No common sense = catastrophic failure

As a once-upon-a-time machine learning expert, I know that Google recruited a batch of machine learning scientists. Very cool it seemed. But the reality ... machine learning doesn't have common sense no matter how good the machine learned criteria (see the story below). So, for mission critical elements like search, Google still prefers to use human tuned criteria to avoid catastrophic failure. Fascinating - and an interesting lesson in trust for automated learning - although the notion of capturing common sense has been a preoccupation of machine learning and AI for a long while (e.g. cyc).

(Google apparently does use Machine Learning for Spam detection and no doubt in other areas as well.)

Projected pedestrians ... laser traffic lights

Great tech application - not all that practical I suspect, but certainly arresting.


This one comes from Springwise and talks about using lasers in traffic lights to project a moving curtain of giants crossing the street to emphasize the stop signal. Very cool - nicely Cyber.

William Gibson on the future

Q U O T E D

"The trouble is there are enough crazy factors and wild cards on the table now that I can't convince myself of where a future might be in 10 to 15 years. ... We hit a point somewhere in the mid-18th century where we started doing what we think of technology today and it started changing things for us, changing society. Since World War II it's going literally exponential and what we are experiencing now is the real vertigo of that -- we have no idea at all now where we are going.

Will global warming catch up with us? Is that irreparable? Will technological civilization collapse? There seems to be some possibility of that over the next 30 or 40 years or will we do some Verner Vinge singularity trick and suddenly become capable of everything and everything will be cool and the geek rapture will arrive? That's a possibility too."

-- Science fiction author William Gibson, who coined the word "cyberspace," explains why he's taken to writing about the past
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From http://svextra.com/blogs/gmsv/2007/08/quoted-606.html
Originally from: http://www.silicon.com/silicon/networks/webwatch/0,39024667,39168006-1,00.htm

Forecasting

"The consequences of our actions are so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed."

- J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Robotics, Robots, Flowers

Technology Review has a new article on internet enabled robotics, and refers to a very interesting robot kit from Charmed Labs. I want one :) Probably the most interesting part is the community robotics and recipes site.

Enhanted objects all round.

Nano Bots - Cool, Cute, Soccer?

How cool is this? Nano-bot soccer!

This is what the field looks like:

And the players:

Just amazing stuff! Very primitive in many ways, but at the same time so cutting edge. I want the video version - when will a nano-soccer match be shown on SBS or posted to youtube?

For more, see: http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/calmed/robocup_photos.html and

http://www.technologyreview.com/Wire/19025/page1/