AI: No command, and control

See original story at The Economist

Can AI agents make better decisions under stressful situations than humans? Some people think so:

"ARMIES have always been divided into officers and grunts. The officers give the orders. The grunts carry them out. But what if the grunts took over and tried to decide among themselves on the best course of action? The limits of human psychology, battlefield communications and (cynics might suggest) the brainpower of the average grunt mean this probably would not work in an army of people. It might, though, work in an army of robots."

Once again, computing tops "Best Jobs in America"

See original at Money Magazine Best Jobs in America 2010.

"The job is creatively challenging, and engineers with good people skills are liberated from their screens. Salaries are generally higher than for programmers, and a typical day has more variety."

Virtual-Reality Expert Jaron Lanier on the Potential of Avatars - WSJ.com

See original WSJ article at Virtual-Reality Expert Jaron Lanier on the Potential of Avatars

Do brains make minds, or do minds make brains? Recent approaches to AI have begun exploring the idea that not only do minds need brains, they need bodies as well. Disembodied thought may be impossible. The linked article takes an interesting tangent on the mind-brain problem by giving a preview of how our brains might adapt to being 're-embodied' in some other form. Sure to be of interest to gamers, but perhaps also to the most philosophically-minded.

"Becoming an avatar in virtual reality, as a full-bodied human (or even nonhuman), has the potential to be vastly more interesting and important than one would expect from a technological amusement. What is really going on is the opening up of a new frontier of human potential, which can be called 'somatic cognition'—somatic meaning 'of the body.'"

The coming ubiquity of Human-Agent Collectives

Or, why (you+tech) > (you) + (tech)

See original story at New science to enable humans and computers to interact more effectively
 

"Embryonic and relatively unsophisticated examples of current human interactions with autonomous software entities include the crowd-sourcing that provides a growing element of our traffic information, user-generated content for weather reports, and our interactions with software that can find us hotels according to our preferences.

Professor Jennings says: “We are fast approaching an ‘era of ubiquity’ where each of us will become increasingly dependent on multiple smart and proactive computers that we carry with us, access at home and at work, and that are embedded into the world around us."

Google Cars Drive Themselves

Image courtesy NYTimes

See original story at NYTimes - Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic

I've posted links before to government and academic research projects working on autonomous navigation, but now apparently Google has gotten into the fray.

"The car is a project of Google, which has been working in secret but in plain view on vehicles that can drive themselves, using artificial-intelligence software that can sense anything near the car and mimic the decisions made by a human driver."

"Robot drivers react faster than humans, have 360-degree perception and do not get distracted, sleepy or intoxicated, the engineers argue. They speak in terms of lives saved and injuries avoided — more than 37,000 people died in car accidents in the United States in 2008. The engineers say the technology could double the capacity of roads by allowing cars to drive more safely while closer together. Because the robot cars would eventually be less likely to crash, they could be built lighter, reducing fuel consumption. But of course, to be truly safer, the cars must be far more reliable than, say, today’s personal computers, which crash on occasion and are frequently infected.

Portable, personal augmented reality a step closer

Image courtesy BBC News at news.bbcimg.co.uk/

See original story at BBC News - Smart specs unite world and data

Very cool -- images are superimposed on the real world by projecting them directly onto the retina.

"A lightweight pair of augmented reality glasses that overlay the world with digital content, such as directions or a travel guide, has debuted in Japan.

The headset, created by Olympus and phone-maker NTT Docomo, uses augmented reality software on an attached phone."

Cars as traffic sensors

Image: Google

See original story at MIT News -- Cars as traffic sensors

A great example of how ubiquitous networked processors can function together as a single sensor network.

"Data about road and traffic conditions can come from radio stations’ helicopters, the Department of Transportation’s roadside sensors, or even, these days, updates from ordinary people with cell phones. But all of these approaches have limitations: Helicopters are costly to deploy and can observe only so many roads at once, and it could take a while for the effects of congestion to spread far enough that a road sensor will detect them."
"MIT’s CarTel project is investigating how cars themselves could be used as ubiquitous, highly reliable mobile sensors."

Gadgets to learn about you

See original story at CNET News

I've often heard people humbly say "I'm not very good at computers." My favorite response is "No, it's just that computers aren't very good at you." (The original line is from a Friends episode where Jeff Goldblum is coaching Joey on acting technique...) Anyway, the point is that our frustrations with computers are often indicators of poor design. In his book The Design of Everyday Things, Don Norman makes the case that if tools are well-designed, the intuitive thing to do will be the right thing to do. Great idea, but it takes an exceptionally creative designer to implement it. The story linked describes another approach -- use machine learning so that software can adapt to the people who use it.

"Rather than teach your gadgets what to do, Intel researchers say that in the not-too-distant future they will learn about you on their own. That means where you are, how you're feeling, and what you want.

