I just completed a good scrub updating the SourceForge.net project websites for JWords and AutoSummary. I removed most of the unused features, uploaded & organized documentation, and configured the SF.net web hosting service. No new file releases are available (or pending), but the SourceForge.net page and documentation should make JWords & AutoSummary much more accessible and easier to use.
Javadoc source code documentation was uploaded onto SourceForge for both of the projects. Additionally, I created step-by-step instructions for getting each program up and running, which should be easy to follow for even the non-programmer. And finally, I posted more extensive project descriptions to the respective documentation pages.
The updated SourceForge.net project websites can be viewed at:
JWords Java Interface for WordNet
AutoSummary Semantic Analysis Engine
My SourceForge.net developer profile can be found at:
http://sourceforge.net/users/greenbacker/
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Let the machines target machines - not people?
Not to be outdone by her allies, the US military has decided to draft some proposals regarding the proper use of robots and other autonomous systems in combat. The basic idea of the guidelines suggested by the Naval Surface Warfare Center is that machines should be allowed to freely engage other unmanned systems and weapons, but must require human interaction for permission to fire on enemy personnel manned systems. The researchers point to precedence of this concept in the automatic engaging protocols of the Patriot Missile Battery, Aegis Auto Special "hands-off" mode, and the Phalanx ship defense system.
An interesting suggestion, but it puts an awful lot of reliance on the autonomous systems' abilities to discriminate and positively identify the enemy, leaving allies unharmed. Many video game developers can't even get simple collision detection working. So while this may be an easier pill to swallow for those who criticize the "de-humanization" of warfare (giving lethal decision authority to a machine), those folks will be the loudest to complain as soon as the first error leads to a friendly fire incident. And, of course, all bets are off as soon as we face a symmetric adversary who's systems are not bound by these same guidelines. Overly-restrictive rules of engagement created by lawyers and politicians in the "ivory tower" can be quite the disadvantage for soldiers at the front lines in a shooting war.
(via Slashdot)
An interesting suggestion, but it puts an awful lot of reliance on the autonomous systems' abilities to discriminate and positively identify the enemy, leaving allies unharmed. Many video game developers can't even get simple collision detection working. So while this may be an easier pill to swallow for those who criticize the "de-humanization" of warfare (giving lethal decision authority to a machine), those folks will be the loudest to complain as soon as the first error leads to a friendly fire incident. And, of course, all bets are off as soon as we face a symmetric adversary who's systems are not bound by these same guidelines. Overly-restrictive rules of engagement created by lawyers and politicians in the "ivory tower" can be quite the disadvantage for soldiers at the front lines in a shooting war.
(via Slashdot)
Laws to Govern Robots and AI
Several nations are proposing early legislation aimed at protecting the rights of humans and robots should AI researchers successfully produce sentient, conscious machines.
As part of a future-looking series of papers commissioned by the UK Office of Science and Innovation's Horizon Scanning Centre, developments over the next 50 years could lead to robots demanding the same rights as human beings. The study suggests that machines might be granted the both the rights & responsibilites of all Her Majesty's subjects, including voting, taxes, and military service.
South Korea is drafting an ethical code to regulate interaction between humans and robots. The rules are expected to set guidelines for robotic surgery, household servants, and human-robot "relationships." (via Slashdot)
The Government of Japan is also following suit, although its efforts appear to be mired in committee gibberish and red tape. Fears of conflict between man and machine, and civil servants seeking to avoid liability, seem to be the driving forces behind the draft proposal. Unlike the straightforward language of Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, the Japanese rulebook contains wonderful bureaucratic poetry such as:
Sounds like bloatware to me...
As part of a future-looking series of papers commissioned by the UK Office of Science and Innovation's Horizon Scanning Centre, developments over the next 50 years could lead to robots demanding the same rights as human beings. The study suggests that machines might be granted the both the rights & responsibilites of all Her Majesty's subjects, including voting, taxes, and military service.
