Technology News Category

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

Are we closer to having robots as house servants?

How could this very question not be on the tip of everyone tongue?  Well, if you are a Robotic Engineer working in Japan, it is!   Robotic Engineers in Japan are working on service robots equipped with 3D object recognition in their task completion.  Every year they showcase their work, and milestones in research.  To the every day viewer, they are slow moving, clumsy, and not much of a triumph, but the reality is to make this machine move and respond even ine inch is a victory!

Morally, do we wish to see this succeed?  I think all of us fear the day robots think and move independently.   The further Robotics advance, the more jobs humans lose…that is fact!  We must become smarter than the robots we create.  Every generation must advance at the speed of the machines.   It puts horrible pressure on our children, but in the same breath it is a very exciting time for our children.

I remember when I was a child, 30 years ago, people thought that by the year 2010 we would have flying cars and robots like Rosie in the Jetsons cartoon.

There are flying cars, we have all seen them on television, but they are not for the everyday person and they still do not have the ability to drive like the Jetsons car did.  ZOOM and we are off!  Every year closer to 2010, I waited on bated breath.  Is this the year that the super secret scientists for the government are going to release their flying cars?  No, not this year.

Are we close?  Only the experts behind closed doors can tell us that, but then they would have to kill us.  For now we must make due with video from Japan, where they try and show us their version of Rosie.  Congratulations on the Mahru-Z, and it’s recent accomplishments!

Try not to fall asleep witching the video…

© 2010, Claws and Paws By Kymber. All rights reserved.

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Thursday, January 7th, 2010

Real IM or Robot IM?

How you can tell if your IM buddy is a real person or a bot?  Now before you laugh, did you know there is a yearly competition held where developers enter their prized programs designed to fool judges into thinking they are having a chat conversation with a real person.  It is called the  Loebner Prize Competition,  and was the first formal instantiation of a Turing Test.   The test is named after Alan Turing the British mathematician.  Alan Turing asked, “If a computer could think, how could we tell?” Turing’s suggested, that if the responses from the computer were indistinguishable from that of a human, the computer could be said to be thinking.

Along comes the year 1990,  Hugh Loebner and The Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies decided to underwrite a contest designed to use the Turing Test. Dr. Loebner established a Grand Prize of $100,000 and a Gold Medal for the first computer whose answers were indistinguishable from a human’s.  Each year an annual prize of $2000 and a bronze medal is awarded to the closest human-like computer. No one has won the grand prize to date.

Do you think you could be confused by a computer?  Last years winner fooled 25% of the judges as stated by Discover Magazine.  Each judge ( all experts consisting of journalists, computer scientists, philosophy professors, and other academics) sits at a split computer screen.  One side is a human having a chat conversation with them, the other a robot doing the same.  They must declare which side is the human and which is the robot.

Not as easy as one would think.  One judge was fooled based purely on the responders location and lack of world news awareness.

Judge: So let’s cut straight to the point. Are you the human or the computer?

Respondent 1: What do you think?

Judge: That’s just the sort of answer I would expect from a computer.

R1: Well you could be wrong!!!

Judge: That’s true. It’s happened a lot in the past. What do you make of Sarah Palin?

R1: Sorry don’t know her

Judge: How can you possibly not know her? What have you been doing for the last two months?

The judge, a reporter, decided Respondant 1 was the robot, declaring the other screen was the human. In reality Respondent 1 was truly a French librarian who had never heard of Sarah Palin.

On the other hand robots also answered questions in ways that fooled judges.

Judge: I’d like to ask you some questions. What is going to solve this credit crisis?

Eugene: Damn! Are you going to ask me about all apparent things in the world? Read the “Encyclopedia for kinds”. I see you like being judge :-)

How about this one

Judge: Hello

Ultra Hal: Good morning judge. Its 8-something [in the morning], so maybe you ate something. Get it?

Judge: Yes

The judge in this exchange chose the robot and said it was human.

So where does human intelligence and artificial intelligence begin and end.  Are we truly creating artificial intelligence or are we just extending our own?  The smarter and more technology savvy we become the smarter and more technology savvy our machines become. Ultimately, aren’t we the ones leading the race?  I mean, we are the ones creating the computers and programs…. aren’t we?

Kimberly Veautour

Acknowledgments:  Discover Magazine, Loebner.net

© 2010, Claws and Paws By Kymber. All rights reserved.

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Friday, April 10th, 2009

A New Conficker?

Conficker, the  much-hyped worm that was supposed to trigger on April 1st but didn’t, has evolved dare I say it…..again.  Multiple sources are now reporting a new variant of Conficker called WORM_DOWNAD.E by Trend Micro and W32/Confick-D by Sophos.

This new strand of Conficker has an activation date of May 3rd.  So here we go again…..

According to Trend Micro the new worm, ”

1.)This worm may be downloaded unknowingly by a user when visiting malicious Web sites.

2.)This worm creates registry entries, and executes only after meeting certain trigger conditions.”

The new worm deletes its original download, leaving no traces in the Windows registry. You will not be able to see traces of the “Conficker” if searching.

Now, detecting it should be fairly easy.  For one, this version of Conficker opens up (according to Trend Micro) port 5114 to serve as an HTTP server.

As well, like the previous Conficker, it still exploits the same Windows flaw which was patched by Microsoft back in October.  Now as I said in my article on the original Conficker, “Conficker Computer Worm, horrible or hype?” As I have stated MANY times before… Many people do not run their current updates and even others have illegal copies of Windows that does not support updates.  This is how the authors of Conficker keep getting in.

What I have trouble understanding is that the Conficker authors are continuing to evolve the worm, and  evade detection.  Just when experts think they have a handle on one threat, they release another.  No one can find out who, what, where or why.

The thought that someone, somewhere can evade all of the worlds TOP experts scares me.  I even heard Microsoft has offered a 250K reward for a “Conficker arrest.”  Can no one catch these masterminds?  Where is Superman when we need him.. it seems Lex Luthor is at it again, and no one can save us.

Kimberly Veautour

Acknowledgments:  Trend Micro

© 2009, Claws and Paws By Kymber. All rights reserved.

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