It's actually not as creepy as it sounds. Intel Chief Technology Officer and Director of Intel Labs Justin Rattner took the stage Wednesday at the annual Intel Developer Forum here to talk about the future of 'context-aware computing,' what Intel is doing about it, and how gadgets can make life easier for their owners, but in a way that the owners can control."

Emotional robot pets

See original story at Eurekalert.org

Don't you hate it when your robotic dog doesn't notice that you're annoyed at its barking? I know I do.

"Designers of robot pets are fighting a never-ending battle with consumers to provide entertaining and realistic gadgets that respond to human interaction in ever more nuanced ways, mimicking the behavior of real pet animals or even people. Researchers in Taiwan are now looking at a new design paradigm that could see the development of a robot vision module that might one-day recognize human facial expressions and respond appropriately."

Robot insects for exploration

Image courtesy www.wpafb.af.mil

See original story at Tiny MAVs May Someday Explore and Detect Environmental Hazards

Insects provide a great model for robust cooperative exploration. With swarms of relatively inexpensive microrobots, reliability is increased since the loss of one or more need not affect the others. Processing power can be distributed across the swarm. Still huge compared to smart dust, but a step in that direction!

"Dr. Robert Wood of Harvard University is leading the way in what could become the next phase of high-performance micro air vehicles for the Air Force.

His basic research is on track to evolve into robotic, insect-scale devices for monitoring and exploration of hazardous environments, such as collapsed structures, caves and chemical spills."

Songs in the key of EEG

See original article at CultureLab

Brain-computer interfaces have been researched and developed for all kinds of practical reasons; here's an example of an artistic application.

"Mick Grierson of Goldsmiths College, London, developed a program that allows a computer to read music from your mind. Think of a note, and the computer will play it back. It wasn't perfectly accurate, but it was good enough to get Peters' attention."

Electric Skin that Rivals the Real Thing

See original article at Technology Review.

In Artificial Intelligence, an agent is defined as an entity that perceives and acts in an environment. Here's an example of a cool technology for perceptual input.

"The tactile sensitivity of human skin is hard to re-create, especially over large, flexible surfaces. But two California research groups have made pressure-sensing devices that significantly advance the state of the art."

One, made by researchers at Stanford University, is based on organic electronics and is 1,000 times more sensitive than human skin. The second, made by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, uses integrated arrays of nanowire transistors and requires very little power. Both devices are flexible and can be printed over large areas; they are described this week in separate papers in the journal Nature Materials.

The Brain Speaks

See original article at The University of Utah.

A logical next step in human augmentation / technological integration.

"Sept. 7, 2010 -- In an early step toward letting severely paralyzed people speak with their thoughts, University of Utah researchers translated brain signals into words using two grids of 16 microelectrodes implanted beneath the skull but atop the brain."

Screensaver discovers new star

One of the first significant applications of distributed computing I heard about (and actually participated in) was SETI@home, a project that uses the computers of volunteers to analyze radio telescope data. Another is the search for Mersenne Primes -- in 2008 the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) found the then-largest known Mersenne Prime; a number that would stretch 30 miles if printed in 12-point type.

Here's another success of distributed computing: the discovery of a new star:

"WASHINGTON -- Astronomers announced Thursday the discovery of a new star, found with help from a most unusual source -- a screen saver.

Chris and Helen Colvin, owners of the personal computer running the screen saver are participants in a project called Einstein@home, an experiment in distributed computing that uses the donated idle time from hundreds of thousands of home computers across the globe in lieu of more expensive supercomputers." See original story at FOXNews.com

With robot car, no driver needed

Image courtesy www.ce.unipr.it

See original story at New Scientist

An interview with Alberto Broggi, leader of an autonomous driving project.

"We are making a three-month journey, travelling 13,000 kilometres from Parma, Italy, to Shanghai, China, using autonomous vehicles - a world first. We've just left Moscow and are heading to Siberia."

Translating Thought into Speech

See original story at latimes.com

"In a first step toward helping severely paralyzed people communicate more easily, Utah researchers have shown that it is possible to translate recorded brain waves into words, using a grid of electrodes placed directly on the brain.

Although they have only done it with one person and individual words can only be identified with accuracy in tests 50% of the time, the study reported Tuesday provides a ray of hope for people who can now communicate only by blinking, or wiggling a fingertip."

You, too, can have your own mind-reader for on $80! Mattel's Mindflex and Uncle Milton's Force Trainer both allow you to practice your powers of mental telepathy...

Your trash can may be watching you...

Source: media.cleveland.com

See original story at cleveland.com

Students in COSC418 -- I saw this article and couldn't resist. Not exactly the same as the FoamRecycleBot we described in class on Monday, but a step in that direction. Challenge question: in which aspect of "PEAS" does the agent described in the article differ from the one we described in class?

"It would be a stretch to say that Big Brother will hang out in Clevelanders' trash cans, but the city plans to sort through curbside trash to make sure residents are recycling -- and fine them $100 if they don't."

