Police, Army Robots To Debut In 5 Years

A short one from kurzweilai.net, regarding robots entering the mainstream in the coming years:

Police, Army Robots to Debut in 5 Years

The Korea Times, Jan. 16, 2006

By the 2010s, Korea expects to see robots assisting police and the military, patrolling neighborhoods and going on recon missions on the battlefield.

The outdoor security robots will be able to make their night watch rounds and even chase criminals, directed by a remote control system via an Internet connection or moving autonomously via their own artificial intelligence systems.

The government also seeks to build combat robots. They will take the shape of a dog or a horse, with six or eight legs or wheels.

There is no link to an English source which could provide more detailed information. The Korea Times (the source) is, like you'd expect, written in Korean and is therefore of no use to me.

See also my previous post Robots Mainstream By 2006, 2007?.

Nanoparticles Pinpoint Brain Activity

Nanotechweb reports on nanoparticles pinpointing brain activity.

Scientists could be a step closer to unraveling the mysteries of human memory thanks to a nanoparticle-based imaging technique developed at Bordeaux University. The team is observing how biomolecules change position within a cultured rat synapse, the junction between nerve cells, by labeling the biomolecules with tiny gold particles.

This is essentially another step in reverse engineering our brains, which is important because...

Wait a minute... I dedicated a whole FAQ to why it's important to reverse engineer the brain.

Read that instead.

Cloned Embryo Stem Cells Keep Genetic Integrity

NewScientist reports that cloned embryo stem cells keep their genetic integrity.

The results of the new study – which examined gene expression patterns in the stem cells – suggest that there is no subset of genes that is universally activated or disabled in cloned stem cells as compared with their normal stem cell counterparts.

“This is the first study to try to find gene expression differences – and there were none,” says Rudolf Jaenisch of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, senior author on the study.

He adds that the “reassuring” findings address concerns that stem cells from cloned embryos contain unusual genetic features that could make them unsuitable for therapeutic purposes.

Stem cells are primitive, unspecialised cells which can be coaxed into becoming any cell type. Stem cell therapies might be able to replace damaged tissues, or grow new organs. Doctors hope that one day cloned embryos might offer stem cells which could be tailored to individual patients for treatment.

This is a good thing because, in the past, there have been concerns that cloning stem cells might yield stem cells with unpleasant genetic mutations, which might render them less useful in therapeutic cloning therapies.

When you're getting to growing replacement organs for your body, you want those organs to have the exact same genetic information that your donor cells did.

Just think... how useful would replacement organs be if they gave us tumors by surprise?

The Future Of Mind Controlled Prosthetics

And oldy, but a goody.

This article talks about what's in future store for people who need to have their limbs replaced with prosthetics.

Darpa, the Pentagon's blue-sky research division, now wants to ratchet that work up about ten notches, by developing a "neurally controlled artificial limb that will restore full motor and sensory capability to upper extremity amputee patients. This revolutionary prosthesis will be controlled, feel, look and perform like the native limb."

So, basically, what Luke Skywalker gets in Empire Strikes Back, after Darth chops off his hand. Except, researchers won't have a long, long time to get this limb ready. Darpa wants the robo-arm stat -- in four years or less.

The limb would have to be wired directly into the peripheral nervous system, instead of the brain-controlled arms being demonstrated today, Darpa tells researchers interested in working on this "Revolutionizing Prosthetics" project. Under agency guidelines, the arm will need enough finesse to pick up a raisin or to write in longhand. It needs to be sensitive enough for the wearer to handle day-to-day tasks in the dark. And the limb will have to be strong enough to lift 60 pounds at a time.

The article contains some interesting links. Additionally, this article links to a flashwave file that demonstrates how monkeys are taught to control robotic arms with their thoughts.

In order to view the flashwave file, first save it to disk (by either leftclicking or rightclicking and then saving). Once you have it on your harddisk, you can drag it into an Internet Explorer window to play it.

For more coverage (and pretty pictures) of monkeys thought-controlling robotic arms, read this link.

Should you be curious as to the future of prosthetics for humans, read this article:

"[For the] long term, we want to develop a system that allows humans with paralysis to move their limbs in a way that they can carry out useful movements and lead independent lives. And we want to develop a new class of neurotechnologies that can diagnose and treat disease and restore lost functions in humans," said Donoghue. "These are ambitious goals, but we believe they are realizable."

For anybody who wants to read about the very real and existing BrainGate system in action, read this article and this article.

