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Category Archives: Artificial Intelligence

NSF Brings Together Leading Brains To Explore Artificial Intelligence

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September 10, 2013

Michael Harper for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

Scientists and robotics engineers have long looked to the human brain for inspiration when building out artificial intelligence. Theyve yet to build a machine that comes anywhere close to replicating the sophistication of the human brain, but theyve made great strides.

Now the National Science Foundation (NSF) wants to push this field of study further by giving the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) $25 million to establish the Center for Brains, Minds and Machines. Members from Harvard and other Ivy League schools as well as industrial partners such as Google and Microsoft will be a part of this group effort to deliver smarter machines in the near future. By crossing over disciplinary lines, the NSF hopes not only to move technology forward, but to provide a facility to train the next generation of engineers and scientists.

Understanding the brain is one of the grand scientific challenges at the intersection of the physical, life, behavioral and engineering sciences, said John Wingfield, assistant director of NSFs Biological Sciences Directorate in a press statement.

Despite major research and technological advances achieved in recent decades, a comprehensive understanding of the brain how thoughts, memories and intelligent behavior emerge from dynamic brain activity remains unexplained.

The Center for Brains, Minds and Machines will be staffed by ten MIT faculty members and five from Harvard. They will also be joined by faculty members from Cornell, Rockefeller University, UCLA, Stanford and the Allen Institute. IBM, Boston Dynamics, Rethihnk Robotics and Willow Garage will also provide their expertise as industrial partners in this venture.

Each of the partners involved has already been working to build intelligent machines machines which think in the same way the human mind has been doing for hundreds of thousands of years. Most notably, Google has been making headlines lately as they push forward with their driverless car program. Though Nissan has recently thrown down the gauntlet and hopes to beat them to the punch, Google plans to have the first commercially available autonomous vehicle on the road, capable of making the hundreds of snap decisions that human drivers normally make inside their natural brains.

IBM, in partnership with DARPA, recently announced theyve developed a programming language to facilitate brain-inspired machines. With a new architecture and new hardware, IBM says theyll be able to power devices which operate in a way weve never before seen.

Researchers from Stanford have been actively pursuing a computer which is built with genetic material, the same kind of stuff found floating around in essentially every human cell. In March they announced that they had developed transistors made completely out of bio material, and said they could one day soon put a computer in any living cell, further blurring the distinction between the brain and a machine.

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NSF Brings Together Leading Brains To Explore Artificial Intelligence

Military Mindset- Artificial Intelligence Vs Natural Intelligence… – Video

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Military Mindset- Artificial Intelligence Vs Natural Intelligence...
Our mindset is shaping the way we live, the way we think, the way we behave. We gradually must move away and replace this military type consciousness with a ...

By: IssacBenAvram

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Military Mindset- Artificial Intelligence Vs Natural Intelligence... - Video

Artificial intelligence first topic in speaker series

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Geneva Public Library Submitted column September 6, 2013 3:16PM

Larry Bartoszek will open the Geneva Library Foundation Speaker Series on Sept. 25 with a discussion of Human and Artificial Intelligence Are we building new tools or new people? | Submitted

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Artificial intelligence first topic in Geneva speaker series

Updated: September 6, 2013 3:24PM

Join us for our fall kickoff Sept. 25 to the highly successful speaker series when Larry Bartoszek walks us through the current research on artificial intelligence.

We will be introduced to current concepts and ideas about intelligence, robotics and nanotechnology. We will be asked to think about what it means to be human, so that if or when new intelligent things appear, we can decide how to treat them.

Here are some of the questions Bartoszek will ask us:

Is human intelligence different from everything else in the world, or just another product of evolution?

How do we know who has consciousness? Can it be rigorously defined and identified?

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Artificial intelligence first topic in speaker series

Could This New Artificial Intelligence Revolutionize Health Care?

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To most investors, Nuance Communications (NASDAQ: NUAN) is best known as the creator of Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL) virtual assistant, Siri.

However, Nuance's voice recognition products also have a major presence in the artificial intelligence and health care fields -- two major areas of growth benefiting from the rising demand for more cloud-based products and services.

Bringing Wintermute to lifeMost of Nuance's products aren't as easily recognizable as those from Apple or Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) , but they are equally ambitious, if not more so.

Nuance's Project Wintermute (sarcastically named after the insane AI of William Gibson's Neuromancer) is aiming to become the first cross-platform synchronized cloud assistant that can cross all boundaries between devices, brands, and operating systems. This means that if users were to pause a song or video on their Android phones, it could be resumed from the same spot on a different device, such as a tablet or a PC.

