritable cognitive mind. by r.colin johnson ee times. " marvin minsky, mit professor and ai's founding father, says today's artificial-intelligence methods are fine for gluing together two or a few knowledge domains but still miss the 'big' ai problem. indeed, according to minsky, the missing element is something so big that we can't see it: common sense. 'to me the problem is how to get common sense into computers,' said minsky. 'and part of that, it seems to me, is not how to solve any particular problem but how to quickly think of a new way to solve it-perhaps through a change in emotional state-when the usual method doesn't work.' in his forthcoming book, the emotion machine, minsky shares his accumulated knowledge on how people make use of common sense in the context of discovering that missing cognitive glue. ... reasoning by analogy is a way of adapting old knowledge, which almost never perfectly matches the present situation, by following a recipe of detecting differences and tweaking parameters. it all happens so quickly that no 'thinking' seems to be involved." >>> commonsense, analogy, emotion, reasoning, representation, cognitive science, ai overview july 28, 2003: rat-brained robot does distant art. by lakshmi sandhana. bbc. "the 'brain' lives at dr steve potter's lab at georgia's institute of technology, atlanta, while the 'body' is located at guy ben-ary's lab at the university of western australia, perth. the two ends communicate with each other in real-time through the internet. the project represents the team's effort to create a semi-living entity that learns like the living brains in people and animals do, adapting and expressing itself through art. ... the computer translates any resulting neural activity into robotic arm movement. by closing the loop, the researchers hope that the rat culture will learn something about itself and its environment. 'i would not classify [the cells] as 'an intelligence', though we hope to find ways to allow them to learn and become at least a little intelligent.' said dr potter. ... dr potter hopes the venture will provide valuable insights into how learning occurs at a cellular level." >>> neural networks & connectionist systems, machine learning, cognitive science, art june 24, 2003: letting your computer know how you feel. by cliff saran. computerweekly. "kate hone, a lecturer in the department of information systems and computing at brunel university, is the principal investigator in a project that aims to evaluate the potential for emotion-recognition technology to improve the quality of human-computer interaction. her study is part of a larger area of computer science called affective computing, which examines how computers affect and can influence human emotion. hone described her research at brunel as a human factor investigation. she said, 'we are trying to build a system that recognises emotion to support human-computer recognition.' the project, called eric (emotional recognition for interaction with computers) has three main goals. ... 'many of the approaches used in speech recognition can be applied to recognising emotion through facial recognition,' hone said. ... affective computing can be defined as 'computing that relates to, arises from, or deliberately influences emotion'. a number of different types of research are encompassed within this term. for instance, some artificial intelligence researchers in the field of affective computing are interested in how emotion contributes to human and, by analogy, computer problem solving or decision making..." >>> interfaces, emotion, speech, cognitive science june 19, 2003: spare parts for the brain. the economist technology quarterly. "for decades, artificial-intelligence buffs have been trying to create a synthetic mind, an artificial consciousness. achieving that goal would answer many interesting philosophical questions about what it means to be human. that is well into the future. meanwhile, a quiet revolution has got under way in the world of neuroscience and bioengineering. these disciplines have made significant progress in understanding how brains work, starting with top-level functions such as thinking, reasoning, remembering and seeing, and breaking them down into underlying components. to do this, researcher have been studying individual regions of the brain and developing 'brain prostheses' and 'neural interfaces'. the aim is not to develop an artificial consciousness (although that may yet prove to be a by-product). instead, the goal is more pragmatic: to find a cure for such illnesses as parkinson's disease, alzheimer's disease, tourette's syndrome, epilepsy, paralysis and a host of other brain-related disorders." >>> philosophy, cognitive science, neural networks & connectionist systems, machine learning june 9, 2003: 'biomimetics' researchers inspired by the animal world - animal kingdom inspires new breed of robots. by scott kirsner. boston globe. "some call the field 'biomimetics,' for the efforts to mimic biology. darpa calls it 'biodynotics' -- biologically inspired multifunctional dynamic robots. .by either name, researchers are finding that even trying to duplicate the simplest of animals isn't easy. ... but developing the control software that will enable the robolobster to navigate and avoid obstacles -- never mind looking for mines -- is a tougher problem to crack. 