From The Age: The Human Touch “I don’t understand why robots need to look human,” says Cox – which is odd, considering his work involves making mechanical contraptions look and move like they are alive for film projects. “The Japanese are doing great things with making robots look friendly without making them look human,” he says.

Congress is started hearings on net Neutrality yesterday, and seems to generally be sympathetic to the neutrality doctrine. From ZDNet News: Politicos divided on need for ‘net neutrality’ mandate Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said at the hearing that he plans to introduce a bill that “will make sure all information (transmitted over broadband networks) is made available on the same terms so that no bit is better than another one.” The provisions would bar broadband providers from favoring one company’s site over another (for example, he said, J. Crew over L.L. Bean), from giving their own content preferential treatment and from creating “private networks that are superior to the Internet access they offer consumers generally.” Also visibly troubled by the prospect of a so-called two-tiered Internet were two other Democrats, Sen. Barbara Boxer of California and Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota. Referring to a recent Washington Post report in which a Verizon executive said Google and others shouldn’t expect to enjoy a “free lunch” on its pipes, Dorgan said such reasoning was flawed. “It is not a free lunch…(broadband subscribers have) already paid the monthly toll…Those lines and that access is being paid for by the consumer.” One of the more interesting aspects of these hearings was Vint Cerf’s statement (pdf) on net neutrality, where he lays out not only the meaning and importance of neutrality in general, but gives a rather good overview of structure of the internet itself. I was fortunate to be involved in the earliest days of the “network of networks.” From that experience, I can attest to how the actual design of the Internet – the way its digital hardware and software protocols, including the TCP/IP suite, were put together — led to its remarkable economic and social success. First, the layered […]

I’m going to start an on-going and semi regular blog project where I take some major and minor philosophers and quote their discussions of machines, our relation to artifacts and technology, and their relation to the natural world. Nietzsche is an odd place to start, granted, but I happen to have some quotes on hand. Nietzsche’s relation to machines is rather complex. On the one hand, he is one of the first naturalists, embracing the idea that man himself is merely a machine, on par with animals. On the other hand, his view of nature and life is grounded in error. Life might require error; man is imperfect and prone to mistakes; nature itself is not a machine. At the bottom of human reasoning lies contradiction. This seems to fit in nicely with Turing’s insistence that we stop holding machines to ideal standards of perfection, thereby opening it to the possibility of intelligence. All italics are original. From The Gay Science § 109 Let us now be on our guard against believing that the universe is a machine; it is assuredly not constructed with a view to one end; we invest it with far too high an honor with the word “machine.” § 111 The course of logical thought and reasoning in our modern brain corresponds to a process and struggle of impulses, which singly and in themselves are all very illogical and unjust; we experience usually only the result of the struggle, so rapidly and secretely does this primitive mechanism now operate in us. § 121 Life is no argument; error might be among the conditions of life. § 354 Consciousness is properly only a connecting network between man and man… for this conscious thinking alone is done in words, that is to say, in the symbols for communication, […]

My mailbox today contained a small clipping from the letters to the editor section of The New Yorker. It didn’t come with a issue number, or even what article this was in response to; I’ll let you know if I find those references. Update: The response is to an article entitled “Your Move: How Computer Chess Programs Are Changing the Game” from Dec. 12, 2005. (Thanks, Maschas) Total lack of emotional involvement in the game may give chess programs a strategic advantage over human players, but it is also precisely what robs them of anything like geunine intelligence. Can we even say that such programs are “playing” the game when they neither know nor care what it means to win or lose, or even just to do something or be thwarted? Real animal intelligence involves the organism responding affectively to its environment. Computer programs literally could not care less, which is why they are mere simulations of intelligence. Taylor Carman Associate Professor of Philosophy Barnard College, Columbia university New York City This gives me hope, because this view is still alive and well among even the distinguished academics in our field. It is of course no surprise that Carman is a Heidegger scholar. But lets attack his arguments here nice and methodically. I’ll start with the easy one first. 1. Machines aren’t really “playing the game” because they don’t know or care what it means to win or lose. We should hold off on answering the question about ‘playing’ until we know whats at stake in that question. Carman just assumes that participation requires care and emotional investment (more on that below); I don’t think the case is quite so open and shut. ‘Knowledge’ here is much easier. Of course the machine knows what it means to win: thats the […]