The last link has a video of a paralyzed Matt Nagle controlling a mousecursor with his thoughts alone. Unfortunately, viewing this requires registration. If anybody knows a link to the video, I'd appreciate to have it so I can put it in this post.


I think I can summarize this post nicely by saying...

We are becoming cyborgs.

Cars Driving Themselves

Ananova reports that Honda has released a selfdriving car.

The article's information is so compact, I see no point in summarizing it. I'll just copypaste the whole thing here for your reading pleasure:

Car drives itself

A car that drives itself has been launched.

The Honda Accord ADAS automatically speeds up and slows down - and even steers around bends.

All the driver has to do is gently nudge the wheel every 10 seconds reports the Mirror.

Honda spokesman Graham Avent said: "The Advanced Driver Assist System (ADAS) doesn't replace the driver - you can't climb into the back seat for a nap! But it keeps you in your lane and at a safe speed on motorways.

"It makes long journeys much less tiring and will prevent some accidents by reducing driver error. It's the biggest step forward in safety since the airbag."

ADAS only works on motorways and dual carriageways, but Honda bosses hope that future models could drive on any road.

The car works by using two main components. The Adaptive Cruise Control is a radar sensor behind the Honda badge in the front of the car that scans ahead for other vehicles. It then speeds up or slows down accordingly. It also has a Lane Keep Assist System (LKAS) - a camera next to the rear-view mirror which watches the white lines and controls steering.

The £25,880 Accord goes on sale in March with all Hondas due to have ADAS by 2016.

Vauxhall hopes to have a self-drive Vectra on the road by 2011.

Autoexpress.co.uk has reported on this a few months ago. Read their article here.

Also worthy of your attention: a previous post of mine regarding autonomous cars racing a 130 mile race.

And then there's General Motor's intention of releasing selfdriving vehicles in 2008.

The Quest For Immortality

Aubrey de Grey is a scientist with The Methuselah Foundation. He's got a background in computer science. He has used his engineering mindset to come up with an engineering approach to stop the aging process dead in its tracks (pun intended). This will allow humanity to stay young forever and live an indefinate lifespan.

A few years ago, Aubrey began digging around in scientific publications in order to find out what exactly causes us to age. As it turns out, there are only 7 major processes that cause our bodies to become old and wither away.

Why is he so sure there are only 7? Because the last one of those 7 has been found over 20 years ago. And 20 years just so happens to be an eternity in science. Had there been more aging processes in our bodies, science would have surely found some of those more recently.

The seven things that slowly kill us over time are:

1. Too few cells
2. Too many cells (cancer)
3. Chromosomal mutations (dna corruption)
4. Mitochondrial mutations (another type of dna corruption)
5. Junk inside cells
6. Junk outside cells
7. Protein crosslinking outside of cells

And that's basically it. Tweak all of those so they don't do damage anymore, and you've got yourself a non-aging human.

A huge task, but peanuts compared to the impossible task that some researchers, with the impractical researcher mindset that doesn't aim for application in practice, would have you believe.

For details, check Aubrey's site on SENS (Strategies for Engineering Negligible Senescence). Everything is explained there, from the technical stuff to the most basic of immortality-related concerns.

Aubrey's SENS has had some criticism. Nobody ever manages to build a solid case against SENS, but some keep critisizing it anyway. So Aubrey has issued a challenge in July 2005. Anybody who can construct a solid case against SENS, can win 20.000 dollars. Easy money... you'd think. Strangely, nobody has picked up the challenge yet.

Gee, I wonder why. ;)

In order to get enough funds available to engineer immortality in humans, Aubrey first wants to implement it in a mouse. Once the world has seen that it is possible to seriously intervene in the aging process, the funds will surely flow. Human immortality should come no more than a few years behind rodent immortality. Aubrey thinks it is achievable in about 25 years.

In order to achieve the world's first immortal mouse within the next 10 years, Aubrey has come up with the Methuselah Mouse Prize. The M-Prize can be donated to, and whoever demonstrates a record life extension in mice receives a financial prize.

History shows this is a very succesful model. The Ansari X-Prize for cheap spaceflights has collected several millions over several years. Those cheap spaceflights were made not too long ago.

The M-Prize is growing much faster than the X-Prize did in its day. At the moment, it is at 3.209.275 dollars. That's impressive, especially if you consider that the M-Prize has only been around for about 2.5 years. It was at only just below 2 million not so long ago, but a generous and anonimous donater put an extra million on there and pushed it towards the 3 million. Now, it has already climbed up to 3.2 million.

