miƩrcoles, 19 de noviembre de 2008

Robots. a new race.

The NAO is an example of how robots can perform human actions. It really seems to be alive. How would that make our life different?

Q&A about I.A.

Here we have some guiding questions regarding Artificial Intelligence and its main functioning.

Basic Questions

Q. What is artificial intelligence?
A. It is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs. It is related to the similar task of using computers to understand human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself to methods that are biologically observable.

Q. Yes, but what is intelligence?
A. Intelligence is the computational part of the ability to achieve goals in the world. Varying kinds and degrees of intelligence occur in people, many animals and some machines.

Q. Isn't there a solid definition of intelligence that doesn't depend on relating it to human intelligence?
A. Not yet. The problem is that we cannot yet characterize in general what kinds of computational procedures we want to call intelligent. We understand some of the mechanisms of intelligence and not others.

Q. Is intelligence a single thing so that one can ask a yes or no question ``Is this machine intelligent or not?''?
A. No. Intelligence involves mechanisms, and AI research has discovered how to make computers carry out some of them and not others. If doing a task requires only mechanisms that are well understood today, computer programs can give very impressive performances on these tasks. Such programs should be considered ``somewhat intelligent''.

Q. Isn't AI about simulating human intelligence?
A. Sometimes but not always or even usually. On the one hand, we can learn something about how to make machines solve problems by observing other people or just by observing our own methods. On the other hand, most work in AI involves studying the problems the world presents to intelligence rather than studying people or animals. AI researchers are free to use methods that are not observed in people or that involve much more computing than people can do.

Many more questions at: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/whatisai/node1.html

... and this piggy went to the-... e-market?

Nowadays, people perform their daily tasks through the internet. Commerce has been the most masive transition from face-to-face interaction to a completely impersonal interaction of a client and a company. This article shows that many people turn to the internet to get what they need. It shows how internet is becoming a part of peoples lives and they rely on it for making their life decisions, including work:http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1003949

miƩrcoles, 12 de noviembre de 2008

The Prose of Blogging: Literature and Technology

Arcticle by Rama Ramaswami about a specific case where IT has been used as a working tool for learning.
"Can the technology often derided as the favored tool of lowbrow cyber rogues actually be used to improve student writing? Educators are beginning to demonstrate it can."
http://www.thejournal.com/articles/23562

A Robot's Touch

In the following arcticle we have the work of Professor Nicola J. Ferrier about his attepts to give robots an artificial sence of touch for contact, force, pressure and other capabilities of living beings. He also discusses the current role of robotics and its limitations:
"Right now robots are really clumsy," Ferrier says. "Eighty to 90 percent of the robots in use do not come into contact with anything. They are spray painters, arc welders and spot welders." And in those cases, Ferrier says the objects worked on by robots have to be placed in the same place every time so that the robot can find the work.

Complete arcticle at: http://www.engr.wisc.edu/alumni/perspective/25.1/robots.html

Ergo - what?

The term “ergonomics” is derived from two Greek words: “ergon”, meaning work and “nomoi”, meaning natural laws. Ergonomists study human capabilities and posture in relationship to work demands. (Definition taken from http://www.ergonomics.org/)
This link below explains the subject widely, and to round it up we have a video that delivers practical advice regarding this subject to avoid working problems and how this affects the work done.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35SZ-M7mfhQ&feature=related

Cuil-it!

A new search engine developed by an ex-googler, Anna Patterson, finally appears to be online and tries new tecniques for searching algorithms. Some particular insight on how search engines work contrasts how Cuil is different from Google, which can give a very particular insight on the topic.

http://news.cnet.com/new-search-engine-cuil-takes-aim-at-google/