Breakthroughs often arise from convergent technologies. ..

Zeno appears to be more than the sum of its parts - a child of excellence from best-of-breed progenitors. But his smarts come from an unlikely relative.

Modern films with rendered animation or human actors in stunning computer-generated effects often produce an eerie feeling they might have a life of their own.

Films and books are laborious works of art, yet ultimately are simple artifacts, no more ‘living’ than celluloid, paper, ink, and silicon wafers, that carry the message. Nor is their fabrication by magic. It is sheer effort, every step a manually-dependent progression, every stage needing input from artisans.

In a sense movies, and before them novels or even oral history, do come alive .. in the human mind, and until recently that’s where this argument ended.

In the last two decades computers have blurred the huge, refined, and repeatable process used to weave such intricate illusions. Consequently this stillborn structure we know as “a movie” is starting to suggest signs of a ghost in the machine.

Computer-generated movies increasingly feed off themselves during production. As incredibly labor-intensive as the modern film is, the human element is disappearing from .. well, maybe it’s better to say film-making is moving into the virtual realm, out of the physical layer, gradually and inexorably out of human control.

This is more than simple automation. While ultimately answering to physical laws, complexity (as in everything) leads to unpredictable outcomes. Automation is no longer simple mechanical cause and effect but increasingly a self-referenced decision-making system.

Computer games have pushed this divide for twenty years, engendering ideas of a complex future simulation in which its inhabitants gain sentience - thus begging the question “are we also simulations?”

The movie Tron did some anthropomorphic musing in a bold metaphor: a virtual world within the computer where programs (artificial life) spoke of beings outside the system called ‘users.’ As John C. Lilly observed, we humans have similar views but call these mythical beings ‘angels.’

Film-making and computer gaming have effectively converged to virtual reality, which might or not model the real world. Modeling is one thing. What about a thinking modeling?

For most, our only experience with artificial intelligence is talking to a primitive syntax engine. Rapidly disappointed with inevitably stupid answers to enquiries like: “what color is a blue car?” we find we’ve been talking to a syntax engine, a database of Q&A, not a semantic engine or anything like we envision ‘AI.’

And so the philosophical argument goes, that whatever the complexity will a computer/robot ever be truly smart? Will AI that ‘understands’ speech truly understand it or merely apply the test of millions of rules like a chess robot.

Can anyone prove humans don’t just do this?

Invention and discovery has a way around philosophical ‘objections.’ A groundbreaking idea has sneaked up on us - though it’s been there since day one - that of a physically adept robot “moving around in” virtual reality and generating its own script with AI.

Virtual-reality is now eerily mated with hardware, in real time, by introducing Hanson Robotics’ sophisticated automatons via a wireless link to the open-ended complexity of Massive Software’s AI simulation engine, the software driving modern film-making.

The idea is rather exciting imagining both a leading-edge automaton and a supercomputer. Despite such grandiose possibilities our little fella Zeno is sadly aiming low, at mere consumer toy status.

Yet still it’s a fine achievement.

Hanson supply a robotics platform including “voice recognition and conversational AI” while Massive supply “vision and decision-making components” for Zeno to react to his world (his VR?).

Zeno is the name

In his (or her!) virtual mind, the real world (our world) plays out like a simulation.

Zeno is:

the world’s first complete character robot …  vision, speech, speech recognition, animation, artificial intelligence and artistry define the integrity and underlying character of Zeno. This in turn allows him to exist as a fantasy character that moves and communicates with you with true personality traits.”

How can it, how does it, work?

The vision and decision making components in Massive Software give Zeno the ability to navigate, make facial expressions, and move his body based on what he sees in his physical environment. The video coming in from Zeno’s eye camera is fed into the Massive Software part of his brain so that he can move appropriately and respond emotionally to what is going on around him.”

Wait, there’s more. Hanson adds to the mix:

.. a character engine with voice recognition and conversational AI for language reasoning so that Zeno can recognize and remember both voices and faces and interact accordingly. The robot is highly articulated with over 28 built-in servos (specialized motors) in its legs, torso, arms and face.

Zeno is an intelligent character robot that can show emotions with his very flexible expressive face and perform stunts with his agile and self-balancing body. He can lie down, get up to standing, gesture with his arms, smile, make eye contact, open and close his eyes, mouth ..”

