http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/google-shows-off-self-driving-car/2014/10/27/a72f77ca-5961-11e4-8264-deed989ae9a2_story.html

Google shows off self-driving carThe Post's deputy business editor, David Cho, interviews Chris Urmson, director of Google's Self-Driving Cars, at an America Answers: Fix My Commute live event. (Meena Ganesan/The Washington Post)

By Nancy Szokan October 27 at 4:29 PM

Google has been working on self-driving cars for a while, but until this year the company basically bolted its equipment onto familiar vehicles.

The test cars looked almost normal: When the company did street demos, a staffer would pose reassuringly behind the (nonfunctioning) steering wheel, and the most noticeable addition was the fast-spinning, roof-mounted laser sensor that delivers 360-degree information to the car’s driving mechanism.

But in May, Google unveiled its first “purpose-built” self-driving vehicle — looking a little like a cartoon car ,with no steering wheel or pedals — and videotaped some volunteers taking an unaccompanied ride. In “A First Drive,” which you can find on YouTube, the “drivers” include some senior citizens, a mother and her son, and a blind man.

“You feel relaxed,” says a gray-haired woman who giggled through her trip pretending to turn an imaginary steering wheel. “What she

really liked was that it slowed down before it went around the curve, and then accelerated in the curve,” says one man, nodding toward his wife.

And the blind man yells, “I love this!” out the window, adding later, “There is a big part of my life that a self-driving vehicle could bring back to me.”

Google’s first “purpose-built” self-driving vehicle lookS a little like a cartoon car. (Associated Press)

Chris Urmson, director of the car project, brought the video to a Washington theater last week as part of his presentation at “Fix My Commute,” a day-long program on transportation problems and solutions organized by The Post. (One speaker was Carl Dietrich of Terrafugia, whose flying car, or “street-legal airplane,” spent the

day parked in front of the theater, inspiring a multitude of selfies. He said it can take off at 70 mph.)

Urmson took questions about Google’s business plan, the self-driving car’s safety and price, and production issues. Finally, he was asked when he thought his team might be ready to market a self-driving car. “My son is 11,” he said. “He’ll be 16 in five years. So the goal . . . .”http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/artificial-intelligence/machinelearning-maestro-michael-jordan-on-the-delusions-of-big-data-and-other-huge-engineering-efforts#qaTopicOne

Machine-Learning Maestro Michael Jordan on the Delusions of Big Data and Other Huge Engineering EffortsBig-data boondoggles and brain-inspired chips are just two of the things we’re really getting wrongBy Lee Gomes Posted 20 Oct 2014 | 19:37 GMT

Photo-Illustration: Randi Klett

The overeager adoption of big data is likely to result in catastrophes of analysis comparable to a national epidemic of collapsing bridges. Hardware designers creating chips based on the human brain are engaged in a faith-based undertaking likely to prove a fool’s errand. Despite recent claims to the contrary, we are no further along with computer vision than we were with physics when Isaac Newton sat under his apple tree.

Those may sound like the Luddite ravings of a crackpot who breached security at an IEEE conference. In fact, the opinions belong to IEEE Fellow Michael I. Jordan, Pehong Chen Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Jordan is one of the world’s most respected authorities on machine learning and an astute observer of the field. His CV would require its own massive database, and his standing in the field is such that he was chosen to write the introduction to the 2013 National Research Council report “Frontiers in Massive Data Analysis.” San Francisco writer Lee Gomes interviewed him for IEEE Spectrum on 3 October 2014.

Michael Jordan on…

1. Why We Should Stop Using Brain Metaphors When We Talk About Computing 2. Our Foggy Vision About Machine Vision 3. Why Big Data Could Be a Big Fail 4. What He’d Do With US $1 Billion 5. How Not to Talk About the Singularity 6. What He Cares About More Than Whether P = NP 7. What the Turing Test Really Means

1.Why We Should Stop Using Brain Metaphors When We Talk About Computing

IEEE Spectrum: I infer from your writing that you believe there’s a lot of misinformation out there about deep learning, big data, computer vision, and the like.

