Artificial Curiosity

The first robot with curiosity built-in. And you can even buy this Sony Aibo.

Robots that are driven by curiosity may be able to develop on their own, without programming or supervision.

Time Travel & Destiny

This article deals with the paradox of time travelling being possible, but the impossibility to change the past. The uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics could explain that : once something has been observed, it's set in stone. And going in the past can't change something that has been observed. So time traveling could only happen to observe what has already been observed, all the rest is left free to be changed. But if it's free to be changed and make sense to be changed and time travel will exist in the future, it's very likely that people from the future already came to "observe" the things left to observe. And our present or near future is probably the same too. So in the end I think the uncertainty principle makes destiny a reality. All the past is written once and for all, and our future will soon be the past of future generations. So is everything is written already...

I'm happy with what I came up with so far...

Robots putting their heads together

One of the many examples where simple brains can make complex things, like ants or even maybe like ours...

More on the limits of consciousness

Two interresting articles on consciousness, something that actually may not even be a tangible thing. But more the illusion of a more complex system which might not be that coherent.

Mistaken identity

I also didn't see it as a big news before but IBM is starting a project to simulate a brain in one of their most powerful computer. Something that Kurzweil expected to happen around now (and be real in about a decade or 2). We'll push the limits further of what can be and cannot be done...

Blue Brain

Corporate Censorship

It seems that big companies are not relunctant at all to the idea of controlling what you are allowed to know or not. Among them are Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!. They have agreed to censor the content they provide to chinese citizens. I guess whatever a powerful government will ask them, they'll do it. Business as usual... But it's always good to know who you can (not) trust...

Back to life

Now that my situation is getting a bit calmer and that I found a few good articles I'm back to feed this blog.

For those who followed the Ateme move, I finally didn't go there. I'm now working in Los Angeles on a hardware, software, distribution project for video. This project is very exciting, much more than the one they proposed me at Ateme.

The life so far has been very rock'n'roll, living in a luxury hotel (now another one), DJing once in a while, working at night, sleeping a tiny bit... I hope it will become a bit calmer soon.

Another guy who thinks about immortamity though computers

I like this quote about the conscious computer and feelings :

'It would definitely have emotions - that's one of the primary reasons for doing it. If I'm on an airplane I want the computer to be more terrified of crashing than I am so it does everything to stay in the air until it's supposed to be on the ground.

Cold Hearted Bosses Suck

An interresting study on successful manager and how feeling and intuition could play an important role. That makes full sense with my own... intuition :) Or rather knowledge that intuition and instincts are what happen when there is too many information to handle in a short time. Reason is not fast enough in this case. And that's exactly the situation a boss has to deal with. So you'd better have good intuition if you want to take responsabilities...

Scientists get closer to the physical limit of conscious

You know what a visual illusion is : you watch something and you actually see (or cannot see) something else. Images are processed in the brain and therefore there must be a place where the wrong interpretation of the image occurs...

Some scientists have found the error is not in the eye and even gets into the brain. But the conscious perception is indeed wrong. This is clearly the first step to find the limit of where consciousnsess lies in the brain (by knowing where it's not).

So technology makes you dumb ?

...seems like. But I doubt about the larger impact. Only the aspect of the "context switching" seem to be the important factor here. Maybe the effect on kids too...

Hibernation of mice

So mice has been set in deep sleep state for 6h and have recovered without any damage. Just by using a gas.

Their temperature was reduced to 15°C instead of their normal 37°C. The need for oxygen of cells was highly reduced.... Which means one of the major drawbacks of human could fall down (a bit) in the future. At least for space travels.

Common Sense

There is a new chatbot based on AI that is going to be put online soon. The difference here is that it's supposed to have "common sense". That's probably a good idea, because at some point a machine will have to decide what is interresting information, and decide between quantity and quality. But the way it's presented here is a bit flawed :

Others admitted computers could become intelligent but said they would never develop qualities such as compassion or wisdom which were uniquely human, the result of our emotional upbringing and experience. The definition of intelligence itself began to slip through the philosophers' fingers, and the disagreements continue today.

IMO compassion is not the way of evolution. It seems to help getting humans together, but it removes the necessary balance in nature between good and evil. Letting things die is part of nature too. Otherwise evolution (unadapted species) would not work. Maybe that's the key point we'll have to deal with soon : is evolution worth ? That might be the only way to stop it (if decided so). But I'm all for it, just because it's just where we belong in nature/universe.

Ray Kurtzweil meets Mikail Gorbatchev

Nop, it's not a political-science chimera. It's just a report from Kurzweil about their meeting recently. A short but worth discussion.

Mikhail: My advice would be to have a dialogue with people, to help overcome prejudice, to build bridges of understanding.

Mikhail's fourth toast: Only monks and nuns do their thinking alone. We need to communicate our thoughts and work together.

Recovering from unconsciousness

A rather long article that shed some different light on Terry Schiavo's case (for those who never read the news, it's a woman in vegetative state that is being starved to death). Recovering from this vegetative state is sometimes quick, but it can sometimes be long. It all depends on the level of injuries (lack of oxygen in the brain). But the brain recovers gradually from the coma state to consciousness.

New Job

I don't often talk about personal matters. But this time I will, as it may have some impact on my life.

I've signed for a new job at Ateme to work on video codecs on DSP (and all the related stuff). I don't know exactly when I will start this new job (and quit the current one) but I hope it will be some time around may.

I got this job because of my involvement in Matroska, because I know quite a bit about digital video. That was also the subject of my university studies. And I'm glad I can get a job closer to what I like to work on.

That doesn't mean my involvement in Matroska will stop. There are still plenty to do. And I don't think this baby is old/mature enough to live alone in the wild world. It will need a little bit more care to make it grow and reach a stable status. Time will tell how much time I'll be able to give it in the future. So in the mean time I'll try to do as much as possible to add key features here and there.

PS: A big thank to Philog, my former employer. I've learned a lot and always enjoyed the people there.

Kurzweil interview

OK, I admit. I really like Ray Kurzweil. He has this ability to feel how the future is going to be. And he often makes very valid points on his theories. This article is quite long and covers a lot of what he's working on now. I'll be waiting for his next book in fall "singularity of the near" which is about reverse engineering the brain into computers...

Already companies need to reinvent themselves in order to succeed. There’s a shock when an industry resists changing its business model. The recording industry resisted changing its business model; they tried to keep the same business model that was around when my father was a kid. Selling an album with maybe only one or two songs that someone wants for a pretty expensive price. The bottom line is that industries have to change the structure of their business models. Very often it’s a new set of organizations that adopt a business model that’s consistent with disruptive change that displaces the old ones. But people aren’t necessarily going to keep the same jobs or careers for their whole life -- especially when we change the concept of the human life cycle.

M-TRAN robots

This is a new kind of robot build to change its shape. Its movements are also chosen using genetic algorithm for better efficiency. The interresting part is the conclusion : it has bigger potential than the (current) human body because it can evolve/grow during its lifetime to do things unpredicted at its birth... As one know, nature smiles to the ones with best adaptation skills...

Palm founders jump on AI

The 2 persons responsible for the success of the Palm PDA have created a new company (Numenta) to work on AI projects, based on knowledges of neuroscience. This is probably not the first one, but given their background and probably the money they can generate, it could give a good boost to all this nascent industry.

Capitalist Research

A survey shows that companies tries to bias research results and also try to get short-term revenues on research, rather than substantial results. It was expected but never so obviously and openly...

Scientists asking questions

It's always refreshing to see scientists being puzzled by their discoveries. That they find limits to what they can explain/understand yet.