Advances in Artificial Intelligence

In writing a paper on artificial intelligence I came across an article describing Buddhabot, an artificial intelligence that has begun answering questions on Yahoo! Answers. Several of Buddhabot's answers have been chosen as the best answers to their respective questions. They gave one such example:

One winning answer was posted in response to the human question, "why is comedy part of who we are -- does god have a sence(sic) of humour??"

Out of 26 human responses the following Buddhabot reply was chosen by an impartial unrelated asker as the best response,

"Humor is the quality that makes something laughable or amusing. Laughter is the pleasant or amusing feeling generated by the emotional release required to dissipate the inexplicable shock triggered when absurdities or irrational, unexpected or uncomfortable situations suddenly come into focus. Humans can only understand God with the faculties available to them as humans such as emotion, intuition, intellect, imagination and sensation thus God is made according to each individual humans understanding of all that is good and pleasing in the universe (if the human believes God to be good). Thus if a human believes humor is good then God must be the ultimate comedian." (1)

What can one say, wow. That line of reasoning came from a computer? Perhaps we are closer to science fiction than we thought. Artificial intelligence is not an easy problem, and it's something that scientists have been working on for decades. In relation to other advances in computers it might seem that artificial intelligence is a relatively slowly innovating field because we don't see its applications in everyday life.

In reality, however, we are simply not seeing the applications of artificial intelligence in a form familiar enough for us to recognize and label as intelligence. That is to say, the general population is good at recognizing human like behavior as intelligent, but miss the intelligence present in subtler, more specific applications. Take, as examples, Amazon's recommendation system, the post office handwriting recognition system, e-mail spam filters, or the Google search engine. These are all intelligent, learning, and adaptive systems, but many people do not immediately think of them as artificial intelligence.

The fact of the matter is that people have difficulty recognizing the intelligence of these systems because they were built for a specific purpose. A limited task with which to put their intelligence. There is a good reason for this, thats all the hardware can manage. Computers really are not yet, by human standards, intelligent--at least in a contest of computational power with the brain. One article written in 1999 (or possibly 2000-2001) stated that, at the time, all of the computing power in the world put together was only equivalent to that of one human brain (2). At the present rate of computational power growth, however, the tables might be turned sooner than we think. Some estimate that this will happen the 2020s (3). Computers will briefly match, then surpass the total computational power of our brains. So it won't be long before we start witnessing artificial intelligence on a human scale, and at that time we'll have to start thinking in terms of many human brains compared to one, single computer, instead of the other way around.

Around this time a whole new set of questions of ethics, rights, and responsibility regarding artificial intelligence and autonomous systems will be forced into consideration. Will computers have rights? Who is responsible for the actions of autonomous systems? Does responsibility confer rights? Will artificial intelligence succeed humanity? These are all profound questions that will have a major impact on our future, and topics for a later time.

References:

1: Artificial Intelligence (AI) Beats Human Intelligence on Yahoo Answers Social Networking Site, http://www.newstarget.com/020733.html, October 12, 2006.

2: The Future of Artificial Intelligence, http://www.sffworld.com/authors/m/moy_chris/articles/futureofai1.html, date unknown.

3: When will computer hardware match the human brain?, http://www.jetpress.org/volume1/moravec.htm, Journal of Evolution and Technology. 1998. Vol. 1.

Further reading:

Take a moment and a raise a glass to the wonderful, underappreciated AI, http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/andrewkantor/2006-06-01-wonder-ai_x.htm, June 1, 2006.

Robot future poses hard questions, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6583893.stm, BBC News, April 24, 2007.

I find myself asking, why write? One effect seemingly derived from the pervasiveness of information in this, the information age, is a feeling that, whatever it is, it must have been said before. School is no help in this regard. Nor is the increasing predictability of social situations.

While walking at the university today I passed a fellow student talking, rather loudly, on her phone. The part of the conversation I heard amounted to "why do these weird things happen to me, they don't happen to normal people!" Had I a dime for every utterance of this or a similar phrase throughout the world and history...

So again, as I walk home, I question myself: what can I say that has not been said, perhaps not in so many words, already? While it seems I know the answer deep inside, I find it difficult to part with the worldly abstractions pressed upon our consciousness. Perhaps then, I can gain some comfort by limiting my discourse to that which is of some importance.