Michael Jordan: Well, on all academic topics there is a lot of misinformation. The media is trying to do its best to find topics that people are going to read about. Sometimes those go beyond where the achievements actually are. Specifically on the topic of deep learning, it’s largely a rebranding of neural networks, which go back to the 1980s. They actually go back to the 1960s; it seems like every 20 years there is a new wave that involves them. In the current wave, the main success story is the convolutional neural network, but that idea was already present in the previous wave. And one of the problems with both the previous wave, that has unfortunately persisted in the current wave, is that people continue to infer that something involving neuroscience is behind it, and that deep learning is taking advantage of an understanding of how the brain processes information, learns, makes decisions, or copes with large amounts of data. And that is just patently false.

…https://amplab.cs.berkeley.edu/2014/10/22/big-data-hype-the-media-and-other-provocative-words-to-put-in-a-title/

Big Data, Hype, the Media and Other Provocative Words to Put in a TitlePosted on October 22, 2014 by Michael Jordan

I’ve found myself engaged with the Media recently, first in the context of a“Ask Me Anything” (AMA) with reddit.com http://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/2fxi6v/ama_michael_i_jordan/ (a fun and engaging way to spend a morning), and then for an interview that has been published in the IEEE Spectrum.

That latter process was disillusioning. Well, perhaps a better way to say it is that I didn’t harbor that many illusions about science and technology journalism going in, and the process left me with even fewer.

The interview is here:  http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/artificial-intelligence/machinelearning-maestro-michael-jordan-on-the-delusions-of-big-data-and-other-huge-engineering-efforts

Read the title and the first paragraph and attempt to infer   what’s in the body of the interview. Now go read the interview and see what you   think about the choice of title.

Here’s what I think.

The title contains the phrase “The Delusions of Big Data and Other Huge Engineering Efforts”. It took me a moment to realize that this was the title that had been placed (without my knowledge) on the interview I did a couple of weeks ago. Anyway who knows me, or who’s attended any of my recent talks knows that I don’t feel that Big Data is a delusion at all; rather, it’s a transformative topic, one that is changing academia (e.g., for the first time in my 25-year career, a topic has emerged that almost everyone in academia feels is on the critical path for their sub-discipline), and is changing society (most notably, the micro-economies made possible by learning about individual preferences and then connecting suppliers and consumers directly are transformative). But most of all, from my point of view, it’s a *major engineering and mathematical   challenge*, one that will not be solved by just gluing together a few existing ideas   from statistics, optimization, databases and computer systems.

I.e., the whole point of my shtick for the past decade is that Big Data is a Huge Engineering Effort and that that’s no Delusion. Imagine my dismay at a title that said exactly the opposite.

The next phrase in the title is “Big Data Boondoggles”. Not my phrase, nor my thought. I don’t talk that way. Moreover, I really don’t see anything wrong with anyone gathering lots of data and trying things out, including trying out business models; quite to the contrary. It’s the only way we’ll learn. (Indeed, my bridge analogy from later in the article didn’t come out quite right: I was trying to say that historically it was crucial for humans to start to build bridges, and trains, etc, etc, before they had serious engineering principles in place; the empirical engineering effort had immediate positive effects on humans, and it eventually led to the engineering principles. My point was just that it’s high time that we realize that wrt to Big Data we’re now at the “what are the principles?” point in time. We need to recognize that poorly thought-out approaches to large-scale data analysis can be just costly as bridges falling down. E.g., think individual medical decision-making, where false positives can, and

already are, leading to unnecessary surgeries and deaths.) *** I would say the same about AI and with autonomy ***

Next, in the first paragraph, I’m implied to say that I think that neural-based chips are “likely to prove a fool’s errand”. Not my phrase, nor my thought. I think that it’s perfectly reasonable to explore such chip-building; it’s even exciting. As I mentioned in the interview, I do think that a problem with that line of research is that they’re putting architecture before algorithms and understanding, and that’s not the way I’d personally do things, but others can beg to differ, and by all I means think that they should follow their instincts.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/531911/isaac-asimov-asks-how-do-people-get-new-ideas/

Isaac Asimov

October 20, 2014

Isaac Asimov Asks, “How Do People Get New Ideas?”Note from Arthur Obermayer, friend of the author:

In 1959, I worked as a scientist at Allied Research Associates in Boston. The company

was an MIT spinoff that originally focused on the effects of nuclear weapons on aircraft

structures. The company received a contract with the acronym GLIPAR (Guide Line

Identification Program for Antimissile Research) from the Advanced Research Projects

Agency to elicit the most creative approaches possible for a ballistic missile defense

system. The government recognized that no matter how much was spent on improving

and expanding current technology, it would remain inadequate. They wanted us and a

few other contractors to think “out of the box.”

