Lucy: Her Story of Survival
Otto is not listening–again. The first time this happened was with Lyta.
Now, he has found a beautiful female Homo erectus. She’s a warrior, strong powerful. She lives in Africa so wears no animal skin clothing to protect her from the cold.
Here are a few more pictures of Lucy, her clan, her habitat:
Cat’s the one who started me on DNA computers (we share a grad student office). My AI Otto is struggling with my need for speed in his computations and his need for energy to complete the work. When I ask him a question, he sorts through a datasphere the size of the digital Library of Congress (all public sources on the internet. Imagine if you searched ‘Homo erectus’ on the internet and then read and absorbed the one million hits–that’s what Otto does just to get started) to create the simulated reality required for his movies. You can see the importance of speed.
Here’s what I know about DNA computers. They weigh almost nothing, carry their own energy pack, can perform ten trillion operations at once and store an amazing amount of information–all in a drop of water with room to spare. The mechanics are deceptively simple. A high school senior won a scholarship by programming the Declaration of Independence into a DNA molecule. Here’s a link to How Stuff Works if you’d like more information.
The problem, from what Cat’s explained, is the amount of error in DNA computing. In our human genome, we call them mutations and they’re considered part of our uniqueness. The average child has around 6.3 billion base pairs of DNA with around 277 mutational differences from his/her parents. Many are noninvasive because 1) cells have built-in redundancies, 2) parts of our genetic make-up are inactive. Maybe they used to be active, but with H. sapiens sapiens, they aren’t. 3) some have nothing to do with how we get along in the world.
But, for traditional computing needs, we need more accuracy than that. The theorists believe that within highly-structured uses, they can be controlled. Taiwan has already created a chip out of DNA.
Fascinating. I wish computers could solve world hunger.
IBM computer taking on ‘Jeopardy!’ champs for $1M
It couldn’t hit a buzzer.
But that’s been fixed, and on Thursday the hardware and software system named Watson was to play a practice round against Ken Jennings, who won a record 74 consecutive “Jeopardy!” games in 2004-05, and Brad Rutter, who won a record of nearly $3.3 million in prize money.
“‘Jeopardy!’ felt that in order for the game to be as fair as possible, just as a human has to physically hit a buzzer, the system also would have to do that,” IBM spokeswoman Jennifer McTighe said. “Now Watson has its own real buzzer.”
The practice round was to be played on a stage at an IBM research center in Yorktown Heights, 38 miles north of Manhattan and across the country from the game show’s home in Culver City, Calif. A real contest among the three, to be televised Feb. 14-16, also will be played at IBM, but the date hasn’t been made public.
The winner of the televised match will be awarded $1 million. Second place gets $300,000, third place $200,000. IBM, which has headquarters in Armonk, said it would give its winnings to charity while Jennings and Rutter would give away half theirs.
I love exercising my brain. I don’t like health clubs or running, so the only
350 years ago, in the margin of this text, Fermat claimed he could prove this theorem
way I get exercise is by thinking. To me, this is one of life’s traits that separates human from non-. Have you ever seen a dog sit quietly and think. No. He falls asleep. Most animals hunt, play or sleep. Their critical problems–those that might cause their extinction, those that might make their life easier–are solved by evolution. They are replaced by a different species that adapts better to the environment.
Not true with the human species, Homo. When we aren’t hunting or playing, we are as likely to be thinking through a problem as sleeping. We have adapted to our environment as much through our own big brain’s problem solving abilities as by evolution’s incremental process of replacing one species with another.
Extreme sports for a thinker is solving unsolvable mathematical problems. And one of the most extreme is Fermat’s Last Theorem. It took 350 years and over 150 pages to solve the first time, making it a worthy exercise for the brilliant human brain.
