The $5 million Mind Machine Project (MMP), a patchwork team of two dozen academics, students and researchers, intends to go back to the discipline's beginnings, rebuilding the field from the ground up. With 20/20 hindsight, a few generations worth of experience, and better, faster technology, this time researchers in AI — an ambiguous field to begin with — plan to get things right.

The study of AI is a half a century old, beginning with lofty expectations at a 1956 conference but quickly fragmenting into different specializations and sub-fields. The MMP wants to roll back the clock, fixing early assumptions that are now foundations of the field and redefining what the objectives of AI research should be.

The fundamental problem, it seems, is that the mind, memory and body function both together and separately to solve any number of problems, and the way they work together (and alone) varies from problem to problem. The human mind alone applies various systems and functions to any given problem. Many AI solutions have attempted to solve all the problems with one system or function rather than multiple systems working together as in the human mind, a "silver bullet" approach that hinders real progress.

Likewise, when it comes to memory, researchers have created models that work more like computers, where everything is either one or zero. Real memory is filled with gray areas, ambiguities and inconsistencies, but functions in spite of not always being congruent. MMP researchers also intend to bring computer science and physiology together, forcing computers to work within the confines of physical space and time just like the body does.

The team even proposes discarding the Turing Test, the long-recognized standard for determining artificial intelligence. Instead, MMP researchers want to test for a machine's comprehension of a children's book — rather than a human's comprehension of another human being — to gain a better understanding or the AI's ability to process and regurgitate thought.

It's a big-picture approach to a big challenge, and while it's perhaps unlikely that the team can re-imagine AI in the ambitious five-year window they've given themselves, it very well could shore up some of the loose underpinnings of a discipline that has boundless potential to shape a better world (or, for you SkyNet junkies, limitless potential to destroy it). If nothing else, it's a responsible admission from the scientific community that they simply don't have it quite right, that we need to rethink what we think we know.

Climatologists, take notes.

[MIT News]

Popular Science is your wormhole to the future. Reporting on what's new and what's next in science and technology, we deliver the future now.

Henry Markram, the Blue Brain guy, says in an email to IBM's CTO, that the project is not even close to an ants brain and that the kind of simulations pulled off by IBM are trivial. He also calls the whole thing "stupid", and "extremely harmful to the field." [IEEE via Popsci]

Officially, this video shows that Carnegie Mellon researchers have given Asimo the ability to detect and avoid moving and stationary objects while in pursuit of a goal. Unofficially, researchers at Carnegie Mellon have fueled the cliched "robot uprising" that we joke about from time to time.

The one positive in all this is that anyone not wearing a large blue dot in the near future will most likely be spared. [YouTube via Plastic Pals via BotJunkie via OhGizmo]

For comparison's sake, Honda's Asimo robot can only manage a meager 6 km/h. We assume Toyota was able to squeeze the extra kilometer per hour out of their robot with a strict training regimen and what can only be described as a mild dose of physical abuse—their robot can re-balance itself when pushed lightly, as you can see in the video.

Just don't get too pushy, young lady. Word on the street is these robot things are about ready to rise up and kill us all. [Jalopnik, YouTube via Smart Machines]

At the conference, the scientists debated research limits on AI, much like their colleagues in genetics and biotechnology have done already with stems cells. Their thoughts were published this weekend under an ominous, dark cloud headline at the New York Times: "Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man"

The location is actually an interesting bit of trivia, as Asilomar was host to a groundbreaking conference on genetics and biology in 1975. At that conference, scientists met to debate their new found ability to reshape life at the cellular level. As the Times notes, the conference ultimately led to guidelines for "recombinant DNA research" and a Nobel Prize for organizer Paul Berg.

Today's scientists are hoping to get similar guidelines into place for AI, although many worried openly that autonomous people-killing robots were here already.

But for every cautionary tale out of Asilomar these days, there's a detractor ready to debunk the warnings with a bit of what they believe to be common sense. Said startup guru and investor Chris Dixon (via Gawker's own Nick Denton, no less), "Is the nytimes serious? AI researchers I know are embarrassed by the lack of progress, not worried about too much."

Indeed, when Wilson chatted with Wired for War author PW Singer during our ominous Machines Behaving Deadly theme week, we learned that a Terminator uprising was unlikely to happen anytime soon because the "preconditions" simply weren't in place—yet.

