[isml] Surrounded And Outnumbered

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From: "Dan S" <ds1999@PM5-h5aGjqTjCeItTPQPfw1Qj8MIrwNJLTjLj03UIMm_xAKJDSiIRAp-X-V_mkbZ6XSBl_wIpwSiPhJaHw.yahoo.invalid>

>>From http://www.botspot.com/pcai/article10.htm
-
REPORTS ON AI FROM
The Secret Agent Man
DON BARKER
BotSpot's man in the field

Surrounded And Outnumbered
By Don Barker

In 1965, NBC launched Get Smart, which spoofed the 60's spy craze and James
Bond in particular. The most memorable image from the show is bumbling
secret agent Maxwell Smart using his shoe phone to call his "Chief."

I remembered that show with some amusement when I recently came across Neil
Gershenfeld's new book When Things Start to Think, which features a picture
of a "smart" shoe on the cover.

Nike is supporting Gershenfeld's "Things That Think" research consortium at
MIT's famous Media Lab to develop "intelligent" shoes. The idea, I gathered
from the book, is to create a shoe capable of generating power and
containing the equivalent of today's laptop computer. (I suppose taking off
your shoe to phone home won't be an initial feature.)

The "Things That Think" (TTT) consortium is working at making computing and
computation ubiquitous but less obtrusive, providing "...information that
you need where you want it, when you want it, and without you needing to
manage it."

The first decade of the Media Lab was devoted to the recognition that
content transcends the means to physically represent it. In other words,
these researchers foresaw that print and images would evolve into "bits" in
the rapidly emerging world of digital media.

"In the second decade, more and more of the work of the Media Lab revolves
around the recognition that capable bits need capable atoms," Gershenfeld
argues in his book. He believes that in order to bring computation closer to
people it is now necessary to revisit and revise the physical ways atoms
represent content (bits).

In practice, this means developing a range of new computation devices that
come in almost any form (except traditional personal computers, of course).
So, in addition to shoes and clothing, other things like jewelry, furniture,
carpets, walls, and cars are being endowed with intelligence by the TTT
consortium and their industrial sponsors, such as Nike, HP, Motorola,
Microsoft, Fedex and Disney. They are also developing the communication
protocols and transports required to connect these smart devices into
networked systems. In the end, they hope to create an environment where,
"Your shoes should be retrieving the day's personalized news from the carpet
before you even have time to take off your coat."

In essence, the scientists at TTT are attempting to move computation away
from the digital world, which is how computers operate, and toward an
enhanced analog world that is similar to how humans function.  In
Gershenfeld's vision of the future, VCR's never flash annoying 12:00 symbols
because they automatically check with atomic clocks on the Internet to reset
their own time after a power failure.  Coffee machines monitor your
consumption patterns and the temperature of the coffee in your cup so a warm
pot is ready for you at the appropriate time.  You don't have to go in
search of a phone jack to plug in your laptop computer when you want your
email; instead, your wristwatch, eyeglasses, or even a tabletop or wall
display your messages upon command.

Before you dismiss the idea of ubiquitous and unobtrusive intelligent
computation as unrealistic or absurd, keep in mind Moore's Law (named after
Gordon Moore, the inventor of the integrated circuit and a previous chairman
of Intel). Moore's Law states that approximately every two years the number
of transistors on the same size chip doubles. This means that the power and
speed of computing doubles about every two years, while the cost remains
about the same.

Ray Kurzweil, in his new book, The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers
Exceed Human Intelligence, masterfully illustrates the long-term
implications of this exponential growth for machine intelligence. Kurzweil,
who played a key role in the invention of character and voice recognition,
plots this accelerating trend out until the year 2100. After factoring in
other contributing trends, Kurzweil predicts that a single $1,000 computer
will have the equivalent computation capabilities of a human by 2020 and the
combined computation power of all humans by 2060.

Although it remains to be seen if chip technology, or its offspring such as
optical, nanotechnology, or quantum computing, can maintain that pace of
acceleration for the next 100 years, Kurzweil makes some convincing
arguments based on current research.

Of course, there is also the question of whether software development will
keep pace with advances in computational power and speed. But the defeat of
the reigning world chess champion Gary Kasaprov by IBM's supercomputer "Deep
Blue" does indicate that ever increasing computing power is helping to
overcome the limitations of software in delivering more intelligent
machines.

Patrick Winston, former director (for a remarkable 25 years) of the MIT AI
Lab, recently told me that, "...it is not outrageous to imagine that
discoveries [in artificial intelligence] analogous to [finding DNA in
biology] will take place in next decade or so." Such a discovery would
certainly shorten even Kurzweil's optimistic estimates of the arrival of
machine intelligence. So, when Gershenfeld and Kurzweil predict intelligent
computation will be imbedded in our clothing and jewelry, we should take the
prospect seriously.

I also recently spoke with Rodney Brooks, inventor of such extraordinary
robots as COG and the current director of MIT's AI Lab. Although research
projects run the gamut from robotics to information "survivability," Brooks
says they too are working on "...intelligent spaces...[where] instead of you
having to go to the machine the machine is where you are and you don't think
of it as a machine...you have computation all around."

He gave an insightful example of how a professor might be talking with a
student in the hallway about a particular subject that required the display
of a chart to fully explain the concept. Instead of heading for a computer,
the professor just gestures and a nearby wall displays the graph,
automatically modifying the chart as the professor, or student, suggest
changes.

Unlike the future envisioned by science fiction writers, such as William
Gibson's original "cyberspace" in which humanity and artificial artifacts
interact, we are much more likely to see computation entering our physical
world in ever-increasing amounts and places, according to researchers such
as Gershenfeld, Kurzweil, and Brooks. Proponents of nanotechnology, the
science of automatically building matter atom by atom, even believe that it
eventually will be possible to remake our physical world in any image, a
sort of "virtual realty" without the "virtual." Trillions of "nanobots"
could, in theory, intelligently reorganize our surroundings based on our
needs and tastes. For example, instantly changing our bedroom to a kitchen
when we awaken in the morning.

This may all sound a bit way out, but one thing is for sure: As we move into
the 21st century we will no doubt be surrounded and outnumbered by
intelligent agents and computation in general. So, as computation evolves
and multiples around us, we should get smart now about planning and
controlling it.

I hear my shoe phone ringing, so this 007.10 signing off. You can reach me
at don@pLC6n673hetKc_jO1Ch695mGFFvazOC4TmLLKKCU6K_XRbQp1fey8TsU86rolyeKYxc-NaM7QQ32mw.yahoo.invalid or visit me at http://www.donbarker.com. Just remember,
I'm the man who lives the life of danger and to everyone I meet I stay a
(bit) stranger.


Don Barker is the senior editor of PCAI Magazine.

--
Dan S

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