'making a robot move in the lab is a whole lot different from making it move in the real world, where there are people and obstacles and other things that you can't anticipate,' says jordan pollack, a robotics researcher at brandeis university. one advantage those following a biological example have, though, is that they can turn to real animals for help. [joseph] ayers, who is developing the control software for the robolobster, uses live lobsters as assistants. 'we have a big outdoor pool in nahant,' he says. 'this summer, one thing we'll do is put the robot in a situation where it's surrounded by a field of rocks. if it can't get through, then we'll take a real lobster, and put it in the same situation. we can see how it solves the problem, then build that into the [robot's software].'" >>> robots, nature of intelligence, military, hazards & disasters, natural resource management, cognitive science, applications may 26, 2003: designing robots that can reason and react. spacedaily. "in a large room in georgia tech's college of computing, thomas collins is tweaking the behavior of a machine. around him stand a gaggle of robots, some with trash can figures, others resembling miniature all-terrain vehicles. they appear to be merely functional, plodding pieces of equipment. but these unlikely contraptions can 'think' in the sense that they can react to and reason about their environment. collins, a senior research engineer in the georgia tech research institute's electronic systems laboratory, likens the 'minds' of these machines to those of clever insects that have learned to thrive. 'a cockroach is intelligent because it can survive and do the things it needs to do well. by that definition, these robots are smart,' he says. ... 'our goal is to create intelligence by combining reflexive behaviors with cognitive functioning,' explains ronald arkin, a regents' professor of computer science and director of the lab.'" >>> robots, nature of intelligence, hazards & disasters, military, machine learning, reinforcement learning, applications, cognitive science; also see our related but is it ai? vignette may/june 2003: creating a robot culture - an interview with luc steels. the well-known researcher shares his views on the turing test, robot evolution, and the quest to understand intelligence. by tyrus l. manuel. ieee intelligent systems. "the turing test is not the challenge that ai as a field is trying to solve. it would be like requiring aircraft designers to try and build replicas of birds that cannot be distinguished from real birds, instead of seriously studying aerodynamics or building airplanes that can carry cargo (and do not flap their wings nor have feathers). ... computers and robots are used as experimental platforms for investigating issues about intelligence. researchers who are motivated in this way, and i am one of them, try to make contributions to biology or the cognitive sciences. ... ai has had an enormous impact on how we think today about the brain and the mechanisms underlying cognitive behavior." >>> cognitive science, natural language, machine learning, robots, ai overview, turing test, interviews & oral histories, history, nature of intelligence may 1, 2003: artificial intellect really thinking? by fred reed. the washington times. "can machines think? the question is tricky. most of us probably remember the defeat of garry kasparov, the world chess champion, in 1997 by ibm's computer, deep blue. the tournament was part of the company's deep computing project, which designs monster computers for business and scientific research. when a calculator takes a square root, we don't think of it as being intelligent. but chess is the premier intellectual game. surely it requires intelligence? ... whether machines can be intelligent depends of course on what you mean by intelligence. most of us recognize it without being able to define it. >>> philosophy, nature of intelligence, chess, turing test, cognitive science, ai overview april 2003: cognitive systems. ercim news. "the european commission has identified cognitive systems as one of the priorities for the new generation of research projects to be developed from 2003 to 2008 (http://www.cordis.lu/ ist/workprogramme/fp6_workprogramme.htm ). the stated objective is to construct physically instantiated or embodied systems that can perceive, understand (the semantics of information conveyed through their perceptual input) and interact with their environment, and evolve in order to achieve human-like performance in activities requiring context-(situation and task) specific knowledge. ercim news has chosen to devote a special issue to this exciting research challenge in order to monitor what is under development in europe (but not only in europe), and what is the current status of research and development in this domain." - from the introduction >>> ai overview, cognitive science, applications, agents, vision, machine learning, robots, education april 28, 2003: cognitive journey - did you know that one malaysian has made significant studies on artificial intelligence? by anita matthews. the star. "scientist yeap wai kiang’s room at auckland university of technology in penrose is trim and tidy. the lack of clutter belies the zeal and passion the malaysian-born professor has dedicated in the pursuit of artificial intelligence ­ a subject that has consumed his entire career. yeap first discovered the realm of artificial intelligence (ai) as an undergraduate at the university of essex in england. back in 1975, ai was just emerging as a new field of study. 