And, God forbid, might it think!? [No scoffing in the speculation room]. In development Zeno could barely stand and needed considerable computer grunt enabling it to smile, frown, or express anger.

What inspired David Hanson? You’ll not be surprised to know it was Spielberg’s fine interpretation of Brian Aldiss’ Sci-fi story in the film Artificial Intelligence that inspired Hanson on this project.

It’s a representation of robotics as a character animation medium, one that is intelligent,” explains Hanson. “It sees you and recognizes your face. It learns your name and can build a relationship with you.”

Texas-based Hanson Robotics is well known for “expressive, intelligent, conversational character robots, like P.K. Dick and Einstein.

Massive Software is a leading creator of artificial intelligence-based animation systems employed in recent films like Lord of the Rings, Happy Feet and A Night at the Museum. The system has been ported to a Microsoft Windows PC-based application as a back-end for Zeno - his cortex, you might say.

Zeno is in prototype, featuring pre-release at Wired’s NextFest 2007 as I scribe (September). Aimed squarely at the consumer market, based on current faire Zeno would have to strike out at a coupla grand.

But Xena Zeno wouldn’t sell at such prices and Hanson Robotics hope to sell Zeno for only a few hundred dollars.

At that price, I hope it’s not a clockwork lemon.

Go salivate at these links:

* Hanson Robotics

* Zeno’s World

* Zeno’s blog

*** DANGER  Will Robinson!!

The Massive Software website will massively irritate your Internet Explorer browser, aggressively attempting BHO adware install on your PC - uninvited, it seems. It will arm-wrestle, then crash a patched & secured IE7. 

While Internet Explorer crashed repeatedly, Massive Software website opens normally in FireFox 2. Be warned: while I doubt it’s a malicious website it sure behaves as one.

Though one component attempting install is everyone’s favorite nagware QuickTime, the anti-SpyWare on our base PC trapped some adware also (screenshot below) while several other MS Windows PCs in the lab shrugged it off. The website does get a green flag from SiteAdvisor, so perhaps the adware was a transient attack.

This link may is assumed safe, a press page about Zeno on the Massive website.

* Zeno PR on Massive Software

Should you click back to their ‘Home page’  this might be your fate:

What is a singularity, and why do you care?

On Bot7 we tend to pore over press releases for the latest tech trivia and figuring how to parody accompanying photos. Doing so we tend to overlook the original inspiration for this blog - artificial intelligence.

While comfortable with robots as cute little guys with a CPU, or not, and the massive industry spawning ever more varieties, ultimately where this genus heads is toward fictional creatures like 2001’s HAL and Star Trek’s Mr. Data - awesomely intelligent artificial devices.

Trying to humanize them, the screen writers added hints of feeling, but in the cold light of cinema they were ever emotional imbeciles, which is where the more philosophical near-term arguments rage. Can a machine intelligence think like a life form without peripheral senses contributing ‘feelings’ and generating emotions?

All moot, ultimately. Whatever will happen will soon, according to the Singularity Institute.

A Singularity is ..

.. the technological creation of smarter-than-human intelligence.

For over a hundred thousand years, the evolved human brain has held a privileged place in the expanse of cognition.

Within this century, science may move humanity beyond its boundary of intelligence. This possibility, the "singularity," may be a critical event in history.    [Singularity Institute]

Forget everything you have seen in film or television, or ever read. This scenario frightens those who contemplate it most intently.

You have probably questioned the endless Star Trek quest of Imperial Earth and decided Hoyle’s "A for Andromeda" is far more plausible than either viral Von Neuman conquests of adjacent stars and galaxies or carbon-based units warping around in a tin can because they can’t find reverse.

If so, you would then puzzle over the blind spot in our near future.

All who future-gaze in these increasingly fluid times balk at the exponentiation of possibility. While anything and everything now seems possible in both the "real" (increasing unreal) world, and in virtual worlds, some almost inescapable possibilities effect standing waves in the writhing turbulence that is our modern techno-civilization. 

One of these is the artificial intelligence singularity.

It is increasing appealing to common sense (no, that’s not a scientific proof) that an artificial mind, a massive conditional expert system, will emerge from the efforts of our runaway information technology.

Many dispute this, their objections strongly enhanced by the pathetic examples of so-called AI and an apparently stalled progress (measured in five-year comparisons over the past 50 years).

For proponents there is only the (apparent) certainty of historic technological gains - brick walls notwithstanding - and endless optimism.