"The Global Hawk drone may be able to take off on its own, fly on its own, but it still needs someone to put that gasoline in there," he said. Nevertheless, as Wilson added after that comment, "it's not hard to see how this precondition could eventually be overcome." No kidding.

Many of the details from this conference are still coming out, but from what we read today one could definitely infer that there was an ominous, cautious tone present throughout the proceedings. "I went in very optimistic about the future of A.I. and thinking that Bill Joy and Ray Kurzweil were far off in their predictions," said Tom Mitchell, a professor of AI and machine learning at Carnegie Mellon University. "[But] the meeting made me want to be more outspoken about these issues and in particular be outspoken about the vast amounts of data collected about our personal lives."

Sounds like a split decision. Who's afraid of some big bad AI now? [New York Times]

So, what are the preconditions, according to Singer?

1. The AI or robot has to have some sense of self-preservation and ambition, to want power or fear the loss of power.

2. The robots have to have eliminated any dependence on humans.

3. Humans have to have omitted failsafe controls, so there's no ability to turn robots or AI off.

4. The robots need to gain these advantages in a way that takes humans by surprise.

At the moment, says Singer, these conditions do not exist. "In the Terminator movies, Skynet gets super intelligence, figures the humans are going to eventually shut it down, thinks, 'I better strike first.'" However, in today's army, "we're building robots specifically to go off and get killed." He adds, "No one is building them to have a survival instinct—they're actually building them to have the exact opposite."

As far as human dependence, robots may do more and more human dirty work, but robots still need the meatbags to handle their dirty laundry. "The Global Hawk drone may be able to take off on its own, fly on its own, but it still needs someone to put that gasoline in there." Still, it's not hard to see how this precondition could eventually be overcome.

The failsafe discussion is surprisingly two sided. "It seems rather odd that people who grew up watching Terminator in the movie theaters wouldn't think, 'Hmm, maybe we should have a turn-off switch on there.'" But on the other hand, "brilliant AI could just figure a way around it." Besides, "we don't want to make the failsafe all that easy, because we don't want a robot that comes up to Bin Laden that he can just shut off by reaching around the back and hitting the switch."

We of course assume that robots will never gain the element of surprise. "You don't get super-intelligent robots without first having semi-super-intelligent robots, and so on. At each one of these stages, someone would push back." The scary thing is, Singer does acknowledge that the exponential growth of super-smart machines may indeed catch us by surprise eventually. "By the end it's happening too quickly for people to see."

No matter what preconditions are prevented deliberately, there is a point on every futurist's timeline where computers become "smarter" than humans, in terms of sheer brain capability, and no matter what happens up till that point, the game then changes completely. "In the Terminator movies, Skynet both tricks and coerces people into doing its bidding." How do we stop that from happening?

"Some people say, 'Let's just not work on these systems. If they're so many things coming out of this that are potentially dangerous, why don't we just stop?'" says Singer. "We could do that, as long as we also stop war, capitalism and the human instinct for science and invention." [More from my interview with PW Singer]

Machines Behaving Deadly: A week exploring the sometimes difficult relationship between man and technology.

The robot's AI made a hypothesis about the genomics of a yeast, planned a test for the hypothesis and carried the test out in its lab. The results were replicated by human scientists later, confirming that, no, the robot wasn't lying about its discovery to get on the fast track to tenure. [Lab Spaces and image not of the actual robot]

Still, I find myself transfixed as the robots self-organize, connecting to one another like a giant train to stack their power for a greater purpose. It's also pretty funny to watch the poor child who must be thinking, "this was not worth that stupid Barbie, not at all." [EPA via MAKE]

The Turing Test states that to be considered "sentient," an artificial intelligence must achieve a 30% success rate. That means Elbot's accomplishment, while noteworthy, does not an AI make.

Organizer Kevin Warwick from the University of Reading's School of Systems Engineering was excited anyway, and readily compared today's events to the time in the 1997 when IBM's Big Blue defeated chess master Gary Kasparov. "This has been a very exciting day with two of the machines getting very close to passing the Turing Test for the first time," he said.

Perhaps even more impressive was just how believable the computers were, even if the human speaking with them knew they were speaking with a machine.

