Online worlds such as Second Life will soon become training grounds for artificial intelligences.

Researchers at US firm Novamente have created software that learns by controlling avatars in virtual worlds.

Initially the AIs will be embodied in pets that will get smarter by interacting with the avatars controlled by their human owners.

Novamente said it eventually aimed to create more sophisticated avatars such as talking parrots and even babies.

Virtual adoption

“The virtual world provides the body,” said Dr Ben Goertzel, founder and head of Novamente.

He said the company had developed a “Cognition Engine” that acted as the thinking part of the artificial intelligences it wanted to create.

This engine had some partially scripted behaviours and goals for the avatar under its control but was also capable of reasoning to work out novel ways to achieve its aims.

Dr Goertzel said business and research reasons drew Novamente towards using virtual worlds for its AI development.

There was likely to be a ready market for smart virtual pets in worlds such as Second Life and many others, he said.

“There are a lot of virtual pets out there and none of them have much intelligence,” he said.

“We have a pretty fully functioning animal brain right now and we are hooking it up to the different virtual worlds,” said Dr Goertzel. “There’s not much doubt that we can make really cool artificial animals.

“They could be ambient animals that go around and try to achieve their own goals, or pets that you can give people so they teach them.”

Initially Novamente would focus on pets such as dogs or monkeys but aimed to branch out afterwards.

“I’d really like to do virtual talking parrots,” he said, “and then virtual babies. You would get one and it would be yours for the next 18 years.”

It’s a lot more practical to control virtual robots in simulated worlds than real robots

Dr Ben Goertzel

Also, said Dr Goertzel, smart virtual animals were likely to get a good reception among gamers and those that spend time in online worlds.

“The gaming industry has been one of the few places where AI has not been a dirty word,” he said.

Many of the computer controlled characters in games are driven by basic AI programs that dictate how they behave when attacked, when they spot a player’s character or how they interact.

Body language

On the research side, said Dr Goertzel, virtual worlds also solved the problem of giving an AI a relatively unsophisticated environment in which it could live and learn.

“I’m one of many AI theorists who believe that embodiment is important,” he said. “Typing stuff back and forth does not give the AI much to go on in terms of understanding the world around it, or itself or its place in that world.”

This desire to embody artificial intelligences led many to robots, he said, but that approach presented its own problems.

“Robots have a lot of disadvantages, we have not solved all the problems of getting them to move around and see the world,” he said. “It’s a lot more practical to control virtual robots in simulated worlds than real robots.”

Novamente is working on avatars for different virtual worlds with The Electric Sheep company that specialises in producing artificial entities for online environments.

Dr Goertzel said Novamente was due to announce its first products and which worlds they would appear in at the Virtual Worlds conference being held in San Jose in early October.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Punk-loving dancing robots.

Robots that recognise a certain kind of punk music are dancing at Institute of Contemporary Arts concerts.

They have been programmed to move up and down to music with specific characteristics.

Robots that can climb walls have been developed by scientists in the United States.

The robots can scale surfaces using the same principles behind electrostatic charges, which make balloons stick to ceilings after being rubbed.

Developed by a team in SRI’s Mobile Robotics and Transducers Programme, the machines are about the size of a remote-controlled car and have caterpillar tracks similar to those on toy tanks.

Inside these tracks are materials with electro-adhesive properties, which mean that when a current is applied, the tracks are attracted to the wall, preventing the robots from falling off.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Robots scale new heights.

Vianix announced today that it has executed an OEM License Agreement with Yap, an early mover in the rapidly growing mobile voice services market. Yap has introduced a state-of-the-art free-form Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) platform that makes mobile applications easier and faster to use. Yap’s first deployments offer dictation into text messaging and search, to support accessibility and safety initiatives, as well as the natural convenience compared to tapping on small form factor devices. Vianix’ MASC enhances the Yap platform with improved performance and more accurate ASR results. The combination of Vianix’ MASC speech processing technology and Yap’s platform will command an important position in the mobile voice services market, with the voice search component valued at $11B alone.

