Weekly QUEST Discussion Topics and News
Friday May 10th, 2013
A Framework / Theory for Artificial Consciousness:
A framework is not a detailed hypothesis or set of hypotheses; rather, it is a
suggested point of view for an attack on a scientific problem, often
suggesting testable hypotheses – we will discuss how defining
characteristics of consciousness can provide the guidance to developing a
mathematical framework for QUEST. We will focus on which of the tenets /
fundamental laws we’ve discussed are critical to embody in QUEST
solutions and thus the mathematical framework must support.
THE ULTIMATE GOAL of a theory of consciousness is a simple and elegant
set of fundamental laws, analogous to the fundamental laws of physics.
•
What might the underlying fundamental laws be?
•
There is no reason they should not be strongly constrained
to account accurately for our own first-person experiences, aswell as
the evidence from subjects’ reports.
•
If we find a theory that fits the data better than any other
theory of equal simplicity, we will have good reason to accept it.
•
If the theory leads to the engineering of systems that
demonstrate an engineering advantage then that will be a success!
News Articles
1. Hackers and Jihad
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/6/jihadis-andhackers-teaming-launch-cyberattacks-us/
Middle East- and North Africa-based criminal hackers are preparing
cyberattacks this week against the websites of high-profile U.S.
government agencies, banks and other companies, according to the
Department of Homeland Security…attacks, dubbed #OpUSA, for
Operation USA, will begin Tuesday, the department said in a
warning bulletin circulated to the private sector last week…attacks
are called for in the name of Anonymous, the leaderless coalition of
hackers whose trademark Guy Fawkes mask has become a global
symbol for their anarchistic spirit…"OpUSA poses a limited threat of
temporarily disrupting U.S. websites," the homeland security bulletin
states, saying the attackers will likely use commercial hacking tools in
a variety of "nuisance-level" strikes, defacing websites or temporarily
knocking them offline…More dangerous, though, is the developing
alliance the organization of the attacks seems to presage between
criminal hackers and violent Islamic extremists…bulletin notes that
the attacks are being promoted by the moderators of websites and
discussion forums that host al Qaeda and other Islamic extremist
material, in addition to calls through more conventional hacker
channels like the bulletin board Pastebin…collaboration may "signal
an emerging trend of Middle East- and North Africa-based criminally
motivated hackers collaborating with others regardless of their
motivation," like Islamic extremists…Future public statements "may
provide insight into whether these [hacker] groups are radicalizing
toward violence and whether they would potentially partner with or
conduct attacks on behalf of violent extremists."…
2. Data made me do it
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/514346/the-data-mademe-do-it/
told me a story about awakening at dawn to catch a flight from
Shanghai. That’s when an app he’d begun using, Google Now, told
him his flight was delayed…software scours a person’s Gmail and
calendar, as well as databases like maps and flight schedules. It had
spotted the glitch in his travel plans and sent the warning that he
shouldn’t rush…Weigend, a fast-talking consultant and lecturer on
consumer behavior, such episodes demonstrate “the power of a
society based on 10 times as much data.” If the last century was
marked by the ability to observe the interactions of physical
matter—think of technologies like x-ray and radar—this century, he
says, is going to be defined by the ability to observe people through
the data they share…So-called anticipatory systems such as Google
Now represent one example of what could result. We’re already
seeing the transformations that big data is causing in advertising and
other situations where millions of people’s activity can be measured
at a time. Now data science is looking at how it can help individuals.
Timely updates on a United Airways flight may be among the tamer
applications. Think instead of statistical models that tell you what job
to take, or alert you even before you feel ill that you may have the
flu…Driving this trend is a swelling amount of personal data available
to computers. The amount of digital data being created globally is
doubling every two years, and the majority of it is generated by
consumers, in the form of movie downloads, VOIP calls, e-mails,
cell-phone location readings, and so on, according to the
consultancy IDC. Yet only about 0.5 percent of that data is ever
analyzed….the merger of big data and personal data has been a
goal for some time. It creates tools advertisers can use, and it makes
products that are particularly “sticky,” too…Exposing more personal
data seems inevitable. With the huge jump in sales of smartphones
packed with accelerometers, cameras, and GPS, “people have
become instrumented to collect and transmit personal data,”…
Wolfram is interested in predictive apps, but also in the insights
that large data sets can have on personal behavior, something he
calls “personal analytics.”… holdup, says Wolfram, is that some of
the most useful data isn’t being captured, at least not in a way that’s
easily accessible. Part of the problem is technical, a lack of
integration. But much data is warehoused by private companies like
Facebook, Apple, and Fitbit, maker of a popular pedometer…
3. Internet of things kit
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/514541/twitter-tests-atoolkit-that-puts-the-internet-in-things/
Twitter recently developed a whimsical tweet-enabled cuckoo clock.