When I first became involved in the project, I suggested that Isaac Asimov, who was a

good friend of mine, would be an appropriate person to participate. He expressed his

willingness and came to a few meetings. He eventually decided not to continue,

because he did not want to have access to any secret classified information; it would

limit his freedom of expression. Before he left, however, he wrote this essay on

creativity as his single formal input. This essay was never published or used beyond our

small group. When I recently rediscovered it while cleaning out some old files, I

recognized that its contents are as broadly relevant today as when he wrote it. It

describes not only the creative process and the nature of creative people but also the

kind of environment that promotes creativity.

ON CREATIVITY

How do people get new ideas?

Presumably, the process of creativity, whatever it is, is essentially the same in all its branches and varieties, so that the evolution of a new art form, a new gadget, a new scientific principle, all involve common factors. We are most interested in the “creation” of a new scientific principle or a new application of an old one, but we can be general here.

One way of investigating the problem is to consider the great ideas of the past and see just how they were generated. Unfortunately, the method of generation is never clear even to the “generators” themselves.

But what if the same earth-shaking idea occurred to two men, simultaneously

and independently? Perhaps, the common factors involved would be

illuminating. Consider the theory of evolution by natural selection,

independently created by Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace.

There is a great deal in common there. Both traveled to far places, observing strange species of plants and animals and the manner in which they varied from place to place. Both were keenly interested in finding an explanation for this, and both failed until each happened to read Malthus’s “Essay on Population.”

…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/google-shows-off-self-driving-car/2014/10/27/a72f77ca-5961-11e4-8264-deed989ae9a2_story.html

Google shows off self-driving carThe Post's deputy business editor, David Cho, interviews Chris Urmson, director of Google's Self-Driving Cars, at an America Answers: Fix My Commute live event. (Meena Ganesan/The Washington Post)

By Nancy Szokan October 27 at 4:29 PM

Google has been working on self-driving cars for a while, but until this year the company basically bolted its equipment onto familiar vehicles.

The test cars looked almost normal: When the company did street demos, a staffer would pose reassuringly behind the (nonfunctioning) steering wheel, and the most noticeable addition was the fast-spinning, roof-mounted laser sensor that delivers 360-degree information to the car’s driving mechanism.

But in May, Google unveiled its first “purpose-built” self-driving vehicle — looking a little like a cartoon car ,with no steering wheel or pedals — and videotaped some volunteers taking an unaccompanied ride. In “A First Drive,” which you can find on YouTube, the “drivers” include some senior citizens, a mother and her son, and a blind man.

“You feel relaxed,” says a gray-haired woman who giggled through her trip pretending to turn an imaginary steering wheel. “What she

really liked was that it slowed down before it went around the curve, and then accelerated in the curve,” says one man, nodding toward his wife.

And the blind man yells, “I love this!” out the window, adding later, “There is a big part of my life that a self-driving vehicle could bring back to me.”

Google’s first “purpose-built” self-driving vehicle lookS a little like a cartoon car. (Associated Press) http://www.thelocal.no/20141023/norways-killer-robot-technology-under-fire

Minister of Defence Ine Eriksen Søreide under fire about new autonomous missile technology. Photo: Torstein Bøe / NTB scanpix

Norway's 'killer robot' technology under firePublished: 23 Oct 2014 11:28 GMT+02:00Updated: 23 Oct 2014 11:28 GMT+02:00

The Norwegian government is set to develop a new controversial robot-controlled missile for its fighter jets, but faces opposition from MPs and peace organizations claiming the technology may break international law.

