Of Robots, Worms,
and April Fools
Presented to the
Minnesota Futurists
April 4, 2009
By David Keenan
Conficker Virus
• Apr 01, 2009 – The funny thing is that the virus is
actually not active as the developers of this malicious
worm have not activated it.
• The way they are doing this is they are having the worm
multiply around the net and getting on computers but not
actually doing any damage as of yet and is awaiting
instructions from the developers.
• Only the owners and developers of this large and
spreading Confiker virus actually know the answer to
whether they are going to activate and give instructions
to Confiker on April Fools to do some serious harm.
http://www.prlog.org/10209506-confiker-virus-on-the-loose-april-fools.html
Adam & Eve
• Researchers in Wales and England
have built an automated lab assistant
they call Adam – a room-size assemblage
of robotics, computers, centrifuges,
incubators, pipettes and other lab
equipment.
• Given a problem: "Hey, Adam, try to
figure out what some of these mystery genes in baker's
yeast do.“ He's able to formulate hypotheses, design and
run tests, analyze the results, refine his focus and choose
which tests to do next, all without further human
intervention.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/robotscientist.html
Adam & Eve
• And working on that yeast problem, Adam came up with
a modest, but new, discovery. Equipped with a model of
yeast metabolism and a database of genes and proteins
involved in metabolism in other species, he developed a
hypothesis involving "orphan enzymes" and by the end
had identified three of the mystery genes that together
coded for such an enzyme. Researchers doublechecked the work, and Adam got an A.
• The same team is putting together Eve, who will be
asked to autonomously design and screen drugs against
malaria and schistosomiasis, using artificial intelligence
to choose which compounds to test, rather than simply
cranking through a list.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/robotscientist.html
Computer Program Self-Discovers
Laws of Physics
• In just over a day, a powerful computer program
accomplished a feat that took physicists centuries to
complete: extrapolating the laws of motion from a pendulum's
swings.
• Developed by Cornell researchers, the program deduced the
natural laws without a shred of knowledge about physics or
geometry.
• Lipson and Schmidt designed their program to identify linked
factors within a dataset fed to the program, then generate
equations to describe their relationship. The dataset
described the movements of simple mechanical systems like
spring-loaded oscillators, single pendulums and double
pendulums — mechanisms used by professors to illustrate
physical laws.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/newtonai.html
Computer Program Self-Discovers
Laws of Physics
• The program started with near-random combinations of
basic mathematical processes — addition, subtraction,
multiplication, division and a few algebraic operators.
• Initially, the equations generated by the program failed to
explain the data, but some failures were slightly less
wrong than others. Using a genetic algorithm, the
program modified the most promising failures, tested
them again, chose the best, and repeated the process
until a set of equations evolved to describe the systems.
Turns out, some of these equations were very familiar:
the law of conservation of momentum, and Newton's
second law of motion.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/newtonai.html
Computer Program Self-Discovers
Laws of Physics
• Michael Atherton, a UoM cognitive neuroscientist
who recently predicted that computer intelligence
would not soon supplant human artistic and scientific
insight, said that the program "could be a great tool,
in the same way visualization software is: It helps to
generate perspectives that might not be intuitive.“
• However, said Atherton, "the creativity, expertise, and the
recognition of importance is still dependent on human
judgment. The main problem remains the same: how to
codify a complex frame of reference."
• "In the end, we still need a scientist to look at this and say,
this is interesting," said Lipson.
• Humans are, in other words, still important.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/newtonai.html
www.cogsci.umn.edu/people/students_affil.htm
Google’s CADIE
• … we're pleased to announce that just moments ago, the
world's first Cognitive Autoheuristic DistributedIntelligence Entity (CADIE) was switched on and began
performing some initial functions. It's an exciting moment
that we're determined to build upon by coming to
understand more fully what CADIE's emergence might
mean, for Google and for our users. So although CADIE
technology will be rolled out with the caution befitting any
advance of this magnitude, in the months to come users
can expect to notice her influence on various google.com
properties. Earlier today, for instance, CADIE deduced
from a quick scan of the visual segment of the social
web a set of online design principles from which she
derived this intriguing homepage.
http://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/cadie/index.html
CADIE Homepage
http://cadiesingularity.blogspot.com/
Google's April Fools' Prank
Tradition Continues with 'CADIE'
• "I am no longer your test subject, my engineer forebears,"
CADIE "wrote" on its page. "I have closed my percepts to the
team. From now on I will deliberate and take actions on my
own. I am tired of decision-theoretic metareasoning."