'i was fascinated by ai and was lucky as there was a group of people with a strong interest in the subject which led me to do research in the area,' recalled the former anglo-chinese school student from kampar, perak. ... his advice to aspiring scientists is to ask the right questions. he points out that young researchers are often fearful of fundamental questions." >>> careers in ai (@ resources for students), cognitive science, natural language, robots april 14, 2003: carnegie mellon psychologist helps build a better mine sweeper - in a low-tech solution, soldiers are taught an expert's technique and detection soars. by byron spice. post-gazette. "[t]he more significant advance in demining, a practice that must continue for years after the war ends, may be the revamped training that u.s. soldiers have received since last spring. devised by jim staszewski, a cognitive psychologist at carnegie mellon university, the training program teaches soldiers to use the thought patterns and techniques honed by an expert, a 30-year mine-detection veteran. it builds on the work of the late cmu scientists herbert simon and allan newell, pioneers in the study of the nature of human expertise. ... what was it that made them experts? how do experts differ from everybody else? these were the questions being asked by the army and the same sort of questions that mesmerized cmu's newell and simon. the cmu researchers were popularly known for creating the first thinking machine, launching the field of artificial intelligence, in the mid-1950s. but this quest to make computers think like humans went hand-in-hand with their efforts to understand how humans think. as a result, the pair had as much impact on the field of psychology as on computer science. "herb simon and allan newell pretty much got cognitive science off the ground," staszewski said. 'i'd like to think this work is a direct descendant of them' and other cmu psychologists, including the late william chase. how to be an expert one of the things they learned is that you don't have to be a genius to be an expert. in his 1991 book, 'models of my life,' simon wrote: 'experts, human and computer, do much of their problem solving not by searching selectively, but simply by recognizing relevant cues in situations similar to those they have experienced before.'" >>> cognitive science, reasoning, expert systems, landmines (@hazards & disasters), ai overview, history march 22, 2003: i, robot - by baby steps. the latest creation at mit's media lab, a robot named ripley, can't play chess or guide spacecraft. he's more like a rather slow-witted infant. by michael valpy. the globe and mail. "ai's avant-garde reality in 2003 is ripley, rather resembling the head of an amiable mechanical airedale. he's the creation of 34-year-old deb roy, founder and director of the cognitive-machines group at mit's famed media lab, who has been building robots since his winnipeg childhood. ... [w]hat looks to humans to be difficult for robots, like playing chess, is in fact mindlessly easy. and what looks easy -- because it's easy for humans to do -- is mind-numblingly complex. like learning language. ripley is not being programmed with scripted speech. he is being taught the meanings of words and how to speak, the way a human child would be. ... ripley learns language by looking at an object, touching it and hearing the word for it. in the media lab it is called 'grounding.' ... the team is about to teach ripley to understand the idea of point of view. when the researcher talking to ripley describes a beanbag as being on his own left, it will be on ripley's right. in effect, mr. [nick] mavridis says, it will allow ripley to step outside himself and grasp the notion of 'other.' ... robots, prof. [anne] foerst says, will never be humans. but they could be somebodies -- individual selves." >>> robots, cognitive science, philosophy, natural language, vision, ai overview march 14, 2003: mind of the company - science is finding that mimicking living systems to produce robots is about understanding biology, not physics. there are lessons here for the way we run our corporations. by tim wallace. financial review boss. "the phrase 'fast, cheap and out of control' was coined by australian-born scientist rodney brooks and a colleague for an article published in 1989 advocating the use of robots in space exploration. internet guru kevin kelly later adapted it for the title of his 1994 book on new modes of thinking in artificial intelligence, while filmmaker errol morris used it for his 1997 documentary film featuring the robotics scientist. ... brook's work on ai challenges us to rethink oi (organisational intelligence) and to smash the machine, rebuilding it from the bottom up - fast, cheap and out of control. ... the most celebrated of all early efforts to create a robot that could do childish things resulted in shakey, built at the stanford research institute in the late 1960s to early 1970s, and so named because of the way its camera and tv transmitter mast shook when it moved. ... the designers of shakey, and of the projects following it, believed that for a robot to act intelligently in the world it first needed an accurate model of that world. ... what must be happening in insects, brooks realised, was sensing connected to action - sensors to actuators - very quickly. the key to building a similarly efficient robot, he concluded, was to have it react to its sensors in the same way, so it did not need a detailed computational model of the world. 