Re:Scratch - LOGO in spirit for a new century?
on
Forty Years of LOGO
·
· Score: 1
I love scratch--and so does my 8 year old daughter. Our first programming task was to make the dog bark when it touched the cat -- the dog moved around randomly. literally put some blocks together and instant program. very cool approach to teaching logic, looping, subroutines....very nicely done.
The BDI model (Beliefs, Desires, Intents) has exited in the multiagent world of AI for some time.
Think of how you work as an autonomous organism. You have a set of beliefs--what you perceive to be true about your environment. You have desires--goals that you'd like to achieve. Once you marry beliefs and desires you get a commitment to act--and that is an intent. So from this intent you determine a plan to get to your goal. You try and the results of that change your current environment state--your beliefs. Continue until terminated. Oh yea, there are other agents out there competing, communicating, and negotiating with you as well...multiply this by a large # and you get very complex behavior based on some much simpler rules.
So this patent seems to be on using simulation to try to determine what the beliefs & desires of a specific agent are--and from there I can predict what their intents--and behavior will be like.
At my company we use Java-based BDI-agent based technolgy to actually build complex processes in a fraction of the time as it takes using traditional development or a finite-state machine design approach. The company founder was one of the pioneers of the BDI approach.
The AI is actually based on a Multi-Agent solution. I saw a presentation of this firefighting system at an AI/Multi Agent conference last year (AMAAS).
At a simple level, agents use BDI theory -- Beliefs, Desires, & Intents. The agents in this scenario not only create the and run the disaster scenario, but they also represent the resources in use. Each agent has a set of goals that it is trying to achieve and the system generates a set of plans for achieving those goals. Mix all these agents together and you begin to get some very complex emergent behavior. So in this system, it could alert the commander that perhaps they were trying to send squad a to place b without realizing that they can't see where they are going, or can't see what is happening on the other side of the building. these are very important things to know and be aware of when you are fighting a nontrivial fire in an dense urban setting. The advantage of agents is that they can take a set goals, plans, and rules and combine them during runtime to achieve goals. As conditions change, the agents react in realtime and reevaluate their goals and generate new plans for achievement. So in this system, I believe there are agents representing the firetrucks, the fireman, helecopters, victims, etc. What it was really helping train were the commanders who had to coordinate all these things.
I don't recall many more specifics of the implementation for this system but it certainly got everyone's attention because of the 'coolness' factor.
You have some valid concerns--network out, etc.
However, each of your points is most likely something that everyone's business model will need to account for. The publicity/problems stemming from any of these scenarios will cause the general public to flee from whatever vendor or technology is causing it. If Diney or Sony did one of those things--how fast would it take everyone to say a big f*ck you to buying the next DVD from these guys?
I don't like DRM--but I see the necessity of something in place.
The biggest pain in the arse about DRM is that each vendor has their own proprietary way of handling it--player lockin, etc.
Like all technology shifts, mistakes will be made--but in today's connected world, eventually the market will dictate what is acceptible to consumers and what isn't.
Everyone seems to be making the assumption that because its Fuddrucker's, its a giant corporation trying to screw the little guy.
The truth is probably more like: fuddruckers isn't in the web business--their IT people probably aren't the most web savvy...and they linked to this guys stuff.
I'm sure they learned a less on this one.
On the other hand it could have been that "greedy corporation" trying to screw the little guy. But I doubt it. Savvy IT organizations would have gotten permission because they know the little guy can sue them pretty easily these days. Especially with some that leaves tracks..like traffic logs.
Slashdot Mirror
I love scratch--and so does my 8 year old daughter. Our first programming task was to make the dog bark when it touched the cat -- the dog moved around randomly. literally put some blocks together and instant program. very cool approach to teaching logic, looping, subroutines....very nicely done.
The BDI model (Beliefs, Desires, Intents) has exited in the multiagent world of AI for some time. Think of how you work as an autonomous organism. You have a set of beliefs--what you perceive to be true about your environment. You have desires--goals that you'd like to achieve. Once you marry beliefs and desires you get a commitment to act--and that is an intent. So from this intent you determine a plan to get to your goal. You try and the results of that change your current environment state--your beliefs. Continue until terminated. Oh yea, there are other agents out there competing, communicating, and negotiating with you as well...multiply this by a large # and you get very complex behavior based on some much simpler rules. So this patent seems to be on using simulation to try to determine what the beliefs & desires of a specific agent are--and from there I can predict what their intents--and behavior will be like. At my company we use Java-based BDI-agent based technolgy to actually build complex processes in a fraction of the time as it takes using traditional development or a finite-state machine design approach. The company founder was one of the pioneers of the BDI approach.
The AI is actually based on a Multi-Agent solution. I saw a presentation of this firefighting system at an AI/Multi Agent conference last year (AMAAS). At a simple level, agents use BDI theory -- Beliefs, Desires, & Intents. The agents in this scenario not only create the and run the disaster scenario, but they also represent the resources in use. Each agent has a set of goals that it is trying to achieve and the system generates a set of plans for achieving those goals. Mix all these agents together and you begin to get some very complex emergent behavior. So in this system, it could alert the commander that perhaps they were trying to send squad a to place b without realizing that they can't see where they are going, or can't see what is happening on the other side of the building. these are very important things to know and be aware of when you are fighting a nontrivial fire in an dense urban setting. The advantage of agents is that they can take a set goals, plans, and rules and combine them during runtime to achieve goals. As conditions change, the agents react in realtime and reevaluate their goals and generate new plans for achievement. So in this system, I believe there are agents representing the firetrucks, the fireman, helecopters, victims, etc. What it was really helping train were the commanders who had to coordinate all these things. I don't recall many more specifics of the implementation for this system but it certainly got everyone's attention because of the 'coolness' factor.
You have some valid concerns--network out, etc. However, each of your points is most likely something that everyone's business model will need to account for. The publicity/problems stemming from any of these scenarios will cause the general public to flee from whatever vendor or technology is causing it. If Diney or Sony did one of those things--how fast would it take everyone to say a big f*ck you to buying the next DVD from these guys? I don't like DRM--but I see the necessity of something in place. The biggest pain in the arse about DRM is that each vendor has their own proprietary way of handling it--player lockin, etc. Like all technology shifts, mistakes will be made--but in today's connected world, eventually the market will dictate what is acceptible to consumers and what isn't.
Everyone seems to be making the assumption that because its Fuddrucker's, its a giant corporation trying to screw the little guy. The truth is probably more like: fuddruckers isn't in the web business--their IT people probably aren't the most web savvy...and they linked to this guys stuff. I'm sure they learned a less on this one. On the other hand it could have been that "greedy corporation" trying to screw the little guy. But I doubt it. Savvy IT organizations would have gotten permission because they know the little guy can sue them pretty easily these days. Especially with some that leaves tracks..like traffic logs.