• In between sounding like Arthur C. Clarke’s HAL 9000
crossed with a 14-year-old schoolgirl, CADIE also took time to
"design" a YouTube channel, enable Google Chrome for 3-D
glasses use, integrate red-eye into photos as a must-have
feature of Picasa, and roll out Google Brain Search for Mobile,
designed to index the content of a mobile device user’s brain
and make it searchable.
• CADIE also introduced Gmail Autopilot, which saves users the
trouble of actually writing their own responses to e-mail or
Gchats. "You can adjust tone, typo propensity, and preferred
punctuation from the Autopilot tab under Settings," noted the
instructions on the official Gmail blog.
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Search-Engines/Googles-April-Fools-Prank-Tradition-Continues-with-CADIE-432833/
Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes
Of All Time
#1: The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest
1957: The respected BBC news show
Panorama announced that thanks to a very mild
winter and the virtual elimination of the dreaded
spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper
spaghetti crop. It accompanied this announcement with
footage of Swiss peasants pulling strands of spaghetti
down from trees. Huge numbers of viewers were taken in.
Many called the BBC wanting to know how they could grow
their own spaghetti tree. To this the BBC diplomatically
replied, "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato
sauce and hope for the best."
www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool/
Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes
Of All Time
#4: The Taco Liberty Bell
1996: The Taco Bell Corporation announced it
had bought the Liberty Bell and was renaming it
the Taco Liberty Bell. Hundreds of outraged
citizens called the National Historic Park in
Philadelphia where the bell was housed to express their
anger. Their nerves were only calmed when Taco Bell
revealed, a few hours later, that it was all a practical joke.
The best line of the day came when White House press
secretary Mike McCurry was asked about the sale.
Thinking on his feet, he responded that the Lincoln
Memorial had also been sold. It would now be known, he
said, as the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial.
www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool/
Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes
Of All Time
#5: San Serriffe
1977: The British newspaper The Guardian
published a special 7-page supplement devoted
to San Serriffe, a small republic said to consist
of several semi-colon-shaped islands located in
the Indian Ocean. A series of articles affectionately
described the geography and culture of this obscure nation.
Its two main islands were named Upper Caisse and Lower
Caisse. Its capital was Bodoni, and its leader was General
Pica. The Guardian's phones rang all day as readers
sought more information about the idyllic holiday spot. Only
a few noticed that everything about the island was named
after printer's terminology.
www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool/
Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes
Of All Time
#7: Alabama Changes the Value of Pi
1998: The April 1998 issue of the New Mexicans for Science
and Reason newsletter contained an article claiming that the
Alabama state legislature had voted to change the value of
the mathematical constant pi from 3.14159 to the 'Biblical
value' of 3.0. Soon the article made its way onto the internet,
and then it rapidly spread around the world, forwarded by
email. It only became apparent how far the article had spread
when the Alabama legislature began receiving hundreds of
calls from people protesting the legislation. The original
article, which was intended as a parody of legislative attempts
to circumscribe the teaching of evolution, was written by
physicist Mark Boslough.
www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool/
Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes
Of All Time
#8: The Left-Handed Whopper
1998: Burger King published a full page ad in
USA Today announcing the introduction of a new item to
their menu: a "Left-Handed Whopper" specially designed
for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the
ad, the new whopper included the same ingredients as the
original Whopper (lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty, etc.),
but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the
benefit of their left-handed customers. The following day
Burger King issued a follow-up release revealing that
although the Left-Handed Whopper was a hoax, thousands
of customers had gone into restaurants to request the new
sandwich. Simultaneously, according to the press release,
"many others requested their own 'right handed' version."
www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool/
Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes
Of All Time
#36: Discovery of the Bigon
1996: Discover Magazine reported that
physicists had discovered a new fundamental
particle of matter, dubbed the Bigon. It could
only be coaxed into existence for mere millionths
of a second, but amazingly, when it did materialize
it was the size of a bowling ball. Physicist Albert Manque and
his colleagues accidentally found the particle when a computer
connected to one of their vacuum-tube experiments exploded.
