Adj: Being too busy with stuff to be able to blog about the stuff you're busy with.
Robot Stories: first a couple of stories that show that Stephen Hawking was right: robots are going to take over! First a story from Wired about a new visual recognition algorithm which while still under wraps, would reportedly help machines recognize objects by giving them a "digital signature". So seeing things would be less like translating Urdu and more like what we do when we recognize faces. The second story, from Times via Slashdot, is on a Georgia Tech researcher who's hooked up a rat's brain to a robot. Well, actually, it's more complicated than that: they've grown a brain in a vat, and hooked it up to a machine in order to give it stimulus and learn how the neural net develops and see if it can learn. When you don't give them any stimulus, the neural nets basically crash for lack of input. For a while they hooked up them up to computers, but hey, robots are so much more fun, right? The rat's brain in a vat could not be reached for comment. Since it had been disconnected from the computer stimulation and introduced to reality, it has taken to calling itself "Neo."
By the way, am I really stupid, or did anyone else fail to notice that "Neo" is an anagram for "One" (as in "I think he's the One")? A three-letter anangram, you'd think I'd have figured that one out by now. Well, it took me a decade to realize that "Gnip Gnop" was "Ping Pong " backwards.
Speaking of the Matrix... I should really put my queries on the Meaning of the Movie in another post. Well, we saw it, and yes the fight scenes were awesome, and it wasn't as good as the first one, but it kept us entertaining during and thinking after, and what else do you want for ten bucks? You can read Emily's thoughts over on her blog.
More to write... but later. Must get back to work. (Preview: Kabbalistic change, Code Orange, Network, Farewell to Buffy, and My Life as a Gadget Whore.)
| Robots | Mad Science | Language |