Wintermute originated from Nuance's Dragon TV voice control system, which was designed for set-top boxes, cable boxes, and smart TVs. The voice recognition system is a major improvement over Siri in that it understands complex, casual commands, such as "keep playing the song I was listening to" or "throw on the game." Like Siri, Wintermute is also programmed to interact with more natural and possibly humorous responses.

Building the perfect, seamless cloudAlthough Wintermute is still in the early stages of development, it will be a step up from current cloud services. For example, Google's cloud-based ecosystem -- which includes Maps, YouTube, Chrome and other services -- can save favorites, preferences and settings over the Internet so they can be accessed from other devices. However, with the exception of Google Docs, these settings and changes are not saved in real time. For example, a YouTube video can be saved, but not resumed, from another device.

More importantly, Wintermute saves a user's queries and learns from themin a similar way to Google's collection of stored Internet data, to predict future behavior and needs.

However, both Google and Apple are working on their own projects. Google is following up on AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton's research, known as "deep learning" technology, and Apple is working on a "Nuance-free" version of Siri that could cut the company out of the loop.

Applications in health careThat desire to create a perfect cross-platform cloud solution opens the door to fascinating opportunities in the health care industry, where real-time results are a necessity in medical situations.

Nuance's health care business is already booming. Last quarter, the company's health care unit reported a 29.1% year-on-year gain in revenue -- a stark contrast to its slumping mobile and consumer business, which reported a 16.2% decline. Nuance's main health care products includeClintegrity 360, Dragon Medical 360 and PowerScribe 360 -- all of which use voice capture, recognition, and documentation to aid physicians in the improvement of their daily workflow.

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Could This New Artificial Intelligence Revolutionize Health Care?

Paul G. Allen Appoints Head of Artificial Intelligence Institute

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SEATTLE, Sept. 4, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Vulcan Inc. Chairman Paul G. Allen announced today that Dr. Oren Etzioni has joined his family of organizations as the Executive Director of his artificial intelligence institute based in Seattle. Etzioni will be in charge of expanding the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence with new hires, and directing and developing a wide range of AI initiatives.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130904/SF73454)

Etzioni joins Allen's institute from the University of Washington's Computer Science Department, where he was the Washington Research Foundation Entrepreneurship Professor and Director of the Turing Center. His research has focused on solving fundamental problems in AI, with an emphasis on automatic learning of knowledge from text.

"Oren is exceptionally talented, and he shares my vision and enthusiasm for the exciting possibilities in the field of AI,including opportunities to help computers acquire knowledge and reason,"said Allen. "I've been very encouraged by the tremendous strides we've made in brain research at the Allen Institute for Brain Science over the past decade. With Oren's leadership, we will apply that same model to explore the critical questions in AI today."

"I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to launch a major AI research institute in Seattle," said Etzioni. "Our goal is to revolutionize the field, and with Paul's vision and support, the sky's the limit."

A faculty member at the University of Washington since 1991, Etzioni holds a bachelor's in computer science from Harvard University and Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University. He is a recipient of a National Young Investigator Award, a Robert S. Engelmore Memorial Award, and was selected as an Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Fellow. In addition to working as a venture partner with Madrona Venture Group, he has founded several startup companies, including the shopping site Decide.com and the price prediction engine Farecast, acquired by Microsoft in 2008 to become the foundation for Bing Travel.

"Oren has a gift for imagining possibilities, which is key when you are working in these uncharted areas,"said Allan Jones, CEO of the Allen Institute for Brain Science. "I'm excited to see another Paul Allen institute take off, and look forward to finding ways for the Institute for Brain Science to collaborate with this one down the road."

Etzioni, who has assumed his new position this week, will immediately begin his search for talented AI scientists and staff to join the institute team.

About Paul G. Allen

Paul G. Allen is a leading investor, entrepreneur and philanthropist who has given more than $1.5 billion to charitable causes over his lifetime. He founded Vulcan Inc. in 1986 with Jody Allen to oversee his business and philanthropic activities. Today, that Seattle-based company oversees a wide range of Allen's investments and projects throughout the world. In 2003, Allen created the Allen Institute for Brain Science to accelerate understanding of the human brain in health and disease. The nonprofit pursues unprecedented large-scale research initiatives that result in knowledge, data and tools intended to fuel discovery throughout the broader scientific community. Using the Allen Institute for Brain Science as a model, Allen recently established the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Seattle to explore opportunities for development in the field of AI. Allen is the co-founder of the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, which has awarded over $469 million to non-profits in the Pacific Northwest and beyond, as well as the founder of the EMP Museum, the Flying Heritage Collection, and the Living Computer Museum.

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Paul G. Allen Appoints Head of Artificial Intelligence Institute


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