In the novel I am currently working on, my antagonist sponsors a competition between a brilliant mathematical scientist and a unique problem solving AI to see which can come up with the solution to Fermat’s Last Theorem. Even for an eidetic mind, memorizing 150 pages of obtuse equations would be close to impossible. But if you know the logic that provides a blueprint for the solution, you could reproduce it. Continue reading ‘Fermat’s Last Theorem–Extreme Sports for the Brain’
I love palindromes. I named my AI Otto. My favorite girl name is Hannah.
But I never thought of a palindrome movie. Watch this. Continue reading ‘I am Part of a Lost Generation. I Refuse to Believe…’
I’m fascinated by robots. It’s not my field, but it’s where the human race is headed. For better or for worse, only time will tell.
What Japan is doing in robotics blows me away. I posted recently about Aiko. Now, meet Kojiro. This android’s movements are based on a skeletal structure similar to ours, which means he moves in a more natural fashion, and bends and twists via his artificial spine. Continue reading ‘Meet Kojiro, Your Next Assistant’
Imagine wondering not if Barry Bonds ws on steroids, but if his arm was human? Far fetched? Read these posts:
…and then read this BBC article about China’s first humanoid Olympics: Continue reading ‘Sports Has Bigger Worries Than Steroids–How About ‘Is it Human?’’
It is well-known that military research has created a myriad of everyday products (like Velcro) that have filtered onto our store shelves. Here’s the next: PETMAN. For this robot to perform its chemical protection tests correctly for the Army, it must balance itself, walk, crawl, all while exposed to chemical warfare agents. The robot will have the shape and size of a standard human, making it the first anthropomorphic robot that moves dynamically like a real person.The development program has a 13 month design phase, with delivery scheduled for 2011.For more information, read Wired’s Army Terminators Walk Like Men.
For a different kind of futuristic soldier, read Soldier of the Future is a Hologram.
If you were wondering when robots would become sentient, we’re one day closer with Aiko. She can be used in the home, to help kids with their math, help the elderly read newspapers, check the weather, distinguish between different medicines etc. In the office at an information desk, to alert meeting times, give directions such as food court, washroom, elevators. She performs security functions well–she can
detect 250 faces per second and do a quick filter of known faces at the airport, answer arrival/departure time questions or give locations to certain gates and answer other queries etc. You can follow her on Twitter Click Here and here her singing here (Aiko Singing Video Click Here).
Who is this dream assistant? Watch YouTube:
More? Read on…
(PhysOrg.com) — In August 2007, Le Trung invented Aiko, a Yumecom, or “Dream Computer Robot.” Although it took only a month and a half to build Aiko’s exterior, the artificial intelligence software has been a work in progress ever since. Recently, Le Trung has demonstrated his most recent improvements to the software, called BRAINS (Bio Robot Artificial Intelligence Neural System).
In the video below, Le Trung demonstrates Aiko’s internal operating system, which gives the robot many abilities, including the ability to speak two languages (English and Japanese), solve high school math problems, communicate the weather forecast, understand more than 13,000 sentences, sing songs, identify objects, focus on objects or people of importance, read newspapers and other materials, and mimic human physical touch.
As Le Trung explains, in some ways the BRAINS software is even more powerful than a human brain because it can link to infinite sources of data. Similar to a human brain, the software is designed to interact with the surrounding environment, process it, and record the information in its internal memory. Once the internal memory is at full capacity, the information can be transferred into a server database. The information can then be shared with current and future robots.
With the BRAINS software, Aiko (whose name means “beloved one”) has the potential for many applications. For example, in the home, Aiko could help elderly people by reminding them when to take their medicine and helping them read the newspaper. It could also help kids with their math homework. In work and public environments, the robot could be used at information desks, where it could give directions and inform people when and where events take place. Le Trung also suggests that, with Aiko’s ability to detect 250 faces per second, it could be useful in airports to quickly scan and filter faces, as well as answer questions regarding flight times and gate locations. In addition, Aiko’s sensitivity sensors and humanlike appearance offer the potential for its use as a companion robot.