Aubrey has recently had some nice exposure when he went on CBS 60 Minutes (America's most popular news program, or so I've read). An inside friend of mine tells me this appearance was a really big deal, and site hits increased massively. It is fascinating to see all of this coming into the mainstream. The interviewer, Morley Safer, took Aubrey seriously. No laughing and pointing fingers at his 'crackpot' ideas. Not bad if you consider that the word 'immortality' has only been accepted in scientific circles a few years ago.

It will be extremely interesting to see this pick up even more and more in the years to come.

Statistics show that curing diseases such as cancer and diabetes will only prolong our lives by a few measly years, while intercepting aging itself will increase our lifespans with decades. We're losing 100.000 people per day to old age. The world sorely needs a cure for aging. It's about time we got practical and efficient, and pump our research dollars where they matter... into anti-aging research.

Wanna help turn this into a reality?

You can!

Spread the meme. That is very important. Tell all your friends and relatives. Post about it on your favorite forum.

Know any rich folks? Enlighten them and talk them into donating to the M-Prize.

Do whatever it takes to let it be known to the world that we can stop aging and live healthily for as long as we like. Let it be known that this is for real, and that the science behind immortality is as solid as a ton of bricks.

Together... we can take on death.

Scientists Grow Stem Cells In New Medium

Scientists have managed to grow stem cell cultures that are free of animal cells.

The new work, reported in the journal Nature Biotechnology, is a crucial step in stem cell research because it will allow growth of these cells without using animal products that can harbor viruses and other potential sources of problems.

...

"This is the first time is has been possible for us to derive new cell lines in completely defined conditions in medium that completely lacks animal products," said James Thomson, senior author of the new study and a UW-Madison professor of anatomy who seven years ago was the first to successfully grow human embryonic stem cells in the lab.

This is good because...

Many scientists worry that animal viruses and other agents might be taken up in the human cells and could infect human patients if those cells were to be used for therapy.

"All of the concerns about contaminating proteins in existing stem cell lines can essentially be removed using this medium," wrote Ludwig in the Nature Biotechnology paper.

All in all yet more progress for stem cell research.

GenoTrim - The Official Site

Salugen has now apparently launched the official GenoTrim Site. GenoTrim is the DNA pill that has been in the news recently and which, according to Salugen, will easily burn off your excess fat for you without having to go on any diet.

It's in Dutch, so I'm going to translate the short bit of info that it has right now:

(Run the site through a site translator yourself if you feel like it.)

Salugen is the marketleader in nutrigenomics. It researches, develops and markets patented nutritional supplements based on DNA.

More than 30 years of research by Prof. Dr. Kenneth Blum and many millions of invested dollars have been spent finding the causes of genetic nutritional imbalance in the body which leads to health complaints. Salugen Inc. is the pioneer and leader in finding DNA based nutritional solutions.

The first application of this revolutionizing technology is GenoTrim, which restructures the body, hightens energy levels and prevents jointpains.

What is this body restructuring?

The body consists of 4 basic elements (molecules):

• Bone
• Muscle
• Water
• Fat

Of these 4 elements, fat is the lightest molecule, so losing much fat does not result in great weightloss. That is the reason why many existing programs and weightloss diets don't work, which can be frustrating. Body restructuring aims at looking thinner, being in better shape and feeling better. That is the focus of GenoTrim. It doesn't aim at the weighing scale alone. Losing weight will be a natural result.

What is GenoTrim?

GenoTrim is the world's first unique and completely natural nutritional food supplement based on your personal DNA. All ingredients and minerals are 100% natural. The unique patented formulas will give you an optimal result. Because of the study into genes, GenoTrim is capable of feeding genes that are in imbalance so this imbalance will restore itself. The reaction of the body is a healthier look, slimmer figure and less weight. But the most important thing is, it just makes you look good and healthy.

The 5 important groups of GenoTrim are:

• Enhancing energy production
• Raising immunity, important factor is stress
• Less sensitive to infections
• Enhances the working of the nerve system
• Increases immunity

Salugen makes nutritional supplements just for you, which guarantees optimal results.

That's an almost literal translation. Lots of easy-to-understand, unscientific salesman-talk:

• Dieting doesn't work because burning fat will not cause much weightloss? Where is the logic in that? If weightloss is not that important with respect to fatloss, why talk about weightloss in the first place?
  
• Weightloss will be a natural result of looking slimmer and getting a better figure? If a better figure is guaranteed, then (again) why even bother mentioning the weightloss? Who cares what you weigh as long as you are in good shape (and thus not obese).
• Why is immunity named twice in the so-called 'groups' of GenoTrim? Must be a marketing decision to get the number of GenoTrim-targets up to 5.
• Feeding genes? What does that mean?
  