Reason and comments

Reason Magazine online reviewed the Singularity Summit of September, 2007, with a synopsis itself entertaining, but never as keen as the comments the article provoked.

Like all areas of science, the consensus is as wide as the population has opinion.

Will Ray Kurzweil shut .. up? This guy’s is a book mill … Let me be perfectly clear, there will be no singularity before 2050. None, zip, nada. Technology will continue to expand exponentially, yes.

But an artificial intelligence will not spawn itself out of it.  …  They can’t even make a damned chat bot that can’t be bamboozled in less then four seconds.."

.. err, and in reply:

I’ll be happy to stand in for Ray Kurzweil.

But your characterization is so broad it’s virtually a parody of what Ray Kurzweil has actually written and said. Here is an excerpt from his website (published in 2001):

""Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity — technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence..""

Gentlemen please, no fighting in the war room!

Leaving aside that angry little whirlpool of antipathy, a delicious array of views paraded in the comments:

What about the rights afforded to these hypothetical superintelligent creations? Based on their predicted abilities, they will easily pass the Turing test, or any other such measure of awareness. What rights will these things have?"

Fine testament it is to our nobler qualities that so much attention has been given to mere possibility. Science fiction has given it decades of coverage, the most recent in films I Robot and Artificial Intelligence, the latter’s bleak depiction being more likely, given current (2007) estimates that 800 million people are starving on Earth while over a billion are obese.

Ah, strong AI. I see that it’s still the realm of crackpots. This stuff comes on Coast to Coast AM all the time. These folks can’t get a paper published in a decent scientific publication so they form their own conference."

Ouch!

I’ve never been a huge fan of the philosopher John Searle (though he was kind to my term paper as an undergraduate), but to quote him in a different context, ‘this kind of stuff gives bullshit a bad name’. .. Kurzweil talks about a computer program able to ’simulate’ a human mind in 10 years; in what way? Will it go out on dates?"

 Dextre isn’t a huge fan either.

Weak AI posits that intelligent behaviour can be modeled and used by computers to solve problems. Whereas strong AI believes that we can create machines that can think and are conscious.  … Sorry to be snippy, but I’ve encountered a lot of strange people who monopolize AI gatherings with their bizarre theories. … It would be nice to focus on where we are making progress instead of on unlikely scenarios. "

It seems entirely reasonable to expect that an integration of cumulative knowledge can produce an uber-humanoid when the processing power advances enough. This cyber-consultant may not be able feel emotion the same way as a normal human, but that does not seem to be necessary for amazing intellectual productivity gains to be realized.

The few quotes above were barely a scratch on the surface.

Amongst many useful links posted, a reader referred to this YouTube video "Computers and Common Sense," a refreshing reminder of just how short we are - today, 2007 - of attaining an even half-smart program, let alone AI of searing intellect:

On the Vinge

No singularity discussion is complete without introducing Vernor Vinge, retired San Diego State University Professor of Mathematics, computer scientist, and science fiction author, whose 1993 essay The Coming Technological Singularity epitomized thinking on this line.

Vinge in part attributes his notion to statistician I.J. Good who stated in 1965:

Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever.

Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind.

Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make."

Extinction scenarios

Why do students of AI quake at the downside of their work?

Fathers of the atom bomb were in obvious awe and trepidation at their isotopic offspring. So too can AI researchers see high possibility of self-annihilation from their handiwork.

Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom elaborates ethical principles governing the creation of AI, the absence of which might rapidly promote superintelligence as a possible cause of humanity’s demise:

When we create the first superintelligent entity, we might make a mistake and give it goals that lead it to annihilate humankind, assuming its enormous intellectual advantage gives it the power to do so.

For example, we could mistakenly elevate a subgoal to the status of a supergoal. We tell it to solve a mathematical problem, and it complies by turning all the matter in the solar system into a giant calculating device, in the process killing the person who asked the question. "

Strip the Terminator movies of a few wild premises and you have a chilling scenario - one of millions - in how the machines might turn on us.

More likely, per the Wargames movie, it will probably be due to a programming oversight :0)

A reader enquiry highlighted the choice: either add to the mindless clutter on the Internet or create content with at least some value beyond momentary novelty.

Enquiring about the source of PaperBots article - in particular, the origin of the ’smart wallpaper’ image - Auriele, a French designer, brought home with a bump the trivial folly of commercial blogging using transient content as a mere hook for a sale, and  articles with a use-by date of lunchtime.

