DailyDirt: To Serve Mankind

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Robots are becoming more and more advanced every day. And as their software improves, they're also becoming more useful for tasks that humans can't do. They can seal off deep sea oil wells at extreme depths. They'll fight dangerous fires. And someday, in the distant future, we might have to debate whether or not it's ethical to send robots to their deaths -- after we grant personhood to artificial intelligence. (And also deal with crazy folks who'll want to marry their laptops....) Progress, FTW!

• Remote-controlled, radiation-proof robots are preparing to enter the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in order to scope out the most dangerous parts of the facility. These robots will hopefully be able to inspect the containment systems and help keep any more nuclear materials from escaping. [url]
• Other robots are being used to help find survivors (or casualties) and to assess the damage of hard-to-access infrastructure. This may be one of the few non-creepy-looking applications of "snake-like" robots... [url]
• For fire-fighting missions, the US Navy is building some humanoid robots. The Navy will be spending about $2M a year to develop these Terminator precursors. [url]
• As always, there's also humanoid robots just waiting to take over manufacturing jobs, and the newest models will even look bored if you don't give them enough work to do. These bots will smile happily as they replace human workers. Great UX! [url]
• To discover more interesting AI-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: ai, humanoid, robot

DailyDirt: Computers Are Beating Us At Our Own Games

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Artificial intelligence is a fun topic -- especially when it's applied to playing games with humans. The classic "man vs. machine" battles are always entertaining... until we hit the Singularity, and computer AI just consistently trounces humans in everything. Here are a few more examples of cool AI projects.

• Microsoft Research is working on AI that can play the ancient game of Go -- and incorporating it into an XBox Live game called The Path of Go. This is a pretty cool project to try to get more people playing go, but adding avatars and some storyline about finding your missing twin doesn't sound like a more fun way to play Go to me. [url]
• Starcraft is another AI challenge that requires more than fast reflexes and a pulse. Instead of creating supercomputers that play MMORPGs perfectly, I'd settle for AI that just happily mines gold for me all day. [url]
• Computers can also beat us at really simple games that you wouldn't think need any intelligence to play. So don't play Rock-Paper-Scissors to the death, and never wage a land war in Asia. [url]
• Maybe football coaches should be replaced by computers, too. When your fantasy league is short human players, try a few bots as competitive players. [url]
• If only the neural nets that play 20 questions were a bit more useful... These kinds of programs were supposed to help diagnose medical diseases, but now they just play trivial games and advertise for Whoppers. [url]
• To discover more interesting AI-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: 20 questions, ai, game algorithms, go, rock-paper-scissors, starcraft
Companies: microsoft

Finally Found: A Human That Can Beat Watson... And It Turns Out To Be Rep. Rush Holt

from the bow-down-to-the-superior-mind dept

While IBM's Watson obviously got a ton of attention for winning its big national TV challenge against two Jeopardy stars, apparently, IBM is taking the Jeopardy playing machine on tour, with a key stop being Congress. It got to play against a group of our elected officials... and one of them actually beat Watson. Say hello to Rep. Rush Holt -- who was a bit of a ringer, since he's actually a five-time Jeopardy champion. Holt apparently outscored Watson $8,600 to $6,200, though all the other Congressional Reps who went up against Watson were unable to master the computer. I guess this means that we should make Rep. Holt our new leader when the machines come to try to enslave us.

Filed Under: ai, computers, game algorithms, jeopardy, rush holt, watson
Companies: ibm

DailyDirt: Add Jeopardy! To The List Of Games That AI Is Better At Than You....

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Today is the final game of Jeopardy! where the IBM supercomputer Watson plays against two of the best human players to ever compete on the show. Folks on the East Coast already know the outcome by now, so feel free to ruin the suspense in the comments below for those of us in later time zones. But whatever the outcome, Watson's performance has been pretty interesting to watch. And let's hope these supercomputers don't start playing thermonuclear war any time soon. In the meantime, here are some links on AI beating humans at other games and tests.