I consider salespitches such as these to be an insult to my intellect. I prefer the emphasis to be on the science myself. But at least GenoTrim seems to be for real.

For more information, see this comment that was posted under my previous GenoTrim post. Not sure where it was pasted from, but it looks genuine at first glance.

Has anybody actually seen it on the Oprah show, where it was supposed to be broadcast as claimed previously, on old year's eve? Comments welcome.

Top 10 Tech Trends 2006

Ten predictions on top tech trends of 2006 are available on Mercury News. It's interesting to read because you can definately tell the people who wrote this have done their research.

The 10 tech trends 2006:

1. Video will come to the big screen in your living room and to the small screen on your cell phone.
2. Cell phones do everything
3. Internet phone calls become more popular
4. The office moves to the web
5. Stemcell research advances
6. Biotech targets flu vaccines
7. Small start-ups go global
8. Video comes to the blog
9. On-demand video everywhere
10. Clean technology investment increase

For details, read the article.

DNA Pill Solution To Obesity?

American and Dutch scientists have come up with the very first personalised medication for weightloss, that will soon be available in the mainstream.

We have yet to see whether this thing will actually do as promised, but we can safely say that the era of personalised medicine has begun. And that's a big deal!

(I for one wasn't expecting this until about 2010.)

The article is in Dutch, which is why I'm going to loosely translate it in this post:

The pill, named Genotrim, will be manufactured for individuals, based on 4 to 16 genes that are related to metabolism. Saliva is taken from the inner cheek, and having it analysed costs 325 euro's. After that, Salugen will fabricate you your personalised medication, which you'll be taking for 3 months and costs anywhere between 40 and 80 euro's.

It is claimed that any person who weighs 110 kilo's can go down to 85 kilo's in 3 months without having to go on any diet whatsoever. The pill does this by restoring your metabolism (apparently to what it used to be when you were young, the article doesn't say anything on this). The pill will initially be released in the US and in Holland.

Oprah Winfrey will talk about the pill on her new year's eve show, and she'll be testing it as well.


If I look at this objectively, I think there is reason for cautious optimism here. The people behind the Oprah Winfrey show have probably done their research, so they know what they'll be talking about. Would Oprah Winfrey really want to put her reputation on the line if this was a scam?

It might be big. Let's sit back and watch what happens next.

[update]

It looks like this whole thing is a scam. Read the comments under this post for more details.

Robots Demonstrates Self Awareness

Japan has come up with a robot that seems to demonstrate self awareness.

A new robot can recognize the difference between a mirror image of itself and another robot that looks just like it.

This so-called mirror image cognition is based on artificial nerve cell groups built into the robot's computer brain that give it the ability to recognize itself and acknowledge others.

The ground-breaking technology could eventually lead to robots able to express emotions.

Under development by Junichi Takeno and a team of researchers at Meiji University in Japan, the robot represents a big step toward developing self-aware robots and in understanding and modeling human self-consciousness.

"In humans, consciousness is basically a state in which the behavior of the self and another is understood," said Takeno.

...

In one experiment, a robot representing the "self" was paired with an identical robot representing the "other."

When the self robot moved forward, stopped or backed up, the other robot did the same. The pattern of neurons firing and the subsequent flashes of blue light indicated that the self robot understood that the other robot was imitating its behavior.

In another experiment, the researchers placed the self robot in front of a mirror.

In this case, the self robot and the reflection (something it could interpret as another robot) moved forward and back at the same time. Although the blue lights fired, they did so less frequently than in other experiments.

In fact, 70 percent of the time, the robot understood that the mirror image was itself. Takeno's goal is to reach 100 percent in the coming year.

I regard this as a big deal. Developments like this one are important steps towards a true Artificial Intelligence. One that is potentially smarter than us humans. AI is the only technology which can come up with more technology all by itself. Therefore, AI will likely be the last invention mankind need ever come up with.

Also have a look at the latest developments in Honda's Asimo to get an idea of where things are headed, and how fast it's going.

For more details on the implications of artificial intelligence, and the exponential acceleration thereof, read the Singularity FAQ.

Hair Follicle Stem Cells Regenerate Nerves

Reason of the LongevityMeme reports on progress made in stem cell technology with the use of hair follicles.

Hair follicles turn out to be quite potent in their abilities, which is a good thing. It may turn out we won't be needing any embryonic stem cells at all, which is another controversy wiped off the table. This can only speed up stem cell research.

