EU project builds artificial brain for robots

CORDIS News EU project builds artificial brain for robots: "Scientists in Spain have achieved a giant leap for robotkind by building the first artificial cerebellum to help them interact with humans. The cerebellum is the portion of the brain that controls motor functions. "

"The project will now implant the man-made cerebellum into a robot so as to make its movements and interaction with humans more natural. The overall goal is to incorporate the cerebellum into a robot designed by the German Aerospace Centre in two year's time. The researchers hope that their work will also result in clues on how to treat cognitive diseases such as Parkinson's"

"The four-year project, dubbed Sensopac (SENSOrimotor structuring of perception and action for emerging cognition) is funded by the EU under its Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) and brings together physicists, neuroscientists and electronic engineers from leading universities in Europe."

Teaching Computer to Read Minds

Technology Review Teaching Computers to Read Minds: "Ultimately, Tan hopes to develop a mass-market EEG system consisting of a small number of electrodes that, affixed to a person's head, communicate wirelessly with software on a PC. The software could keep e-mail at bay if the user is concentrating, or select background music to suit different moods."

Powerset: The natural language search mashup platform

ZDNet.com » Powerset: The natural language search mashup platform: "Powerset is using natural language technology from Xerox Parc and focusing its efforts on the indexing. It’s building a search destination site and a platform that leverages the wisdom of the crowds for development."

IBM measures single-atom memory, molecular switch

EETimes.com IBM measures single-atom memory, molecular switch: "Even the highest density hard-disk drives use approximately 1 million magnetic atoms to store a single bit of information. IBM's Almaden Research Center (San Jose, Calif.) has measured the ability to store a bit on a single atom, portending hard drives with ultra-high storage capacity."

"Simultaneously, IBM's Zurich Research Lab has demonstrated a molecular switch that could replace current silicon-based chip technology with processors so small that a supercomputer could fit on a chip the size of a speck of dust."

Making Cars Smarter Than You

ScienceDaily Making Cars Smarter Than You: "The augmented cognition research team at Sandia National Laboratories is designing cars capable of analyzing human behavior. The car of the future they are developing may, for example, deduce from your driving that you’re become tired, or during critical situations, tell your cell phone to hold an incoming call so you won’t be distracted."

DARPA throws down the challenge on cognitive computing

DARPA throws down the challenge on cognitive computing: "The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s research in the field of cognitive computing could progress to the point of a Grand Challenge that would pit alternate methods of building brainlike systems against one another. The agency’s Biologically-Inspired Cognitive Architecture program is pushing artificial intelligence in the direction of building software that mimics human brain functions. BICA relies on recent advances in cognitive psychology and the science of the human brain’s biological structure to build software that comes much closer to human abilities than previous AI. The research agency’s Information Processing Technology Office is leading the BICA research process by funding research teams based mainly at universities."

Artificial Intelligence Is Lost in the Woods

David Gelernter seems to argue that even simulated intelligence would have to exhibit a broad range of cognitive abilites. "Unfortunately, AI, cognitive science, and philosophy of mind are nowhere near knowing how to build [even a simulated intelligence]. They are missing the most important fact about thought: the 'cognitive continuum' that connects the seemingly unconnected puzzle pieces of thinking (for example analytical thought, common sense, analogical thought, free association, creativity, hallucination). The cognitive continuum explains how all these reflect different values of one quantity or parameter that I will call 'mental focus' or 'concentration'--which changes over the course of a day and a lifetime."

C.f. argument from disability -- a common argument against the feasibility of strong AI.