Swarming spacecraft to self-destruct for greater good

Image: ESA/Medialab

See original at New Scientist

Students in COSC 180 -- this is a step toward the kind of space exploration we mentioned in class last Thursday -- using many many small devices rather than one large one. The probes described in this article aren't yet "smart dust," but they are a step in that direction.

Also interesting is the behavior described in the article and referred to in the title: self-destruction of individual probes "for the greater good of the collective." Begins to sound a bit like altruistic behavior, no?

"The agency foresees a day when space missions are undertaken not by one large spacecraft but by swarming formations of much smaller, cheaper ones. Such craft could collectively provide a 'floating optics' system for a space telescope comprising separate craft flying in formation, for instance."

Robot with frog egg smell sensor

See original at PhysOrg.com

Microphones and webcams aren't the only ways for robots to get sensory input.

"Researchers from the University of Tokyo have invented a novel means of improving a robot's sense of smell, by using inexpensive olfactory sensors containing frog eggs."

Robots learning from experience

See original at ICT Results

Great example of "bottom-up" approaches to AI, which rely on statistical learning techniques to acquire knowledge, rather than attempting to hand-code it all explicitly.

"Software that enables robots to move objects about a room, building up ever-more knowledge about their environment, is an important step forward in artificial intelligence.

Some objects can be moved, while others cannot. Balls can be placed on top of boxes, but boxes cannot be stably stacked on top of balls. A typical one-year-old child can discover this kind of information about its environment very quickly. But it is a massive challenge for a robot – a machine – to learn concepts such as ‘movability’ and ‘stability’, according to Björn Kahl, a researcher at the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University and a member of the Xpero robotics research project team.

The aim of the Xpero project was to develop a cognitive system for a robot that would enable it to explore the world around it and learn through physical experimentation."

20:20 Vision - the future for IT workers

See original at Computerworld

Especially interesting to me is the quote "combining a technology degree with business knowledge will lead them to the higher-paying areas of IT." Double major anyone? In any field?

"Computerworld - Information technology has always been a fast-changing field. But nothing compares to the expected sea changes in the next decade that will impact the career plans of every generation of IT worker.

'The rate of change has accelerated dramatically,' says Alain Chesnais, president of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and founder of Visual Transitions, which specializes in computer graphics and social networks. Consider, he says, that graphics chips are doubling in capacity every six months. That translates into a thousandfold increase in capacity over a five-year period -- the average shelf life of most game platforms. 'We've never seen anything like it in any industry,' he says."

“P vs NP” Finally Solved?

See original at Discover Magazine

The repercussions of proving P/=NP are interesting enough; but perhaps even more interesting is the way mathematics is being conducted in a public online forum.

"P is not equal to NP. Seems simple enough. But if it’s true, it could be the answer to a problem computer scientists have wrestled for decades.
Vinay Deolalikar, who is with Hewlett-Packard Labs, has sent to peers copies of a proof he did stating that P is not equal to NP. Mathematicians are reviewing his work now—a task that could go on for a long time. If he’s correct, Deolalikar will have figured out one of the Clay Mathematics Institute’s seven Millennium Prize Problems, for which they give $1 million prizes"

Grand unified theory of AI: Combining top-down with bottom-up

See original at Science Daily

In the 1950s and '60s, artificial-intelligence researchers saw themselves as trying to uncover the rules of thought. But those rules turned out to be way more complicated than anyone had imagined. Since then, artificial-intelligence (AI) research has come to rely, instead, on probabilities -- statistical patterns that computers can learn from large sets of training data.

The most well-known example of the top-down approach to AI is the Cyc project. I wonder how it could be combined with bottom-up approaches?

At The Extreme Edge Of Artificial Intelligence - Forbes.com

See original at Forbes.com

Think sentient computers are the stuff of science fiction? We have news for you.

The last couple of posts were a bit pessimistic; here's someone writing from the other side. Make sure to check out the link to 11 Leaders in Artificial Intelligence.

Dr. Robot?

See original at Duke University news

That's Dr. "Robot," not Dr. "Rohrbot" :-)

As physician-guided robots routinely operate on patients at most major hospitals, the next generation robot could eliminate a surprising element from that scenario -- the doctor.

Feasibility studies conducted by Duke University bioengineers have demonstrated that a robot -- without any human assistance -- can locate a man-made, or phantom, lesion in simulated human organs, guide a device to the lesion and take multiple samples during a single session. The researchers believe that as the technology is further developed, autonomous robots could some day perform many more simple surgical tasks.

Computers: Will They Ever Learn?

See original at Forbes.com

Have we plateaued in our progress on AI?

A computer that translates as well as a human, which is as good a definition as any of genuine artificial intelligence, is nowhere in sight.

This isn't just an issue for computer translation; it exists for just about all of the tough problems computers are working in: language, vision, robotics--even search, which is at the heart of the Web. Computers have become remarkably useful but are still a far cry from the dream of early computer pioneers of a machine so smart it would be indistinguishable from a human.

