AI Report

The AI Report - Forbes.com

"Can machines think? In 1950, Alan Turing, considered by some to be the father of modern computing, published a paper in which he proposed that, "If, during text-based conversation, a machine is indistinguishable from a human, then it could be said to be 'thinking' and, therefore, could be attributed with intelligence." He predicted that a computer would pass this "Turing Test" by the end of the century. That hasn't happened--yet. But the question continues to provoke and inspire. AI might be just around the corner, or it might be centuries away"

GR: check out this Forbes special report, with essays by cyberneticist Kevin Warwick, philosopher Nick Bostrom, Singularity Institute president Michael Vassar, and Google Research Director Peter Norvig.

Proven Kernel delivers safer computing

Code breakthrough delivers safer computing "Computer researchers at UNSW and NICTA have achieved a breakthrough in software which will deliver significant increases in security and reliability and has the potential to be a major commercialisation success.

"Professor Gernot Heiser, the John Lions Chair in Computer Science in the School of Computer Science and Engineering and a senior principal researcher with NICTA, said for the first time a team had been able to prove with mathematical rigour that an operating-system kernel – the code at the heart of any computer or microprocessor – was 100 per cent bug-free and therefore immune to crashes and failures.

"The breakthrough has major implications for improving the reliability of critical systems such as medical machinery, military systems and aircraft, where failure due to a software error could have disastrous results."

Computer science majors still in demand

Computer science majors still in demand "The nation's leading computer science programs say graduating seniors are still sought after by technology vendors and corporate shops, despite the global economic slowdown and high-profile layoffs across the tech industry."

"Professor Peter Lee, head of the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University, says demand for the program's 130 graduating seniors has not wavered during the last few months. "Our graduates continue even in this downturn to have near 100% employment," Lee says. "It is still the case that companies are coming to recruit new computer science graduates, and very often they go away happy with the recruits they find here."

Mobile Apps Give Students Instant Access to Information

Columbus State University Mobile Apps "In what may be a nationwide first, new cell phone and PDA applications developed by Columbus University will allow students to have instant access to academic and financial aid information, as well as events around campus.

"Programmers in CSU's University Information and Technology Services have been working for months to interface Google Apps for mobile devices with the university’s online, password-protected Student Information System. With the new Columbus State Mobile Apps, students can now use any Web-enabled cell phone to securely view information about:

• Academic status, such as GPA, adviser contact and grades
• Schedule of classes
• Required admissions documents, such as financial aid and immunization
• Student account information, such as amount owed, refunds available or account holds
• Student activities
• Athletic events
• Campus shuttle bus schedule
• Campus map"

Mental telepathy... over the internet?

Communicating person to person through the power of thought alone "New research from the University of Southampton has demonstrated that it is possible for communication from person to person through the power of thought alone.

"Brain-Computer Interfacing (BCI) can be used for capturing brain signals and translating them into commands that allow humans to control (just by thinking) devices such as computers, robots, rehabilitation technology and virtual reality environments.

"This experiment goes a step further and was conducted by Dr Christopher James from the University’s Institute of Sound and Vibration Research. The aim was to expand the current limits of this technology and show that brain-to-brain (B2B) communication is possible."

By 2040 you will be able to upload your brain...

Upload your brain... "By 2040 you will be able to upload your brain... or at least that's what Ray Kurzweil thinks. He has spent his life inventing machines that help people, from the blind to dyslexics. Now, he believes we're on the brink of a new age – the 'singularity' – when mind-boggling technology will allow us to email each other toast, run as fast as Usain Bolt (for 15 minutes) – and even live forever. Is there sense to his science – or is the man who reasons that one day he'll bring his dad back from the grave just a mad professor peddling a nightmare vision of the future?"

"In Kurzweil's estimation, we will be able to upload the human brain to a computer, capturing "a person's entire personality, memory, skills and history", by the end of the 2030s; humans and non-biological machines will then merge so effectively that the differences between them will no longer matter; and, after that, human intelligence, transformed for the better, will start to expand outward into the universe, around about 2045. With this last prediction, Kurzweil is referring not to any recognisable type of space travel, but to a kind of space infusion. "Intelligence," he writes, "will begin to saturate the matter and energy in its midst [and] spread out from its origin on Earth."

