Jan 11, 2008
A few years ago I read about an experiment that used living cortical neurons from a rat brain to perform calculations. More specifically, the neurons were connected to the controls of an F-22 fighter jet simulator. After some training, the brain was able to fly the jet in tough weather conditions. Today Geylen brought my attention to another similar experiment. An associate professor at the Uni. of Arizona has built a robot chassis controlled by the brain of a moth. He predicts we’ll be using such organic-machine hybrid computers soon.
Dec 31, 2007
Two-thousand-and-seven was a fine year. On May 27th ThinkArtificial.org launched with a bang and naturally I’ve quite enjoyed the ride. We’ve talked about synthetic lifeforms, living spacedust, surprising ingenuity of AIBOs. But this is the last post for 2007 and in it we ponder peeking into the future.
Nov 30, 2007
Last week an online friend of mine, Nils Geylen of NDNL, asked a question:
2005 was the year of the blog, 2006 that of social networking and 2007 that of microblogging. 2008 will be that of?
My answer was knowledge networking while Nils’ was videos. Consequently, we decided to write our own separate posts on the matter, explaining in a bit more detail our visions of what the web of 2008 will bring (read Nils’ predictions). We also decided that the winner gets the internet.
Nov 28, 2007
As much as I’d love a brain-computer interface for controlling game characters or avatars in virtual worlds, there are still a few years until they’ll be able to analyze our body’s every move and translate them in real time to machines. In the meantime, there are other options. Small and cheap sensors have promise for new machine interfaces that monitor your entire body.
Nov 19, 2007
One of my courses this semester is Programming Languages, covering their fundamental histories and differences. Something I direly need to open my eyes and jolt me out of Java fanaticism. I particularly enjoyed playing around with Scheme, a dialect of Lisp. Rather than selfishly leaving the precious resources somewhere in a dark corner, I wrote this article to help get you started with Lisp as well.
Nov 9, 2007
One of the things that I really want to do is to make robots that live in the wild. We don’t yet have technology that’s cheap enough, but you can bet we will soon — and when that happens you’ll find me releasing hordes of intelligent machines into the wild.
Oct 31, 2007
You must have noticed that Leopard made it’s debut a few days back. It isn’t as obviously revolutionary as the first version of OS X, but introduces some nifty improvements. What’s gone relatively unnoticed is that Leopard sports what could be the most impressive practical use of artificial intelligence in OS history. Don’t believe me? I don’t blame you. After all, there’s been absolutely no mention of “AI” anywhere … here’s the rundown and the reasons.
Oct 24, 2007
The past weekends I’ve been spending some time on a pet game project. Writing a small engine, building a storyline and creating visuals. When it comes to 3D games there’s a lot to consider, from aesthetics through software architecture to AI, and naturally, my curious mind has been venturing ideas in all these areas. Lately I’ve started to think that maybe the whole thing is worth more than just random jabs of code and color.
Oct 19, 2007
A few weeks ago I said you should keep an eye out for Radar Networks‘ work on semantic web applications. Today they’ll finally come out of stealth mode, and over the past 24 hours they’ve unveiled quite a lot of details regarding the nature of their product, Twine. From what’s been disclosed, my excitement appears justified.