The partially autonomously controlled missiles, or so-called "killer robots", will be used for airborne strikes for its new fighter jets and have the ability to identify targets and make decisions to kill without human interference.

The Norwegian Peace League, for one, believe the technology may violate international law, wanting a parliamentary debate about the move.

Alexander Harang of the Norwegian Peace League (Norges Fredslag) demands discussion . He is also a member for the international “Campaign to stop killer robots”.

Norway is one of many countries developing weapons that can operate without human control or surveillance.

The technology raises moral questions, such as what happens when the human is removed from the battle field and machines are left to do the job? Or who will be responsible if the weapon makes mistakes or performs attacks violating international law?

Harang believes that a discussion is highly relevant before final development of Joint Strike Missiles (JSM) made by Norway's Kongsberg Gruppen. These missiles will be part of the weaponry of the Norwegian Armed Forces’ new fighter jet plane, the Joint Strike Fighter.

…

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/532001/how-magic-leaps-augmented-reality-works/

Reality WorksPatent and trademark filings reveal the augmented reality technology that convinced Google and others to invest $542 million into Magic Leap.

By Tom Simonite on October 23, 2014

Why It MattersDisplays that trick the human visual system into perceiving virtual objects as real could have many applications.

A patent filing by startup Magic Leap describes a wearable display that presents realistic 3-D imagery, powered by a computer worn on the hip.

A Florida startup called Magic Leap announced Tuesday that it had received $542 million in funding from major Silicon Valley investors led by Google to develop hardware for a new kind of augmented reality hardware. The secretive startup has yet to publicly describe or demonstrate its technology, and declined an interview request. But patent and trademark filings reveal the kind of technology that Magic Leap plans to use to create what the company’s CEO and founder Rony Abovitz has called “the most natural and human-friendly wearable computing interface in the world.”

…

http://www.af.mil/News/ArticleDisplay/tabid/223/Article/526332/new-application-aims-to-improve-analysts-performance.aspx

New application aims to improve analyst's performanceBy Wesley Farnsworth, 88th Air Base Wing Public Affairs / Published October 25, 2014

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DOWNLOAD HI-RES  /   PHOTO DETAILS

Second Lt. Michael Emard creates slides from video snapshots Oct. 15, 2014, during a demonstration of the new Enhanced Reporting, Narrative Event Streaming Tool developed by the Air Force Research Lab, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. The program streamlines some routine tasks performed by intelligence analysts in an effort to increase their overall effectiveness and allow for faster distribution of intellgence to those that need it. Emard is a 711th Human Performance Wing behavioral scientist. (U.S. Air Force photo/Wesley Farnsworth)

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DOWNLOAD HI-RES  /   PHOTO DETAILS

First Lt. Kristin Spencer watches a video for suspicious behavior during a demonstration of a new Enhanced Reporting, Narrative Event Streaming Tool developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory Oct. 15, 2014, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. The program aims to make intelligence analyst’s jobs easier by streamlining some of their routine tasks, which could enable to them save more lives. Spencer is a 711th Human Performance Wing behavioral scientist. (U.S. Air Force photo/Wesley Farnsworth)

WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio (AFNS) -- Members from an Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) team collaborated to create a new tool suite, which could be used by the Air Force intelligence community around the globe.

AFRL’s Planning & Direction, Collection, Processing and Exploitation, Analysis and Production, and Dissemination - Experimental (PCPAD-X), which includes subject matter experts from the Human Effectiveness Directorate, Sensors Directorate, Information Directorate and countless educational and industry partners from around the country, have produced an Enhanced Reporting, Narrative Event Streaming Tool (ERNEST). ERNEST is an integrated compilation of many different tools such as a video player, speech to text program, slide maker and chat program.

ERNEST is designed to streamline many of the intelligence analyst's routine tasks.

With the program now completed, members of the PCPAD-X team brought in analysts from various bases around the U.S. to the team's offices here to provided critical feedback to team members.

…

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/531996/ford-to-add-pedestrian-detection-to-its-cars/

Detection to Its CarsFord sedans will soon come with a system that brakes if you’re about to hit a pedestrian.

