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.

Higher Games

Technology Review Higher Games: "The verdict that computers are the equal of human beings in chess could hardly be more official, which makes the caviling all the more pathetic. The excuses sometimes take this form: 'Yes, but machines don't play chess the way human beings play chess!' Or sometimes this: 'What the machines do isn't really playing chess at all.' Well, then, what would be really playing chess?"

Toward a General Logicist Methodology for Engineering Ethically Correct Robots

A bit of light reading: Toward a General Logicist Methodology for Engineering Ethically Correct Robots: "It's hard to deny that robots will become increasingly capable and that humans will increasingly exploit these capabilities by deploying them in ethically sensitive environments, such as hospitals, where ethically incorrect robot behavior could have dire consequences for humans. How can we ensure that such robots will always behave in an ethically correct manner? How can we know ahead of time, via rationales expressed clearly in natural language, that their behavior will be constrained specifically by the ethical codes selected by human overseers?"

Save us from the robots!

Economist.com Trust me, I'm a robot: "IN 1981 Kenji Urada, a 37-year-old Japanese factory worker, climbed over a safety fence at a Kawasaki plant to carry out some maintenance work on a robot. In his haste, he failed to switch the robot off properly. Unable to sense him, the robot's powerful hydraulic arm kept on working and accidentally pushed the engineer into a grinding machine. His death made Urada the first recorded victim to die at the hands of a robot."