Apparently ETS has created a test for a student’s skills and abilities handling, processing, evaluating, and communicating information in an internet environment. Navigating the virtual world is surely a second order skill, at least as valuable as the primary skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Knowing that kind of stuff just isn’t optional any more, and I suppose testing for it is the only way to force schools to accept that fact. From CNN: Exam measures students’ ‘information literacy’ The ICT Literacy Assessment touches on traditional skills, such as analytical reading and math, but with a technological twist. Test-takers, for instance, may be asked to query a database, compose an e-mail based on their research, or seek information on the Internet and decide how reliable it is. … Students will receive an individual score on a point scale of 400 to 700, and schools will get reports showing how students fare in seven core skills: defining, accessing, managing, integrating, evaluating, creating and communicating information. The new “core” version that will be sold to high schools can be taken in a school computer lab over about 75 minutes and consists of 14 short tasks, lasting three to five minutes each, and one longer task of about 15 minutes. Students may be asked, for example, to determine what variables should go where in assembling a graph, and then use a simple program to create it. They could also be asked to research a topic on the Web and evaluate the authoritativeness of what they find. Students “really do know how to use the technology,” said Dolores Gwaltney, library media specialist at Thurston High School in Redford, Michigan, one of a handful of high school trial sites for the test over the next few weeks. “But they aren’t always careful in evaluating. They […]

From Mercury News: Dino-robot is new toy by Furby creator “People are in love with robots, but the feedback we have is people need to have a more engaging relationship with their products,” said Bob Christopher, chief executive of Ugobe. “They want to treat something like a pet. So we need robots that show and feel emotion and that evolve over time.” The $200 Pleo dinosaur promises to one-up Chung’s earlier creation. While Furby had two computer brains, Pleo will have seven computer brains that control 14 motors and 38 sensors. Christopher says the combination of intelligence, precision movement and personality will make Pleo a believable, lifelike pet. “This robot is going to have organic movement, so that it seems to move and behave like something real,” Christopher said. From the Ugobe press release (pdf): Pleo features include – 14 servo joints (torso, head, tail, neck, legs) with force feedback – 38-touch, sound, light and tilt sensors including nine touch sensors (mouth, chest, head, shoulders, back, feet) and 8 feet and toe sensors – Fluid quadruped motion – Ability to avoid obstacles and not walk off edges – Sound output, stereo sound sensors and music beat detection – Autonomous interaction with owner and environment including coughing, blinking eyes, chomping, twitching, sighing, sneezing, sniffing, growling stomach, tail drift, and yawning – Distinct moods including anger, boredom, playfulness, hunting, cautious, cuddling, disgust, disorientation, distress, fear, curiosity, joy, sorrow, surprise, fatigue, hunger, and a desire for social interaction MSRP: $200 A somewhat less disturbing, and probably more realistic picture of the Pleo can be found here. The Roboraptor might look cooler, but its nothing more than a suped up remote controlled car.

(01:30:46) drcrawl: hey, Ian, I have a personal bet going… whos the ‘awesome’ guy in Deadwood? (01:31:03) ToliverChap: oh the awesome guy (01:31:05) ToliverChap: hmmm (01:31:14) ToliverChap: well maybe it’s the obvious (01:31:23) drcrawl: yeah, go the obvious (01:31:26) ToliverChap: I personally like the Doc since he’s sort of a decent fellow (01:31:36) ToliverChap: but Love Joy is really holding it all down (01:32:01) drcrawl: ok. And for the record, who’s the awesome guy in Godfather? (01:32:05) ToliverChap: I mean he doesn’t have the most money or smarts but by God that town works the way he wants it. (01:32:11) ToliverChap: hmmm (01:32:13) ToliverChap: Godfather (01:32:45) ToliverChap: aside: this seems weird as a bet. I mean it’s not like a game where the results haven’t been decided unless the bet is what I’ll say? (01:32:49) ToliverChap: any who (01:33:00) ToliverChap: Michael is the awesome one in GF (01:33:03) ToliverChap: obvious again (01:33:13) ToliverChap: I mean think of him as a young kid back from the way (01:33:14) ToliverChap: war (01:33:37) ToliverChap: with his finger in his pocket trying to look tough outside the hospital protecting his pop (01:33:48) ToliverChap: there was a man that did what he needed to do (01:33:57) ToliverChap: and he never let it get complicated (01:34:18) ToliverChap: two key elements to the “awesome guy” claim.

