Meet Lucy. She sure ain't pretty, but she's certainly unique. Steve Grand (interview
1,
2) one of the brains behind
Creatures, has been working for the last three years on building a robot orangutan
in his own house. Those is the South Wales area can catch Steve speaking about his experiences
next month. Steve may well be a non-establishment genius, but when I see pictures like
this, I can't help thinking it's
already been done.
posted by nylon
on Feb 27, 2004 -
6 comments
Heaven or Hell? It's Your Choice
A new
shareware E-Book is out, penned by the likes of
Captain Crunch and
Matthew Smith, that makes the claims:
Don't bother planning your pension, the world is about to change and we can prove it, please just take 2 minutes out of your life to read this page, it may change your life.
Artificial intelligence is coming and it may become smarter than any of us. Smart networks using grid technologies could become a threat to us ALL, this is the real Matrix.
From Dot.Net to the X-Box, from M-Theory to the Playstation 3 the future is V.R. / A.I. and Nanotech.
If you ever wanted to know what the system is and what it has done to you, then this ebook is for you.
You left school, you were standardised, you took an exam, you were graded, they made you believe in money, this is the last great social control mechanism. There's more to this, than you can imagine.
...and there you have it. Or do you?
posted by metameme
on Jul 7, 2003 -
24 comments
Review on SF Site Here’s a question: what if the Wachowski brothers’ 1999 film
The Matrix was not just an entertaining piece of sf-action-adventure hokum. What if, instead, it is all true? Imagine it as a message sent via the medium of the Matrix itself (Hollywood cinema) from someplace outside the Matrix, to wake us up to our human condition, to alert us all to the fact ‘that we are slaves’. If so, then we are not living the lives we thought we were living; we are instead inhabiting a virtual reality composed by oppressive machine-intelligences. What if this were literally true? How would it appear to us? Well, clearly, it would appear exactly as our lives presently appear to us. Unless we get ‘unplugged’, unless we become enlightened, we cannot see past the illusion that has been created for us.
What should we do in this circumstance? Should we collaborate with the machines and not rock the boat? Or should we fight, free ourselves and eventually free everybody else? Clearly, says
The Matrix Warrior, this latter. This is a book that proceeds from the assumption that the situation described in The Matrix is real, and tells you where to go from there.
posted by metameme
on Apr 20, 2003 -
54 comments
Another year, another Chat. This year's
Loebner Prize competition will be held next week in Atlanta, GA
(at SciTrek and GSU). The yearly contest is a modified
"Turing test" (seminal paper here) where people try to guess whether they're chatting with computers or with people.
There are some resources for
rolling your own
AI bot, but before you begin, think about these two sentences and you'll see what a serious problem natural language is: "We gave the monkeys the bananas because they were
hungry" and "We gave the monkeys the bananas because they were
ripe"
(nod to this guy for the example). You have to know a lot about the world and the things in it to disambiguate the
"they" in those sentences.
posted by zpousman
on Sep 20, 2002 -
15 comments
A search engine to help you find things you don't know about. gnod stands for The
Global
Network
of
Dreams, and is a test of artificial intelligence. Building a database from the user choices, it helps you find books, music and misc. other by having you enter in things that you like, and based on what other people like, it shows you stuff you ought to like, too (which is slightly different from what Amazon does, showing you what other people have
bought). Don't know if all the Amazon Associate links detract from it all or not
posted by crunchland
on Aug 30, 2002 -
25 comments
"When he can't get along with the real world, Wallace goes back to the only thing he has left: his computer. Each morning, he wakes before dawn and watches conversations stream by on his screen. Thousands of people flock to his Web site every day from all over the world to talk to his creation, a robot called Alice. It is the best artificial-intelligence program on the planet, a program so eerily human that some mistake it for a real person. Richard Wallace has created an artificial life form that gets along with people better than he does."
A fascinating article (NYT), how a beautiful and original mind survives in our corporate society with the help of "a daily cocktail of psychoactive drugs, including Topamax, an anti-epileptic that acts as a mood stabilizer, and Prozac. Marijuana, too -- most afternoons, he'll roll about four or five joints the size of his index finger."
posted by semmi
on Jul 9, 2002 -
18 comments
Meet Cyc. This endeavor to produce AI has been going on since
1984. In ’86 it asked if it were human; it later asked “if any other computers were engaged in such a project”. It’s strength lies in a database of assumptions and generalities, in the hopes that it will eventually “generalize as much as possible until further generalization would be false”. Is this going to be the breakthrough, or does it just seem really cool? (yes, via
Slashdot)
posted by sherman
on Jun 8, 2002 -
9 comments
Thank you very much, Mr. Roboto. Both Honda and Sony have unveiled the newest versions of their humanoid robots. Honda favours a more practical design, while Sony's is geared for entertainment. Having just watched
AI the other night, I'm wondering when and if people would want to have one around the house.
posted by Stuart_R
on Mar 19, 2002 -
21 comments
The Robots Are Coming (Yawwwn...). Yet another corporate futurist (with a
bizarre 1996 Mosaic-type website) telling us that A.I. will deliver the "homework" robot by 2006 (now, is that January or December?). Also, look out for an
emotionally responsive Barbie:
"We already have technologies that can measure stress, using simple cues like skin condition and temperature and it will be easy to put these in Barbie dolls which will be able to talk to little girls when they are upset and ask what is wrong." Ech.
posted by theplayethic
on Jan 22, 2002 -
21 comments
Teddy is the best character to come out of movies in years. Shame about the movie.
