Yearly Archives: 2008

Evolution of the Neuroevolutionary Solver documentation

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There was some major updating of the Neuroevolutionary Solver page on the weekend. Now there are sections to help you download the software, install the required Java JDK and Java 3D packages and instructions on how to get the NS working on your home system. Working with the NS is much easier through the Eclipse IDE and detailed instructions are available for that method. Command line instructions for Windows and Linux are also available. Click through to the NS page here or click the Neuroevolutionary Solver tab at the top of this page.

Keep watching for more updates over the next few days.

The Learning Algorithm of the Brain

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A group of researchers at NYU have been given funding to “discover the learning algorithm of the brain“.

This will be some exciting work, many scientists believe the easiest method to general artifical intelligence is through duplicating the human brain, that the sum of the parts is the soul so to speak. These researchers will be focusing on the visual system and how it manages to identify all the important bits in a photograph or any real world scene. They will then apply what they learn from these experiments to see if the same methodology works on similar brain structures.

I am not certain but this research may be related to the recent full simulation of the human visual cortex on Roadrunner currently the most powerful computer in the world. This full simulation of the visual cortex was a simulation system called PetaVision which actually was a full simulation of all the neurons that compose the human optic system and visual cortex that could be run in real time.

Slap some ears on it, a nose, and a neocortex and we have a beautiful baby AI.

Happy Thanksgiving, Mr. Turing

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Well yesterday was Thanksgiving, my wife and I went to our friends house and cooked a turkey. Quite the proceedure, I researched several sources including YouTube and my mother, to figure out the best way to get the job done. The turkey was fabulous. The human beings ability to take in information from several sources, assimilate it, process it and use it to understand and reproduce something is remarkable.

Computers got a bit closer to that on the same day. The Turing Test I wrote about in my last post happened yesterday and quite a few of the systems did quite well. The program Elbot actually managed to fool twenty five percent of the judges into thinking it was a human. That is no small feat, as even the tiniest confusion or mistake can make a human aware it is not talking to one of its own kind.

I wonder if in another 25 years, an AI based robot I have will ask me about how to cook a turkey. I will explain the process to it, and it will proceed to make that turkey for me. Who knows…

Turing test next weekend.

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Next sunday there will be a fun little challenge happing at the University of Reading. Several computer programs will be competing to pass the ‘Turing test’.

To explain it simply, the Turing test, is an experiment to test a computers intelligence by having it attempt to fool a human into believeing it is human as well. A human judge faces off against a computer program and a human pretending to be the same program simultaneously. If the judge cannot tell which conversation is the human and which is the program, the program will have passed the Turing test.

Some people will definitely argue that the program doesn’t understand what it is saying, it is simply following rules to respond to the questions posed to it, and it does not represent intelligence. Well, don’t you as a human really just do the same thing, but with a considerably more complex and dynamic ruleset?

If the example conversation in this article is representative of all the programs competeing then they have a long way to go before they fool a human.

Is this thing on?

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Well, it has been about a year since I posted on Automatons Adrift. There have been some significant changes in my life. I completed my masters degree with a clear pass. A very rare feat I am told, typically there are at least minor revisions. I left my job at UNBC and moved to the University of Alberta to be the System Administrator for the Faculty of Science. This of course means I moved to the wonderful city of Edmonton.

The most surprising thing is, all these changes happend in the last couple of months. Now that my research for my thesis is complete I have a lot less time pressure and I can devote more energy to Automatons Adrift. I have updated the website along with the hosting service for it. I have added some new content including pages on the SDNEAT and NEAT algorithms which were at the center of my research. I have also started a page for the Neuroevolutionary Solver. This page will outline how to use the system and modify it to perform further experiments.

There is a lot of material to be posted as we move forward. I hope you enjoy the new Automatons Adrift!