Yap’s platform is differentiated from its competitors with technology that eliminates the need for human intervention, increasing speed and scalability while addressing privacy concerns. With compelling value propositions for end users, carriers, device makers and web portals, Yap’s award winning platform has the potential to change the way devices are used. The adoption of MASC for management of voice file bandwidth and storage requirements while maintaining high ASR accuracy is a critical enabler for Yap’s platform.

Bernard Brafman, Vianix’ Vice President of Sales and Marketing said, “We have been following mobile voice services for some time now and are thrilled to make our first licensing announcement in the space. Yap’s outstanding team is well positioned to stake out an early leadership position, and Vianix’ contribution to performance and accuracy of their platform plays a strategic role.”

“As we accelerate our research and development activities, we are leaving no element unexplored to ensure the most pristine experience for our end users,” confided Igor Jablokov, CEO of Yap. “We appreciate the work the Vianix team has performed to date in support of our mission and are looking forward to servicing our mutual customers.”

It couldn’t be done in California or Zurich, but a high tech device at the University of Salford has succeeded in reproducing a room from virtual world Second Life in 3D.

The 3D model is a direct replica of a Second Life creation by Austrian artist Max Moswitzer for an exhibition curated by Salford academic Mathias Fuchs. It shows how people throw away free gifts such as aeroplanes and shoes in the virtual world - echoing the wastefulness of the real world.

Max wanted to bring the virtual creation to life by producing a replica but was unable to get it produced - until Mathias suggested using the University’s £60,000 3D printer. By using a laser to lay down layers of plastic one tenth of a millimetre thick, the printer produced the model from an email sent by Max in just over 23 hours.

The printer is normally used by staff and students in the University’s School of Art & Design to create prototypes of their work. It is also used by external companies who want to test their latest designs.

Mathias said: “When I first got interested in the internet and the possibilities of virtual worlds, this sort of thing seemed like science fiction. Now you have the potential to email a design for a cup from Australia and ‘print’ it off, ready to drink from.

“It’s a real advantage for our students to have such an advanced piece of technology at Salford.”

Computer scientists and engineers at The University of Manchester took part in the first ever recording of digital music in the early 1950s, it has been revealed.

Evidence of the achievement has come to light in the form of an astonishing audio recording that has emerged from the archives of the Computer Conservation Society.

The Ferranti Mark 1 computer - the immediate successor to the famous ‘Baby’ computer - is heard playing God Save The King, Baa Baa Black Sheep and In The Mood.

The recording was done during a visit to The University of Manchester by the BBC’s Outside Broadcasting team in the autumn of 1951. (more…)

Quantum Computer plays SudoQ
Quantum Computer plays SudoQ
Whats next?
This is suppposed to be 20 years off!
I don’t think so!

Physicist Michio Kaku : The Screensavers on Tec.

Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence

http://www.singinst.org/ 

A long youtube from Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence!

HAL’s history: {Sourced from wikipedia}

HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey

In 2001: A Space Odyssey, after HAL appears to be mistaken about a fault in the spacecraft’s communications antenna, astronauts David Bowman and Frank Poole consider disconnecting his cognitive circuits. They believe that HAL cannot hear them, but are unaware that HAL is capable of lip reading. Faced with the prospect of disconnection, HAL decides to kill the astronauts in order to protect and continue “his” programmed directives. HAL proceeds to kill Poole while he is repairing the ship, and those of the crew in suspended animation by disabling their life support systems.

 

 

A view of HAL 9000’s Central Core in the Discovery.

Realizing what has occurred, Bowman then shuts down the machine. HAL’s central core is depicted as a crawlspace full of brightly lit computer modules mounted in arrays from which they can be inserted or removed. Bowman shuts down HAL by removing modules from service one by one; as he does so, HAL’s consciousness degrades. HAL regurgitates material that was programmed into him early in his memory, including announcing the date he became operational as 12 January 1992. By the time HAL’s logic is completely gone, he begins singing the song “Daisy Bell“, which is perhaps the most recognized scene in the film. HAL’s final act of any significance is to prematurely play a prerecorded message from Mission Control which reveals the true reasons for the mission to Jupiter, which had been kept secret from the crew and not been intended to be played until the ship entered Jupiter orbit.