South Korea is drafting an ethical code to regulate interaction between humans and robots. The rules are expected to set guidelines for robotic surgery, household servants, and human-robot "relationships." (via Slashdot)
The Government of Japan is also following suit, although its efforts appear to be mired in committee gibberish and red tape. Fears of conflict between man and machine, and civil servants seeking to avoid liability, seem to be the driving forces behind the draft proposal. Unlike the straightforward language of Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, the Japanese rulebook contains wonderful bureaucratic poetry such as:
Risk shall be defined as a combination of the occurrence rate of danger and the actual level of danger. Risk estimation involves estimating the potential level of danger and evaluating the potential sources of danger. Therefore total risk is defined as the danger of use of robots and potential sources of danger.
Sounds like bloatware to me...
Monday, April 2, 2007
Google Speaks 12 Languages
I just read an interesting article about the great success Google has been having using statistical machine translation for automatic translation of foreign language documents, as opposed to the rule & grammar based approaches used before.
I, for one, am very much persuaded by the idea that human language is so complex (we don't even fully understand it, just ask a linguist!) that it can never be fully hard-coded into a machine, but rather, a machine must "learn" it on it's own for the most part (we'll guide it and help it where needed). I like the approach that Google is taking, but without a conceptual framework or knowledge representation model, the system really isn't "understanding" or "comprehening" anything--it's just doing a "dumb" translation using statistical references. Still quite an accomplishment, but entirely different from my ultimate objective.
I, for one, am very much persuaded by the idea that human language is so complex (we don't even fully understand it, just ask a linguist!) that it can never be fully hard-coded into a machine, but rather, a machine must "learn" it on it's own for the most part (we'll guide it and help it where needed). I like the approach that Google is taking, but without a conceptual framework or knowledge representation model, the system really isn't "understanding" or "comprehening" anything--it's just doing a "dumb" translation using statistical references. Still quite an accomplishment, but entirely different from my ultimate objective.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Machine Analysis of Scientific Papers
There's a lot of exciting work going on in NLP right now, and it's hard to keep up...and even harder to maintain a blog about all of it! Larry pointed me to an article from last year detailing an automated tool for analyzing and comparing experimental reports.
This project sounds like some sort of XML markup scheme for outlining scientific papers, similar to the ontologies powering the semantic web initiative. It probably involves too much overhead to be widely adopted and therefore be useful, as it likely requires the author to spend an awful lot of additional time constructing papers such that the EXPO system could parse it. A much more elegant method would be for the system to perform an automatic analysis and markup of the text, however that would require NLP technology beyond what's currently available.
As you might imagine, a similar hurdle exists for the adoption of the semantic web in general. However, the analysis & synthesis of peer-reviewed journals presents us with yet another "killer app" for NLP. There is simply far too much information covering any given topic being generated for a human being to digest, even experts in a particular field...let alone a renaissance man or polymath to synthesize from diverse fields. Only a machine with advanced NLP capabilities would be able to make sense of it all and create new knowledge from what's already available.
This project sounds like some sort of XML markup scheme for outlining scientific papers, similar to the ontologies powering the semantic web initiative. It probably involves too much overhead to be widely adopted and therefore be useful, as it likely requires the author to spend an awful lot of additional time constructing papers such that the EXPO system could parse it. A much more elegant method would be for the system to perform an automatic analysis and markup of the text, however that would require NLP technology beyond what's currently available.
As you might imagine, a similar hurdle exists for the adoption of the semantic web in general. However, the analysis & synthesis of peer-reviewed journals presents us with yet another "killer app" for NLP. There is simply far too much information covering any given topic being generated for a human being to digest, even experts in a particular field...let alone a renaissance man or polymath to synthesize from diverse fields. Only a machine with advanced NLP capabilities would be able to make sense of it all and create new knowledge from what's already available.
Friday, March 2, 2007
Commercially Available Automatic Summarization Software
In his weekly article, Robert X. Cringley profiles a company that has created software which is seemingly able to create relevant summaries of arbitrary size from bodies of text covering all possible subject domains. This is precisely the sort of thing I wanted to accomplish with my AutoSummary project. Automatic summarization is yet another application of NLP as a solution to the problem of too much information for humans to deal with. Learn more about iReader at Syntactica.
Marvin Minsky AI Podcast from 2001
Slashdot points us to three podcasts from MIT Professor Marvin Minsky where he discusses the past failures of AI and the hope for progress in the future. Part One can be found here.
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