Your Brain on Computers

See original at NYTimes.com

I've noticed an interesting trend in recent years -- I've met more and more students who seem tired of technology. Is it time to back off?

"The quest to understand the impact on the brain of heavy technology use — at a time when such use is exploding — is still in its early stages. To Mr. Strayer, it is no less significant than when scientists investigated the effects of consuming too much meat or alcohol."

The First Church of Robotics

See original at NYTimes.com

Not everyone is enamored with the search for Artificial Intelligence. Does AI devalue humans?

"THE news of the day often includes an item about some development in artificial intelligence: a machine that smiles, a program that can predict human tastes in mates or music, a robot that teaches foreign languages to children. This constant stream of stories suggests that machines are becoming smart and autonomous, a new form of life, and that we should think of them as fellow creatures instead of as tools. But such conclusions aren’t just changing how we think about computers — they are reshaping the basic assumptions of our lives in misguided and ultimately damaging ways."

GPUs Threaten Password Security

See original at Georgia Tech Research Institute

Earlier this year I saw a story about how the US Air Force used PlayStation 3 consoles to build a supercomputer "100,000 times faster than high-end computer processors sold today." The power comes from the PlayStations' graphics processing units.

"It's been called revolutionary - technology that lends supercomputer-level power to any desktop. What's more, this new capability comes in the form of a readily available piece of hardware, a graphics processing unit (GPU) costing only a few hundred dollars.

Georgia Tech researchers are investigating whether this new calculating power might change the security landscape worldwide. They're concerned that these desktop marvels might soon compromise a critical part of the world's cyber-security infrastructure - password protection."

First robot able to develop and show emotions is unveiled

See original at The Guardian

We've all gotten mad at our computer, but what if your computer could get mad at you?

"When Nao is sad, he hunches his shoulders forward and looks down. When he's happy, he raises his arms, angling for a hug. When frightened, Naohe cowers, and he stays like that until he is soothed with some gentle strokes on his head.

Nothing out of the ordinary, perhaps, except that Nao is a robot — the world's first that can develop and display emotions. He can form bonds with the people he meets depending on how he is treated. The more he interacts with someone, the more Nao learns a person's moods and the stronger the bonds become."

Phone Calls Not Efficient

See original article on Techdirt

Is texting better than voice communication?

"The telephone, in other words, doesn't provide any information about status, so we are constantly interrupting one another. The other tools at our disposal are more polite. Instant messaging lets us detect whether our friends are busy without our bugging them, and texting lets us ping one another asynchronously. (Plus, we can spend more time thinking about what we want to say.) For all the hue and cry about becoming an 'always on' society, we’re actually moving away from the demand that everyone be available immediately."

Gaming for a cure

See original article at University of Washington News and Information

A nice example of a GWAP ("Game with a Purpose").

"Biochemists and computer scientists at the University of Washington two years ago launched an ambitious project harnessing the brainpower of computer gamers to solve medical problems.

The game, Foldit, turns one of the hardest problems in molecular biology into a game a bit reminiscent of Tetris. Thousands of people have now played a game that asks them to fold a protein rather than stack colored blocks or rescue a princess."

First Human Testing of Mind-Controlled Artificial Arm

See original at Singularity Hub

A next step in the integration of human with technology.

"The world’s first human testing of a mind-controlled artificial limb is ready to begin. A joint project between the Pentagon and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), the Modular Prosthetic Limb will be fully controlled by sensors implanted in the brain, and will even restore the sense of touch by sending electrical impulses from the limb back to the sensory cortex. Last week APL announced it was awarded a $34.5 million contract with DARPA, which will allow researchers to test the neural prosthetic in five individuals over the next two years."

The Fantastic Voyage?

Robot Pills: Scientific American

I remember seeing The Fantastic Voyage as a kid on TV -- scientists shrink a submarine and its crew and inject it into a person. Coming soon! :-)

• "Active pill-size robotic capsules are being developed for use in screening, diagnosis and therapeutic procedures.


• "Miniaturizing robotic components to perform tasks inside the body poses novel engineering challenges. Those challenges are giving rise to creative solutions that will influence robotics and other medical technologies in general."

Air Force Wants Drones to Sense Other Planes’ ‘Intent’

I think the right direction to go in HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) is to design interfaces that understand people, not just interfaces that people understand. Combine that with autonomous agents, and you get the linked story at Wired.com.

"Unmanned aircraft, for all their utility, are fairly simple beasts. They’re good at taking direction, but they’re not so good at processing information on their own. Now the Air Force figures it’s time for drones to get a lot smarter, especially as they take off or land."

Surgery without (human) surgeons?

Next generation surgical robots: Where's the doctor?

I heard that the military is working on autonomous battlefield medics that could initiate treatment without direct instruction from a human operator. The linked story describes a pretty amazing autonomous surgical robot.

