AI

Transcendent Man: Film About Kurzweil

May 5, 2009 8425 Views 13 Comments

The two themes of the movie – Ray’s life as a futurist visionary, inventor and entrepreneur; and Ray’s vision of the near-future technological Singularity – are so familiar to me that, even if I hadn’t been in the movie, it would have been impossible for me to view it with a “beginner’s mind.” But a substantial percentage of the audience appear...

The Rise of the Answerbots

May 4, 2009 5520 Views 7 Comments

It might mean that IBM is on the path to creating a human-level AI.

Singularity 101 with Vernor Vinge

April 22, 2009 15217 Views 18 Comments

My personal definition for the Singularity — I think that in the relatively near historical future, humans, using technology, will be able to create, or become, creatures of superhuman intelligence.

Brain On a Chip

April 7, 2009 21492 Views 13 Comments

Are we humans... we might be able to imprint the circuitry of the human brain using transistors on a silicon chip?

Wolfram|Alpha: Searching for Truth

April 6, 2009 20795 Views 15 Comments

And now, in 2009, a new kind of browser search engine called Wolfram|Alpha is about to appear. The other day I talked to Stephen on the phone for about two hours, and he demonstrated some of Wolfram|Alpha’s powers via a web-conferencing hook-up.

The Global Financial Crisis

March 20, 2009 5367 Views 5 Comments

One of the many interesting aspects of the current global financial crisis is the role that AI and advanced computer software has played in it. It’s worth asking a few questions about exactly what this role has been — and what it suggests for the future.

The Future of Machine Intelligence

March 20, 2009 16395 Views 5 Comments

In early March 2009, 100 intellectual adventurers journeyed from various corners of Europe, Asia, America and Australasia to the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Arlington Virginia, to take part in the Second Conference on Artificial General Intelligence, AGI-09: a conference aimed explicitly at the grand goal of the AI field, the creation of thinking machines with general intelligence at the human level and...

Open Source Robotics Looks Better Than Ever

keith March 18, 2009 5204 Views No Comments

Where’s C3PO when we need him? Compared to many other aspects of advanced technology -- even compared to AI software technology, which isn’t exactly zooming along -- humanoid robotics seems to be advancing at a snail’s pace.