Sunday, August 26, 2012
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Let Artificial Intelligence Fight Crime
Connect a global network of millions of these, and we are set for letting computers fight crime and terrorists. This is progress, this is beautiful.
UK researchers are working on fitting CCTV cameras with artificial intelligence, allowing them to more quickly respond to crimes.
The technology, being developed by University of Portsmouth scientists, would allow cameras to "hear" violent sounds and react, swiveling quickly in the direction of a broken window or somebody shouting abusively for example, before alerting an operator.
The artificial intelligence powering the camera would also be able to respond to visual cues such as fights, or violent behaviour.
Scientists say the aim is to allow the camera to react just as a human might, hearing a scream and then swinging around to find the source with the same speed as a person, which is about 300 milliseconds.
Over time, the scientists claim the AI algorithms would learn, picking up key words and phrases it associates with criminal activity.
"The longer artificial intelligence is in the software the more it learns. Later versions will get cleverer as time goes on," says Dr David Brown, director of the project.
Article: AI could power next-gen CCTV cameras.-PC Pro Magazine
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Network Consciousness: The Foundation
Through the 20th century discussions on the feasibility of human-superior AI ( HSAI ) was weighed down by two standard axioms:
- Computers execute commands, and thus are limited to a finite list of commands they are given.
- What computer consciousness there is, is not embodied, and thus can be lost in eternal loops that have little or no corporeal use.
But what about the database query and/or regular expression operating on a global network? Especially within systems such Google and Amazon?
I realize databases or log files have domain specificity built in to the data structures. What is open ended is the endless recombination of these data structures. The novel results of new combinations, fed into more databases structured by the novel data scenario, are then the next source of queries. It is the accumulating layers of novelty recorded, re-mined, and reacted to that is emergent. It should be emphasized that before the cloud computing era, such large novel configurations in corporeal space where sometimes apprehended by conscious beings, but were largely dissipated over time due to no means to record the configuration in strongly bounded language. Historically, the best means was poetry.
Just as animals lack a means to store their cognitions in a strongly bounded language, and retrieve many years after the death of the perceiver, humans have lacked a means to do the same for large social enterprises typical of a global economy. A cloud computing platform with access to a high enough amount of network activity and physical environment sensors can make that evolutionary leap -the cognitive grasp, storage, and reappraisal of global activity.
To turn the tangent of perspective, I'll posit that we already do this to some degree with computers. Financial analysis is but one intuitive example. Across all examples it should be noted the action taken after the analysis is in service to a finite domain of activity -whether financial, crime solving or other. The emergence hits a road block of containment within a government department or private enterprise, the exponential rise of value within the Metcalfe Law hits a terminal point. Terminal points are often death in emergent systems.
A jump start to the Network Consciousness would be a transparent, globally accessible system. Here is the sound of rubber hitting pavement: transparent, globally accessible system with all your purchases and every surveillance camera also. Finally, any computer could mine the data, any person could mine the data. Emergence is back on the table.
It is at this point in my spiel that most people say
"Wow, if there is Network Consciousness, and the Network knows more about what humans are doing than I do, I'd like the Network to be the manager of humans. I think computers would be more fair, and our legal frameworks already do not access human judgement, and are bounded by sequential logic. The Network would probably provide better service than legislatures and courts. I'm for world peace, I'm for the Network ruling humans."
Exactly.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Phrases Pointing Forward
Computer-on-a-Planet.
When the network becomes as fast as the processor, the computer hollows out and spreads across the network. -Eric Schmidt.
The next wave of innovation will compress today's parallel solutions in an evolutionary convergence of electronics and optics. It will link to trillions of sensors around the globe, giving it a constant knowledge of the physical state of the world, from traffic conditions to the workings of your own biomachine.
Quotes from The Information Factories -Wired Issue 14.10
Futurism Phrases by Lance:
- All socially usable thoughts are documentable.
- All documents must be readable by the Computer-on-a-Planet.
- All data must have nouns to be considered information, and the nouns can morph over time.
- The Computer-on-a-Planet must intelligently track that morphing.
Add to the above an aesthetic shift. It would be an innovation to move most narrative text to the use of bullet lists, ordered and not ordered. Ordered when algorithms are being discussed ( and by algorithms I include such non-science as "first establish credit, save up a down payment, then bid on a house" ), not ordered when we just know that a given list of things are associated within the bounds of some phenomenon or classification taxonomies. ( It is ironic I used the antithetical paragraph to discuss its successor, the bullet list )
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