Slashdot Mirror
(Artificial) Mind Meld
Reader tewl points to this Wired article about a collaboration between the OpenMind project headed by Push Singh of MIT's Media Lab and Chris McKinstry's Mindpixel project. Neat to see these complementary projects getting along despite criticism each might have for the other. From the article: "The OpenMind and the Mindpixel projects will tie their databases together 'at the back end.' This means that any user data entered into either of the projects will be accessible by the other."
When MIT's Media Lab was founded in 1985 by Nicholas
Negroponte, the Lab emphasized computers and multimedia.
Ten years later it began its silly season with "Things that
Think" (chips in shoes or clothing that communicate with
the wearer, for example). But just then the Internet
materialized out of nowhere and caught the Lab with its
micropants down. Judging from its website, by now the MIT
Media Lab has made up for lost time by promoting projects
that expand e-commerce.
More interesting than anything the Lab has ever produced
is the fact that it's funded by big business. The Lab's annual
budget in 1995 was $25 million, mostly from 95 corporate
sponsors, half of which are overseas. While the Lab claims
that sponsors cannot dictate the research, it's also true
that grad students have to sign a nondisclosure agreement
before receiving aid, and sponsors often fund research that
is proprietary. Given this history, it's not surprising
that since the Internet arrived, the Lab has been chasing
the dot-com rainbow. But one has to ask: What about the
public sector? Where's the vision? Does anyone at the Media
Lab care?
This OpenMind project smells more like a rat than a mouse.
A computer knows only one thing, and it's the only thing
it is likely to ever know without insanely massive databases,
along with bloated fuzzy-logic programs that go by the name
of "artificial intelligence," but are really thinly-disguised
variants of brute force.
A computer knows this: one is not equal to zero.
Slashdot should try to stay clear of trendy hype backed by
big bucks. That includes Wired magazine, which received
start-up money from Nicholas Negroponte.