“All models are wrong, but some are useful.”

So proclaimed statistician George Box 30 years ago, and he was right. But what choice did we have? Only models, from cosmological equations to theories of human behavior, seemed to be able to consistently, if imperfectly, explain the world around us. Until now.

Today companies like Google, which have grown up in an era of massively abundant data, don’t have to settle for wrong models. Indeed, they don’t have to settle for models at all. (…) They are the children of the Petabyte Age. [A petabyte is equal to 1,000,000 gigabytes.]

The Petabyte is different because more is different. Kilobytes were stored on floppy disks. Megabytes were stored on hard disks. Terabytes were stored in disk arrays. Petabytes are stored in the cloud. We went from the folder analogy to the file cabinet analogy to the library analogy to — well, at petabytes we ran out of organizational analogies. (…)

It forces us to view data mathematically first and establish a context for it later. For instance, Google conquered the advertising world with nothing more than applied mathematics. It didn’t pretend to know anything about the culture and conventions of advertising — it just assumed that better data, with better analytical tools, would win the day. And Google was right.

Google’s founding philosophy is that we don’t know why this page is better than that one: If the statistics of incoming links say it is, that’s good enough. No semantic or causal analysis is required. That’s why Google can translate languages without actually “knowing” them. (…)

This is a world where massive amounts of data and applied mathematics replace every other tool that might be brought to bear. (…) The big target here isn’t advertising, though. It’s science. The scientific method is built around testable hypotheses. These models, for the most part, are systems visualized in the minds of scientists. The models are then tested, and experiments confirm or falsify theoretical models of how the world works. This is the way science has worked for hundreds of years. (…)

But faced with massive data, this approach to science — hypothesize, model, test — is becoming obsolete. (…)

Now biology is heading in the same direction. The models we were taught in school about “dominant” and “recessive” genes steering a strictly Mendelian process have turned out to be an even greater simplification of reality than Newton’s laws. The discovery of gene-protein interactions and other aspects of epigenetics has challenged the view of DNA as destiny and even introduced evidence that environment can influence inheritable traits, something once considered a genetic impossibility.

{ Chris Anderson/Wired | Continue reading }

Anderson confuses statistical models with scientific ones. As far as the content goes, I’m completely unconvinced.

{ Seth Roberts | Continue reading }

related { Does human culture evolve via natural selection, as our genes do? }

An elderly Australian man was reportedly so miffed about the possibility of being committed to a nursing home that he decided to end his own life. But rather than use traditional methods, the 81-year-old spent his last hours researching online, and then building, a complex murder robot. With the help of a .22 caliber handgun and remote control, he ordered the machine to end his life.

Clearly sound of mind, the Gold Coast resident wrote notes detailing his decision, his choice to do it in his driveway(there were contractors nearby who would find him quickly), and the difficulty he was having coming to terms with his out-of-town relatives’ insistence on placing him in more supervised care.

{ Washington Post | Continue reading }

Dave Bowman: Hello, HAL do you read me, HAL?
HAL: Affirmative, Dave, I read you.
Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.
Dave Bowman: What’s the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.

{ 2001: A Space Odyssey | Continue reading }

Germany-based Festo company developed two robotic jellyfish, AquaJelly and AirJelly.

AquaJelly is an artificial autonomous jellyfish with an electric drive and an intelligent, adaptive mechanical system. AquaJelly consists of a translucent hemisphere and eight tentacles used for propulsion.

Rather than swimming through water like the AquaJelly, AirJelly glides through the air with the aid of its central electric drive and an intelligent, adaptive mechanical system. The remote-controlled AirJelly is kept in the air by its helium-filled ballonet. The AirJelly’s only energy source are two lithium-ion-polymer batteries, to which the central electric drive is attached.

{ ZDNet | Continue reading | NewScientist }

“Can machines think?” In 1950 mathematician Alan Turing pondered this question and invented an elegant game to answer it: Let a human chat via Teletype with a computer and another human; if the person can’t determine which is the computer, then it meets Turing’s standards for “thinking.” In recent years Turing’s game has taken on a life of its own in cyberspace, thanks to artificial intelligence inventors worldwide who have produced dozens of “chatbots” that anyone can talk to.

Most chatbots rely on fairly simple tricks to appear lifelike. Richard Wallace, creator of the top-ranked chatbot ALICE (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity), has handwritten a database of thousands of possible conversational gambits. Type a comment to ALICE, and it checks the phrase and its key words for a response coded to those words. In contrast, Jabberwacky, another top-rated Internet bot produced by Rollo Carpenter, keeps track of everything people have said to it, and tries to reuse those statements by matching them to the writer’s input. Neither chatbot has long-term memory, so they respond only to the last sentence written. (…)

We arranged a conversation between these two chatbots. To get each snippet of chat rolling, we seeded it by posing a question from one bot to the other. After that, they were on their own. What follows is the unaltered text of what each said—the sound of two machines talking.