Intelligent vehicles tested across European roads

Intelligent vehicles tested... "In the context of euroFOT, a European-wide research project, 28 organisations have committed to scientifically test and assess the impact of eight advanced driver assistance systems on safety, efficiency and driver comfort. This collaborative research project is supported by European funds from the DG Information Society and Media.

"Both lateral and longitudinal control systems will be tested: systems that give warnings to the driver on potential side- and front-end collisions. Also, other advanced in-vehicle systems such as Curve Speed Warning, Fuel Efficiency Adviser and the Human machine interaction with navigation systems will be tested.

"Beginning in 2010, no less than 1000 vehicles from various European vehicle brands equipped with various intelligent in-vehicle systems will drive around Europe for approximately one year. These intelligent vehicles will collect data that should deliver answers with regards to the impacts that these systems have on safety, efficiency and driver comfort."

Going plasmonic in search of faster computing, communications

Going plasmonic... "A team of European researchers has demonstrated some of the first commercially viable plasmonic devices, paving the way for a new era of high-speed communications and computing in which electronic and optical signals can be handled simultaneously.

The pioneering devices, which are expected to lead to commercial applications within the next decade, make use of electron plasma oscillation to transmit optical and electronic signals along the same metal circuitry via waves of surface plasmon polaritons. In contrast, signals in electronic circuits are transmitted by electrons, while photons are used to carry data in optical systems."

"As an emerging nano-scale technology that is often referred to as “light on a wire,” plasmonics, as the field of research is known, shares the advantages of fibre optics, including ultra-high-speed data transfer, with the benefits of electronic components, particularly their small size. The technology holds the promise of all-optical computer chips operating at ultra-fast speeds, faster communications and a vast new range of sensing devices.

“For the last five years or so it has been possible to build an optical computer chip, but with all-optical components it would have to measure something like half a metre by half a metre and would consume enormous power. With plasmonics, we can make the circuitry small enough to fit in a normal PC while maintaining optical speeds,” explains Anatoly Zayats, a researcher at The Queen's University of Belfast in the United Kingdom.

Supercomputers with 100 million cores by 2018

Supercomputers with 100 million cores... "There is a race to make supercomputers as powerful as possible to solve some of the world's most important problems, including climate change, the need for ultra-long-life batteries for cars, operating fusion reactors with plasma that reaches 150 million degrees Celsius and creating bio-fuels from weeds and not corn.

"Supercomputers allow researchers to create three-dimensional visualizations, not unlike a video game, to run endless 'what-if' scenarios with increasingly finer detail. But as big as they are today, supercomputers aren't big enough -- and a key topic for some of the estimated 11,000 people now gathering in Portland, Ore. for the 22nd annual supercomputing conference, SC09, will be the next performance goal: an exascale system."

Futurologist Vernor Vinge on the Singularity

Contact lenses as heads-up displays

Contact lenses to get virtual graphics New Scientist "A contact lens that harvests radio waves to power an LED is paving the way for a new kind of display. The lens is a prototype of a device that could display information beamed from a mobile device.

"Realising that display size is increasingly a constraint in mobile devices, Babak Parviz at the University of Washington, in Seattle, hit on the idea of projecting images into the eye from a contact lens.

"One of the limitations of current head-up displays is their limited field of view. A contact lens display can have a much wider field of view. 'Our hope is to create images that effectively float in front of the user perhaps 50 cm to 1 m away,' says Parviz."

Teachers obsolete?

Hybrid Education 2.0 - Inside Higher Ed: "What if you could teach a college course without a classroom or a professor, and lose nothing?  According to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, there’s no 'what if' about it. Earlier in the decade, Carnegie Mellon set out to design software for independent learners taking courses through the university’s Open Learning Initiative, an effort to make courses freely available to non-enrolled learners. But rather than merely making course materials available to non-students, like MIT's famous OpenCourseware project, Carnegie Mellon wanted to design courses that would respond to the individual needs of each student. It currently has courses in 12 different subjects available on its Web site, mostly in math and science."

"Carnegie Mellon is not about to replace all its professors with computer programs. But with $4 million in private grants and perhaps more to come from the federal government, the university is currently exploring how the open-learning software could be used in conjunction with classroom education to speed up the teaching and learning process -- a prospect that some involved think could help solve overcrowding in America's community colleges and realize the Obama administration's goal of boosting graduation rates.