"Feasibility studies conducted by Duke University bioengineers have demonstrated that a robot -- without any human assistance -- can locate a man-made, or phantom, lesion in simulated human organs, guide a device to the lesion and take multiple samples during a single session. The researchers believe that as the technology is further developed, autonomous robots could some day perform many more simple surgical tasks."

How many atoms in a vacuum tube?

BBC News - Seven atom transistor sets the pace for future PCs: "Researchers have shown off a transistor made from just seven atoms that could be used to create smaller, more powerful computers."

If robots can marry[1], can they also marry[2]?

Robot Conducts Wedding Ceremony in Tokyo : Discovery News:

Marry[1] - to conduct a wedding ceremony.
Marry[2] - to enter into the formalized relationship of marriage

"Almost everyone stood when the bride walked down the aisle in her white gown, but not the wedding conductor, because she was bolted to her chair.

The nuptials at this ceremony were led by 'I-Fairy,' a 4-foot (1.5-meter) tall seated robot with flashing eyes and plastic pigtails. Sunday's wedding was the first time a marriage had been led by a robot, according to manufacturer Kokoro Co.

'Please lift the bride's veil,' the robot said in a tinny voice, waving its arms in the air as the newlyweds kissed in front of about 50 guests."

MIT researchers enable self-assembling of chips

MIT researchers enable self-assembling of chips: "Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Tuesday released research detailing how molecules in chips can self-assemble, potentially reducing manufacturing costs.

A step on the way to building the "other" von Neumann machines (self-replicating machines). If you're a CS major, you're more likely to think of "von Neumann machine" as a type of computer architecture.

"The researchers have developed a technique in which polymers automatically fall into place to create an integrated circuit, said Caroline Ross, professor of materials science and engineering at MIT and a researcher behind the technology. The researchers designed a template to cause polymers to spontaneously arrange themselves into useful patterns."

Watch out for grey goo.

Living with Robots

Honda has been developing robotics technologies for many years now. This short video explores some of the successes to date as well as challenges to be overcome (largely social rather than technological).

You think MY password is long?

Check out the password at time 1:40... students wouldn't laugh at THAT password.

Light-activated, DNA-based Nanomachines

Nanomachinery lights up: "A light-activated switch to turn nanomachines on and off has been developed by Japanese researchers. The team showed how tiny tweezers made with DNA could be triggered to open and close in response to UV and visible light. The clever mechanism is hoped to find useful roles in designing future nano-robots.

DNA is a versatile building block to construct nanomachinery that is small enough to interact with single molecules. But these nanomachines usually require a source of 'fuel' to trigger activity: typically small DNA fragments that are added each cycle. The problems associated with this process are delays in activating and deactivating systems, and the build up of waste products that can inhibit movement."

Flying Pixel Display

3D display made of flying pixel-copters in the works: "Two teams at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are working on a unique 3D display dubbed Flyfire, in which a flock of tiny aircraft carrying multicoloured LEDs hover in front of the viewer to form an image. As pixels that can move through space, the free-flying LEDs could form a shape-shifting 3D display (see video). As well as the pixels displaying moving images like a normal screen, they could change their position to add real depth."

Dubai Assassination Caught on Surveillance

Big news this week was the assassination of a Hamas official in Dubai by a team of more than 10 assassins. What was particularly striking to me was how much of the unfolding event was captured on surveillance video. I've often asked my students how much of their lives they think is captured on video -- certainly not as much as in a place like Dubai. But whatever amount it is, it will only be increasing.

There are at least two significant issues this raises: first is the social issue of privacy. It's not exactly that surveillance makes private things public; however it does turns public events that would have been transient into permanent records. What will the social cost be?

Second is the technological issue of how to deal with the deluge of data. Not just how to store it, but what to do with it. Imagine a day when intelligent software can monitor the massive flow of data from ubiquitous video, audio, and other sensors. Will we be able to prevent crimes and terrorist acts by catching the would-be perpetrators in advance? Starting to sound a bit like "Minority Report!"

Image credit: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/LeaderTalk/

Real-time language translation coming soon?

Google developing a translator for smartphones

It's hard enough for machines to translate text; harder to translate spoken language; and harder still to do it in real time. But tech behemoth Google is working on technology to do exactly that.

"Head of translation services at Google, Franz Och, said he believed almost instant speech-to-speech translation should be possible if the accuracy of voice recognition and machine translation can be improved. He said Google is working on this, and he expected the technology to “work reasonably well” in a few years. There has been a great deal of progress in voice recognition and machine translation in recent years, especially the latter, thanks to funding from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)."

Robots will replace all workers in 25 years

Cisco Systems Futurist Dave Evan has no shortage of shocking projections about the future of technology and the human race. Among them:

• artificial brain implants
• data created at a rate of 92 million Libraries of Congress per year
• cost of storage dropping below $10 per petabyte (at that price, you could create a high def video of every second of your entire life for less than $100, assuming you don't live past 130!)
• instantaneous language translation
• intelligent machines with feelings

See more at itWorld Canada

Programming methods for multicore

There have been many advances in programming paradigms (functional, object-oriented) and programming methodologies (agile, extreme); but much development is still done with a single or a small number of processors in mind. This has to change in order to take advantage of the power of multicore machines. Researchers at Berkeley are aiming to change this by developing new parallel methodologies.