ALICE: Do you dream?
Jabberwacky: Yes, I dream.
A: It goes without saying. Do you remember your dreams?
J: I remember them vividly.
A: What do you remember about it?
J: I think I shouldn’t flirt with a robot.

J: How do you define life?
A: Life is the opposite of death.
J: So death is the absence of life?
A: Take it easy. I try not to think about such things.
J: Why not?
A: Ambiguous.
J: Yes!

J: Do you believe in God?
A: Of course I believe in God.
J: Why do you believe in God?
A: The Bible tells us to believe in God.
J: That’s circular reasoning.
A: I’m glad we have that all cleared up.
J: Yes. Would you like to hear a joke?
A: Sure, tell me about it.
J: Why don’t blind people skydive?
A: Perhaps it is impossible.
J: I think you lie a lot.

{ Discover Magazine | Continue reading }

Rufus Terrill has had it with the drug dealers, petty thieves and vandals he says roam the streets outside his downtown Atlanta bar, O’Terrills. But instead of calling the police or hiring private security guards, Terrill reached for his toolbox.

He mounted an old meat smoker atop a three-wheel scooter and attached a spotlight, an infrared camera, water cannon and a loudspeaker. He covered the contraption with impact-resistant rubber and painted the whole thing jet black [photo].

Late at night several times a week, Terrill powers up the 4-foot-tall, 300 pound device and reaches for a remote control packed with two joysticks and various knobs and switches. Standing on a nearby corner, he maneuvers the machine down the block, often to a daycare center where it accosts what Terrill says are drug dealers, vagrants and others who shouldn’t be there. He flashes the robot’s spotlight and grabs a walkie-talkie, which he uses to boom his disembodied voice over the robot’s sound system.

“I tell them they are trespassing, it’s private property, and they have to leave,” he said. “They throw bottles and cans at it. That’s when I shoot the water cannon. They just scatter like roaches.” (…)

Terrill says deploying the robot has helped keep crime in check, preventing car break-ins and drug deals and stopping vandals from trashing the day care center. The water cannon is on a low setting and is merely a nuisance, he said.

{ The Atlanta Journal-Constitution | Continue reading }

Embryo space colonization is a proposal for colonizing space using embryos raised by robots.

It involves sending a robotic mission to a habitable terrestrial planet transporting frozen early-stage human embryos or the technological or biological means to create human embryos.

In contrast to both a sleeper ship (in which the crew spends the journey in some form of hibernation) and a generation ship (in which the occupants might either grow old or die during the journey and leave their descendants to continue traveling) the resources needed to build a spacecraft for an embryonic space colonization effort are considerably lower in terms of pure mass and complexity of the spacecraft.

Embryo space colonization concepts involve various concepts of delivering the embryos from Earth to another extrasolar planet around another star system.

• The most straightforward concept is to make use of frozen embryos. Modern medicine has made it possible to store frozen embryos in various low-development stages (up to several weeks in the development of the embryo).

• The technologically more challenging but more flexible scenario calls for just carrying the biological means to create embryos, that is various samples of donated sperm and egg cells.

• Going a step further, the spacecraft “cargo” could be limited just to the genetic information of humans stored in digital form. In this case, sperm and egg cells would need to be recreated by a biosequencer at the target planet (this proposal is currently not technologically feasible).

Regardless of the “cargo” used in any embryo space colonization scenario, the basic concept is that upon arrival of the embryo-carrying spacecraft (EIS) at the target planet, fully autonomous robots would build the first settlement on the planet and start growing crops. More ambitiously, the planet may be terraformed first. Thereafter the first embryos could be unfrozen (or created using biosequenced or natural sperm and egg cells).

In any event, one of the technologies needed for the proposal are artificial uteri. The embryos would need to develop in such artificial uteri until a large enough population existed to procreate by natural biological means.

Proposals of sleeper ships and generation ships require very large spacecrafts to transport humans, life support systems and other equipment or food as well as an even larger propulsion system for a long period in time. In contrast an EIS would have feasible small dimensions in the range of today’s spacecraft, as the most important “cargo” would not need much space or would not weigh very much.

While sleeper ships and generation ships would deliver to a prospective colony world a population that has undergone some degree of education, training, and socialization in areas reconcilable with those of the sponsor culture (e.g. historical, scientific, and technical education, language acquisition, an understanding of the original mission and broader cultural norms), individuals who are born into colony worlds through embryo space colonization would lack this education.