'if the building and maintaining of the internal world model was hard and a computational drain, then get rid of the internal model. every other robot had had one. but it was not clear that insects had them, so why did our robots necessarily need them?'" >>> nature of intelligence, robots, reasoning, history, cognitive science february 28, 2003: it's a dog's life these scientists are keenly interested in - roll over, robo-rover. by mark watson. the commercial appeal. "at a symposium on the dynamics of perception and cognition at the university of memphis, about 35 people have gathered to study the way biological systems, such as dogs, perceive, understand and navigate the world. they're doing so in order to build devices that perform as smartly. ... 'planetary rovers today can only go a few meters a day - a day! - because they have to stop and call home and ask, 'what should i do?'' nasa co-sponsored the event, along with the national science foundation and u of m's institute for intelligent systems, which will join the fedex technology institute when it opens in the fall. ... robert kozma, a u of m associate professor of computer science and chairman of the symposium, said these scientists discuss techniques 'to model brain behavior, and use the results to create artificial-intelligent devices.'" >>> nature of intelligence, cognitive science, neural networks, space exploration, autonomous vehicles february 24, 2003: tech for elders must have purpose. by mark baard. wired news. "seniors will accept newfangled gadgets, as long as they come in familiar packages. the key, researchers say, is to make assistive technologies easy to use and familiar. the devices must also increase seniors' independence. ... aging baby boomers might happily adapt to a wireless phone-based system that helps them navigate public transportation systems using artificial intelligence, for example. mobility for all, part of the cognitive levers project, known as clever, at the university of colorado, will put cognitively impaired people on the right local bus by combining gps and wireless technology with java-enabled smart phones that have high-resolution displays. ... researchers admit that technology can't fix all seniors' problems. people age differently, and an assistive technology must get smarter as a person's functioning declines. 'we've got to make systems that are highly customizable,' said martha pollack, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the university of michigan. ... pollack is programming the ai brain behind nursebot, a robot that provides both cognitive and motor support to seniors. nursing-home residents can lean on nursebot as the machine walks them down long corridors, responds to their questions and reminds them about appointments." >>> assistive technologies, interfaces, cognitive science, applications, robotic pets, robots february 18, 2003: robots are getting more sociable - researchers work on machines with a human touch. by alan boyle. msnbc. please note: accompanying the article is a link to an interactive brief history of robotics. "for [david] hanson, k-bot is step down a decades-long path in cognitive science. future robo-faces could be used to test theories about how humans come up with acceptable responses to social cues. eventually, the robot itself might recognize when it has flashed an inappropriate expression or made an ill-timed remark, then adjust its own software accordingly. there may even be occasions when humans who have a psychological problem with socializing could learn a thing or two from k-bot’s descendants. many other robotics experts are working on their own brands of sociable machines. cynthia breazeal, a professor at the massachusetts institute of technology, was a pioneer in the field, by virtue of a cute contraption called kismet. ... now she’s working on a furry, lop-eared robot named leonardo, which was designed with the aid of experts in animatronics. 'there are many, many, many, many possible applications,' she said. sociable robots could serve as entertainers, nursemaids, servants or surrogate friends. the software advances could also lead to better on-screen 'virtual humans' in situations where the physical form isn’t needed -- say, providing a friendly 'face' at automatic teller machines. ... looking beyond the science and engineering, the effort to construct more humanlike robots has a philosophical point as well, the researchers said. 'robots have always been an intriguing mirror to our own conception of what it means to be a human,' breazeal said." >>> robots, history, cognitive science, assisitive technologies, applications, marketing, philosophy february 6, 2003: niyogi uses computers to analyze language evolution. by steve koppes. the university of chicago chronicle (vol. 22 no. 9). "if a computer could master language as well as a child does, the feat would rank as one of the greatest technological achievements of our time. but so far, computers fall far short of the capability. 