HAL in 2010: Odyssey Two

In the sequel 2010: Odyssey Two, HAL is restarted by his creator, Dr. Chandra, who arrives on the Soviet spaceship Leonov. Prior to leaving Earth, Dr. Chandra has also had a discussion with HAL’s twin, the SAL9000 (see [1] and section below). Dr. Chandra discovers that HAL’s crisis was caused by a programming contradiction: he was constructed for “the accurate processing of information without distortion or concealment”, yet his orders, directly from White House officials, required him to keep the discovery of the Monolith TMA-1 a secret for reasons of national security. This contradiction created a “Hofstadter-Moebius loop,” reducing HAL to paranoia. This paranoia produced a creative solution: HAL would not have to withhold information if there were nobody from whom to withhold the information. Ergo, HAL made the decision to kill the crew, thereby allowing him to obey both his hardwired instructions to report data truthfully and in full and his orders to keep the monolith a secret — nobody remained from whom to keep the secret.

The alien intelligences controlling the monoliths have grandiose plans for Jupiter, plans which place the Leonov in danger. Its human crew devises an escape plan, which unfortunately requires leaving the Discovery and HAL behind, to be destroyed. Dr. Chandra explains the danger, and HAL sacrifices himself for the Leonov’s crew. In the moment of his destruction, the monolith-makers transform HAL into a non-corporeal being, so that David Bowman’s avatar may have a companion.

The details in the book and film are nominally the same, with one important exception: in the film, HAL functions normally after being reactivated. In the book, it is revealed that his voice circuits were destroyed during the shutdown, forcing him to communicate through screen text. Also, in the film the Leonov crew lies to HAL about the dangers that he faced (suspecting that if he knew he would be destroyed he wouldn’t initate the engine-burn necessary to get the Leonov back home), whereas in the novel he is told right at the outset. However, in both cases the suspense comes from what HAL will do when he knows that he may be destroyed by his actions.

Prior to Leonov’s return to Earth, Curnow tells Floyd that Dr. Chandra has begun designing HAL 10000. 2061: Odyssey Three indicated that Chandra died on the journey back to Earth, making the point moot.

The session of keyboard/screen interaction between HAL and Dr. Chandra has a taste of SHRDLU, which both increases the realism of the scene, and gives an interesting insight of the perception of Artificial Intelligence at the time the book was written.

HAL in 2061: Odyssey Three and 3001: The Final Odyssey

In 2061: Odyssey Three, Heywood Floyd is surprised to encounter HAL, now stored alongside Dave Bowman in the Europa monolith.

3001: The Final Odyssey introduced the merged forms of Dave Bowman and HAL. The two have merged into one entity called Halman after Bowman rescued HAL from the dying Discovery One spaceship towards the end of 2010: Odyssey Two. Halman helps Frank Poole infect the monolith (which it once served) with a computer virus; as the primitive life in Jupiter’s clouds were sacrificed to make Jupiter into a sun to warm Europa, it is feared that humanity as well as life on Europa would be destroyed as humanity had the potential to be dangerous and the Europans had stagnated, according to the monolith’s reasoning. The plan succeeds, and all of the monoliths disintegrate; however, Halman (which survived by downloading itself onto another storage medium) is subsequently isolated in a special containment facility due to this virus infecting itself.

Influences

The scene in which HAL’s consciousness degrades was inspired by Clarke’s memory of a speech synthesis demonstration by physicist John Larry Kelly, Jr, who used an IBM 704 computer to synthesize speech. Kelly’s voice recorder synthesizer vocoder recreated the song “Daisy Bell“, with musical accompaniment from Max Mathews.^[4]

Characterization

The book differs from the film in a number of details, e.g.

1. The book explains far more explicitly the causes of HAL’s behavior; it is implied that HAL’s programmed objective to ensure the mission’s success — at any cost — vaguely resembled the human drive for a purposeful existence, while the prospect of being shut down resembled the fear of death. When these factors began to contradict his primary objective of preserving the ship’s crew, his malfunction was the result.
2. In the film, HAL shuts Bowman out of the craft after Bowman attempts to retrieve Poole’s body. In the book, Bowman stays within the ship and is forced to shut down HAL after he attempts to kill him by opening the ship’s airlocks.

