AI

Today in class I talked a little about what makes something a robot, or an androiod, or a cyborg, but I didn’t bring up the notion of an automaton. This article has a really nice description of Jaquet-Droz’s writing automaton, including video [via Clicked]. The article points ot that the automaton is really closer to being a precursor of the computer than a precursor of the robot, because it can change what message it writes out based on a “program” on a wheel. Though, the “program” is not truly a program, as it does not change the essential functioning of … Continue reading It probably has better penmanship than me…

It’s just a short little blurb, but report is that starting this year the MCATs are going to be graded automatically using an artificial intelligence system, rather than human graders. The MCAT, like the GRE, moved to a computerized format recently to allow more frequent administration. The essay section, though, was graded in much the same way with multiple readers scoring the writing samples and a degree of consensus being required for the final score. The claim is that the AI system is more consistent than human scorers. I’ve certainly read that human scoring can vary widely. The AI system, … Continue reading Automated Grading

I’ve got robots on the brain this month, so this link via J (who got it from Digg I think) is apropos – old advertisements with robots in them. I actually think that the first one on the page is my favorite; it strikes me as ironic….

OMG! Google has announced that not only have they been collecting n-gram data from a training corpus they have built from on-line sources of a trillion works, but they’re goiing to make the n-gram data available via the UPenn Linguistic Data Consortium in the near future. I don’t even have a need for this data at the moment, but I’m drooling over the idea. I’m sure there’s some way I can make use of this in my current project…… [via Language Log]

In one of the more bizarre news articles I’ve seen about robotics lately, a professor’s project to substitute an andriod version of himself in his lectures doesn’t actually seem to be very positive about the project.[via AI in the News] From the start, the andriod is labeled as looking “creepily like him”. Looking at the technology behind the article, there’s no intelligence in the system, as the operator wears motion-capture gear and the android reproduces those behaviors. The professor claims he just wanted to eliminate his commute – I would have thought some good videoconferencing equipment would be easier and … Continue reading Didn’t they do this scene in Real Genius?

For my students in my AI class, who had the honor of being my last exam of the spring semester, I link to the Top 10 Strangest Robots, with video! RunBot might be my favorite because he is so cute, but the OmniZero robot boxing video is probably the “must see” of the bunch and Robonova is impressive too.

What did you do with your holiday break? Did you invent a new field of computer science? If not, you weren’t as productive as Newell and Simon were during their break fifty years ago. This is a nice story about their early work towards a program that could be considered “artificial intelligence”.