“The most recent improvement with Aiko is the BRAINS software,” Le Trung said. “I have just finished re-architecting the BRAINS software to have triple threads, which will make the software run a bit smoother and process about 15% faster for 3D recognition. As a result, Aiko can distinguish the difference between a $20 Canadian bill and $20 American bill. Aiko also has new improved facial expressions with 21 recognition points. Aiko will know when you are angry, happy, etc. Finally, the BRAINS can now process newspaper reading much faster and more accurate.”
Le Trung, whose background is in microbiology and chemistry, was originally inspired to build Aiko after watching “Chobits,” a Japanese manga that explores the relationships between humans and personal computers. While he hopes to continue to improve Aiko’s software, he currently faces a hardware limitation, as the CPU is currently at 99% capacity. Le Trung hopes to raise funds to upgrade the CPU.
In the future, Le Trung hopes to enable Aiko to achieve further skills, such as making tea, coffee, and a breakfast of eggs and bacon; cleaning a human’s ears with a Q-tip; giving a neck massage; writing; and cleaning windows, shelves, and bathrooms. He also hopes that, one day, he will be able to mass produce sister copies of Aiko for an estimated cost of about $17,000 – $20,000.
“Future improvements include making the voice with more emotions and feelings when speaking, improving the silicone material on her face so that she can do facial expressions like humans, and redesigning the body and arm system to move more naturally and carry heavier things,” Le Trung said.
UCSB Allosphere
The only reason Allosphere–UCSB’s virtual reality world–wasn’t invented sooner is processing speed. A holographic world, ala Star Trek’s holodeck, is a simple matter of collecting the data and feeding it out as fast as the eye can focus on a new portion of the surroundings. To date, no computer approaches the brain’s processing speed of 20 million billion calculations per second. If AlloSphere wants to live up to its hype, it’ll have to work at least that hard.
In the 2006 TOP 500 list, which ranks supercomputers by speed, the top three were:
1. IBM’s BlueGene/L – 360 teraflops
2. IBM’s BGW – 115 teraflops
3. IBM’s ASC Purple – 93 teraflops
This is far too slow for a virtual reality world. It has been estimated by many Who Should Know that we will have a computer as fast as the human brain within a few decades. That means it will be able to make a really simple decision–like naming a picture or reading a word–within 300-700 milliseconds.
How is it possible to create a computer that processes that quickly? Simple–theoretically. Instead of using silicon, use the same materials used in the human computer: DNA. DNA computers operate parallel to each other, like StarTrek’s Borg, all working to solve a problem. A silicon computer works at blazing speed on one problem (think of 7 of 9 when she was separated from the hive).
Speed is one part of our brain’s amazing structure. The other is storage capacity. According to Dr. Chris Westbury at the University of Alberta:
“Let’s assume that a change in any connection strength between two connected neurons is equal to one bit of information and further assume (a huge over-simplification) that neural connections have just two possible strengths (like a bit in a computer, which is either 1 or 0). Then each neuron has ‘write’ access to 1000 bits of information, or about 1 kilobyte. So we have 100 billion (number of neurons) X 1 K of storage capacity, or 100 billion K. That’s about 100 million megabytes. Since in fact neural connections are not two-state but multi-state and since neuron bodies can also change their properties and thereby store information, this is a very low estimate, so you can see why some people have estimated it to be functionally infinite.”
This is about 167 hard drives (at 600 gig per). Then again, a DNA molecule inside your cell contains about 750 megabytes of information.
Most scientists consider the brain’s storage capacity to be infinite. Why are they probably right? Because your brain, with its DNA-based computing power, is made up of about one trillion cells with 100 trillion connections between those cells. which could be 10 quadrillion instructions per second.
What that means is that the data and speed necessary to create a virtual world boggles the mind. Still, AlloSphere is a good start and shows us all we’re that much closer.