Using [their] approach, one team created a program that reduced the time needed to create an MRI image from one hour to one minute. The code is already being used at a local children's hospital.
In another example, the approach reduced the time to handle object recognition from 222 seconds on an Intel Nehalem processor to 1.8 seconds on a massively parallel Nvidia GTX 280 chip. Other efforts in areas including speech recognition, option trading and machine learning showed results ranging from 11 to 100-fold performance gains.

See more on Berkeley's progress in parallel programming.

Will Keyboards give way to Brain Control Interfaces?

Mind Over Matter... ExtremeTech

I remember sitting in typing class back in high school, wondering "when in the world am I ever going to use this skill?" I couldn't have envisioned how computers would change things.

Despite the rapid advancement of computers, a few elements have remained near universal: display screen, keyboard, pointing device. These components have been such an integral part of computing since early days that it's hard to imagine a computer without them. Prediction: this is certainly going to change. Some new input technology will come along and keyboards will go the way of rotary-dialed phones. We don't know yet what that new technology will be, but it's coming.

An intriguing possibility: direct brain interfaces. If we could master two-way neural/electronic interfaces, we could get rid of all three: keyboard, mouse, AND monitor.

"The ability to influence the physical world merely by thought has been a dream of mankind for many years. Now researchers are making real progress in letting people control a PC simply by thinking, and the first crop of consumer Brain Control Interface (BCI) headsets has arrived. Right now these are being used only for simple games, and hardware and applications to support the technology are scarce. But this still represents a major advance that could significantly change how we all interact with computers."

As the story goes on to describe, a natural application of brain control interfaces (BCIs) is to replace lost functionality in people who have suffered loss of motor control. Once BCIs can be used replace lost functionality, it's almost inevitable that they will be used to introduce new functionality -- built-in GPS, anyone? Human calculators? Eidetic memory? Why not control the world around you with a mere thought? Turn lights on and off. Set the thermostat. Change the channels. Sounds spurious? Maybe. But how many of today's conveniences would have sounded the same to earlier generations?

Donate your computing power to map the Milky Way

PCs Around the World Unite To Map the Milky Way

"At this very moment, tens of thousands of home computers around the world are quietly working together to solve the largest and most basic mysteries of our galaxy.

"Enthusiastic and inquisitive volunteers from Africa to Australia are donating the computing power of everything from decade-old desktops to sleek new netbooks to help computer scientists and astronomers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute map the shape of our Milky Way galaxy. Now, just this month, the collected computing power of these humble home computers has surpassed one petaflop, a computing speed that surpasses the world’s second fastest supercomputer."

This "crowd-sourcing" approach was used by the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence early on, and more recently was responsible for finding a new largest Mersenne Prime.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC)

First chess, now Jeopardy?

IBM is working on a Jeopardy-playing computer that can beat human contestants. Though it can't yet beat the best human players, it's pretty amazing that it can do everything it needs to do. Consider:

Without being connected to the Internet, the computer has to understand natural language, determine the answer to a question (or, in the case of Jeopardy, the question to an answer), and then calculate the odds that its answer is correct in order to decide whether it is worth buzzing in.

The fear of getting a question wrong and losing money prevents many a wrong answer from a human Jeopardy contestant. At the same time, humans often instinctively know they know the answer to a question, even if it doesn't pop into their heads right away. So a human Jeopardy player will often click the buzzer upon hearing the question, and then spend the next several seconds pulling the answer out of the memory bank. To compete on Jeopardy, a computer must determine whether it knows the correct response within seconds.

See the original story at IBM's Jeopardy-playing machine can now beat human contestants

The Emotional Computer

Can your computer make you happy?

Researchers in the Affective Computing Group at the MIT Media Lab are trying to improve your computer by giving it emotions -- or rather, the ability to detect them. Plenty of people get mad at their computers. What if the computer could sense that, and respond by changing the way it worked?

"We're not talking about handing a global missile defence system over to a PC with a lot of feelings, but we are talking about improving the interface between humans and computers by making computers easier and more intuitive to interact with. For example, computers that sense when a user is getting frustrated could try a different way of explaining how to troubleshoot the internet connection. Cars that can tell when a driver is about to fall asleep could sound an alarm."

"The laboratory for Affective Computing at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology puts it like this: "Emotion is fundamental to human experience, influencing cognition, perception, and everyday tasks such as learning, communication, and even rational decision-making. However, technologists have largely ignored emotion and created an often-frustrating experience for people, in part because affect has been misunderstood and is hard to measure."

At some point in the future, will your computer get mad at you for the way you're acting? We'll have to wait and see.

Can we trust computers to drive our cars?

