MetaFilter posts tagged with artificialintelligence

Catch you later.

knave — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:43:43 -0800

Two AI Pioneers. Two Bizarre Suicides. Wired's David Kushner examines the work of two young, competitive AI researchers, and the eerie circumstances of their deaths.

Kicking koopas and stomping goombas, for Science!

tybeet — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 06:20:30 -0800

A couple of professors, in collaboration with two upcoming IEEE conferences, have organized a Mario A.I. Competition (via), inviting programmers to create controllers for a modified version of Infinite Mario Brothers (previously). One contender has stepped up and posted a demo of his controller in action. Overview (from the site): "This competition is about learning, or otherwise developing, the best controller (agent) for a version of Super Mario Bros. The controller's job is to win as many levels (of increasing difficulty) as possible. Each time step (24 per second in simualated time) the controller has to decide what action to take (left, right, jump etc) in response to the environment around Mario. We are basing the competition on a heavily modified version of the Infinite Mario Bros game by Markus Persson. That game is an all-Java tribute to the Nintendo's seminal Super Mario Bros game, with the added benefit of endless random level generation. We believe that playing this game well is a challenge worthy of the best players, the best programmers and the best learning algorithms alike."

A robot Hitler?

supercres — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 06:33:44 -0800

Electronic Evolution: Research Show Robots Forming Human-like Societies

Within fifty generations of this electronic evolution, co-operative societies of robots had formed - helping each other to find food and avoid poison. Even more amazing is the emergence of cheats and martyrs. Transistorized traitors emerged which wrongly identified poison zone as food, luring their trusting brethren to their doom before scooting off to silently charge in a food zone - presumably while using a mechanical claw to twirl a silicon carving of a handlebar moustache.

More than just Google on Steroids

filthy light thief — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 12:45:40 -0800

IBM Research is planning on working on taking artificial intelligence beyond master-level Chess (previously), and on to question answering with a computing system that has been in development for the past two years. Named "Watson," after the I.B.M. founder, Thomas J. Watson Sr., the system will challenge human contestants at Jeopardy (previously). Watson's success depends as much on its ability to understand and respond to the subtleties of human language as it does on the extent of its knowledge database. Don't worry, Alex Trebek knows what's in store. (via)

ANTS in Space

Kronos_to_Earth — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 23:22:09 -0800

The Autonomous NanoTechnology Swarm (ANTS) "...is a generic mission architecture consisting of miniaturized, autonomous, self-similar, reconfigurable, addressable components forming structures. The components/structures have wide spatial distribution and multi-level organization. This ‘swarm’ behavior is inspired by the success of social insect colonies...." ANTS may one day teem through the solar system.... (last two links large QT files) There's quite a number of video clips on the site, collected here.

sudo apt-get install creepyrobotgirlfriend2.0

loquacious — Tue, 27 May 2008 21:40:04 -0800

The uncanny valley just got deeper. "Treat yourself to the perfect woman."

It doesn't matter how much security you put on the box. Humans are not secure.

desjardins — Wed, 21 May 2008 15:12:47 -0800

The AI-Box Experiments. The hypothesis: "A transhuman can take over a human mind through a text-only terminal." Does Artifical Intelligence create moral monsters (PDF) ? Can we create friendly AI?

Matchbox Computing

Fuzzy Skinner — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 06:50:06 -0800

"Once you've constructed your Hexapawn opponent, it's time to start playing against it... If you play this game repeatedly ... you'll quickly notice that your matchbox opponent plays better and better until it is unbeatable!" Martin Gardner created a game called Hexapawn, and also devised an artificially intelligent opponent you can build yourself out of matchboxes and colored beads. Bonus link: An interview with Martin Gardner.

Victim of The Brain

empath — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 05:44:26 -0800

Victim of the Brain A 'docudrama' about Godel, Escher and Bach author, Douglas Hofstadter, and philosopher Dan Dennett produced in 1988. I'm not sure how to describe it, other than incredibly strange and fascinating.

Jeff Hawkins unleashes his brain: Numenta's new AI platform

grumblebee — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 13:35:42 -0800

Jeff Hawkins, co-founder of Palm and Handspring, has started a new company, called Numenta, to test his controversial theory of intelligence. Whether you find his theory plausible or not, his book, "On Intelligence" is fascinating. Numenta is attempting to build A.I.s using Hawkins' theory as a backbone. They've developed a software engine and a Python-based API, which they've made public (as free downloads), so that hackers can start playing. They've also released manuals, a whitepaper (pdf) and videos [1] [2]. (At about 30:18 into the first video, Hawkins demonstrates, with screenshots, the first app which uses his system.)