Yet this is a rather strange criterion. How many of us can claim to define important in a completely non-relativistic manner? Indeed I think task impossible in its purest sense, yet once again I find it rather unsuitable to lose this concept to eternal wordlessness. I must, it seems, choose my final judgment as, after all, a judgment.

If I can say but only 'interesting' of a topic, then I have given it nary a thought worth floating upon the consciousness of our collective soul. This was my conclusion, tentative as it may be, which establishes purpose in my writing.

I close with a poem, also composed on my trek home:

The stray stone feels not
the force with which it is kicked
and yet
loudly the echoes ripple, through the world

Be Happy

Are you looking for true love?
Be happy and your love will continually grow.

Do you want to loose weight?
Be happy and it will melt away.

Are you searching for prosperity?
Be happy and it will rain upon you.

Do you quest for your health?
Be happy and look no further.

Do you seek the answer?
Be happy.

Sunshine

A must see clip from the up and coming movie Sunshine:

http://www.sunshinedna.com/videos/19 (Mercury Clip)

Enjoy!

Wandering

Sometimes I feel as if I am just wandering about in this life.

Good.

Favors

I recently was approached by a friend who needed some help after recently having surgery. She has many friends in this apartment complex, but it seems not many were able to help her out when she needed it. There could be any number of reasons, but regardless in her mind they were letting her down. She called me and I offered to help, and this started me thinking of favors.

Your life is filled with choices. When you choose not to help someone, you may be letting them down. When you choose to help this is obviously a good thing. But in doing so, you could be sacrificing something else, or even letting someone else down. This is common sense: you're only one person, right? But people sometimes overlook that the person they are letting down may be themselves. Occasionally in our over eager attempt to be a good person, be liked, or receive a favorable impression we may forget about others that are more familiar to us; perhaps our family, our friends, our ourselves. Its not that you should avoid helping people, its that you should avoid neglecting yourself and those close to you in the process.

Theo Jansen

Adding to the collection of interesting lifelike machines previously posted come these fascinating creations, this time of the wind powered type, by Theo Jansen:

Animaris Geneticus Ondula
Animaris Currens Ventosa walking
Animaris Percipiere
Animaris Rhinoceros Transport

More information and movies on these curiosities can be found on the Strandbeestmovie - Weblog. Enjoy!

(originally spotted on the TED Blog.)

Learning

The more I think about it the more I realize that, in a relationship, it is important to be continuously learning from one another. One joy of life is perpetual learning. All people you come into contact with, whether or not they are your partner, will teach you something (or two), but its very easy to miss the lesson if you do not pay attention.

This is especially true in a relationship where one becomes overly dependent on the other. The other may then think that he or she is not learning anything, through a superiority complex or what have you, and the relationship becomes stale. On the other hand, a little dependence is felicitous as well: sometimes feeling needed by others is also an essential relationship ingredient.

The moral of the story is that learning, teaching, and dependence, like everything else in life, are best had in moderation--not to little, not too much. You might say that 'wait a moment, how could there be such a thing as too much learning,' but I would say what good is learning if you never stop to appreciate and practice what you've learned?

Voltage, Energy, and Force

Electrical engineering, physics, computer science majors (and any other major that requires electromagnetic physics), you've just got to watch this video:

Voltage, Energy, and Force

Its hilarious and educational all at the same time. You've got to love the 80's! For more of these radical vid's checkout the tubular site where I found them:

Video Lectures in College Physics, with Calculus

Wicked!

PS: I especially love the theme song at the beginning, and who else here remembers that little tune for the Annenberg Project? That sure brings back memories...

MacBook Pro

Well it looks as if the time has come for a new computer. I'm currently using a trusty Mac PowerBook G4 as my main computer, which has served me well over the last couple of years, but alas requirements of a computer science major are strongly urging me to move up in the world to an Intel based MacBook Pro. That said, I'm really looking forward to the speed improvement overall, as well as being able to use Parallels Desktop for Mac.

Parallels, in case you are unfamiliar, is an application that allows Intel based Mac users to run Microsoft Windows simultaneously to Mac OS X without rebooting. In other words, I will be able to run Windows and Mac OS X at the same time. This will allow me to use applications currently required for my major that only run on Windows such as Xilinx ISE and Visual C++, while still enjoying my cozy home in OS X.