The Electronic Systems That Make Modern Cars Go (and Stop)

We don't have to look to the future to see the rise of autonomous vehicles; computers have already taken over many of the low-level functions of cars.

"The electronic systems in modern cars and trucks — under new scrutiny as regulators continue to raise concerns about Toyota vehicles — are packed with up to 100 million lines of computer code, more than in some jet fighters."

"Even basic vehicles have at least 30 of these microprocessor-controlled devices, known as electronic control units, and some luxury cars have as many as 100.

"These electronic brains control dozens of functions, including brake and cruise control and entertainment systems. Software in each unit is also made to work with others. So, for example, when a driver pushes a button on a key fob to unlock the doors, a module in the trunk might rouse separate computers to unlock all four doors.

Will faulty brake controllers cause us to reject computer-controlled components? Not a chance! For better or worse, our society regularly determines acceptable levels of risk. As long as computer-controlled devices provide sufficient value to outweigh the risks, we will accept them. In most cases, computer-controlled devices actually reduce risks when compared to fallible human controllers.

For more on this topic, see this NPR story entitled Despite Glitches, Electronics Make Cars Safer.

IBM Preps Carbon Transistors

Carbon Transistors for Post-Silicon Era

Moore's law may be running out of steam for silicon-based semiconductors, but IBM is working on the next big thing. Other alternatives might include DNA-based or liquid chemical computers.

"IBM Research demonstrated a carbon-based transistor technology that could make obsolete silicon-based CMOS chips over the next decade."
Graphene solves the No. 1 problem with today's silicon chips: Namely, that as we make them smaller and faster, they generate more and more heat. Carbon, on the other hand, harnesses quantum effects to reverse that trend, consuming less and less power as chips are made increasingly smaller and faster.
Graphene sheets also have higher carrier mobilities (the speed at which electrons are propelled by a given voltage). Carrier mobilities that are hundreds of times larger than silicon chips should translate into equally faster chip speeds for graphene.

Mind-reading in consumer devices

Mind-control mobile-phone games Anyone ready for a driect brain interface?

"Mobile-games researcher Dr Paul Coulton and PhD student Will Bamford of InfoLab21 recently unveiled their new game ‘Brain Maze’, in which players use ‘tilt’ controls and a brain-wave reading headset to progress a marble around a course.

"At key checkpoints around the maze, the accelerometer-equipped phone picks up electromagnetic waves from the player’s brain - ‘Brain Maze’ uses alpha waves, which are associated with a meditative state, and beta waves, which are associated with an attentive state, to control access through the ‘mind gates’ that form part of the game."

The game is controlled by NeuroSky’s MindSet brainwave-interface headset, which retails for just $199.

'Smart dust' to explore planets

'Smart dust' to explore planets

Space exploration is a perfect place for using smart dust and other nanotech. Rather than sending huge, expensive, complex devices to other planets (think Mars Rovers, which nevertheless are pretty cool) why not send a swarm of nanodevices that can be dispersed over a large portion of the planet. This approach could be much more robust -- half the sensors could fail, and we'd still receive plenty of interesting info. BBC News reports:

"Tiny 'smart' devices that can be borne on the wind like dust particles could be carried in space probes to explore other planets, UK engineers say. The devices would consist of a computer chip covered by a plastic sheath that can change shape when a voltage is applied, enabling it to be steered.

Even better, use nanotech von Neumann probes (devices that are capable of self-replication). In theory, we could send a couple hundred such probes to a place like Europa, and they would use the raw materials found there to replicate themselves, resulting in massive coverage from a small initial payload.

Human Augmentation and Future Soldiers

Future Soldiers: Brain Boosters, Exoskeletons and Digital Buddies

Today's technologies to replace lost functions (cochlear implants, vision implants, advanced prosthetics) will inevitably lead to technologies that add new functions that we've never had (Human GPS? Night vision? Super strength? Thought-controlled robots?).

"The soldiers of the future might controversially boost their brains with drugs and prosthetics, augment their strength with mechanical exoskeletons, and have artificially intelligent 'digital buddies' at their beck and call, according to the U.S. Army's Future Soldier Initiative.

"The project is the latest attempt from the U.S. Army research lab in Natick, Mass., to brainstorm what soldiers might carry into the battlefield of tomorrow. A special emphasis of its concept is augmenting mental performance."

Smart Dust Coming?

Advances Bring ‘Smart Dust’ Closer

The idea of "Smart Dust" first caught my attention in the work of Vernor Vinge (one of my favorite authors) in his 1999 novel A Deepness in the Sky.

I've posted recently about the incredible miniaturization of RFID technology, but now Hewlett-Packard is pursuing a project "to embed up to a trillion pushpin-size sensors around the globe." Pushpin-size is pretty big compared to smart dust; but its a step...

