Emotion a Prerequisite for Thought?

A group of scholars gathering at Harvard to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the “cognitive revolution,” are promoting the idea that understanding human emotion is absolutely essential to understanding human thought. The scholars go on to argue that the reason all attempts to recreate human thought in AI have failed up to this point is because AI researchers have ignored the role played by emotion in intelligence. While it is true that emotion is central to human thought, it’s awfully anthropocentric to claim the human model as the only path to intelligence.

Although minds and computers may not be completely analogous, to say that emotion is this missing link to artificial general intelligence seems rather naïve and simplistic. There is much work to be done before we can even come close to developing strong AI, and it is quite easy to imagine thinking machines completely devoid of emotion. Intentionality may perhaps be integral to any intelligent system, and emotion may be deeply-seated in human intentionality, but any number of goal-oriented schemes could be devised to replace emotion as the driving force behind an intelligent machine.

Building a Better Mouse...Brain

IBM researchers have simulated 'half' a mouse brain on a Blue Gene L supercomputer. For comparison, a real mouse brain has 8 million neurons with 8,000 synapses each. The simulation had 8 million artificial neurons with 6,300 virtual synapses each. It was only run for 10 seconds at one-tenth the speed of real-life...which equates to one full mouse second.

Quite a virtualization overhead if you ask me.

When Will It End?

Yet another article has appeared in a British newspaper forecasting the dire consequences of AI as a result of a recent public debate at the London Science Media Centre. The Daily Mail chimes in again, repeating most of what's previously been covered, with concerns that robotic caregivers could "dehumanise" patients, and citing an uneasy relationship with technology.

One ray of coherent thought shined through, however, as it was revealed that the original intent of the debate was for scientists to dispute the "silly report" on robot rights released by the UK Department of Trade and Industry. Unfortunately, all of the media outlets covering the debate chose instead to focus on vague worries of out-of-control robots running amuck. Gotta sell papers I suppose...

Here's a gem from this latest article:

I certainly wouldn't want to be a British squaddie on the sands of Iraq with robot-controlled American gunships patrolling overhead.

Umm...too late?

More Fear Mongering over Robots in UK

Now it seems the “West Britons” are jumping on the bandwagon, with the Belfast Telegraph being the latest UK media outlet to spread FUD about the coming robotic menace. The article has a decent layman’s overview of the current state of robotics, but can’t avoid inciting worry over the increasing use of military robots, “robot rights,” and robots replacing humans providing care for children and the elderly.

It doesn’t get much more ominous than this:

So are these machines a threat?

Yes...

Sounds like those scientists at the London Science Media Centre really frightened the journalists in attendance...or perhaps the less-than tech-savvy reporters misunderstood much of the discussion and wrote sensational articles in order to attract readers.

More coverage of this debate:
Artificial Minds: British Wary of AI
Artificial Minds: Robo-FUD from the BBC

I just wish I could get my hands on some transcripts or other source material from the actual event to see for myself what really went on...

It Takes a Village…?

An interesting experiment in Scotland seeks to build a robotic society to study emergent cultural behaviors. The robots will be grouped into “villages” and programmed to mimic each other’s actions under various conditions. The scientists expect the mimicked behaviors to change slightly every time they are copied, resulting in a variety of different and unpredictable results...much like the telephone game. Of course, the emergent behaviors will be uniquely robotic, and should be distinct from human or animal activities.

Given the general sentiment towards AI in Great Britain lately, don’t be surprised to see protesters warning against the inevitability of these robots going crazy and killing everyone...

NLP Calculator for Mac

The Unofficial Apple Weblog points us in the direction of a calculator that can solve a limited scope of natural language word problems. Written as a front-end for the GNU bc calculator, Soulver is something fun to play with but isn't meant to satisfy all your calculating needs.

I was recently mulling around the idea of creating a natural language Unix shell. It wouldn't be too difficult to map out a significant number of input patterns to actual Unix/Linux commands, but the necessarily narrow scope of the system would have been a major usability drawback, as it must be for Soulver.

British Wary of AI

More doom & gloom from the UK as a result of a "forward-looking" debate on robot ethics at the London Science Media Centre.

The Financial Times is concerned that robots designed for urban warfare could be misused for policing purposes. The Daily Mail fears robots making wrong decisions and warns of vague "consequences." To me these seem more to be matters of posse comitatus and accountability rather than cultural issues exclusively pertaining to AI.

The old saying "We fear that which we do not understand" rings awfully true...