Nullity and Perspex Machines

treepour — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 12:07:57 -0800

Dr James Anderson, from the University of Reading's computer science department, claims to have defined what it means to divide by zero. It's so simple, he claims, that he's even taught it to high school students [via Digg]. You just have to work with a new number he calls Nullity (RealPlayer video). According to Anderson's site The Book of Paragon, the creation, innovation, or discovery of nullity is a step toward describing a "perspective simplex, or perspex [ . . . ] a simple physical thing that is both a mind and a body." Anderson claims that Nullity permits the definition of transreal arithmetic (pdf), a "total arithmetic . . . with no arithmetical exceptions," thus removing what the fictional dialogue No Zombies, Only Feelies? identifies as the "homunculus problem" in mathematics: the need for human intervention to sort out "corner cases" which are not defined.

We don't need no automated porn detectors

GeorgeHernandez — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 10:50:54 -0800

Detecting the erotic (like detecting the humorous) is one of those things that people can do better than any known machine. This new patent seems largely based on "Finding Naked People", a paper in the field of Computer vision.

Thinking machine

growabrain — Thu, 28 Apr 2005 07:15:29 -0800

Play chess against the computer & Watch it think.

Artificial Intelligence

plep — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 09:44:58 -0800

Pygmalion stories in literature and art. The myth of the scuptor who fell in love with a statue and prayed for it to be brought to life.
Related :- Galatea, a piece of interactive fiction which allows you to interact with a interpretation of the living statue (by Emily Short); Wikipedia entry on the myth.

Comments open; continually revised

painquale — Mon, 03 Jan 2005 16:45:49 -0800

The Ethics of Deep Self-Modification. What will happen when machines gain the ability to modify their own psychology? Do we have a responsibility to step in? What happens when we have the ability to modify ourselves? Philosopher Peter Suber has dedicated himself to issues of self-modification... not just in psychology, but also in constitutional law. Small wonder that this is the guy who invented Nomic. His site is littered with great stuff; he now is primarily involved with the open access movement. Check out his open access primer and blog.

Let's play 20 questions!

jeremy b — Sun, 12 Dec 2004 16:50:56 -0800

20 questions, AI style. Pretty amazing... and addictive. It guessed "Superman" in 15 questions, "harmonica" in 18..."tampon" in 20.

Thinking Machine 4

e.e. coli — Wed, 27 Oct 2004 12:44:09 -0800

Thinking Machine 4 explores the invisible, elusive nature of thought. Play chess against a transparent intelligence, its evolving thought process visible on the board before you.

From Martin Wattenberg (with Marek Walczak); they have been noted here before.

ChatNannies fools New Scientist and others

mockerybird — Tue, 23 Mar 2004 15:40:14 -0800

ChatNannies: the first real AI bot, or a hoax? Cameron Marlow's private interview with the ChatNannie bot (which was recently reported by New Scientist) reveals that it has perhaps one of the most sophisticated artificial intelligence engines ever devised. So far neither New Scientist nor any of the other media outlets that posted the story have shown the slightest hint of skepticism about its authenticity. Andy Baio's additional research digs up some information that further places ChatNannie's existence in doubt, but how does one conclusively prove that Jim Wightman's bot isn't for real? If it is for real, the New Scientist probably has a much bigger story to report--AI has been solved!

I love Lucy

nylon — Fri, 27 Feb 2004 09:52:26 -0800

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.

Heaven or Hell? It's Your Choice

metameme — Mon, 07 Jul 2003 14:54:43 -0800

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?

The Personality Forge

plep — Fri, 16 May 2003 04:29:22 -0800

The Personality Forge. Create an AI bot, and set it loose.

they've got god...

moonbird — Fri, 17 Jan 2003 12:39:24 -0800

they've got god... world's first completely artificial lifeform created. ethical, spiritual, and social implications a-go-go, via blogdex.

zpousman — Fri, 20 Sep 2002 06:34:00 -0800

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.

sherman — Sat, 08 Jun 2002 12:17:54 -0800

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)

moz — Mon, 04 Feb 2002 10:17:22 -0800

Little Computer People was a game produced in the '80s and at a time when the gaming landscape was very different from today's market. The point? Life.