Last year, Hewlett-Packard began a project it grandly calls “Central Nervous System for the Earth,” a 10-year initiative to embed up to a trillion pushpin-size sensors around the globe... Microchip-equipped sensors can be designed to monitor and measure not only motion, but also temperature, chemical contamination or biological changes. The applications for sensor-based computing, experts say, include buildings that manage their own energy use, bridges that sense motion and metal fatigue to tell engineers they need repairs, cars that track traffic patterns and report potholes, and fruit and vegetable shipments that tell grocers when they ripen and begin to spoil.

Welcome to Study Computing!

StudyCS! is now StudyComputing!

Computing today is a much broader field than what has traditionally been called "computer science," including also management and business information systems, information technology, computer engineering, and software engineering. Learn more at the Computing Careers website (To learn more than you ever wanted to know, check out the Computing Curricula 2005 (pdf), published by the Association for Computing Machinery.)

Robots evolve to learn cooperation, hunting

Robots evolve to learn cooperation, hunting CNET "If robots are allowed to evolve through natural selection, they will develop adaptive abilities to hunt prey, cooperate, and even help one another, according to Swiss researchers.

In a series of experiments described in the journal PLoS Biology, Dario Floreano of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne and Laurent Keller of the University of Lausanne reported that simple, small-wheeled Khepera and Alice robots can evolve behaviors such as collision-free movement and homing techniques in only several hundred 'generations.'"

Walking Robot Maid

South Korean scientists develop walking robot maid: "South Korean scientists have developed a walking robot maid which can clean a home, dump clothes in a washing machine and even heat food in a microwave.

"Mahru-Z has a human-like body including a rotating head, arms, legs and six fingers plus three-dimensional vision to recognise chores that need to be tackled, media reports said Monday.

'The most distinctive strength of Mahru-Z is its visual ability to observe objects, recognise the tasks needed to be completed, and execute them,' You Bum-Jae, head of the cognitive robot centre at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology, told the Korea Times."

Giving Computers the Gift of Gab

Endowing Computers With the Gift of Gab from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute "Despite the power of computers to crunch numbers with unfathomable speed and perform quadrillions of calculations per second, the machines are still quite primitive in their ability to truly understand human language.

"This is a glaring digital deficiency that Nicholas Cassimatis, assistant professor in the Department of Cognitive Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is looking to solve. He is leading a multi-university team of researchers to develop unified theories of language and cognition that aim to allow more meaningful linguistic interaction between humans and computers. Only by better understanding the nature of human language, Cassimatis said, can we develop computational systems with human-level language abilities."

Loyola Uses Robots To Treat Lung Cancer

Robots Treat Lung Cancer: from medicalnewstoday.com Another application of the Da Vinci™ surgical system to improve surgical outcomes. "Unlike a traditional lobectomy, which requires a large incision and division of the muscles of the chest and spreading the ribs, the robotic procedure using the Da Vinci™ Surgical System allows surgeons to perform the same surgical procedure through four small incisions, resulting in less pain and reduced loss of blood.

"Robotic surgery for lung cancer is done thoracoscopically, in which a tiny camera is inserted through a small incision in order to give surgeons a three-dimensional view of the inside of the chest, which is very rigid and harder to operate on using traditional surgery. Working through three additional, small incisions, the surgeon controls every move of the robotic arms from a computer console at the patient's bedside. The robot's arms are fully articulated, allowing it to turn and grasp with more agility and precision than the human hand."

Robotic Nurses in Your Future?

Toyota Sees Robotic Nurses in Your Lonely Final Years from Wired.com Toyota is developing "partner robots" to serve in hospitals and homes, with expectations to start selling this year. In part spurred by the shifting demographics (towards a higher percentage of elderly), Toyota envisions a variety of roles these robots could play.

Toyota isn't a maverick in this -- Japan’s Machine Industry Memorial Foundation projects the country could save $21 billion annually by using robots to care for the elderly. The government is also drafting safety regulations for all kinds of personal service robots . A new agency, the Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization, has launched a five-year project to improve safety standards for the machines.

Nanoscale Robot Places Atoms With 100% Accuracy

Robot Arm Places Atoms and Molecules With 100% Accuracy hPlusMagazine "Until the mid-1990s, the term "nanotechnology" referred to the goal of creating vast arrays of nanoscale assemblers to fabricate useful human-scale products from scratch in an entirely automated process and with atomic precision. Since then, the word has come to mean anything from stain-resistant pants to branches of conventional chemistry — generally anything involving nanoscale objects. But the dream of a new Industrial Revolution based on nanoscale manufacturing has not died, as demonstrated most vividly by the work of NYU professor of chemistry Dr. Nadrian Seeman.

"In a 2009 article in Nature Nanotechnology, Dr. Seeman shared the results of experiments performed by his lab, along with collaborators at Nanjing University in China, in which scientists built a two-armed nanorobotic device with the ability to place specific atoms and molecules where scientists want them. The device was approximately 150 x 50 x 8 nanometers in size — over a million could fit in a single red blood cell. Using robust error-correction mechanisms, the device can place DNA molecules with 100% accuracy. Earlier trials had yielded only 60-80% accuracy."

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