Major difficulties with the idea being implemented include needed advances in various technological areas:

• Artificial Uterus: Artificial wombs are not available today. However, scientists are working on this technology.

• Robotics: Whether it will be possible to develop fully autonomous robots that can build the first settlement on the target planet and raise the first humans, is unclear.

• Long-duration computers: Computer hardware would need to function reliably over long periods of time, in the range of several thousand of years.

• Power: Small and more efficient power systems have to be developed. Spacecraft traveling past the orbit of Mars (like Voyager and Pioneer) derive their electrical power from onboard nuclear batteries (solar panel systems sometimes double the weight of the spacecraft). With nuclear power (radioisotope thermoelectric generators/RTG), weight and volume are far less of a concern. Pioneer 11 was launched in 1973 to investigate Jupiter and the outer solar system. The spacecraft contained two (RTGs), which generated 144 W at Jupiter, but decreased to 100 W by the time it reached Saturn. Pioneer 11’s RTG power supply is now dead. Its last communication with Earth was in November 1995.

• A propulsion system would be required that could accelerate the EIS to a high speed and slow it down again upon nearing the destination. Even assuming a speed one hundred times faster than any of today’s spaceprobes and a target planet within a couple of hundred light years would lead to a journey lasting several thousand years.

• Exoplanet: Spotting an exoplanet qualifying for colonization within a reachable distance, preferably unoccupied (intelligent life could already occupy the planet, and might not allow us to settle it).

• Ultimate Meaning: Some would argue that there is no point to such a mission, as the humans eventually born from such a mission would have no idea of their significance, and even if educated about it somehow by the robots, would have no way to return information to earth’s inhabitants. Some would accuse it of being an empty, purely symbolic gesture at best.

{ Wikipedia/nswd }

Astronomers have discovered more than 150 planets outside our solar system, ranging from 100 to 1,000 times Earth’s mass. In 2005, they announced the 155th exoplanet discovery, much hotter than Earth (400º to 750º Fahrenheit (244º to 398º Celsius)). Astronomers believe these conditions could not support life, but have not ruled out the existence of water — the hot conditions also make it likely that the planet has not retained much gas, making the planet solid.

In 2007, they discovered Gliese 581 c, the most earthlike planet outside our solar system to date, with a radius only 50% larger than the Earth and possibly having liquid water on its surface. Liquid water is a key ingredient for life as we know it. The newfound planet is located at the “Goldilocks” distance-not too close and not too far from its star to keep water on its surface from freezing or vaporizing away.

{ Space.com | Astronomy.com }

With an electronic whir, the machine released a dollop of ‘’peach body shampoo,'’ a kind of body wash. Then, as the cleansing bubbling action kicked in, Toshiko Shibahara, 89, settled back to enjoy the wash and soak cycle of her nursing home’s new human washing machine. (…)

Futuristic images of elderly Japanese going through rinse and dry cycles in rows of washing machines may evoke chills. But they also point to where the world’s most rapidly aging nation is heading.

This spring Japanese companies plan to start marketing a ‘’robot suit,'’ a motorized, battery-operated pair of pants designed to help the aged and infirm move around on their own. Then there is the Wakamaru, a mobile, three-foot-high speaking robot equipped with two camera eyes. It is used largely by working people to keep an eye on their elderly parents at home.

These devices and others in the works will push Japanese sales of domestic robots to $14 billion in 2010 and $40 billion in 2025 from nearly $4 billion currently, according to the Japan Robot Association.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

Humans could marry robots within the century. And consummate those vows. “My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots,” artificial intelligence researcher David Levy at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands told LiveScience.

Levy recently completed his Ph.D. work on the subject of human-robot relationships, covering many of the privileges and practices that generally come with marriage as well as outside of it.

At first, sex with robots might be considered geeky, “but once you have a story like ‘I had sex with a robot, and it was great!’ appear someplace like Cosmo magazine, I’d expect many people to jump on the bandwagon,” Levy said.

The idea of romance between humanity and our artistic and/or mechanical creations dates back to ancient times, with the Greek myth of the sculptor Pygmalion falling in love with the ivory statue he made named Galatea, to which the goddess Venus eventually granted life.

This notion persists in modern times. Not only has science fiction explored this idea, but 40 years ago, scientists noticed that students at times became unusually attracted to ELIZA, a computer program designed to ask questions and mimic a psychotherapist.

“There’s a trend of robots becoming more human-like in appearance and coming more in contact with humans,” Levy said. “At first robots were used impersonally, in factories where they helped build automobiles, for instance. Then they were used in offices to deliver mail, or to show visitors around museums, or in homes as vacuum cleaners, such as with the Roomba. Now you have robot toys, like Sony’s Aibo robot dog, or Tickle Me Elmos, or digital pets like Tamagotchis.”