A quote from the site:

(Via Genetic Engineering News). Scientists discovered a population of multipotent stem cells in adult hair follicles back in 2004, and now these cells are bring put to work in regenerative medicine: researchers "have found that stem cells from hair follicles of mice can be used to rejoin severed nerves in mouse models. Easily accessible hair follicle stem cells, which normally function to form the hair follicle which in turn form the growing hair in all mammals including man, have been shown to have great potential to produce nerve cells and many other types of cells. The hair follicle stem cells were used by the AntiCancer researchers to rejoin nerves in the legs of mice that were experimentally severed. After injection of the hair follicle stem cells, the nerves were rejoined and were able to regain function, enabling the mice to walk normally again."

The original article can be found here.

For more info on what's going on in hair-related science, look here.

Mass Production Quantum Chips Nearby

Researchers of the University of Michigan have succeeded in building a quantum chip that is believed to be scalable and mass-producable.

Using the same semiconductor fabrication technology that is used in everyday computer chips, researchers were able to trap a single atom within an integrated semiconductor chip and control it using electrical signals, said Christopher Monroe, U-M physics professor and the principal investigator and co-author of the paper, "Ion Trap in a Semiconductor Chip." The paper appeared in the Dec. 11 issue of Nature Physics.

Quantum computers are promising because they can solve certain problems much faster than any possible conventional computer, owing to the bizarre features of quantum mechanics. For instance, quantum computers can process multiple inputs at the same time in the same device, and quantum circuitry can be wired via the quantum feature of entanglement, dubbed by Einstein as "spooky action-at-a-distance."

One of the most favored candidate quantum computer architectures is the use of individual atoms to store quantum bits ( qubits) of information, where each qubit can hold the number 1 or 0, or even both 1 and 0 simultaneously, Monroe said. Electrically charged atoms (ions) for such quantum computers are stored in what are known as ion traps. Trapping is necessary in order to isolate the qubits from the rest of the world, which is absolutely essential for the system to behave quantum mechanically. It is well known how to program a quantum computer composed of any number of trapped ions; the problem is to get the ions trapped in the first place.

A quantum computer can look at the two sides of a coin at once. Conventional computers can only look at one side at a time.

This quantum property also scales up.

A quantum computer can store all values ranging from 0 to 255 in 8 qubits, where a conventional computer can only store one of the values in the range 0 to 255 in 8 bits.

What it comes down to: quantum computers can solve problems, that require exponentially more calculation as the input increases, in an acceptable amount of time, where a conventional computer would take an unacceptable amount of time.

For instance, there exist encryption algorithms so strong, that a conventional computer would take more time than the Universe is old to crack it. A quantum computer could do it in minutes.

I'm sure a quantum computer can also be applied on stuff that is more useful to society. I can imagine there are plenty of exponential algorithms in medical simulations, that could definately use quantum computation. Medical simulations are important and will be a huge part of tomorrow's healthcare. Imagine being able to perform huge calculations in a small amount of time. That would make medical simulations real fast and accurate. A true boon to medicine.

Honda Robots Grows Up

Honda's robot Asimo is growing up, and becoming more useful with each passing year. According to Honda, he is now ready for office jobs and will be taken in use in 2006.

Be sure to check out the movieclips of Asimo showing off his feats.

From the first article:

Only last year, Honda Motor Co.'s (7267.T) now-familiar humanoid robot, Asimo, was learning how to run and avoid tripping over obstacles. Now, the five-year-old droid is ready to take on simple office work, greeting visitors and fetching refreshments.

...

With more joints and flexibility of movement, Asimo can now also grip and carry a tray of drinks, placing it safely on a table.

Demonstrating its latest tricks through video footage, Honda showed the 130 cm-tall (4.25 feet) Asimo addressing a mock visitor by name and showing her to a conference room, all the while maintaining a steady and natural distance from the guest.

"Welcome, Sato-san," Asimo said, bowing deeply as per standard Japanese etiquette.

Also with each passing year, it becomes more clear that we are about to enter an era where robots will be mainstream, thus effectively entering robotic nation.

What will happen when robots become smarter and smarter, and gradually start taking over more and more jobs?

What will happen when chauffeurs and pilots become jobless?

Will we stand by and watch the economy take hits, or will we transform our economy in time in order to guarantee a guaranteed liveable income for those who lost their jobs to automization?

According to Marshall Brain's analysis in his robotic nation essay, the latter is the only option we'll have. So for more details, read his essay.

For more details on the implications of artificial intelligence, and the exponential acceleration thereof, read the Singularity FAQ.