Japanese researcher unveils 'hummingbird robot'

Hummingbird robot "CHIBA, Japan — Japanese researchers said Monday they had developed a 'hummingbird robot' that can flutter around freely in mid-air with rapid wing movements.

"The robot, a similar size to a real hummingbird, is equipped with a micro motor and four wings that can flap 30 times per second, said Hiroshi Liu, the researcher at Chiba University east of Tokyo."

"The robot, whose development cost has topped 200 million yen (2.1 million dollars), may be used to help rescue people trapped in destroyed buildings, search for criminals or even operate as a probe vehicle on Mars, he said.

History of Darpa - 'The Department of Mad Scientists'

Book Review by Michael Belfiore NYTimes "Two years ago, in his book “Rocketeers,” Michael Belfiore celebrated the pioneers of the budding private space industry. Now he has returned to explore a frontier closer to home. The heroes of his new book, “The Department of Mad Scientists,” work for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, better known as Darpa, a secretive arm of the United States government. And the revolution they’re leading is a merger of humans with machines."

"The revolution is happening before our eyes, but we don’t recognize it, because it’s incremental. It starts with driving. Cruise control transfers regulation of your car’s speed to a computer. In some models, you can upgrade to adaptive cruise control, which monitors the surrounding traffic by radar and adjusts your speed accordingly. If you drift out of your lane, an option called lane keeping assistance gently steers you back. For extra safety, you can get extended brake assistance, which monitors traffic ahead of you, alerts you to collision threats and applies as much braking pressure as necessary."

"With each delegation of power, we become more comfortable with computers driving our cars. Soon we’ll want more... Why put down your cellphone when you can let go of the wheel instead? Reading, texting, talking and eating in the car aren’t distractions. Driving is the distraction. Let the car do it.

Cancer Drug Delays Aging in Mice

Cancer Drug Delays Aging... “In a potentially landmark study on the biology of aging and how to delay it, a drug gave elderly mice the human equivalent of thirteen extra years of life.

“Though the drug is an immune system suppressant that almost certainly won’t have the same effect in humans, the study provides compelling evidence that pharmacologically slowing the process of aging itself may be possible.

“It’s unlikely that the life extension came from merely postponing a few specific diseases,” said Jackson Laboratory gerontologist David Harrison, a leader of one of three research teams who conducted the experiment separately. “And the treatment didn’t start until the mice were the equivalent of a 60-year-old human. No other intervention has been so effective starting late in life.”

The real Frankenstein experiment

One man's mission to create a living mind inside a machine | Mail Online: "His words staggered the erudite audience gathered at a technology conference in Oxford last summer.

"Professor Henry Markram, a doctor-turned-computer engineer, announced that his team would create the world's first artificial conscious and intelligent mind by 2018.  And that is exactly what he is doing.

"On the shore of Lake Geneva, this brilliant, eccentric scientist is building an artificial mind. A Swiss - it could only be Swiss - precision- engineered mind, made of silicon, gold and copper."
What Markram's project amounts to is an audacious attempt to build a computerised copy of a brain - starting with a rat's brain, then progressing to a human brain - inside one of the world's most powerful computers.

"This, it is hoped, will bring into being a sentient mind that will be able to think, reason, express will, lay down memories and perhaps even experience love, anger, sadness, pain and joy.
'We will do it by 2018,' says the professor confidently. 'We need a lot of money, but I am getting it. There are few scientists in the world with the resources I have at my disposal.

Computer and Mathematical occupations among fastest growing

Computing Community Consortium: "Focusing in on the “Professional and related” occupations, of the 8 occupational clusters that are included, “Computer and mathematical” occupations are projected to grow by the largest percentage between now and 2018 — by 22.2%. In other words, “Computer and mathematical” occupations are the fastest growing occupational cluster within the fastest growing major occupational group."

Another exoskeleton

Another demo of an exoskeleton.

Reading Your Mind to Tag Images

Reading Your Mind...: "The most valuable machine you own may be between your ears. Work done at Microsoft Research is using electroencephalograph (EEG) measurements to “read” minds in order to help tag images. When someone looks at an image, different areas of their brain have different levels of activity. This activity can be measured and scientists can reasonably determine what the person is looking at. It only takes about half a second to read the brain activity associated with each image, making the EEG process much faster than traditional manual tagging. The “mind-reading” technique may be the first step towards a hybrid system of computer and human analysis for images and many other forms of data."

