Tag Archives: AI

Blog

Wintermute vs. Rachel Rosen

3 Comments

aiHere is a fine exploration of the differences and similarities in the use of artificial intelligences in Philip K. Dick and William Gibson’s writing:

Turing, whose purpose is to prevent AIs from developing too far, mirror the bounty hunters in Androids — the sole purpose of each is to control and destroy rogue intelligences, although in both novels their roles are shown from very different perspectives. In Neuromancer Turing are genuinely afraid of AIs: “You have no care for your species,” one Turing agent says to Case, “for thousands of years men dreamed of pacts with demons”.

Both Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Neuromancer portray artificial intelligences as lacking in empathy, but in different ways and for different reasons.

But would a human equivalent AI necessarily be lacking in empathy? Are humans as empathetic as we’d like to believe?

[via this tweet from SciFi Rules][image from agroni on flickr]

Blog

Merging with your avatar

avatarAn interesting discussion from Thomas Frey at the DaVinci Institute on at which point our individual identity merges with that of our avatars:

With each generation of avatar, they will become more life-like, growing in realism, pressing the limits of autonomy as we become more and more reliant on them for experiencing the world. The avatar will become an extension of ourselves. The pain that we feel is the same pain that they feel, and vice versa. Like symbiotic twins separated only by a dimension or two, we are destined to become one with our avatars.

Karl Schroeder explores a similar notion of avatars becoming extensions of ourselves in Lady of Mazes.

[via FutureBlogger][image from TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³]

Blog

Memristors – is the “missing” fourth electronic component the key to AI?

1 Comment

I guess I never got far enough with my failed degree in electronics to discover that there’s a fundamental component missing from the metaphorical toolbox.

But apparently there is… or there was. Now, though, the memristor is more than just a concept, and realising it may provide a key to building artificial intelligences… with a little help from slime molds:

Four interconnected things, mathematics says, can be related in six ways. Charge and current, and magnetic flux and voltage, are connected through their definitions. That’s two. Three more associations correspond to the three traditional circuit elements. A resistor is any device that, when you pass current through it, creates a voltage. For a given voltage a capacitor will store a certain amount of charge. Pass a current through an inductor, and you create a magnetic flux. That makes five. Something missing?

Indeed. Where was the device that connected charge and magnetic flux? The short answer was there wasn’t one. But there should have been.

It’s a fairly lengthy article that covers a lot of ground, so it’s hard to summarize with a quote or two. Go read the whole thing; not only is the science itself quite intriguing, it’s also an example of the better sort of journalism that New Scientist puts out.

Blog

AI up the game

1 Comment

cardsA fascinating article in the FT magazine over the weekend on the ongoing arms race between those who program the software bots in online gaming rooms, one Martin Smith, and those who play against them:

These are contests that take place on constantly shifting terrain. Smith releases his latest version of a program: it wins for a couple of weeks, then the humans figure out how to beat it and they win for a couple of weeks while Smith goes away and works on his software – algorithms, probability calculations, search techniques – and scratches his head. Then he comes back with a new version of the program that wins for a couple of weeks, while the humans go away and think about it. “We have this ratcheting up,” Smith says. “It’s a very intellectually rewarding thing.”
…
“There’s a very big difference between computer intelligence and human intelligence. This is clearly indicated in games. Back in the ’70s, it was considered that in order to get computers to play chess like a grandmaster, they had to think like grandmasters. That turned out to be wrong. Computers can play fantastic chess and they don’t do anything remotely like what human grandmasters do.”

It is interesting how the upgraded software eventually becomes beatable after sufficient practice by large groups of humans. It’s also interesting for the insight into what a particular flavour of AI researchers actually spend their time doing.

On the distinction between mind and computers, this article at The New Atlantis makes for an interesting read.

[image from Malcav on flickr]

Blog

21st Century digital boy – Milo, the virtual kid

3 Comments

He’s still only a demonstration at the moment, but maybe your kids will be hanging out with Milo in a few years’ time:

Milo is the creation of Peter Molyneux, founder of Lionhead Studios and developer of ambitious games such as “Black and White” and the “Fable” series. Those games tried to present players with moral choices that had consequences for their characters, and also tried to play on people’s real emotions.

Molyneux’s latest effort takes advantage of Microsoft’s new full-body controller for Xbox 360, known as Project Natal. The controller’s sensor bar tracks the real-world movements of Xbox players and translates them into the game, which allows them to practically play with Milo in person.

Yup – Milo is an AI avatar of a boy, and (by all accounts) an impressively convincing one. Here’s the demo video:

As LiveScience puts it:

The E3 demo shows Milo responding to a developer’s questions with some fairly convincing facial expressions, body behavior and voice tone. He even “talks” and looks at a real-world drawing, courtesy of the Natal controller scanning it into the game. It’s an impressive display that appears very human-like, and does not evoke any “uncanny valley” sensations of eerie or weird behavior that make people nervous.

Of course, that’s just the recorded demo. A Kotaku editor who got hands-on time with the Milo demo did run into moments of awkwardness, such as Milo waiting for him to say something. But he also described the magic of the virtual boy complimenting him on his blue shirt.

Molyneux continually beats a drum about “science fiction writers never having imagined such a technology”, and I’m pretty sure he’s wrong on that count, but I was genuinely blown away by that video, even after factoring in a degree of cynicism appropriate to a demonstration given at an industry junket.

Now, Milo as a playmate and companion for kids is a marketable deployment of this technology, sure. But wait until the beleaguered porn industry gets hold of the same algorithms…