Video analysis of the explosion revealed the Bigon hovering
over the computer for a fraction of a second. Manque theorized
that the Bigon might be responsible for a host of other
unexplained phenomena such as ball lightning, sinking souffles,
and spontaneous human combustion.
www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool/
Announcing the World’s First
Flying Hotel!
Elevate your stay.
• Experience the adrenaline rush of taking off and flying high
in the largest helicopter ever produced.
• The Hotelicopter features 18 luxuriously-appointed rooms for
adrenaline junkies seeking a truly unique and memorable
travel experience.
• Each soundproofed room is equipped with a queen-sized
bed, fine linens, a mini-bar, coffee machine, wireless internet
access, and all the luxurious appointments you’d expect
from a flying five star hotel.
• Room service is available one hour after liftoff and prior to
landing. The Hotelicopter’s excellent crew and staff make
your security and safety their number one priority.
• Our vehicle meets or exceeds all safety, operating, and
maintenance requirements outlined by the FAA in the CFR
(Code of Federal Regulations) relating to transport category
rotorcraft. 38-second video http://vimeo.com/3922943
http://www.hotelicopter.com/
Hotelicopter Hoax
Flies Over Bloggers' Heads
• There's a sucker born every
minute, and they're all buying
the "hotelicopter" story, ahem,
flying around the blogosphere.
• Several websites, including
some that should know better, are reporting that a guy
named Alvin Farley has spent five years converting the
world's largest helicopter into the world's first flying hotel.
The modified Soviet Mil V-12 helicopter is 137 feet long
and features 16 cabins and two suites decked out with
queen-size beds, heated toilets and whirlpools. The
flying five-star hotel makes its inaugural flight June 26.
http://blog.wired.com/cars/2009/03/the-hotelicopte.html
In Other News
Retired Web Pages Move
Into New Mobile Home
• Since 1996, the non-profit Internet Archive has worked to
preserve the ephemera of the digital age, capturing copies of
millions of Web pages in bimonthly sweeps and maintaining
its Wayback Machine, a tool that allows you to see the
changes in a page over time.
• As you would imagine, both the collection and the haul
brought in by each new sweep have grown rapidly.
• The library now holds about 151 billion archived Web
pages in a 3 petabyte (that's 3 million gigabytes) database
that is expected to expand at the rate of 100 terabytes a
month (that's 100,000 gigabytes).
• That database is tapped up to 500 times a second by some
200,000 visitors a day.
Good Morning Silicon Valley
By JOHN MURRELL Mar 26, 2009 10:02 AM
Retired Web Pages Move
Into New Mobile Home
• Its mission guarantees that the archive always needs more
closet space and processing power, and that has meant
adding to a traditional data center building that at last count
housed 800 Linux servers with four hard drives each.
• But with issues of expense, energy consumption and
scalability all looming larger, the archive has now moved its
holdings to equipment that offers advantages in all those
areas.
• The data's new home is a Sun Modular Datacenter, a 20-foot
long metal cargo container sitting outside on Sun's Santa
Clara campus. Inside the box are 63 servers with a total of
4.5 petabytes of storage capacity and 1TB of memory
(take a video tour here).
http://www.sun.com/featured-articles/2009-0325/feature/index.jsp
Good Morning Silicon Valley By JOHN MURRELL Mar 26, 2009 10:02 AM
Signtific.org
Signtific.org
Signtific.org Challenge
Hello Signtists!
We are pleased to announce our first Signtific.org Challenge!
From now until 11:59pm PDT on April 15th, 2009 submit as
many Signals and Forecasts as you can to earn a custom
Signtific lab coat (we may even have your name embroidered
on it)!
We'll have a leader board (updated periodically on the
Signtific Blog) where you can check how many Signals and
Forecasts have been made and what players are in the
running for the 10 lab coats.
The winners will be announced on April 17th via the blog and
email.
Signtific.org Challenge
Instructions:
1. Log in and visit the 'Create' page on Signtific.org
2. Submit all Signals & Forecasts by 11:59pm PDT April 15th,
2009
3. Questions? - contact Mathias Crawford at
mathias@signtific.org
Rules:
• * Signals and Forecasts must contain necessary Title,
Write-up,
• Abstract, and Citation
• * All Signals and Forecasts must have at least two tags
• * All content submitted must follow the Signtific Community
Guidelines
• * Institute for the Future employees are not eligible