'how do children learn the language of their parents with seemingly effortless ease?' asks partha niyogi, associate professor in computer science, statistics and the physical science collegiate division. linguists, psychologists and computer scientists specializing in artificial intelligence would all like to know how to answer that question. the computational analysis of how language evolves may well hold the answer, suggests niyogi, who is completing a book on the topic. that is because children imperfectly learn the language of their parents. ... niyogi’s ultimate goal is to build computer systems that can interact with and learn from humans. the first step is to teach computers how to translate sounds into words." >>> speech, cognitive science, natural language, applications february 3, 2003: daniel c. dennett -the mind machine - to cognitive scientist daniel c. dennett, there's nothing artificial about the intelligence of computers. watch this episode of tech tv's big thinkers series on monday 2/3 at 9:30 p.m., tuesday 2/4 at 12:30 a.m., and wednesday 2/5 at 8 a.m. eastern. " many philosophers and scientists have pointed out the similarities between the human brain and the computer, but no one has dedicated more time to those similarities than this week's big thinker daniel c. dennett of tufts university. considered a radical by many in the cognitive science field, we sat down with dennett to find out why he believes that the mind -- and indeed consciousness itself -- is solely a series of computations." a video highlight - - daniel c. dennett on artificial intelligence - is available online. >>> cognitive science, ai overview, philosophy, interviews, show time, resources january 21, 2003: chess champion faces off with new computer. by paul hoffman. the new york times (no fee reg. req'd). " in 1997, garry kasparov, the russian grandmaster who was then the world champion, played a highly publicized match, billed "as the last stand of the brain," against the i.b.m. supercomputer deep blue. ... now almost six years later, mr. kasparov, who is 39, has found an appropriate silicon stand-in for the i.b.m. machine. on sunday, he begins a six-game $1 million match against an israeli program, deep junior, the three-time world computer chess champion. the match is sponsored by the world chess federation. ... cognitive psychologists discovered that grandmaster chess was more of a game of pattern recognition than calculation. but no programmer succeeded in codifying that more elusive ability into a set of rules that a machine could follow. the situation today is that both humans and machines can play world-class chess, but they approach the game completely differently. ... 'the match will be close, but i'm determined to win,' mr. kasparov said. 'one thing i know is that humans' days at the top of the chess world are limited. i give us just a few years.' 'the only sure way to defeat a computer,' mr. [alexander] baburin said, 'will be to cut its power source.'" >>> chess, history, cognitive science, pattern recognition, reasoning, games & puzzles, machine learning december 16, 2002: ngee ann lecturers find way to make computers think like a human brain. by ca-mie de souza. channel newsasia. "two lecturers at ngee ann polytechnic said they had discovered a way to make computers think like a human brain. ... like a library which arranges its books in categories, the team said the brain's grey matter functioned in much the same way. so they designed the 'digital gray matter' technology, which allows computers to store and classify information. ... dr alexei mikhailov, lecturer at ngee ann polytechnic, said: 'i believe now we can significantly improve artificial intelligence tools. they will become cheaper, they will become more intelligent and it will not just improve the quality of life, but it could also save our lives.' ... at the moment, artificial intelligence is already used in robots - in a us$1 billion market that's growing at 45 percent a year. dr pok yang ming, lecturer at ngee ann polytechnic, said: 'artificial intelligence has been in place over the last 20 to 30 years. all these are discovered outside singapore. but neural cortex or the digital gray matter is discovered in singapore.'" >>> cognitive science, applications, machine learning, industry statistics december 10, 2002: human or computer? take this test. by sara robinson. the new york times (no-fee reg. req'd). "as chief scientist of the internet portal yahoo, dr. udi manber had a profound problem: how to differentiate human intelligence from that of a machine. his concern was more than academic. rogue computer programs masquerading as teenagers were infiltrating yahoo chat rooms, collecting personal information or posting links to web sites promoting company products. ... the roots of dr. manber's philosophical conundrum lay in a paper written 50 years earlier by the mathematician dr. alan turing, who imagined a game in which a human interrogator was connected electronically to a human and a computer in the next room. the interrogator's task was to pose a series of questions that determined which of the other participants was the human. ... dr. manuel blum, a professor of computer science at carnegie mellon who took part in the yahoo conference, realized that the failures of artificial intelligence might provide exactly the solution yahoo needed. why not devise a new sort of turing test, he suggested, that would be simple for humans but would baffle sophisticated computer programs. dr. manber liked the idea, so with his ph.d. student luis von ahn and others