King of Excellent (according to Scaryduck)

Wednesday, October 15

Artificial Intelligence

Those that know me, know my ultimate goal would be to work with artificial intelligence. To take psychology and program it into a computer is a real rush for me, and to make it learn is something that is truly staggering.
For the past 3 weeks there has been a new Open University (I know, I know, "Zzzzz") series, presented again by James May, on people's "big ideas". Last week there was a piece on computing and how intelligent computers now are, and will they ever learn? Alan Turing first set up a test 50 years ago, to see if it could be done, and the solution has been decidedly elusive. Meanwhile, Honda (they of the old people's car, sorry Dad) have made Asimo, the humanesque robot who is now being used at the forefront of learning technology. Asimo 2.0 is now a robot with stereo vision, so he has depth perception, and the processing power is a lot more then Asimo 1, and shows how things have advanced. Admittedly using a PowerPC in Asimo 1 was their first mistake, I'd personally create a custom device which is the route they have now chosen to go down. This in turn pays dividends, because he's now learning like a new born infant, as can be seen in this week's video, where he recognises objects, then recognises new objects he's never seen before!
Enjoy.