Scientists often become immersed in their data, and sometimes even lost. The AlloSphere, a unique virtual reality environment at the University of California, Santa Barbara, makes this easier by turning large data sets into immersive experiences of sight and sound. Inside its three-story metal sphere researchers can interpret and interact with their data in new and intriguing ways, including watching electrons spin from inside an atom or “flying” through an MRI scan of a patient’s brain as blood density levels play as music. (more)
More on DNA computers:
DNA Computers–Think Origami, or Brain Folds
Why isn’t DNA Computing Further Along?
DNA Computers Moving from SciFi to Reality
For most people. the first they ever heard of Holograms was on Star Trek and the Holodecks, where the crew of the space-bound ship went to visit the world they came from. In the holodecks, not only were images three-dimensional, they were tangible also.
And who can forget Star War’s Princess Leia and her plea to Obi Wan Kenobi, or Yoda’s appearance as a hologram?
In reality, as close as we’ve gotten is Google’s Streetview. It looks real. It’s based on real pictures and videos, but you can’t interact with it:
Let’s back up. A ‘hologram’ is the result of ‘holography’, a technique that allows the light scattered from an object to be recorded and reconstructed so that it appears to change as the position and orientation of the viewing system changes in exactly the same way as if the object were still present. If you look at well-made holograms from different angles, you see objects from different perspectives just as you would a real object, even appearing to move as you walk past them. This is much more complicated than 3D scanning, where a device collects data on the shape and appearance (such as color) of a real-world object to construct a digital, three dimensional model (much like a 2D dimensional scanner does–the one in everyone’s home office).
Its potential is amazing, but so far we have only mundane products such as holographic credit cards, data storage, and holographic scanners used in post offices to determine the three-dimensional size of a package.
Here’s one that grabbed my attention. The military spends heavily on research–resulting in such discoveries as chlorine and radar–every year in an ongoing race to keep us more than a step ahead of our enemies. Here, they’re researching the use of holograms to create soldiers:
It’s like something out of “The Terminator.” Self-aware virtual humans, regenerating body parts on “nano-scaffolding,” mind controlled weapons – all the stuff of movie robots, comic heroes and otherworldly tomes.
But for some, this kind of higher-than-high tech is as real as life and death.
Dr. John Parmentola, Director of Research and Laboratory Management with the Army’s science and technology office, told military bloggers that the Army is “making science fiction into reality” by creating realistic holographic images, generating virtual humans and diving into quantum computing.
It may sound like a trailer for the next “Star Trek” installment, but Parmentola is deadly serious.
For the last several years, the Army has kept a close eye on research into areas of science that might have once been called “paranormal;” its practitioners drummed out of the academy as kooks and nut-jobs. But now the idea of implanting specific memories or erasing damaging ones, for example, isn’t mere fantasy.
Dr. Joe Tsien, a neurobiologist at the Medical College of Georgia and co-director of the Brain Discovery Institute, has been able to erase certain memories from mice subjected to traumatic experiences in a laboratory environment, Parmentola said. From a practical standpoint, the Army could use this kind of technology to help Soldiers who’ve been psychologically scarred by staring death straight in the eye.
“You can imagine people who have horrifying memories, it would be great if we could eliminate them so this way they’re not plagued by these memories uncontrollably,” Parmentola said. “We have Soldiers that have this problem, like PTSD and traumatic brain injury, but there are many other examples that occur in the civilian world.”
The Army plans to highlight Tsien’s and other research into the ragged edges of science fiction at the 26th Army Science Conference in Orlando next month, where experts in neurorobotics, high-tech computer displays and quantum physics will explain how Soldiers could benefit from the types of radical science most have only seen on episodes of the “X-Files.”
“Quantum ghost imaging,” for example, is as complicated as it sounds. Basically it’s a phenomenon of physics that allows images to be rendered through the pairing of photons that do not reflect or bounce off an object, but off of other photons that did, thereby creating a sort of “ghost” image of it. This technology would enable the Army to generate images of personnel and equipment through clouds and smoke.
“It’s like having a tracing tool … that goes over the image and that’s connected to another one on a piece of paper that exactly imitates what it is that you are tracing with the other pen,” Parmentola said. “It takes advantage of a remarkable property of quantum mechanics to try and do this.”