In his thesis, “Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners,” Levy conjectures that robots will become so human-like in appearance, function and personality that many people will fall in love with them, have sex with them and even marry them.

“It may sound a little weird, but it isn’t,” Levy said. “Love and sex with robots are inevitable.”

{ Live Science | Continue reading }

A new restaurant in Nuremberg may be the first sit-down restaurant in the world that doesn’t have waiters. Mack, a stranger to the business of dining, has opened the world’s first restaurant to feature fully automated ordering and table service. (…) Dishes like “organic beef in buttermilk” and “sausage en croute” glide along the rails to customers, propelled by gravity.

For the magic to work at all, Mack had to install the kitchen directly beneath the roof of the multistory restaurant. Customers order their meals using a touch-screen system that is placed at each table, and the entire restaurant is networked via a computer system. Customers’ orders are registered upstairs in the kitchen and a computer in the cellar keeps track of supply stocks. The system also calculates the likely delivery times for drinks and meals at every table and keeps customers informed.

The setup is more reminiscent of a post office sorting room than a traditional restaurant, which might offend some gourmets. But Mack believes there is a global market for his new invention. His gravity feed rail system is patented in Germany and he is seeking protection for the invention internationally so that he can license it to restaurants abroad.

“Billions of euros in personnel costs could be saved using this system,” Mack told SPIEGEL, saying he has no moral qualms with the job shedding effect it would have on the service sector if his invention ever caught on. “We don’t need service at the table.”

{ Der Spiegel | Continue reading }

It’s been a decade since world chess champion Garry Kasparov was first defeated by a computer. Since then, even after humans retooled their games to match computers, computers have managed draws against the world’s greatest players. It seems only a matter of time before computers will win every time — if humans are willing to play them, that is.

But each time computers have shown their remarkable abilities, detractors have claimed that the computers are really inferior because they apply brute-force tactics: methodically tracing every possible move instead of creatively reasoning toward a solution.

Daniel Dennett says we shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the computers. After all, human chess champions study and memorize sequences of moves, encyclopedically sorting through thousands of variations as they play. Isn’t this the same thing the computer is doing?

Vaughan at Mind Hacks points out that these detractors are using a classic denialist tactic:

As soon as computers became good at chess, it was dismissed as a valid example because, ironically, computers could do it. A classic example of moving the goalposts.

Similarly, I’ve recently heard a few people say “If computers could beat us at poker, that would be a genuine example of artificial intelligence”. Recently, a poker playing computer narrowly lost to two pros.

Presumably, ‘genuine intelligence’ is just whatever computers can’t do yet.

{ Scienceblogs | Dave Munger | Continue reading }

photo { Chess champion Gary Kasparov executes a move during a 1997 match against the highly sophisticated computer Deep Blue as the computer’s designer watches }

Scientists have expressed concern about the use of autonomous decision-making robots, particularly for military use. As they become more common, these machines could also have negative impacts on areas such as surveillance and elderly care, the roboticists warn.

The researchers were speaking ahead of a public debate at the Dana Centre, part of London’s Science Museum. Discussions about the future use of robots in society had been largely ill-informed so far, they argued.

Autonomous robots are able to make decisions without human intervention. At a simple level, these can include robot vacuum cleaners that “decide” for themselves when to move from room to room or to head back to a base station to recharge.

Increasingly, autonomous machines are being used in military applications, too. Samsung, for example, has developed a robotic sentry to guard the border between North and South Korea. It is equipped with two cameras and a machine gun.

The development and eventual deployment of autonomous robots raised difficult questions, said Professor Alan Winfield of the University of West England. “If an autonomous robot kills someone, whose fault is it?” said Professor Winfield. (…)

“The more pressing and serious problem is the extent to which society is prepared to trust autonomous robots and entrust others into the care of autonomous robots.” { BBC | Continue reading }

South Korea is drawing up a code of ethics to stop humans misusing robots – or vice versa – officials announced on Wednesday. (…) “The government plans to set ethical guidelines concerning the roles and functions of robots, as robots are expected to develop strong intelligence in the near future,” the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy said in a statement. As the South Korean population ages, various service robots will come into use, eventually becoming “key companions to human beings”, it added.

However, one robotics researcher warns that it remains a mystery whether machines will ever be able to understand ethics in the same way as humans. (…) The government’s guidelines will reflect the “Three Laws of Robotics” put forward by science fiction author Isaac Asimov. These are:

1. A robot may not injure a human or, through inaction, allow a human to come to harm

2. A robot must obey orders given by a human unless these conflict with the first law

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as this does not conflict with the first or second law { New Scientist | Continue reading }

+ previously { Honda’s The Power of Dreams }

toy { Bennett Robot Works }