By Will Knight on October 23, 2014

Why It MattersNearly 4,500 pedestrians are killed in road accidents in the U.S. each year.

Engineers experiment with the pedestrian detection system on a test track.

Ford is giving its cars the ability to spot—and avoid hitting—pedestrians using a combination of radar and camera sensing. The system will appear in Europe next year on Ford’s Mondeo sedan.

Although similar technology is available in some high-end cars, like the Mercedes S-Class, the move from Ford shows how rapidly automation is coming even to modest vehicles. The pedestrian detection that Ford is developing could also prove crucial to fully automated vehicles capable of driving in complex situations—something that remains out of reach.

“It will scan the road for pedestrians and issue a warning [to the driver],” says Scott Lindstrom, manager of driver assist technologies at Ford. “And if the warning isn’t sufficient, it’ll auto-brake.”

Like other automakers, Ford is also experimenting with more complete automation.  Its bigger Detroit rival, General Motors, plans to offer a Cadillac by 2017 that can drive automatically on freeways. But Ford’s new system also reflects a more incremental and cautious approach, in contrast to Google, which has committed to delivering full autonomy (see “Driverless Cars are Further Away than You Think”). Google’s latest prototype vehicles originally came without a steering wheel and didn’t feature brakes that were operable by its human passengers, although it was forced to add such controls so it could legally test the cars on the road.

…

http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/artificial-intelligence/machinelearning-maestro-michael-jordan-on-the-delusions-of-big-data-and-other-huge-engineering-efforts#qaTopicOne

Will Superintelligent AIs Be Our Doom?Nick Bostrom says artificial intelligence poses an existential threat to humanityBy Nick Bostrom Posted 3 Sep 2014 | 15:00 GMT

Illustration: Mehau Kulyk/Science Photo Library/Corbis

Photo: Oxford University Press

Every morning Nick Bostrom wakes up, brushes his teeth, and gets to work thinking about how the human species may be wiped off the face of the earth. Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, is an expert on existential threats to humanity. Of all the perils that make his list, though, he’s most concerned with the threat posed by artificial intelligence.

Bostrom’s new book, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (Oxford University Press), maps out scenarios in which humans create a “seed AI” that is smart enough to improve its own intelligence and skills and which goes on to take over the world. Bostrom discusses what might motivate such a machine and explains why its goals might be incompatible with the continued existence of human beings. (In one example, a factory AI is given the task of maximizing the production of paper clips. Once it becomes superintelligent, it proceeds to convert all available resources, including human bodies, into paper clips.) Bostrom’s book also runs through potential control strategies for an AI—and the reasons they might not work.

In the passage from the book below, Bostrom imagines a scenario in which AI researchers, trying to proceed cautiously, test their creations in a controlled and limited “sandbox” environment.

…

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/531936/voice-recognition-for-the-internet-of-things/

Mobile News

Voice Recognition for the Internet of ThingsWith natural-language processing aided by crowdsourced data, Wit.ai aims to make smartphones, wearables, and drones heed your call.

By Rachel Metz on October 24, 2014

Why It MattersAs devices become more intelligent, we’ll need new ways to interact with them.

It’s not unusual to find yourself talking to an uncoöperative appliance or gadget. Soon, though, it could soon be more common for those devices to actually pay attention.

A startup called Wit.ai plans to make it easy for hardware makers and software developers to add custom voice controls to everything from smartphones and smart watches to Internet-connected thermostats and drones.

While big companies like Apple and Google have their own voice recognition technology, smaller companies and independent developers don’t have the deep pockets required to create voice software that continuously learns from mountains of data.

Wit.ai, based in Palo Alto, California, is taking aim at the swiftly growing number of devices with small displays, or no screen at all, and at activities like driving and cooking, where you may want the aid of technology but don’t want to look at or touch a display.

And to give all kinds of developers access to a simple-to-use, always-learning natural-language service, the company is offering it free to those who agree to share their user data with the Wit.ai community. Collecting this data should help improve the accuracy of the system over time.

“Everyone will benefit from that,” cofounder and CEO Alex Lebrun says.

…