And if you do end up at the Army Science Conference next month, don’t be startled by the three-dimensional holographic image of a soldier talking to you (not that the regenerated arm, mind-controlled computer or implanted memories won’t freak you out enough) as you walk down the hall. It might just be the virtual human Army researchers are creating to make simulators and war games more realistic for training, Parmentola said.
They’re working on creating “photorealistic looking and acting human beings” that can think on their own, have emotions and talk in local slang.
“I actually interact with virtual humans in terms of asking them questions and they’re responding,” Parmentola said. (more on holographic soldiers)
To test out the computer generated humans’ “humanity,” Parmentola and his researchers want to unleash some of their cyber Soldiers into so-called “massively multi-player online games” such as “World of Warcraft” or “Eve Online” – games frequented by thousands of super-competitive human players in teams of virtual characters fighting battles that can last for days.
“We want to use the massively multi-player online game as an experimental laboratory to see if they’re good enough to convince humans that they’re actually human,” he said.
Looks like I’m no longer the only person pursuing an amalgamation of data to provide a hands-on view of what history used to be. The ones discussed in the article below are similar to the videos provided by Otto. The difference is: Otto draws on every bit of virtual data available to the public to display his results. He draws no judgments about what should or shouldn’t be included. What they’re calling AR (augmented Reality) draws only on what it is fed to give the ‘augmented’ picture of reality.
And, Otto’s results are all videos. He doesn’t believe enough can be communicated with a picture (although a picture tells much more than words). This appears to be a mixture of pictures, video and sound.
Nevertheless, it is an amazing product. Read on.
August 13th, 2009
(PhysOrg.com) — A ruined temple, ancient frescos and even a long-dead king have been brought to life by a “visual time machine” developed by European researchers.
The Palace of Venaria near Turin, Italy, and Winchester Castle in the United Kingdom have already benefited from the technology, which combines augmented reality (AR) content with location awareness on mobile devices to give visitors to historic and cultural sites a deeper, richer and more enjoyable experience. Other places of interest are also set for a virtual renaissance in the near future with a commercial version of the system being developed to run on smart phones.
Augmented reality allows people to see and discover much more than they would normally be able to by overlaying information and images in real time on photos and video taken using a mobile device. Innovative software matches the image being viewed with suitable AR content stored on a central server.
“They can look at a historic site and, by taking a photo or viewing it through the camera on their mobile device, be able to access much more information about it,” explains Luke Speller, a senior researcher at BMT in the United Kingdom who oversaw development of the technology.
“They are even able to visualise, in real time, how it looked at different stages in history,” he adds. The AR system is one component of a comprehensive mobile information platform for tourists developed in the EU-funded iTacitus project, which also created location-based services and smart itinerary-generating software to help users get the most out of any trip.
Virtual guide for augmented holidays
Visitors to historic cities provide the iTacitus system with their personal preferences – a love of opera or an interest in Roman history, for example – and the platform automatically suggests places to visit and informs them of events currently taking place. The smart itinerary application ensures that tourists get the most out of each day, dynamically helping them schedule visits and directing them between sites.
Once at their destination, be it an archaeological site, museum or famous city street, the AR component helps bring the cultural and historic significance to life by downloading suitable AR content from a central server.
At the Palace of Venaria, a UNESCO World Heritage site, the iTacitus system allowed users to see how frescos on the walls of the Sale Diana once appeared and superimpose a long-gone temple in the colourful gardens to the pictures of the ruins on their mobile phone. In Winchester, the system showed visitors the court inside the castle’s Great Hall and even offered an introduction by a virtual King Alfred.
“One of [our] key innovations is that we do not need markers in each location to tell the mobile device to show a certain image or pull up certain information. Instead, the video or photograph taken by the user is sent to a server and analysed by software that matches it with AR content in the database,” Speller says.
“Test users loved the concept of the system,” he adds. However, the project manager admits that they were less keen on the hardware initially chosen to conduct the trials.