SAL 9000

HAL 9000 has at least one Earthbound twin, SAL 9000. SAL was used as a reference system for HAL; when the twin computer fails to predict any communications failure, Bowman and Poole begin to suspect HAL’s reliability. SAL is clearly “female”, and features similar camera plates like HAL, but the “eye” is blue. Dr. Chandra has a private terminal to SAL’s mainframe in his office, and his influence causes her to develop a slightly Indian accent (2010: Odyssey Two). In the film version, SAL is voiced by Candice Bergen, who was credited only under a pseudonym (as “Olga Mallsnerd,” a combination of the surname of Bergen’s husband, director Louis Malle and that of Mortimer Snerd, one of her father Edgar Bergen’s famous puppet characters).

SAL is not mentioned by name in the film 2001, and the novel implies that Mission Control had more than one 9000-series computer available. Given the acronym behind HAL’s name (Heuristic ALgorithmic), it is not clear if “SAL” is just a nickname, or if the name is a different acronym.

Before the Soviet-USA mission to retrieve Discovery, Chandra uses her for a simulation of the possible effects that a prolonged “sleep” might have induced in HAL, and the project is code-named Phoenix. When Chandra asks SAL to guess the reason for the name Phoenix she understands that the there are many possible meanings, and her first guess that it refers to the tutor of Achilles is not what he had in mind; her display of culture makes it clear that SAL has access to some form of encyclopedic knowledge database, or has it built in with the rest of her programs.

2010 reveals that another ground-based HAL machine undergoes the same psychopathy that HAL does when forced to experience the same contradiction.

The future of computing

HAL’s capabilities, like all the technology in 2001, was based on the speculation of respected scientists. Marvin Minsky, director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and one of the most influential researchers in the field, was an advisor on the film.^[5]

When the film 2001 was first screened in 1968, the year 2001 was a long way away and a computer like HAL seemed quite plausible at the time. In the mid-1960s computer scientists were generally optimistic that within a generation or two we would have machines that could pass the Turing test. For example, AI pioneer Herbert Simon had predicted in 1965 that “machines will be capable, within twenty years, of doing any work a man can do.”^[6]

As 2001 approached though, it became clear that 2001′s predictions in computer technology were too far fetched. Natural language, lip reading, planning, and commonsense reasoning in computers were simply still elements of science fiction.

However, 2001 also failed to predict many of the advances that would take place in computing by 2001. The film’s creators felt that as computers got more powerful, they would get bigger and bigger—partly true: Blue Gene, a modern supercomputer is very large. HAL occupies much of the living area on Discovery. A thin laptop or notepad computer is alluded to in a few scenes where they are used to relay news broadcasts from Earth. Also, the film’s portrayal of computer graphics are elegant, though minimalist compared to the graphics and visualization techniques available in 2001.

HAL’s eye and point of view

HAL’s POV shots were created with a Cinerama 160 degree Fairchild-Curtis wide angle camera lens. This Fairchild-Curtis wide angle lens was not used as the eye in the Hal 9000 prop seen in film, because this Fairchild-Curtis wide angle lens is about 8″ in diameter, while the Hal 9000 prop eye is about 3″ in diameter. Stanley Kubrick chose to use the Fairchild-Curtis lens to shoot the Hal 9000 POV shots after attending the 1964 World’s Fair and seeing To the Moon and Beyond, a film produced with the lens and projected onto a planetarium-like dome.

• HAL 9000 has been used and parodied in several movies and shows, such as the episode Treehouse of Horror XII (Section: House of Whacks) on the Simpsons, where Ultrahouse (HAL), voiced by Pierce Brosnan, is installed in the house as an automatic butler/maid/cook/cleaner; falls in love with Marge, and attempts to kill Homer. Another production that spoofed the 9000 was Futurama, when a new personality chip was installed in the space ship. Eventually Bender and the ship begin dating and the ship had to be de-activated after becoming psychotic after Bender decided to break up the relationship.
• The character Dr. Hal Emmerich in the Metal Gear Solid videogame series was named after HAL 9000. He hates the movie, and prefers to be called “Otacon” instead. When he and Snake reveal their real names to each other (Hal and David), Snake jokes that they should take a trip to Jupiter together.