Development of real-life Avatars

Robots for Surgery, Farming and Valet Parking: "Korea is currently developing robots conceptually similar to the avatar humanoids as demonstrated in the movie 'Avatar,' a science-fiction blockbuster directed by James Cameron.

During its regular assembly held on Friday, the Robot Convergence Forum expected that the avatar robots would hit the market in a few years. The forum involves both the private and public sectors.

"Already, domestic robot makers are working on prototypes of avatar robots and the consensus is that the commercial versions will come to town by late 2013,'' a Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE) director said."

Social science meets computer science at Yahoo

Social science meets computer science at Yahoo: "Shortly after Carol Bartz took over as chief executive of Yahoo Inc. early last year, she met with Prabhakar Raghavan for an overview of the Sunnyvale Web giant's research division. As the head of Yahoo Labs ran through the catalog of computer scientists on staff, Bartz turned to him and asked: 'Where are your psychologists?'"

"Raghavan was stunned the newly installed CEO had so quickly gotten to a question he'd been asking for years. His answer was they didn't have enough.
That's changing. In the last year, Yahoo Labs has bolstered its ranks of social scientists, adding highly credentialed cognitive psychologists, economists and ethnographers from top universities around the world. At approximately 25 people, it's still the smallest group within the research division, but one of the fastest growing.

Computer contest hopes to inspire young animators

Computer contest...: "Computer scientists from The University of Manchester have launched an animation competition to inspire the next generation of computer experts."

"Youngsters aged between seven and 19 are being challenged to create an animated film, of one minute or less, using any of the Alice, Scratch Adobe Flash, Greenfoot or Serif software packages.

"Animation10 is supported by Google and Electronic Arts, and is being run in association with BBC 21st Century Classroom. For full details visit www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/Animation10

Aussie quantum experiment challenges computer science

Aussie quantum experiment challenges computer science: "Australian scientists have completed ground-breaking research using quantum computing that will challenge, among scientific principles, the theory of quantum mechanics. UQ physics professor Andrew White, a co-author of the project, said the existence of quantum computing means that either quantum mechanics is wrong, or the Church Turing Thesis, which underpins computer science, is flawed."

“If the Church Turing Thesis is wrong, that’s really big news; or it means that quantum computing will turn out to be impossible for a fundamental reason, or that a fast classical factoring algorithm exists,” White said, referring to a theory by MIT assistant professor Scott Aaronson that the only way to prove the probability of quantum mechanics is to build a quantum computer.

"A quantum computer with hundreds of qubits would be more powerful than every traditional computer on Earth, amounting to billions of bits. “A classical computer with 300 bits of can store 300 bits of information, whereas a 300 qubit register can store more information than the number of particles in the universe,” White said.

Google threatens to leave China

Washingtonpost.com reports on Google's threat to leave China after attacks on activists' e-mail:

"Google said Tuesday that it might pull out of China because of a sophisticated computer network attack originating there and targeting its e-mail service and corporate infrastructure, a threat that could rattle U.S.-China relations, as well as China's business community."

GR: Is Google's act here an attempt at coercion, or one of self-preservation?

Chemical computer that mimics neurons to be created

Computer that mimics neurons... BBC News reports "A promising push toward a novel, biologically-inspired 'chemical computer' has begun as part of an international collaboration. The 'wet computer' incorporates several recently discovered properties of chemical systems that can be hijacked to engineer computing power.

The team's approach mimics some of the actions of neurons in the brain."

GR: it's easy to hold a narrow view of computers as electronic devices; this is a cool example of how computing can go beyond that.

New mathematical model aids simulations of early universe

New mathematical model... SMU Research "Together the scientists built a computer model of events during the 'Dark Ages' when the first stars emitted radiation that altered the surrounding matter, enabling light to pass through. The team tested its model on two of the largest existing NSF supercomputers, 'Ranger' at the University of Texas at Austin and 'Kraken' at the University of Tennessee."

"By forcing the computational methods to tightly bind these processes together, our new model allows us to generate simulations that are highly accurate, numerically stable and computationally scalable to the largest supercomputers available," Reynolds says."

GR: Computers don't just make certain kinds of work easier -- in some cases they make it possible.