“We used small portable computers, but people found them hard to see in daylight and too bulky to carry around. That hardware issue has been solved by the iPhone and similar smart phones, which were not as advanced as they are today when the project began three years ago,” Speller says.
With increasingly ubiquitous smart phone users in mind, the iTacitus project partners are now developing the software further with the aim of creating suitable AR and location-aware applications for the iPhone and for Google’s Android mobile operating system.
“Our aim is to make the application available for free and then charge users a fee for AR content for different locations… It would be a similar amount or even less than they would pay for a guidebook, but offering them a much richer experience,” explains Ben Hodgson, an administrative manager of the iTacitus project at BMT.
The project partners envisage AR content being generated by museums, historical sites and the tourist boards of historic cities and regions looking to promote themselves to visitors. That could be particularly beneficial for less well-known sites by encouraging tourists to get “off the beaten track.” In addition, the researchers see possibilities for user-generated content to be incorporated into the system, further enriching visitor experiences.
“It’s probable that, by giving visitors access to more information in a more interactive way and helping them find different events and places of interest more easily, they will spend more time and do more during their visit,” Speller says.
iTacitus received funding from the ICT strand of the EU’s Sixth Framework Programme for research.
Confusing? Here’s a video that might help:
So many questions about our past are debated because of the lack of written records. Before man put proverbial pen to paper, we had only bones and teeth, soil contents, paleo-geology and -geography and -climate, to intuit what might have been.
This, despite the fact that we know for a fact that written records are always from the writer’s perspective. They are only trustworthy to the point we trust the writer–like a Leakey, Donald Johansson, Chris Beard, Jane Goodall. These interpretations–albeit highly trained–of primary sources (Earth’s record) are given more credibility than the primary source itself (an action I’m sure discouraged by Leakey’s and Johnasson’s and Beard’s and Goodall’s teachers as they pursued their research). Why? The reason is simple: It takes a PhD to interpret Earth’s story. Continue reading ‘The How and Why of Early Man’
You don’t always get what you want. ‘Research’ is the ‘systematic investigation to establish facts’. You don’t know them when you start. You pick them up like breadcrumbs along the path to the Dissertation.
Because mine involves an AI I seem to have lost control over, mankind’s past which is poorly documented by million-year-old artificacts, and a prodigious lack of money, I have often ended up places I had no intent to be, but must some how be connected to my thesis. How do I know they’re connected? Because that’s what Otto does. He takes a collection of facts and finds connections. Here’s an example Otto found and played for me. Why I don’t know. We know man’s past is violent, dangerous. What’s Otto’s point in throwing this into Lyta‘s search for her family?
What I do know is it’s connected to my research, because that’s how I programmed Otto.
Not something I’m good at. I’m a grad student. I talk to AIs, not people.
Have you met Cheru at Alphainventions? I think we need to hire him to solve the health care crisis, here in America, though I think a few other people have dibs on him first. Here’s how he markets his website:
The huge truck got stuck under the bridge, and many men tried to get it out for hours and failed until the creator of 
alphainventions.com told them let the air out of the tires to set it free.
I spent twenty minutes reading his website just because his wisdom is so refreshing. OK. go see it yourself. I know you’ll agree.
Otto found this. It’s what he dreams of being when he grows up. For the entire story, click the title:
A new robot navigates using human-like visual processing and object detection.
By Anne-Marie Corley
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
European researchers have developed a robot capable of moving autonomously using humanlike visual processing. 
The robot is helping the researchers explore how the brain responds to its environment while the body is in motion. What they discover could lead to machines that are better able to navigate through cluttered environments.
The robot consists of a wheeled platform with a robotic “head” that uses two cameras to capture stereoscopic vision. The robot can turn its head and shift its gaze up and down or sideways to gauge its surroundings, and can quickly measure its own speed relative to its environment.