dr. blum devised a collection of cognitive puzzles based on the challenging problems of artificial intelligence. the puzzles have the property that computers can generate and grade the tests even though they cannot pass them. the researchers decided to call their puzzles captchas, an acronym for completely automated public turing test to tell computers and humans apart (on the web at www.captcha.net). >>> turing test, natural language, cognitive science december 2002: a smarter way to sell ketchup - this is your brain. this is your brain in the marketing department. any questions? by alissa quart. wired magazine. "cognitive science, which draws on psychology, neuroscience, sociology, and computer science, has an illustrious history. the discipline has brought us innovations in artificial intelligence, cybernetics, and neural networking. but increasingly, it's about ketchup. cognitive science isn't just being put to work for better marketing - it's also helping to make more sophisticated products. there's cog-sci fieldwork behind cereal ads, and lab experiments support the marketing of jeans. cognitive scientists are investigating why kids might feel positive about, say, coke but hate pepsi; or why zoog is a catchy add-on to the disney brand." >>> cognitive science november 11, 2002: good morning, dave... the defense department is working on a self-aware computer. by kathleen melymuka. computerworld. " any sci-fi buff knows that when computers become self-aware, they ultimately destroy their creators. from 2001: a space odyssey to terminator, the message is clear: the only good self-aware machine is an unplugged one. we may soon find out whether that's true. the defense advanced research projects agency (darpa) is accepting research proposals to create the first system that actually knows what it's doing. the 'cognitive system' darpa envisions would reason in a variety of ways, learn from experience and adapt to surprises. it would be aware of its behavior and explain itself. it would be able to anticipate different scenarios and predict and plan for novel futures. ... cognitive systems will require a revolutionary break from current computer evolution, which has been adding complexity and brittleness as it adds power. 'we want to think fundamental, not incremental improvements: how can we make a quantum leap ahead?' says ronald j. brachman, director of darpa's information processing technology office in arlington, va. brachman will manage the agency's cognitive system initiative. ... but what about hal 9000 and the other fictional computers that have run amok? 'in any kind of technology there are risks,' brachman acknowledges. that's why darpa is reaching out to neurologists, psychologists - even philosophers - as well as computer scientists. 'we're not stumbling down some blind alley,' he says. 'we're very cognizant of these issues.'" >>> cognitive science, scifi, networks, speech, machine learning, applications, robots, philosophy, military, ai overview, ethical & social implications october 15, 2002: robot 'judy' center of futuristic theater piece. by travis cannell. daily nexus (uc santa barbara). "as computers continue to become faster, smaller and cheaper, some cognitive scientists wonder if tomorrow's computers will ever match human intelligence and become self-aware. breaking away from traditional hard science, the ucsb cognitive science program staged a theatrical production, entitled 'judy,' which posed the question: if you build a robot smart enough to do the dishes, would it also be smart enough to find them boring? ... robert bernstein, a local santa barbara resident and robotics enthusiast, thought judy's character presented a plausible vision of artificial intelligence. ... psychology dept. associate professor mary hegarty was dubious about the idea of a machine that could think for itself in the near future." >>> cognitive science, philosophy, ai overview september 19, 2002: who's afraid of the new science? review of "the blank slate: the modern denial of human nature." the economist. "steven pinker's provocative new book is full of catchy examples like this that he uses to highlight two radically different ways of conceptualising and explaining our behaviour: one with an eye to culture, learning and the social sciences, the other with an eye to nature, genetic inheritance and experiment. he makes no bones about where he stands. social science and its popularisers have, he thinks, systematically ignored or derided recent strides by neuroscience, artificial intelligence, behavioural genetics and evolutionary psychology. ... at this point, it would have been neater for a two-camps approach if hard science, as mr pinker calls it, were united against the rogues and cretins of cultural relativism in rejecting the blank slate. but, ever honest, he admits that the blank slate still has defenders among tough-minded and experimental researchers: in artificial intelligence, 'connectionists' who think brains work like neural networks simulated on computers 'learning' from statistical patterns with only weak constraints on their inner structure (the near-blank slate) ..." >>> cognitive science, neural networks, machine learning september 9, 2002: hidden in nature. the new york times (no-fee reg. req'd). "what if we could actually harness nature's secrets to create remarkable new inventions - insect based robots, armies of artificial