It uses a toolkit that could help other designers and engineers test
ways for new products to contribute to, and feed on, the social
network’s chatter. Twitter created the clock, called #Flock, last
month in partnership with London-based technology consultancy
Berg; the clock responds to incoming tweets, @-messages, and
retweets by animating small wooden puppets…toolkit made by Berg
is designed to make it easier for consumer-tech companies to
prototype similar “connected products” and experiment with their
novel user experiences. As the cost of networking technology has
plummeted and wireless connectivity has become more ubiquitous,
connected products have begun to enter the mainstream
marketplace (see “Nest’s Smarter Home”). The concept of the
“Internet of things” first emerged in the late 1990s. It proposed that
physical objects not normally thought of as “computers”—like
boxes in a warehouse or appliances in a home—could be networked
together using small, cheap digital transmitters and receivers…basic
engineering challenges of connecting physical objects to the Internet
are still too daunting to encourage rapid innovation. “Our ambition is
to let you go from zero to your first connected product in a day,” says
Webb. “We all cut our teeth developing for the Web, and we
wanted to create a way to experiment with hardware that’s just as
agile.” The Berg Cloud dev kit includes two small circuit boards and
microcontrollers with access to a set of Web APIs, allowing the
microcontroller to send and receive data from Internet applications.
Another device in the kit, called a Bridge, provides wireless
connectivity, and a built-in mobile user interface called Remote can
access, manage, and control the system via iPhone, Android, or
Windows Phone devices…“Prototyping interactions in physical
objects is difficult enough without tackling the networking
aspect,”… “Internet of things” has already influenced technology
companies like GE and IBM, who see the potential of networked
components in industrial equipment (such as aircraft and power
stations) to add cloud-computing functionality and data-driven
intelligence to basic infrastructure…
4. DARPA direction
http://www.eetimes.com/design/military-aerospacedesign/4412758/DARPA-refocuses-amid-terror--tech-and-fundingshifts
Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA) released anew
framework, reinterpreting its mission in light of three new
realities.Terrorist groups and individuals emphasize new threats,
consumers have access to sophisticated technologies and U.S.
defense funding is expected to decline for the foreseeable future.
new focus calls for developing systems that are "more adaptable so
they can be configured" for a variety of uses, she said. Other efforts
will focus on relatively low cost capabilities "that inflict cost on our
adversaries to respond,"… DARPA is working on "a new generation
of electronic warfare that will leapfrog what others can do," she
said. It is also developing "a new suite of technologies for timing
and position so our people won't be as dangerously reliant on GPS
as they are today,"
5. Deep Learning
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/24/science/scientists-seeadvances-in-deep-learning-a-part-of-artificialintelligence.html?ref=science
technology companies are reporting startling gains in fields as
diverse as computer vision, speech recognition and the
identification of promising new molecules for designing
drugs…advances have led to widespread enthusiasm among
researchers who design software to perform human activities like
seeing, listening and thinking…technology, called deep learning, has
already been put to use in services like Apple’s Siri virtual personal
assistant…what is new in recent months is the growing speed and
accuracy of deep-learning programs, often called artificial neural
networks or just “neural nets” for their resemblance to the neural
connections in the brain…Toronto computer scientist Geoffrey E.
Hinton won the top prize in a contest sponsored by Merck to design
software to help find molecules that might lead to new drugs…From
a data set describing the chemical structure of 15 different
molecules, they used deep-learning software to determine which
molecule was most likely to be an effective drug
agent…achievement was particularly impressive because the team
decided to enter the contest at the last minute and designed its
software with no specific knowledge about how the molecules bind
to their targets. The students were also working with a relatively
small set of data; neural nets typically perform well only with very
large ones…marketers can comb large databases of consumer
behavior to get more precise information on buying habits. And
improvements in facial recognition are likely to make surveillance
technology cheaper and more commonplace…Last year, for
example, a program created by scientists at the Swiss A. I. Lab at
the University of Lugano won a pattern recognition contest by
outperforming both competing software systems and a human
expert in identifying images in a database of German traffic
signs…summer, Jeff Dean, a Google technical fellow, and Andrew Y.
Ng, a Stanford computer scientist, programmed a cluster of 16,000
computers to train itself to automatically recognize images in a
library of 14 million pictures of 20,000 different objects. Although
the accuracy rate was low — 15.8 percent — the system did 70
percent better than the most advanced previous one…