The machine is controlled by algorithms designed to mimic different parts of the human visual system. Rather than capturing and mapping its surroundings over and over in order to plan its route–the way most robots do–the European machine uses a simulated neural network to update its position relative to the environment, continually adjusting to each new input. This mimics human visual processing and movement planning.
Cat’s the one who started me on DNA computers (we share a grad student office). My AI Otto is struggling with my need for speed in his computations and his need for energy to complete the work. When I ask him a question, he sorts through a datasphere the size of the digital Library of Congress (all public sources on the internet. Imagine if you searched ‘Homo erectus’ on the internet and then read and absorbed the one million hits–that’s what Otto does just to get started) to create the simulated reality required for his movies. You can see the importance of speed.
Here’s what I know about DNA computers. They weigh almost nothing, carry their own energy pack, can perform ten trillion operations at once and store an amazing amount of information–all in a drop of water with room to spare. The mechanics are deceptively simple. A high school senior won a scholarship by programming the Declaration of Independence into a DNA molecule. Here’s a link to How Stuff Works if you’d like more information.
The problem, from what Cat’s explained, is the amount of error in DNA computing. In our human genome, we call them mutations and they’re considered part of our uniqueness. The average child has around 6.3 billion base pairs of DNA with around 277 mutational differences from his/her parents. Many are noninvasive because 1) cells have built-in redundancies, 2) parts of our genetic make-up are inactive. Maybe they used to be active, but with H. sapiens sapiens, they aren’t. 3) some have nothing to do with how we get along in the world.
But, for traditional computing needs, we need more accuracy than that. The theorists believe that within highly-structured uses, they can be controlled. Taiwan has already created a chip out of DNA.
For my purposes, itmay be the only method of addressing Otto’s massive requirement for speed and power. I might tinker with it this summer. Logically, it makes sense: I have a specific requirement, a single use (which is what DNA computers have been successful in to date), and Zeke has background in DNA manipulation.
Cat jumped right over DNA computers–assuming as only her big brain would that their invention was far enough along to no longer be a challenge to her–to DNA viruses. More on that later.
(24)
Cat asked me that. I didn’t even know she noticed me, despite the fact we share an office. She’s beautiful and brilliant, where I’m not.
HAL--the most famous AI
One day, I was reviewing Otto’s report on H. habilis and Cat came back from teaching. She asked me about my research. Compared to hers on a DNA virus that can destroy anything it wants, mine sounds boring. Educational research. But it excites me and that’s all I care about at this point in my life.
I explained that I’m not really researching artificial intelligence so much as using it to do my research. Otto collects info on paleo flora and fauna, paleoclimate, geography, everything he can tap into in the metaverse, and creates what’s called a data-driven simulation. Would you be surprised to know she understood all of that.
Well, maybe she wasn’t listening. “I’m hot, and what’s that I’m smelling?”
Otto shares scents and sounds with sensory ports, but that’s only part of it. When he finished collecting the billions of bytes of data available on Plio-Pleistocene Africa, he stitched together a 360 degree four-dimensional panorama, similar to those virtual tours of hotel rooms, but Otto carries it further. As you move through the habitat, Otto re-renders everything as your eyes would in real time. His processors are so fast and his database so huge—equivalent to the digital size of the Library of Congress—he can add the details that make it feel real.
Take the pothole Lyta just avoided. It’s a reasonable assumption the equatorial heat would spiderweb the savanna with crevices. Where I might not have thought to add that, Otto would never miss it.
The ‘actors’—Homo habilis, Australopithecine and Homo erectus—are built using data from ancient bones and teeth. Because there are so few organic remains, the creatures aren’t as realistic as their surroundings. In fact, at that time, they were cardboard figures amidst a lush, vibrant world. That’s changed, but more on that later.
It’s like virtual reality, but without limits. Otto is more a simulated reality. He isn’t predesigned, as the world around you isn’t. Everything is interactive and you can influence what you choose. When you enter Otto’s world, you and he discover it as you go.
That cleared it up for Cat, but her IQ is 198. Do you think it makes sense?
Fact and Fiction about Early Man
