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]

The team at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Federal Institute of Technology created the little experimental learning devices to work in groups and hunt for "food" targets nearby while avoiding "poison." Imagine their surprise when one generation of robots learned to signal lies about the poison, sending opponents to their doom.

The little wheeled robots had neural circuitry with about 30 "genes" that determine their behavior, and how much they react to light in the environment. The food sources charged up the robots' batteries while the poison drained them, and by using the genes of the most successful feeders in 50 successive generations, the team was hoping to select the fittest.

Three colonies of bots in the 50th generation learned to signal to other robots in the group when then found food or poison. But the fourth colony included lying cheats that signaled food when they found poison and then calmly rolled over to the real food while other robots went to their battery-death. Eerily wicked, to say the least. Saving the robots' honor, luckily, there were also a few "hero robots" that signalled danger and then rolled to their death to save the others.

Will technology like this make its way into consumer robots sometime? We kind of hope not: not sure I'd like to argue with a Roomba about whether it had or hadn't swept up that mess behind the sofa.
[Discover Magazine]

Inspired from a Futurama episode in which Bender did actually brew beer (Season 3, Episode 12: The Route of All Evil, for those of you keeping track at home), this contraption is a labor of love that's been under construction since this summer. It's really a work of art, looking like it stepped right off the screen. Inside its stomach is the brewing mechanisms and in its head is a functioning computer that plays Bender sayings on command. It even features a cigar that lights up thanks to a handy pen light/felt contraption. And, of course, it brews beer in its belly, which makes it that much better. Totally worth six months of work if you ask me. Be sure to check out the website to see all the detail that went into making Beer Brewing Bender a reality. [Project page]

"What's the secret of time travel doing on Fry's ass?"
"It was bound to be somewhere." [via digg]

Comedy Central will be showing the 16 episodes. Not much is known about them, apart from a few juicy tidbits from Bender's Big Score. Apparently it involves nudist aliens and the secret of time travel - which apparently has something to do with Fry's buttock. [TV Squad via Slashdot]

I think he's got Pina Cola in his backpack. We all know my thoughts on DIY (not to mention my abilities), but honestly, Promet, I could do better than this.

And if a bad workman blames his tools, does a bad robot blame his overlord? – Ad Dugdale

BBC Image of the day [BBC News]

Say hello to Kyrre Glette, Jim Tørrenson, Jeff Hawkins and one of your future robot overlords. The first three have developed two different ways to create independent machines. The fourth is just looking to destroy you.

Glette and Tørrenson, from Oslo University, have come up with what could be the next generation of hardware—machines that evolve on their own. This means that, rather than having to install new software to update the machine, the evolving hardware inside changes in order to better complete whatever task needs doing. How the hell is this done? Well, while I would trap underpaid little people inside the machine, apparently this is all about pairing up genes in the hardware to find the design that is most effective to solve a specific problem.

This approach avoids the limitations that efforts at artificial intelligence have had so far—precisely the ones that Hawkins claims to have smashed with his new venture, Numenta, which has created software that mimics the human brain. Or so he says.

More on how these two technologies compare to each other, right after the jump.

The Norwegians' first step in 2004 was to make Henriette, a robot chicken that used evolution software in order to learn how to walk (you can try a program that does precisely this in your PC or Mac here). Rather than trying to comprehend the world and create solutions through AI, the evolution hardware tries random variations starting from a seed, which are measured against the problem in order to select the better options. Following the best paths, the hardware reaches an optimum solution for a very specific problem.

In this case, they want to make a robot that will evolve to install underwater oil pipes on its own at 2,000-meter depths, where you either need miles of cable or echo signals to convey orders to the machine, which means long delays between command and execution.

Until one day they finally rise from the seas to command and execute us, that is.

Hawkins' Numenta solution, on the other hand, tries to actually make a machine think as a human brain, feeding it with sensorial information that the artificial intelligence will use to build a model of what surrounds it. This new AI concept, developed after Hawkins had one too many beers with the neuroscientists from his nonprofit Redwood Neuroscience Institute, tries to identify elements, establish relations between them, learn from how things work and, just like a child, predict outcomes based on this understanding of the world.

So, to summarize, here's the drill:

Step 1. The thing, probably to be called SkySomething or HAL-whatever, understands the world.
Step 2. Someone gives it the keys to the ICBMs.
Step 3. The thing destroys the world in a massive nuclear attack.
Step 4 (optional). Someone sends somebody else back in time to smack those two crazy Norwegians and that Jeff dude, who apparently don't see enough sci-fi movies, and try to save the planet.

As you can see, both efforts look to solve the same problems, as if we didn't have enough already.–Ad Dugdale & Jesus Diaz

First Hardware to go through Evolution Developed [Bits of News via Dizzy Thinks]
Project page [Oslo University]
The Thinking Machine [Wired]

If these test work—which they look like they do, the monkeys are feeding themselves successfully—you too can lop off your own arm, stroll into the emergency room, and feel confident that they'll replace your missing appendage with the robotic equivalent. No wait! We mean in a couple of years! – Jason Chen

MOnkey Controls Robotic Arm With Mind [Random Good Stuff]