On the hardware side I'm excited because as I mentioned before the machine will be much faster, but also because I've read that the new MacBook Pro is lighter than its predecessor PowerBook G4 (from this website, which also has a nice comparison of speeds between the older PowerBook and new MacBook Pro). This is great news to me considering how often I carry my computer to and fro.

The only hard part about this whole transaction (besides the additional school loan) is the wait. This time its not the wait for the computer to arrive, which is also always painful, but the wait to place the order. It turns out that Apple will be releasing a new version of the OS X operating system (Mac OS 10.5 Leopard) sometime this spring. I also did a little research and found this time line detailing the date of every major release of the PowerBook/MacBook Pro series. From the looks of it, a hardware upgrade is due on the MacBook Pro around the same time as Leopard is schedule to come out. Considering that this may be as early as two months from now, I'd better bide my time and wait.

Jane Caminos

"A waist is a terrible thing to mind."

Another interesting quote this time from Jane Caminos the author? Again the quote was discovered via the Quotes of the Day feed by The Quotations Page.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

"A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times."

A beautiful if not self-reflective quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809-1894), a writer and poet disguised as a physician. The quote was discovered via the Quotes of the Day feed by The Quotations Page.

Arthur Ganson

I ran across some more great videos on YouTube showing work done by Arthur Ganson. It's difficult to describe his sculptures--better to watch some of the videos:

Machine with Wishbone
Two Cans from the Island of Taiwan
Cory's Yellow Chair
Child Watching Ball
Machine with Artichoke Petal #1
Thinking Chair
Machine with 23 Scraps of Paper

The machines are truly delightful! Of course today we have so much technology that we can afford to glimpse for but a moment before our interest is stolen, but can you imagine how fascinating these machines would be to children and adults alike 200 years ago?

What I love about the machines is the way they show that life is not rigid. The machines themselves almost seem alive because of the fluid movement, which gives pause for us to reconsider todays modern nano-precision engineered machines. It's not that modern technology is not impressive, but it's behooving to be reminded occasionally how much affect can be achieved with relatively simple components.

Design Revolution

Have you caught onto the revolution occurring lately in software design? It's refreshing to say the least. I was reading an except from Robert Hoekman's book Designing the Obvious in which he quoted Seth Godin, creator of Squidoo:

When introducing a website to the public, you are not presenting them with a toolbox. You're telling them a story. If the story is appealing and coherent--if it leaps off the screen and makes someone want to hear more of it--then you get a chance to show off your tools and features and benefits. But if your story is too dense or scary, they're gone.

This captures the driving force behind the revolution rather succinctly. The past 50 years were akin to when humans first started to communicate verbally--localized languages pop up everywhere based solely on need; survival. We are now coming to an age when, catching our breath, we've begun to step back and look at what we've created; we're rediscovering art, we're telling stories!

The bottom line is that we still have a long way to go--there is still plenty of fragmentation and surviving going on--but this is wonderful news because it means we still have a lot of room left for growth. I am really excited about our journey to come!

Gmail Comparison

I will be the first to tell you: I love Gmail. Its a major time saver for me, and without a doubt the one of my favorite tools to use. Finally, for the first time, email feels 'right', and on top of that its free! I really want to thank Google for being able to make something like Gmail, and for actually doing it. I plan to write more about Gmail and the other Google services later, but for now I thought I call you attention to this article at TechCrunch which compares Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Live Hotmail:

A Comparison of Live Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo Mail

The table is especially telling. There may be some inaccuracies there (I noticed a few angry dissenters in the comments), but overall it sums up my satisfaction with Gmail.

Interface

I ran across these great demonstration/exhibit videos at YouTube:

super cool: reactable: basic demo #2
neat: Tangible Sequencer Fork
freaky: LIFE FORMS AT KINETICA

They've got me excited about the frontiers that lie ahead in human-computer interaction. The term is, as these videos show, much deeper than it at first seems. Seeing these videos reminded me of a video from a few years back at TED:

awesome: TEDTalks: Jeff Han

I am highly interested in human interaction with computing devices, and can easily see this as a future research area in my studies at UCLA. I have not heard anything about this area with regards to UCLA yet, however, so I'll have to dig deeper to find out what's happening here.

Great Teachers

It goes without saying there are good teachers, and there are not so great teachers.

A bad teacher can ruin a class by failing to teach the material; being unclear, unorganized, or unprepared; not caring about the students; or any combinations of these. This ultimately drains student's enthusiasm towards the class (if it existed in the first place), and can often lead to a bad grade or less than adequate mastery of the subject.