Mighty Mice Just Got Mightier

A good while ago, scientists made mice real muscular by modifying their genes. These same scientists have now developed an agent which does the job yet more effeciently:

The Johns Hopkins scientists who first created "mighty mice" have developed an agent that's even more effective at increasing muscle mass in mice, by knocking out the gene that codes for myostatin.

Just two weekly injections of the new ACVR2B agent triggered a 60 percent increase in muscle size.

The researchers' expectation is that blocking myostatin might help maintain critical muscle strength in people whose muscles are wasting due to diseases like muscular dystrophy or side effects from cancer treatment or AIDS.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out we'll be using it in the future to enhance the non-sick too. Maybe not with permanent genetic modifications right away. But that's okay, because genetic modifications can be mimicked with the use of drugs.

We're looking at a future here where everybody will be slim, muscular, hairy (on top), healthy and other things that we all crave for but can't have due to our birth-given genetics.

For example, take a look at what other type of benefits you can have with a little bit of genetic tweaking:

We have little software programs inside us called genes, about 23 thousand of them. They were designed or evolved tens of thousands of years ago when conditions were quite different. I'll give you just one example. The fat insulin receptor gene says, “Hold on to every calorie because the next hunting season may not work out so well.” And that’s a gene we'd like to reprogram. It made sense 20 thousand years ago when calories were few and far between. What would happen if we blocked that? We have a new technology that can turn genes off called RNA interference. So when that gene was turned off in mice, these mice ate ravenously and yet they remained slim. They got the health benefits of being slim. They didn't get diabetes, didn't get heart disease or cancer. They lived 20 to 25 percent longer while eating ravenously. There are several pharmaceutical companies who have noticed that might be a good human drug.

Earlier, Ellen Heber-Katz came up with super-regenerative mice, who can regrow limbs and organs.

Right now, these sort of things are research projects confined to laboratories.

We can expect these types of body upgrades to become mainstream in the biotech era, which is slated to be from 2010-2020.

Scientists Discover How Cancer Spreads

Scientists have discovered how cancer spreads.

LONDON - Scientists have discovered how cancer spreads from a primary site to other places in the body in a finding that could open doors for new ways of treating and preventing advanced disease.

Instead of a cell just breaking off from a tumor and traveling through the bloodstream to another organ where it forms a secondary tumour, or metastasis, researchers in the United States have shown that the cancer sends out envoys to prepare the new site.

Intercepting those envoys, or blocking their action with drugs, might help to prevent the spread of cancer or to treat it in patients in which it has already occurred.

"We are basically looking at all the earlier steps that are involved in metastasis that we weren't previously aware of. It is complex but we are opening the door to all these things that occur before the tumor cell implants itself," said Professor David Lyden, of Cornell University in New York.

"It is a map to where the metastasis will occur," he added in an interview.

What can I add?

It says a lot about the future of cancer, I think. Namely that there is none. That's right. Cancer has no future.

Science is going to kick cancer's butt, plain and simple.

The Future Of Artificial Intelligence

The American Association for Artificial Intelligence has a nice archive of AI-related webpostings all around the web.

Have a look at it here.

A few illustrative quotes:

Some AI systems are famous, such as Deep Blue, the computer that beat the world chess champion Garry Kasparov, or Predators, the unmanned spy planes hovering over Afghanistan. But the machine intelligence that underlies most such systems is largely invisible, so people take their cleverness for granted. AI experts grouse that once one of their projects succeeds, people no longer consider it to be AI.

-

Until recently, progress in artificial intelligence lagged so far behind computing technology that some in the field talked about an 'A.I. winter,' after commercial and government funding evaporated in the mid-1980's. Now there is talk about an A.I. spring among researchers like Sebastian Thrun, the director of the Stanford lab.

-

Many people think of artificial intelligence (AI) as a high-flying 1980s tech concept that crashed and burned back in the early 1990s after a good deal of hype. The fact is, AI technology has become pervasive in much of the software we use today.

-

To be sure, AI has its successes. Factory robots use machine vision to track parts. Automotive suspension systems and camcorders use fuzzy logic to smooth out jarring motions. Hospitals use large knowledge bases of drug effects and interactions to ensure that prescribed drugs don't conflict with one another. Computer programs now repeatedly beat the world's chess champions. Part of AI's image problem stems from the fact that whenever a development moves from lab to market, it's no longer artificial intelligence; it's just software.

