Future Salon

The Fundamental Mechanism of Cognition

Robert Hecht-Nielsen, Computational Neurobiologist (via videoconference) spoke on
The Fundamental Mechanism of Cognition.

Synopsis: Each cortical module in the celebral cortex is responsible for describing one attribute that an object in the mental world can have. These attributes are persistent terms of reference. For instance we can have the attribute of apple for a mental object. Hecht-Neilsen goes on to describe how pair-wise "knowledge links" are formed - for instance, apple can be unidirectionally linked to another neuron-collection of red. Hecht-Nielsen goes on to explain how we think (take inputs and respond with action) with this knowledge link model. He ends by discussing conversational interface research funded by the FairIsaac that employs 10B links to mimic a human conversationalist.

Announcement: Grand Challenge Road Trip

Whether you're sad to be saying goodbye to all your ASF friends already after such a jam-packed ACC weekend, or you weren't able to attend at all, a perfect opportunity for some more socializing, over a more leisurely weekend, is just around the corner: you're invited to join fellow Future Saloners to attend the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge autonomous vehicles race on October 8. As was done for last year's Challenge, we will be self-organizing into carpools at a Salon the Friday night before, but this year the race is on the San Diego Future Salon weekend, so we'll be congregating there rather than in L.A. (The precise course of the race will not be revealed until the morning of the race, and even the locations of the start and finish lines will not be announced until the week before, but they will be somewhere out in the southern CA/NV desert.)

Last year, as you may recall, none of the contestants completed the course, and the $1 million prize went unclaimed. Since DARPA had suspected such an outcome was likely (they named it the DARPA Grand Challenge for a reason), the idea was to double the prize amount each race until somebody wins. As planned, therefore, this year's prize is $2 million. Vying for it this year are 43 teams, from 15 states, including two teams ("Red Team" and "Red Team Too") from last year's best contender, Carnegie Mellon. For more on last year's race, check out the DARPA Grand Challenge website, the coverage on IT Conversations, and my own small trip album.

And the October 7 San Diego Future Salon will feature David Lemberg, the Executive Producer and Host of the "Science and
Society" Internet radio and podcast program focusing on nanotechnology, life sciences, space exploration, K-12 science education, and the intersection between science and art. He will be presenting "Nanotechnology: The Near Future of Medicine, Space Exploration, and the Environment."

Feel free to just show up at the SD Salon, or at the race itself if your Friday evening is already booked. But those planning to attend the race are encouraged to let it be known to us all in order to encourage others to join us for the trek as well.

Update: I've now added a coordination page to the ASF wiki.

Shrinking the Planet Session

Two speakers in this session including Peter Barrett, Microsoft TV on IPTV; and Scott Rafer, chairman of Wireless Ink, previously founder of Feedster. From the program: "Each can greatly personalize the information we receive, "shrinking” the planet by making all the world’s knowledge more accessible than ever before."

Peter Barrett is talking about video services over high-speed broadband. Mobile operators in particular are interested in integrating voice, data, video. He sees much of the uses being in the 'long tail' of personal media, sharing of user-created photographs and video.

Scott Rafer makes the point that aggregated, collaborative intelligence is here and now. The Q&A at the end really underscore his point that other humans in aggregate are his "artificial intelligence" agents:

Q: How is this A.I.?
A: My talk is there is none. I grew up on Route 128 and I've been promised AI since I was 12.

Q: Your talk seems to be about collaboratiive intelligence.
A: Yes, I think to average person the end-result will appear same.

Download Scott's Rafer's Slides.pdf

Q&A With Ray Kurzweil

With moderator: Moira Gunn, of public radio's Tech Nation

KEY M: Moira Gunn | A: Ray Kurzweil's response | Q: Audience question

A snippet from this afternoon's Q&A:

[An AI entity...] Is that a machine like a character in a video game? Is it conscious? Consciousness is at the core of our moral and legal systems. But there is not human agreement on consciousness, for instance, are animals conscious?

Kurweil Keynote: When Humans Transcend Biology

Ray Kurzweil, Kurzweil Technologies and author, The Singularity is Near When Humans Transcend Biology keynotes for third year in a row (if memory serves right).

Check out slides at: www.kurzweilAI.net/pps/ACC2005

Synopsis: We have programs in our body we haven't changed in 30,000 years.  The main difference in perspective from people in this conference and much more common view is the historical exponential perspective and a linear perspective. Most people intuitively extrapolate today into the future linearly.