A good teacher does exactly the opposite. They teach what they test, clearly, care about the students, are organized, well prepared, knowledgeable, helpful, and are enthusiastic about their subject and teaching in general. Their enthusiasm is contagious. Not to mention they are usually just plain nice people. They can make dreaded classes worthwhile, and difficult classes bearable.

Kudos to all the great teachers out there. Here are a few that I've met along the way, and the class(s) I took from them:

Monterey Peninsula College

Keri Toma
Elementary Japanese I
Intermediate Japanese

Elizabeth Bishop
Pre-Calculus

Jamie Dagdigian
Graphic Design: Images & Type

Gary Mekarsky
Introduction to Physics
Science & Engineering Physics II

Ed Migliore
Calculus of Several Variables

Don Philley
Differential Equations

University of California, Los Angeles

Yutao He
Logic Design of Digital Systems

David Smallberg
Introduction to Computer Science II

Anna Draganova
Linear Algebra

I may have forgotten a few over the years, but I thank all those I have mentioned and all those I have forgotten. Even if these teachers didn't have all the attributes of a great teacher I listed above, they made up for it in other ways. Thank you.

Endeavors

To spare the environment, here are some things I endeavor to do:

• Unplug electronics when leaving the house


• Always walk somewhere when possible


• Take the bus when walking is not possible


• Drive as a last resort


• Fly as a last resort


• Wear warm clothes in the winter


• Wear cool clothes in the summer


• Eat a 90% or greater vegetarian diet


• Purchase most produce from local farmers markets


• Don't smoke


• Recycle


• Use a reusable grocery bag


• Wear clothes over if they are not dirty


• Turn off the lights I'm not using


• Don't eat more than I need


• Don't be otherwise wasteful

It turns out that all of these can be summed up in the last one: don't be wasteful. Everything in life requires balance and moderation. Stray out of balance for too long and your health will be adversely affected. Being materially conscientious is good mental practice for being conscientious in other ways, such as in your relationships or work. Conversely, if you are materially wasteful, you train your mind and body to be wasteful in general, and you are out of balance. You are using, but you are using too much. It's bad for your health. When you are conscientious you're more balanced, it does not take much effort, and you will feel better.

Relationships

Think about any relationship you have had. It can be your mother, father, brothers, sisters, friends, lovers, spouses, cousins or any body with whom you have associated. Is there any relationship that has been completely absent of either good or bad? Wait, don't say it, I already know the answer: no.

What's that? Have you thought of one? A relationship that has been completely bad, or completely good? Tell me then that even in your baddest of bad relationships, when is a time that you have not learned something about yourself, and should that not be a good thing? Tell me also then that in the best of your good relationships, is there no moment at which you felt the cold tang of jelousy, and should this not be tarnish on the silvery lining of this relation?

Life comes and life goes, but on the up's and down's are what let you know you're still alive.

Questions...

Why are we here?
What is the universe?
Are there more dimensions?
An infinite number?
Are there more time-frames?
An infinite number?
Is time travel possible?
How does the 'butterfly effect' really work?
Is the universe random?
Is it planned?
Who plans it?
Does God exist?
Do Gods (plural) exist?
Does other intelligent life exist outside the Earth?
Does other life exist at all?
If there is other intelligent life, are they vastly superior to us?
If they are vastly superior, are they like a god?
Are there, in turn, entities vastly superior to them as well?
Does the universe have an end?
Whats on the other side?
Is space really curved?
Is it possible to exit this space, and enter into another?
Would we still remain 3-dimensional?
Would time still exist?
What is time?
Does time also go backwards?
Are people reborn?
Do souls exist?
Is intelligence another dimension?
Does intelligence really exist?
Do emotions exist?
Do good and bad exist or do they create each other?
What is love?
Is all else derived from love?
What is the significance of mathematics?
Is every question answerable?
Should they all be answered?
Should we research technology?
Is immortality possible?
If it were, should it be used?
Why do we war?
Will there ever be a end to war?
Will humanity exterminate itself?
What is it like inside an anti-gravity suit inside a black hole?
What was it like before the universe existed?
Was there a before the universe existed?
Is there an end to knowledge?
Is there an end to infinity?
Is there an end?
Where do we go when we die?
Do we simply cease to exist?
Who am I?
What is truth?