"Today's results actually show a more complex story than a straight pass or fail by one machine. Where the machines were identified correctly by the human interrogators as machines, the conversational abilities of each machine was scored at 80 and 90%. This demonstrates how close machines are getting to reaching the milestone of communicating with us in a way in which we are comfortable. That eventual day will herald a new phase in our relationship with machines, bringing closer the time in which robots start to play an active role in our daily lives."

Note to Warnick: Read anything on robots written by Isaac Asimov, then get back to me. [Telegraph]

Each match consisted of 500 hands, with Polaris receiving the same cards in one room that the professionals received in another room. The duplicate system was used so that luck would be less of a factor and the game could be played as much on skill as possible.

Historically, computers have been better at playing games where all information is already on the board, such as chess. With poker, players have to make judgments based on incomplete information. Getting artificial intelligence to do that well is a big step, since real life problems are generally more like poker than like chess. [MSN Cosmic Log]

While the bulk manufacture of micro niche topic publications is Parker's current approach, the clip above shows that Parker is very much interested in expanding his system to create things like turn-key game shows in alternate languages—still exploiting niche markets—but this time from the perspective of the entertainment sector, not business/industry.

We wish Parker the best of luck, and appreciate his computer's continued support as it continues to churn out the posts here at Giz. [NYTimes via BoingBoing]

Nexi is apparently about the size of a three year-old child, with dextrous hands, arms that can lift up to ten pounds of weight and two-wheel balancing movement, a little like a Segway. Each eye has a color camera, there's an IR camera in the forehead for 3D object perception and four microphones so sounds can be localized.

For now, Nexi is just a prototype, designed to explore human-machine interactions and social learning. It's not too hard to imagine a real product based on the design, though, is it? The team forsee robots like this having a role in healthcare, eldercare and education. [GizmoWatch]

Well, we can't really say. The iCub will undergo pretty basic tests, such as shape analysis, nesting different sized cups and stacking wooden blocks, as well as speech development tasks, meaning iCub will be able to name actions it carries out, which will lead to a commentary of its routine. The overall goal was laid out by Angelo Cangelosi, Professor in Artificial Intelligence;

"The outcome of the research will define the scientific and technological requirements for the design of humanoid robots able to develop complex behavioral, thinking and communication skills through individual and social learning."

...supremely oriented, highly intuitive virtual coach-cum-battle manager whose primary mission would support system operators and commanders during engagements. As such, the super system would help Israeli air defenders pick the optimum timing, sequence and targets for specific interceptors.

The good news, which luckily we read right before crapping ourselves for the third time today, is that the developers aren't focusing entirely on making it autonomous, but a sort of hybrid.

"Our approach cannot be based exclusively on man-in-the-loop, nor can it rely only on the opposite. Rather, we need to build an operational concept and a system that is flexible and situationally dependent," Milo said.

In the future, and "under very complex scenarios," Milo said, the envisioned super system would be able to generate a level of supreme situational awareness and snap intuitive capabilities that could surpass the very best wartime commanders.

Nevertheless, if we're all killed by an AI system in 20 years, you know who to blame. [Wired]

Quite a lot of cool, calm thought must have gone into this design—JeJoue's similar product from a while back had programmable, downloadable motions but their research suggested users would prefer something a little more spontaneous. So while you can no longer blog and share the motion files (fascinating concept!) the SaSi has two modes: a simple "natural" mode where you can select from its pre-chosen vibe patterns, and the "learn" mode, where it morphs between different styles, learning what you like as you vote yes or no using its (apparently) iPod-inspired control pad.

Its a high-end product, since electronic pleasure with this level of cleverness will cost you $175 when it's on sale in a couple of months, but at least you get removable silicon covers for that price. And you'll get to explore an attentive electronic bed-partner. You know, there are some product design meetings that we'd just love to have been attending.

Video by NickMcGlynn
[FleshBot and Wired]

Earlier this year Nokia bought up a Silicon Valley start-up called PIXTO, the creator of the Point&Find technology. Combining specially-designed systems architecture, AI, GPS and image processing, Point&Find works on existing cell phones, provided they are equipped with a camera and internet connection.

Point your mobile at the cinema and it will tell you what's on and when, let you view the trailer, and even buy the tickets; click in front of a restaurant and you'll get the latest reviews. Historical landmarks, travel posters, shop windows, etc, will all become reality hyperlinks. And as for the girl on the bus — well, give Nokia 10 years and, thanks to face recognition, perhaps you'll be able to link directly to her website. [Nokia via Mobile Mentalism]