-

There's a joke in the AI community that as soon as AI works, it is no longer called AI,' says Sara Hedberg, a spokeswoman for the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. Hedberg, who has written about AI for the past 20 years or so, has done her share of trying to enlighten reporters who are ready to declare AI dead. 'Once a technology leaves the research labs and gets proven, it becomes ubiquitous to the point where it is almost invisible,' she says.

-

Computers and software can now perform tasks that were impossible five years ago, so it pays to keep an open mind, according to Amreetha Vijayakumar, Frost & Sullivan Technical Insights research analyst. 'AI is slowly starting to propagate in the normal business case, especially in applications risk assessment, CRM, data mining, these applications are starting to reach users.' ... In some cases she says, AI goes unnoticed because developers don't accept that AI is used in their products.

-

Henry Lieberman and other artificial intelligence researchers say computers could become dramatically smarter and more humanlike in the future. The brain is just a physical machine, albeit a complicated one we don't yet understand, they argue. 'People have this illusion that what we do is magic and it will never be automated,' said University of Pennsylvania computer science professor Lyle Ungar. When he first started studying artificial intelligence, he said, no one thought a computer could play chess well enough to beat the masters. Today, computers can beat everyone at chess, he said, and we're no longer impressed.

-

Another reason for the apparent lack of machine intelligence is that, if you know how a computer does something, it no longer seems intelligent. ... An example of what might be regarded as intelligent behavior is automated translation of language. This is done by Google, for example.

-

Pattern recognition is linked to [artificial intelligence], which was very hyped in the '70s and '80s, and that was very detrimental,' said Sameer Samat, chief technology officer at Kofax Image Products Inc., which bought pattern-recognition software maker Mohomine Inc. last year. 'For a time, if you mentioned pattern recognition, people just hung up the phone.' But new interest, based on security necessities arising after the 2001 terrorist attacks, may bring more popularity to pattern recognition.

-

There's a cliché that as soon as something starts to work people no longer call it AI. There's some truth to that because once it starts to work then people can explain how it works. Once the mystery is no longer there, people say that's just an algorithm. There is a misconception that AI is only AI if it has a black box that produces intelligence in a mysterious way.

-

Michael Kearns said this latest advance represented just a small part of a burst of progress in recent years in artificial intelligence and robotics. People have begun to take it for granted that computers can recognize voices and faces, give directions, sift through information on the Web, and create complicated models to predict the weather. ... Kearns, of Penn, said: 'As soon as someone gets a computer to do it, people say: 'That's not what we meant by intelligence.' People subconsciously are trying to preserve for themselves some special role in the universe.

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We're in an era of what I'd call 'narrow AI', where systems are performing intelligent functions that used to require human intelligence. Intelligent systems can fly and land airplanes or make financial investment decisions. These were research projects 10 years ago and are now in widespread practical application and have become integrated into our information infrastructure. Every time an application works, it's no longer called AI - it becomes a separate field. It's speech recognition, character recognition, robotics, machine vision, etc.

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'People say that neural networks and AI were not successful because we don't have humanoid robots walking around, but they don't realize that there are hundreds of applications of this technology that we use every day without thinking,' [Ronald] Brachman said. 'Machine-learning techniques are now built into a variety of commercial systems, finding credit card fraud, evaluating mortgage applications, detecting illegal telephone calls and recognizing speech.' He maintained that 'AI planning algorithms were successful in Desert Storm and are being used every day by the military in complicated logistic situations.'

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Many people only think of robots when artificial intelligence is brought up, he said, but most of the current software available today use artificial intelligence.

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In his forthcoming book 'I'm Working on That: A Trek From Science Fiction to Science Fact,' William Shatner explores the reciprocity between Starship Enterprise fantasy and real-life scientific breakthroughs. 'What was suggested 30 years ago in 'Star Trek' is now old hat,' he said in a telephone interview. ... As a culture, we have become writers of our own fantasy saga in which pacemakers, cloning, the Internet, speech recognition software and the like are merely part of the scenery.

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Quietly, though, AI researchers were making more than progress - they were making products. It's a trend that's been easy to miss, because once the technology is in use, nobody thinks of it as AI anymore. 'Every time we figure out a piece of it, it stops being magical; we say, 'Oh, that's just a computation,' laments Rodney Brooks, the director of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. ... In truth, we may never chat up a computer at a cocktail party. But in smaller yet significant ways, artificial intelligence is already here: in the cruise control of cars... The future is all around us.

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In fact, AI -- or what was once considered AI until it became commonplace -- is now almost everywhere.

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'Software is just getting smarter and smarter and smarter.' [Carol] Brown agrees, saying that accounting firms have 'integrated AI into their normal software, so they don't think about it as AI anymore.'