Dedicated to Andy Clark http://fractionalactorssub.madeofrobots.com/blog/pics/memorystick1fs.jpg From SA’s De-technologize Modern Technology! By Morgan Davis

terrified of wasps. http://fractionalactorssub.madeofrobots.com/blog/pics/Ampulex1.jpg http://fractionalactorssub.madeofrobots.com/blog/pics/Ampulex2.jpg From Corante: The Wisdom of Parasites As an adult, Ampulex compressa seems like your normal wasp, buzzing about and mating. But things get weird when it’s time for a female to lay an egg. She finds a cockroach to make her egg’s host, and proceeds to deliver two precise stings. The first she delivers to the roach’s mid-section, causing its front legs buckle. The brief paralysis caused by the first sting gives the wasp the luxury of time to deliver a more precise sting to the head. The wasp slips her stinger through the roach’s exoskeleton and directly into its brain. She apparently use ssensors along the sides of the stinger to guide it through the brain, a bit like a surgeon snaking his way to an appendix with a laparoscope. She continues to probe the roach’s brain until she reaches one particular spot that appears to control the escape reflex. She injects a second venom that influences these neurons in such a way that the escape reflex disappears. From the outside, the effect is surreal. The wasp does not paralyze the cockroach. In fact, the roach is able to lift up its front legs again and walk. But now it cannot move of its own accord. The wasp takes hold of one of the roach’s antennae and leads it–in the words of Israeli scientists who study Ampulex–like a dog on a leash. The zombie roach crawls where its master leads, which turns out to be the wasp’s burrow. The roach creeps obediently into the burrow and sits there quietly, while the wasp plugs up the burrow with pebbles. Now the wasp turns to the roach once more and lays an egg on its underside. The roach does not resist. The egg hatches, and the […]

http://fractionalactorssub.madeofrobots.com/blog/pics/antigoogle.jpg Taken from Boing Boing

From Nature: Rats show off ‘stereo smell’ Researchers in India have discovered that a single sniff is enough for a rat to locate the source of an enticing aroma. Their work shows that rats can effectively smell in ‘stereo’: their two nostrils work independently in much the same way as our ears, with contrasting signals to the brain creating a spatial understanding of sensory information. The team at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore tested the ability of rats to discriminate between smells coming from their left or their right. They trained thirsty rats to drink from a water spout on the corresponding side in response to the odour. Such is the rodent’s skill that, once trained, they required just 50 milliseconds to decide where the smell was coming from, report Upinder Bhalla and his colleagues in this week’s issue of Science1. The rats selected the correct side with at least 80% accuracy, regardless of the odour presented; the researchers used banana, eucalyptus and rose water in the tests. When one nostril was covered over, however, the rats lost their ability, showing that they need both nostrils to locate smells, the researchers add. This suggests that the two different nasal passages send contrasting signals to the brain, despite the fact that a rat’s nostrils are a mere 3 millimetres apart.

All the major internet players snubbed their virtual noses at congress today, by not showing up for the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. But Google wrote a nice little letter explaining its actions in China, and the rest followed in kind and sentiment: From Google Blog: Human Rights Caucus briefing While China has made great strides in the past decades, it remains in many ways closed. We are not happy about governmental restrictions on access to information, and we hope that over time everyone in the world will come to enjoy full access to information. Information and communication technology – including the Internet, email, instant messaging, weblogs, peer-to-peer applications, streaming audio and video, mobile telephony, SMS text messages, and so forth – has brought Chinese citizens a greater ability to read, discuss, publish and communicate about a wider range of topics, events, and issues than ever before. We believe that our continued engagement with China is the best (and perhaps only) way for Google to help bring the tremendous benefits of universal information access to all our users there.