As Kurweil maintains, the maxim 'Know thyself' is really the goal of reverse-engineering of the brain. Kurzweil's latest book, makes case the reverse-engineering will happen by 2029. That's when computers pass the Turing test.  And our fixed biological intelligence will merge with nonbiological intelligence.

Can We Avoid a Hard Takeoff: Speculations on Issues in AI and IA

Vernor Vinge, Mathematician; Computer Scientist; Author, True Names; The Coming Technological Singularity

Synopsis: Math professor for thirty years, and also science fiction writer, Vernor Vinge talks about the possible scenarios for a technological singularity, including whether we will get there without even knowing it.

"We might think, 'Gee, I don't remember that mountain range west of San Francisco'. Or that sand talking back to me. Humans are operating under illusison that they are self-aware. Adam Smith's invisible hand would really be manifest!"

He peppers his talk with frequent - too frequent for this live-blogger to capture - references to sci-fi novels and short stories that vividly illustrate the possibilities.

John Smart Opens AC2005

John Smart, Acceleration Studies Foundation founder and president as well as conferencec co-producer, kicks off the third year of the Accelerating Change conference:

We're often surprised by the future.

There was that guy in 1992 waving his hands saying that this World Wide Web was going to be a big thing in ten years. We have a lot of those kinds of people here.

Accelerating Change Conference is like PopTech at a fifth of cost with a multi-disciplinary view around accelerating change.

Rather than future-shock, future-shaping.

Four components to Acceleration Studies Foundation include awareness, education, research and advocacy. You should have to think about the future as an undergraduate. If we take courses in history, current affairs, it'd follow.  ASF is teaching a curriculum in Foresight Development at the University of Advancing Technology [a very innovative private university in Tempe, AZ educating the IT-enabled generation].

How do people make bets on the future? Some things are unreasonably predictable that have to do with small-scale techologies, information technologies, and communications technologies.

If we take a broad picture view, we'll often see things that are sea changes.

There's a report by another organization on philantropy around the world (it's in our knowledgebase) and what struck me was how much the world is much more of a network today rather than a hierarchy.

AI (Artificial Intelligence) is one of those spaces that is broad and encompasses all that is increasingly autonomous in computing.

There are ambassadors to Paraguay. We're ambassadors to the future. Sometimes humans don't change [rapidly], but our houses are changing. What happens when your bed is smarter than you are?

tags ac2005

Intelligence Amplification Introduction Wiki

We are trying out something new with our next Future Salon (21st of October): Age of Anxiety. We created an Age of Anxiety Event Wiki page, where if you are interested you can already check background information and even better your own links and views. Please do so.

Although a bit late, am doing the same for my small Intelligence Amplification Introduction on the second day of the Accelerating Change Conference AC2005 this weekend.

Abstract: Growing up I always wished that I had a grandfather around that I could ask anything and everything. Now we have Google and Wikipedia. It takes intelligence to create a software virus, even more a biological virus. But that's not the kind of intelligence we want to amplify. The better question is how to amplify wisdom and maybe we should also shoot for Artificial Wisdom instead of AI.

Here is the wiki page with my current collection of interesting links and thoughts. I only have 25 minutes to introduce the theme, the schedule of the day, give some SAP as well as my own perspective. Not sure yet how to accomplish all that :-)

Very thankful for every insight, link, dialog, ...

Jaron Blogs ...

If you check the Internet Archive where many of our Future Salon videos are stored, the one with the best Batting Average as in how many people have viewed it in comparison to just look at the page with over 20% it is Jaron Lanier's talk. Here some more details about that interesting evening.

Turns out he just started to blog at the Huffington Post with some really good insights for example about Science and Intelligent Design. 

Wifi on Caltrain?

Jeff Nolan is so right. Would love to have Wifi on my Caltrain ride to work.

Seattle buses get wifi

By jeff

Why is it that Seattle gets all this cool stuff and I can't even get a decent cell signal in the heart of Silicon Valley? Link: Wi-Fi Networking News Archives. The King County Metro Transit tries out Wi-Fi on a few routes: Using the locally made Junxion Box, which relays data between a Wi-Fi gateway and a 2.5G or 3G cellular network, Metro Transit will equip all buses along two long routes with Internet access—29 buses in all by mid-October.

There are actually some rumors that Caltrain folks are at least thinking about it, but nothing at the moment if you search for "Wifi" on their site.