Slashdot Mirror
Cutting-Edge AI Projects?
Xeth writes "I'm a consultant with DARPA, and I'm working on an initiative to push the boundaries of neuromorphic computing (i.e. artificial intelligence). The project is designed to advance ideas all fronts, including measuring and understanding biological brains, creating AI systems, and investigating the fundamental nature of intelligence. I'm conducting a wide search of these fields, but I wanted to know if any in this community know of neat projects along those lines that I might overlook. Maybe you're working on a project like that and want to talk it up? No promises (seriously), but interesting work will be brought to the attention of the project manager I'm working with. If you want to start up a dialog, send me an email, and we'll see where it goes. I'll also be reading the comments for the story."
As if I didn't see that coming? I think my UID says I've been here awhile.
It's not that I'm asking Slashdot to do my work for me; I've already got some very strong leads to work on. However, Slashdot occasionally surprises me with people that are thoughtful and working in interesting fields, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Most of the changes in my life have come from sudden and unexpected directions; I wanted to see what serendipity might bring me that deliberation would not.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
Why is it that the first application that I can think of for such project developed by DARPA is that to use it against the citizens?
Like it or lump it, you are in this boat with everyone else. If AI is solved, it will be used for good and evil. If your country does not use it for evil (extremely doubtful), somebody else's country will. Better yours than theirs. What I mean is that true AI will be an extremely powerful thing; if any country other than yours gets an early monopoly on AI, you can bet they are going to use it to kick your country's ass. I don't think you'd like that very much.
Having said that (and to get back on topic), I have been working on ageneral AI project called Animal for some time. Animal is biologically inspired. It attempts to uses a multi-layer spiking neural network to learn how to play chess from scratch using sensors, effectors and a motivation mechanism based on reward and punishment. It is based on the premise that intelligence is essentially a temporal signal-processing phenomenon. I just need some funding. The caveat is that my ideas are out there big time and there is a bunch of people in cyberspace who think I am kook. LOL. But hey, send me some money anyway. You never know. :-D