These so-called articles, or ‘posts,’ should at the very least cite subject source plus all related links uncovered digging around the subject. That’s because no matter how much I trivialize it, the keywords and phrases of AI and robotics on this blog are going to attract professionals in these fields seeking information.

So to the reader’s request. Our exchange went like this:

I would really happy to be in touch with the people who posted the article called Child’s dream comes true, June 22,2007. Is there any chance you could help me to contact him/her ?
Thanks by advance
Regards Auriele

[Thinks: Dang, one of those pesky readers wants to talk]

Hello Auriele 
I wrote that article based on a press release. Which part are you curious about? Perhaps I can help.
Phil (Editor)

Hello, Nice to hear from you.

First, thanks for your article because it was of great help for me. I am a textile designer currently working on a 3D animated wallpaper and looking for specific "moving’ or changing shape materials. I was wondering if you had the references for the smart wall paper picture included in the article, as it might me quite similar to what I want to get.

Moreover, I was wondering if you knew more about this hygroscopic cellophane with what is made the fortune telling fish. Indeed, I would like to get samples of this material, so if you had any idea about a supplier or someone to ask for, I would be really glad.

Thanks a lot by advance.
Best regards. Aurelie

[Thinks: Oops. Kept no notes and only know what's in the published article. Sigh]

Hello Aurelie

I will find what I can. Give me a few days. The ‘cellophane fish’ is maybe between 50 and 100 years old. That will be a challenge, but I will work on it. Update me if you think of something.

Regards, Phil.

Hello Phil,

Great to hear such a positive answer. I’ve maybe found a supplier of this fish : Rage unlimited, 1715 Pearl St Boulder Co, 80302 , Usa. I am waiting news from them. I will let you know. I am looking on my side too.

Regards. Aurelie

So off I went to spend quite some hours digging, the exercise delivering some peripheral yet important lessons:

• The Internet is a wasteland in many ways, depending on what one seeks.
• Search engines are overwhelmed by greedy morons flooding it with pages of garbage trying to gouge cents from Google Adsense
• Real information is locked away by equally-greedy morons who believe holding humanity’s scientific knowledge for ransom is legitimate business

Finally I sent Aurelie the somewhat sad collection of links and comments below. But, hey, at least I tried.

Hello Aurelie

I was able to only discover a little to help you. You might already have found the same links, as the Internet is surprisingly small when searching for real information. If one is seeking rubbish, there is an abundance!

I have located the original article the ‘magic wallpaper’ image was associated with, but not the original image. Unfortunately I never kept the original data & links on which I based the articles in Bot7.com because they were at the time trivial. Your quest makes me realize I should be a little more systematic when the subject is non-trivial (even if I am trivializing it).

Also, the cellophane fish is alive and well all over the Internet if one searches for "fortune-telling fish." Hope you can locate the material manufacturer.

Some links

http://www.fortunetellerfish.com/

————————

Website of Jaehwan Kim, researcher quoted in article:

Mech Eng at Inha Uni

——————-

Though I can’t recall the source of my bot7.com article, I clearly remember this being the primary document referred to. The article contains at least one image related to the ‘magic wallpaper’ image (of the same style) but I cannot find the original image. In other words, the original image was almost certainly from the same source as this paper. So, too, as the original article source, I would guess.

http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/sample.cgi/mamobx/2006/39/i12/html/ma060261e.html

———————

This patent from 1938 goes on in detail about ‘decorative cellophane’ - includes term ‘hygroscopic cellophane’

http://www.google.com/patents?id=akBXAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&dq=%22hygroscopic+cellulose%22#PPP1,M1

– PS ———————–

Not relevant, but amusing, this patent from 1937 for a novelty toy propelled by Mexican jumping beans :0)) (keywords ‘animated’ ‘cellophane’

http://www.google.com/patents?id=nFMBAAAAEBAJ&pg=PA8&dq=cellophane+animated+#PPA8,M1

– PPS ———————

Also, I discovered this while searching, and decided to buy it!!

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=6403173

Here’s another older Japanese one being bid for on EBay - if you’re quick. It is in amongst lots of eBay stores selling the new ones in bulk

http://search.ebay.com/fortune-telling-fish_W0QQ_trksidZm37QQfromZR40