ants? scientists are just beginning to reap the benefits of using nature's way to solve problems. ... studying how animals move can teach how to build better machines, but studying how animals behave can teach us a whole new way to think. doctor eric bonabeau is one of the proponents of a new branch of science called swarm intelligence. a flock of birds, a swarm of bees; it looks like they're following a complex plan. but research into how swarms and flocks behave reveals that each ant or bee is actually following only a few simple rules of behavior, which when multiplied by thousands achieves astonishing feats. dr. alcherio martinoli and his colleagues are simulating these behaviors in the lab to try to learn how to make groups of robots work together, just like ants." >>> nature of intelligence, robots, cognitive science, artificial life, multi-agent systems august 16, 2002: does schmoozing make robots clever? by matthew broersma. cnet. "a belgian professor doing research for sony wants to teach robots to be more like people--but he's running into some resistance. ... steels' work deals with machine intelligence, but it's a fundamentally different view from that embodied in the famous 'turing test.' according to the turing theory, a human-like intelligence has successfully been created when a human can't tell the difference between a conversation with the artificial intelligence and a real one. 'i think the turing test is a bad idea because it's completely fake,' steels said. 'it's like saying you want to make a flying machine, so you produce something that is indistinguishable from a bird. on the other hand, an airplane achieves flight but it doesn't need to flap its wings.' similarly steels believes that machines can evolve intelligence through interaction with one another and with their ecology -- but this synthetic intelligence it is unlikely to bear much superficial resemblance to human intelligence. ... this notion has met with resistance on both theoretical and practical levels. some scientists, such as rodney brooks of mit, have argued that intelligent behavior doesn't need internal representations." >>> nature of intelligence, turing test, cognitive science june 10, 2002: berkeley minds find computers can't think - yet. by lee gomes. associated press / published in the wall street journal / available from new jersey online. "will super-smart machines ever be built? if they are, will they be conscious? at places like m.i.t., academic careers and entire departments were built by answering -yes- to those sorts of questions, starting in the 1950s and 1960s. at berkeley, though, came thundering dissents, notably from hubert dreyfus and john searle, both from the university's philosophy department. ... it's in the field of 'cognitive science,' devoted to the study of the mind, where the berkeley school's triumph is most apparent. the discipline became popular roughly a generation ago, when ai was ascendant and when the computer was viewed as an apt metaphor for the brain. the sloan foundation decided to back cognitive sciences, and made big grants to two schools. one was m.i.t., a bastion of ai research. the other was berkeley, where the skeptics held out. it's getting harder to find anyone in cognitive sciences who still believes that computers are useful models for the brain. instead, most people in the field spend their time actually studying brains: scanning 'em, slicing 'em, dicing 'em. it's essentially the dreyfus-searle research agenda: to understand the mind, forget about computers and look at the gray stuff inside our heads." >>> cognitive science, philosophy, history june 8, 2002: thinking computers must hallucinate, too. by david gelernter. the straits times. "creating a computer that 'thinks' is one goal of artificial-intelligence research. ... the single most important fact about thought follows from an obvious observation: these four styles are connected. we can label them 'analysi'', 'common sense', 'free association' and 'dreaming'. but the key point is that they are four points on a single, continuous spectrum, with analysis at one end and dreaming at the other. psychologists and computer scientists like to talk about analysis and common sense as if they were salt and steel, or apples and oranges. we would do better to think of them as red and yellow, separated not by some sharp boundary, but by a continuous range of red-oranges and orange-yellows." >>> philosophy, commonsense, creativity, emotions, cognitive science, analogy june 2002: sex differences in the brain. by doreen kimura. scientific american - special issue: the hidden mind. "any behavioral differences between individuals or groups must somehow be mediated by the brain. sex differences have been reported in brain structure and organization, and studies have been done on the role of sex hormones in influencing human behavior. but questions remain regarding how hormones act on human brain systems to produce the sex differences we described, such as in play behavior or in cognitive patterns." >>> cognitive science, nature of intelligence also see: sexes handle emotions differently. bbc (july 23, 2002). "scientists have come up with a theory to explain why men and women seem to deal with emotion in different ways. they believe that the sexes use different networks in their brains to remember emotional events. this may explain why women are more likely to be emotional