• Deep Blue won its first game of chess against Garry Kasparov in 1996. The computer didn't win the match that year, but it won the re-match in 1997. [url]
• Checkers was declared "solved" in 2007 by the Chinook project. Chinook was actually stronger than any human player by 1996, but it took a few more years for Chinook to realize checkers was a futile game (like tic-tac-toe) and retire. [url]
• A few years ago, the Polaris poker bot beat a few professionals at Texas hold'em. So be careful playing poker online... [url]
• The famous long bet between Mitchell Kapor and Ray Kurzweil has $20,000 riding on the question of whether or not AI will pass a Turing test by 2029. The bet started in 2002, and Kapor even suggested back then that a machine might win at a Jeopardy! game show. [url]
• To discover more interesting stuff on artificial intelligence, check out what the robots at StumbleUpon suggest. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: ai, checker, chess, chinook, game algorithms, games, jeopardy, poker, polaris, turing test, watson
Companies: ibm

First Test Of Computer Jeopardy Player Goes Well; Watson Beats Mere Humans

from the show-off dept

Last month, we wrote that the IBM computing project Watson was ready to take on real Jeopardy contestants in February of this year (just a few years after the project first came to life). While the big test isn't until Valentine's Day, apparently they had a dry run, and things are looking pretty good for Watson, who beat Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. It wasn't a complete domination. Apparently Watson just narrowly edged out Jennings, though Rutter couldn't keep up. Of course, between now and the real test, Watson can be tweaked. Jennings' and Rutters' brains are pretty much set, and I'd imagine that their ability to cram more useless trivia in their brains is outmatched by Watson.

Filed Under: ai, jeopardy, watson
Companies: ibm

IBM's Watson Aims To Prove Its Intelligence On Jeopardy!

from the the-only-winning-move-is-not-to-play? dept

The world of supercomputing and artificial intelligence has always been fascinated with games like chess, Go and poker -- where evaluating strategies for winning could be approached using vast computational resources. Another historical challenge for AI projects is the classic Turing Test, which requires an understanding of human communication in order to pass the test. So it's interesting to see IBM starting a project called Watson (named after IBM's founder, not Sherlock's assistant) to create a computer to compete on Jeopardy! against human contestants -- because doing so combines the goals of natural language processing and strategic game planning.

Obviously, though, Watson is more of a product demonstration than a serious research project to advance the field of computer science, but it's still a brilliant move, nonetheless, since the effort can be understood by anyone who watches popular game shows, and at the same time, the project studies a practical problem for algorithms. However, the game of Jeopardy! is somewhat trivial (no pun intended, honest) since Jeopardy's given answers all have matching questions -- and it doesn't really require true comprehension to guess (apparently, human contestants respond correctly about 85% of the time). Granted, Jeopardy! is a bit harder to play than Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, but Alex Trebek doesn't seem quite as computationally demanding as search engines can be (unless you count the audio/video Daily Doubles?). Still, IBM should be applauded for supporting its research as eye-catching PR campaigns -- while other companies like Microsoft are getting more attention for downsizing their research divisions.

Filed Under: ai, jeopardy
Companies: ibm

Spammers Solving Difficult AI Problems With An Underground X Prize

from the fascinating dept

Slashdot points us to an interview with Luis von Ahn (who we're a big fan of), where he talks about how spammers who are frustrated by various types of CAPTCHA tests have set up their own sort of "innovation prize," offering up somewhere in the range of $500,000 for software that can automatically pass CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA reading tests (the things where you have to fill in a series of letters to sign up for a service or post a comment). As von Ahn points out: "If [the spammers] are really able to write a programme to read distorted text, great -- they have solved an AI problem." It is, effectively, an "X Prize" for optical character recognition. Not that we like to encourage spammers, but it is rather fascinating how the underground business seems to mirror the above ground innovation world as well.

Filed Under: ai, captcha, luis von ahn, spam, x prize

Humans Hold Their Own At Poker, For Now

from the one-last-redoubt dept

Score one for humanity. After four grueling sessions of human vs. computer poker, the human players managed to outlast and outwit the bot. It was by no means an easy task, as the computer performed strongly on day one. But, by the second day, the human players seemed to have a pretty good feel for the way the machine played the game, giving them the leg up. Assuming that computer, dubbed Polaris, represents the vanguard of AI poker, it would seem that it'll still going to be a long time before computers can compete at the top level, as they can do in chess. This particular match offered the computer optimal conditions, as it faced an opponent heads up in limit poker; in a no-limit game with a full table of opponents (conditions that would make it even harder to calculate proper strategy), its performance would have likely been significantly worse.

Filed Under: ai, game algorithms, poker