This viral video is making the rounds on the blogosphere. For anyone familiar with Second Life — the online 3D virtual world — it’s bound to leave you giggling like a schoolgirl. The video shows real life people behaving like your average SL avatar, bouncing around and into things, accompanied by the appropriate sound effects.

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When working on any software system there are various challenges. When a system is entirely new, there’s a ton. Here’s a short and generalized description of what’s involved in the process. In the interest of keeping this non-technical, let’s use some analogies of adventure and countryside (that we’re ruining with dams to power our systems, ironically). A system is a specific place that you want to go to, like Grandma’s Secret Hillside Bakery. The path that that leads to it are parts of the program you have to create.

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And now for some comic relief. Apparently, there’s a whole subculture of crazed musicians writing brilliantly comic songs about robots killing humans. It wasn’t long ago that I came across the Never Trust Robots video by musician Andrew Thompson. Today I came across an even funnier one by a band from New Zealand.

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My uncle pointed out the “Virtual Haircut” clip about two weeks ago and I’ve been slowly spreading it around to everyone’s delight (and discomfort). It’s a play on stereo-sound extraordinaire and, most importantly, a play on your brain.

Click the link below to listen, but you need headphones (not speakers!) for the clip to have the desired effect.

Used in over 1000 universities in 91 countries, Artificial Intelligence, A Modern Approach is one of the most popular textbooks on Artificial Intelligence. If you’re interested in diving head-first into AI studies, and want a comprehensive overview of the field’s history, common problems and solutions, I recommend this book. It’s also a great reference book for anyone that’s working on AI (No I’m not getting paid for this, unfortunately). See the AIMA table of contents here.

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Reminiscent of Weird Al, this video by musician Andrew Thompson is an hilarious take on the old Hollywood idiosyncrasy. There’s not much to say, watch and enjoy.

[[via Beatsentropy, Thanks to John of OneMan's Blog for the link]]

Glancing over the frontpage I suddenly noticed similarities between images of two posts — and simply couldn’t resist combining them. I’m still chuckling even as I post this.

If you’re reading this at a later time, compare the 300 post with the death by robot post and then come back to this one.

Don’t you just hate keyboards on small devices? Tech like Project Epoc’s would be a nice replacement.

In most conversations, people tend not to ask questions about what I’m doing beyond that of the name, which is usually followed by a nod and a change of subject. When it comes to computers, and especially artificial intelligence — it seems generally not be considered good conversation material. The process is depicted in the cartoon on the side. In the second frame, note the totally blank expression on the friendly persons face while he nods, in comparison to my intense, excited smile of joy at the prospect of an interesting conversion about work.

Governed by a concern for my own health, I’ve decided not even to contemplate the possibility of someone finding science uninteresting; so the closest logical reason is that many think they wouldn’t understand it. I’d already written a half an overview explaining what I do and why I do it, when I realized that the text was a bit technical, and that upon reading it many readers would probably act as depicted in frame 3 of the cartoon. Instead, I made this entry a Normality Certified™ account of my experiences of A.I. in smalltalk.

Now, first, let me point out that of course A.I. isn’t smalltalk material — because it generally requires more than a “small talk” to even reach an agreement on how to define the words being used in the conversation (e.g. defining “intelligence”). In this aspect, small-talk is closely related to small-thought — so my frustration doesn’t really derive from no-one wanting to talk about A.I. any more than the fact that people generally don’t like thinking.

Overall, I’ve heard many — but here are selected responses that I frequently receive when my work is mentioned.

Regular reply from those familiar with certain movies. Usually stated in a sarcastic tone, sometimes implying that A.I. belongs in fairytales (robotales?), with a subtle undertone of fear that it won’t. There are many different versions of this response, but they all mean the same thing with their references to Terminator and the Hollywood idiosyncrasy.

An unfortunate thing about this question is that there is no good answer to it if you’re keeping things smalltalky, except just saying “Yes” if you think you have, or “No” if you haven’t. Any attempt at intelligent answers like “Well, that depends on how you define intelligence” will often cause a smalltalker to think you really haven’t, but that you’re trying to find a way to make it seem like you have.

Note also the emphasis on “real” — the word “artificial” seems to be generally interpreted as a synonym to “fake”. Fortunately, comparing artificial intelligence to artificial fabric works very well, as most people do realize that artificial fabrics are in fact real.

Chances are that people of the analog generations use this reply.

Elderly relatives’ reply. Either (a) the person wants you to explain it, then starts talking about the weather, or (b) she doesn’t, and then starts talking about the weather. Both events a and b are preceded by the person realizing the association of A.I. with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In the end, I’m generally ok with any response I get. We’re all different, and I respect peoples choices and interests. But I have one more tale to tell in this context. The other day insomnia struck again — I had little choice but to put on a DVD from our Friends collection. It was then when I had a very disconcerting reminder of what the majority of people think of science.

So in this scene, characters Ross (David Schwimmer) and Chandler (Matthew Perry) were “hanging out” when Ross mentions “I just finished this fascinating book. By the year 2030, there’ll be computers that can carry out the same amount of functions as an actual human brain. So theoretically you could download your thoughts and memories into this computer and live forever as a machine”.

But then the punchline came: Chandler pretended to doze off with the appropriate satirical snoring sound, followed by that horrible studio-laughter. Now, I like Friends, and I like Chandler, but I didn’t laugh this time — I was just plain bummed that Ross couldn’t talk more about this book!

Let us examine what this made me think at the time:

• Normal people’s ideas of interesting conversations do not involve science, and usually not events further away than a week (unless it’s a concert).
• I’m not a Normality Certified™ individual¹

In point 1, I’m not referring to the conversation of the fictional characters Chandler and Ross. I’m talking about the very-real people that watch the show and probably rolled around on their nacho-covered floor laughing their asses off over the absurd notion of the mention of something “so obnoxiously boring” — which was exactly what the very-real scriptwriters knew, and were planning on happening.

See definition on Normality Certified™ below for reference on Point nr. 2. But the feeling I got watching the scene was both eerie and relieving. I’ll leave it up to the respected reader to hypothesize why.

So, in conclusion — draw your own conclusions, and find the sarcastic hidden message in this article (not kidding).

¹Normality Certified™ means that the contents of the product or products do not break the borders of normal, although the Institute of Norm makes no guarantees that your sense of normal is normal enough to perceive the contents as normal.

Note: This is actually the second time I publish this entry. The first time was on my first blog, which was very obscure and I doubt more than 5 people have actually read it.

When I make casual jokes very few people get them. They’re usually either too far fetched or too obscure. But, after having one person laugh at something I wrote up (who usually doesn’t), I’m gonna go out on a limb here and post this latest mindleak of mine: 9 different views of the half-empty or half-full glass dilemma.

Is the glass half empty, or half full?

• The Government says it’s half full. It’s innocent until proven guilty.
• The Science rationally remains undecided.
• The Religion says it’s not a glass at all. It’s a monkey.
• The Common Man just keeps asking “Is the glass half empty, or half full?”
• The Corporation says it’s not only half full, but half priced as well.
• The Military says it’s classified … and then asks why you want to know.
• The Web 2.0 entrepreneur says it’s half full. It’s just in its beta.
• The Machine says whatever we taught it to say.
• The Blogger says it depends on his reader statistics.