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According to the primary examiner for AI in the U.S. Patent Office, Robert Downs, a decade ago only about 100 patents mentioned AI specifically; last year, about 1700 mentioned artificial intelligence, with another 3900 or so mentioning related terms. About 2200 patents are specifically classified in the Patent Office's class for artificial intelligence, which means that the invention or technique is specifically directed to something new in knowledge-based systems, machine learning, fuzzy logic, or neural networks.

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Successful applications of AI are part of, and buried in, larger systems that probably do not carry the label AI inside.

To sum it all up: Many people do not take AI seriously, but it's coming anyway and it will eventually have a huge impact on our lives.

It will probably happen a lot faster than you might think, because of a little thing called The Law Of Accelerating Returns.

For more information regarding the implications of artificial intelligence, read the Singularity FAQ.

Geneticists Claim Aging Breakthrough

This Guardian Unlimited article reports on the claim of researchers that they have achieved a breakthrough related to the aging process.

Summed up, it comes down to:

• Organisms live six times longer in laboratory tests
• Cells genetically 'tricked' into slow-ageing mode

The slow-aging mode is related to the mechanism that kicks in when our bodies are not getting the necessary amount of nutritions: the body thinks it is going through a period of food scarcity, and knows that it can't afford to age, because it still needs to reproduce. Therefore, aging is slowed down.

And yes, that mechanism does go back all the way to the caveman-era.

The most important thing to keep an eye on, is this part:

In the experiment, Dr Longo's team took yeast cells and knocked out two key genes, named Sir2 and SCH9. The latter governs the cells' ability to convert nutrients into energy. They found that instead of dying after a week, the cells lived for up to six weeks. Dr Longo said parallel experiments on human liver cells appeared to replicate the effect, but refused to elaborate until the results have been published.

The amazing thing here is... it only took minor genetic modifications to achieve a sixfold increase in lifespan.

Researchers are finding ways to modify our own genes permanently, and to produce drugs that will mimic genetic modifications by inhibiting the mRNA that our genes produce. The latter one will effectively tell a gene to shut up, which gives the same result as if you'd disabled the gene completely. This technique is called RNAi.

Some day in the not too distant future (2010-2020 is supposed to be the Biotech-Era), we will see humans having genetic modifications routinely, and we are likely to benefit greatly from them.

For another great example of how a few small genetic modifications can have a profound effect, read my post about super-regenerative mice.

Kurzweil Touts Future Technology

Ray Kurzweil, well known inventor, futurologist and entrepreneur, touts the technologies of tomorrow in this CRN article:

The bulk of human intelligence is pattern recognition, which Kurzweil said is the quintessential example of a self-organizing system. This will be instrumental in the development of future Web-based applications, he added. For example, he said that Google has developed a speech tool for English-Arabic and Arabic-English translation, despite the fact that no one on the development team spoke Arabic. "I think this type of feature will be a standard feature on mobile phones by the next decade," he said, giving a demonstration of the tool.

As proof that these types of evolutions will take place, Kurzweil used the example of artificial intelligence that is embedded everywhere in today's society, from medical devices such as electrocardiogram machines and credit card fraud detection software. "If these narrow [artificial intelligence] programs suddenly stopped working, it would cripple the economic infrastructure," he said.

By 2010, Kurzweil said, computers will begin to disappear, instead becoming embedded in the environment and into materials such as clothing and eyeglasses. Images will be written directly on human retinas, said Kurzweil, adding that the military uses this technology today in modeling virtual reality environments. "Search engines of the near future won't wait to be asked for information," he said.

Hmmm... sorta sounds like what I've described in a few previous posts of mine.

See The Future Of Computers and The Future Of Internet for related information.

Nanotubes Make Supersprings

Betterhumans reports on an interesting find with regard to the physical characteristics of nanotubes.

Researchers of the University of Florida speculate on the types of products that could possibly be created with future nano-materials:

Carbon nanotubes have been found to act like super-compressible springs, which could allow the creation of foam-like materials for everything from disposable coffee cups to new space shuttle insulation.

Research reported in the journal Science shows that films of aligned multiwalled carbon nanotubes can act like a layer of mattress springs and rebound in response to force. Unlike a mattress, however, the foams retain resilience even after thousands of compression cycles—there is no tradeoff between strength and flexibility.

"Carbon nanotubes display an exceptional combination of strength, flexibility, and low density, making them attractive and interesting materials for producing strong, ultra-light foam-like structures," says Pulickel Ajayan, coauthor of the paper.