Seen it?
posted by Frasermoo
on Sep 26, 2001 -
11 comments
Are machines going to take over our planet? Stephen Hawking sure thinks so. Is he just making a fuss about nothing?
posted by yevge
on Sep 4, 2001 -
30 comments
Given the recent
cinematic floppery of late, I was pleasantly surprised when I came across an
article about real-world Artificial Intelligence that was written in a solid down-to-Earth manner about some very technical concepts. If you're into AI it should be worth a look to you. How would you like to have a computer that learns and adapts? Heh...how'd you like your computer to pout because you won't buy the latest processor? ;}
posted by Spanktacular
on Aug 29, 2001 -
5 comments
A.I.'s chatbot from the movie's website is pretty nifty, even if it doesn't know David or recognize any other obvious questions about the movie.
posted by Zebulun
on Jul 11, 2001 -
41 comments
Silly use of Eliza for an A.I. review. I just saw it yesterday and I don't see this as Speilberg doing Kubrick as much as Spielberg taking (stealing?) all of Philip K. Dick's tricks and putting together a movie slightly more audience friendly than Blade Runner. (more)
posted by skallas
on Jun 30, 2001 -
51 comments
Not-So-Deep-Blue! Why wait for Spielberg's
AI. Play 20 Questions with a computer
now.
(Click on Play 20Q, then Anonymous Login if you prefer not to register).
posted by geronimo_rex
on Jun 8, 2001 -
4 comments
It's raining cats and dogs this summer! GEEZ!
Pearl Harbor,
Shrek, and
The Mummy Returns are already in the theaters. This weekend we get
Swordfish,
Evolution, and even
Atlantis: The Lost Empire in limited release. What's next? Oh nuthin. Just stuff
Angelina Jolie's been kicking around,
Eddie Murphy's little pet project, something
Jay & Silent Bob tossed off in the shower,
Stephen Spielberg's thoughtful adult film coupled with his
token bloodfest for the kiddies...
Final Fantasy,
Planet of the Apes,
Kiss of the Dragon, a painfully predictable looking sequel to
American Pie, a predictable but funny-lookin' sequel to
Rush Hour, and a predictable sequel to
Scary Movie,
and the ever present
SO MUCH MORE! I skipped half the movies coming out but those are the highlights. Is this gonna be the best summer blockbuster festival ever thrust upon the world's populous, or are we true fans of cinema about to once again take it up the ass? Whatcha think?
posted by ZachsMind
on Jun 6, 2001 -
102 comments
As noted earlier this
month, there are slew of websites connected to Spielberg’s AI. As it turns out, they are all part of an
intricate game that stands to last long after the movie comes out. That game is called “movie marketing,” albiet terribly engrossing marketing.
posted by capt.crackpipe
on Apr 30, 2001 -
7 comments
A.I. is already into advertising. BELLADERMA-SRL-IT.COM, INOURIMAGE.ORG, METROPOLITANLIVINGHOMES.COM, DONU-TECH.COM, ROGUERETRIEVAL.COM, SPCB.ORG, ELECTRIC-TOYLAND.COM, KATENEI.COM, FAMILYCHAN.ORG, MARTINSWINTONDESIGNS.COM, RATIONAL-HATTER.COM, UNITE-AND-RESIST.ORG, JEANINESALLA.COM, MARTINSWINTON.COM, CORONERSWEB.ORG, TREACLE-WELL.NET, ONE-LUMP-OR-TWO.NET, OFFWITHHISHEAD.NET, ALEPH-NAUGHT.ORG, ELIZAS-TEAROOM.NET, RAVEN-LIKE-WRITING-DESK.NET, www.bangaloreworldu-in.co.nz are all part of the a.i. website.
more inside...
posted by tiaka
on Apr 11, 2001 -
13 comments
Peter Molyneaux , arguably the greatest game designer of all time, does it again with Black and White. I saw this game at the Game Developers' Conference a couple weekends ago - it really is amazing. It must have the most sophisticated AI of any game to date.
posted by SilentSalamander
on Apr 8, 2001 -
17 comments
VR Pioneer Jaron Lanier trashes AI and futurists and makes a case that software designers that engage in this groupthink produce user-unfriendly software.
posted by skallas
on Oct 3, 2000 -
4 comments
Clicking for consciousness Depressingly reductionist. It is wrong to think that if we can't tell the difference between a binary machine in a box and a person in a box we should behave as if there were no difference.
posted by scum
on Sep 1, 2000 -
3 comments
Oh my lord. The
Guess the Dictator/Sit-com character site works by asking a series of questions about a person you have to think of. I selected an obscure sit-com character, Chris Elliot from Fox's ill-fated "
Get a Life" series. If you would have asked me to bet money on it before proceeding, I would have gladly put $20 on the site not figuring it out. After about 15 questions, it guessed right. This is scary stuff. [via
rebeccablood]
posted by mathowie
on Feb 26, 2000 -
15 comments
