Robots in agriculture
This cute little chap is Harvey, a robotic shifter of pot plants. Pot plants need to be moved around a lot within nurseries as they grow, for instance to allow the right spacing between them. It is tedious, time-consuming work, but Harvey doesn't mind. Using sophisticated on-board sensors and simple programming, he can reliably shuffle his charges from here to there and back again. And again... And with a price tag of $30,000, the manufacturers are confident he will be cost-effective for many growers. The management of pot plants is not the most obvious application of the emerging robotics industry...
Google’s quantum computer
This is a post-script to my recent post on Eric Schmidt saying that the Turing Test would be passed within five years. An interview with a pioneer in quantum computing suggests that Google just might be hoping to build a human-level AI in that sort of time frame. Google has recently bought a quantum computer from D-Wave, and during a long but fascinating webcast interview on Singularity 1 on 1, Geordie Rose, founder and Chief Technology Officer at D-Wave Computers, talked about how D-Wave is a key partner in Google's programme to develop machine intelligence. Rose did not commit to any timelines, but when...
The Turing Test to be passed within five years – Eric Schmidt
“Many people in AI believe that we’re close to [a computer passing the Turing Test] within the next five years.” So said Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman, speaking at The Aspen Institute last month. The Turing Test, of course, was proposed in 1950 by brilliant computer pioneer Alan Turing as a way to decide whether a machine could be said to think. The Turing Test has many critics, but it seems to me that if a computer convinces a panel of humans that it has human-level consciousness and intelligence then we will have to accept that it is correct. After all, that is...
Light pollution
During a family holiday (a California road trip) we have been enjoying the stunning beauty of starry nights above the Grand Canyon and elsewhere. (Not my photo, I hasten to admit.) This wonderful sight was available to everyone since the dawn of human history up until very recently. In the late eighteenth century, the industrial revolution began to place an umbrella of smog above the minority of humans who lived in cities. Then, between the world wars, the great blessing of electric light brought light pollution, and now hides the stars from most of us. It is an extraordinary irony...
Minsky vs Markram
In the previous post, I mentioned that there are, broadly speaking, two main ways for us to build a human-level, conscious AI. One is to assemble the most advanced AI systems available and have them learn, and the other is to build a model of a human brain which is as precise as we can manage, and see if it appears to exhibit consciousness. Henry Markram is doing exactly that at the Human Brain Project in Lausanne, funded to the tune of €1bn by the EU and others. But in an interview on the Singularity 1 on 1 website, AI...
Artificial intelligence system has the IQ of a four year-old
A team at the University of Illinois, Chicago, gave one of the world's most advanced AI systems an IQ test.* They reported its IQ as the level of an average four year-old. This research has to be taken with a pinch of salt. For a start, many psychologists are sceptical of the value of IQ tests. The fact that you can improve your test results with practice suggests that they don't test anything more inherent than the ability to pass IQ tests. Also, the system scored very differently on different parts of the test, to the extent that a child...
Meet Atlas, the military’s latest robot
The performance of robots from DARPA-funded Boston Dynamics continues to improve dramatically. As several commentators on this YouTube clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zkBnFPBV3f0 (prepare yourself for dubious musical accompaniment) have pointed out, robots like this are likely to be killing people soon. Human Rights Watch is trying to stop this http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/05/30/prevent-killer-robots-deciding-when-kill-battlefield. It will be an interesting test of the feasibility of "relinquishment", the idea that research into artificial intelligence (or any of the other new technologies that could bring marvellous benefits or hideous harms) can be stopped on the precautionary principle. Good luck to them - they'll need it!
Robert Peston warns about Artificial Intelligence
Has Robert Peston, the BBC's high-profile business editor, been reading Ray Kurzweil? He broadcast some intriguing comments in A Dark Magic, a programme about the use of computers in financial trading which aired on 8th July. Near the start of the programme, an unidentified American interviewee says: "The most interesting thing I've observed is this battle between man and machine. It's like watching the Terminator movies in the financial markets. We came that close to being wiped out." Towards the end of the show, Peston himself asks us to: "...remember the fate of world in the film Terminator, when machines...