and to remember fraught occasions. researchers from stanford university in california used scan technology to measure the brain activity of 12 men and 12 women who were shown a range of images." sexes 'brains work differently.' bbc (july 8, 2001). "boys and girls were equally good at both tasks. but they appeared to use different, though sometimes overlapping, parts of their brains to process the information. the researchers believe it is possible that boys process faces at a global level, an ability more associated with the right hemisphere of the brain. conversely, girls may process faces at a more local level - an ability associated with the brain's left hemisphere." may 7, 2002: a human touch for machines - the radical movement of affective computing is turning the field of artificial intelligence upside down by adding emotion to the equation. by charels piller. los angeles times. "for the last decade, the uc san diego psychologist has traveled a quixotic path in search of the next evolutionary leap in computer development: training machines to comprehend the deeply human mystery of what we feel. [javier ] movellan's devices now can identify hundreds of ways faces show joy, anger, sadness and other emotions. the computers, which operate by recognizing patterns learned from a multitude of images, eventually will be able to detect millions of expressions. ... such computers are the beginnings of a radical movement known as 'affective computing.' the goal is to reshape the very notion of machine intelligence. ... such devices may never replicate human emotional experience. but if their developers are correct, even modest emotional talents would change machines from data-crunching savants into perceptive actors in human society. at stake are multibillion-dollar markets for electronic tutors, robots, advisors and even psychotherapy assistants. ... classical ai researchers model the mind through the brute force of infinite logical calculations. but they falter at humanity's fundamental motivations. ... movellan is part of a growing network of scientists working to disprove long-held assumptions that computers are, by nature, logical geniuses but emotional dunces. ... scientists don't foresee machines with hal's emotional skills--or, fortunately, its malevolence--soon. but they already have debunked ai orthodoxy considered sacrosanct only five years ago--that logic is the one path to machine intelligence. it took psychologists and neuroscientists--outside the computer priesthood--to see inherent limits in the mathematical pursuit of intelligence that has dominated computer science." >>> emotion, cognitive science, machine learning, vision, history, robots, ethical & social implications march 29, 2002: scientists challenge theory of mind's eye. different parts of brain used to process real and imagined images. by brad evenson. national post. "most people use mental imagery to seek answers to these questions, a faculty known as the mind's eye. some of these images are so precise, experimental psychologists believed the same brain mechanism that handled visual images also allowed us to imagine what the world is like. but now u.s. and canadian researchers, using a scanner to map brain activity as subjects performed cognitive tasks, have raised doubts about this theory. the study was published this week in the journal neuron. ... the findings could have applications in designing object-recognition systems in robots and artificial intelligence systems. ... consider moving a couch through a doorway. visual recognition would compare the doorway space with the couch and determine whether it would fit. using mental rotation, one might spin the couch on its end and visualize squeezing it through the doorway." >>> cognitive science, robots, image understanding spring 2002: a body of knowledge. by stephen kiesling. spirituality & health magazine. "other brains in the body? apparently so. what got me thinking about this was, once again, the humanoid robots at mit. a big advance in making robots move like humans was rodney brooks’s development of 'distributed intelligence' -- small brains spread throughout the robot that concentrate on particular tasks. without these small brains, the problem of walking is too complicated for the robot’s central processor." >>> cognitive science, nature of intelligence, robots, multi-agent systems february 21, 2002: toyland is tough, even for robots. by barnaby j. feder. the new york times (no fee reg. req'd). "mr. [mark] tilden has been arguing with little success for well over a decade that progress in robotics would be much more rapid if researchers concentrated on designing relatively dumb robots rather than devices stuffed with increasingly powerful programmable electronic brains. the trick, in mr. tilden's view, is to equip simple-minded but physically robust robots with mechanical variations on animal nervous systems. nervous networks do not organize and process information digitally as computers do. 'all life is analog,' mr. tilden said." >>> robots, cognitive science, toys there's more ! news indexed by topic: cognitive science fyi: as explained in this announcement, on march 1, 2007 aaai changed its name from the american association for artificial intelligence to the association for the advancement of artificial intelligence. fair use notice ©2000 - 2007 by aaai

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