Your Kids Could Soon Have a Virtual Teacher

My wife teaches 8th-grade algebra. She is very good at her job. She should be paid more than she is, but that is a complaint that often falls on deaf politician's ears. In any case, the time may soon come when at least certain parts of her curriculum are taught by a virtual teacher called Eve.

Eve is what's know in in the field of information systems an intelligent or affective tutoring system. It can "adapt its response to the emotional state" of its students (Blogging the Singularity).

The ability of virtual Eve to alter her presentation according to the reaction of the child facing her at the keyboard has been hailed as an exciting development in the $25 billion e-learning market.

The Massey scientists, led by Dr Hossein Sarrafzadeh at the Auckland-based Institute of Information and Mathematical Sciences, tell the story of creating Eve and the teaching system in the latest issue of the leading international journal on information sciences, Elsevier.

Because one-to-one teaching is known to be the most effective teaching method, Dr Sarrafzadeh says the researchers wanted to create a virtual teacher that could pick up body language and facial expressions – like a real teacher – to interact and to ensure they are holding the attention of students.

He says the realisation that software systems would significantly improve performance if they could adapt to the emotions of the user has spawned research and development in the field of affective or intelligent tutoring systems.

“With rising demand for long-distance learning and online tutoring, a computer programe capable of detecting human emotions may become a critical teaching tool.”

Although Eve was developed for one-to-one maths teaching with eight-year-olds, she is a significant new character in the future of human computer interaction and could be a personalized virtual tutor by any name.

Linked to a child via computer, the animated character or virtual tutor can tell if the child is frustrated, angry or confused by the on-screen teaching session and can adapt the tutoring session appropriately.

If you plan to go into teaching, it's unlikely that Eve will completely replace all teaching kind, but there can be no doubt that there will be significant and far-reaching implications. Maybe you should think about teaching computer engineering.

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Birthplace of Strong AI: Virtual Worlds?

Where will strong AI make its first appearance? Where will it be born? There is some speculation that virtual worlds may prove to be the birthplace and nursery of super-intelligence.

What are the alternatives? Some researchers believe that an artificial intelligence must interact with other intelligences to become intelligent itself. This stands to reason when we consider the development of our own intelligence, which grows through interactions with other humans as we mature.

Another, related school of thought holds that a body is also necessary, some manifestation of the intelligence that can interact with others.

We have all seen the rudimentary efforts of researchers to combine these elements in the lab in the form of cute robots that interact with people in order to learn, but these may be simply too limited in scope.

What's left then is a virtual environment where an intelligent machine can have any kind of body and interact with human and other artificial intelligences at will.

BBC News in this article proposes this scenario, highlighting the work of one particular company, Novamente.

Researchers at US firm Novamente have created software that learns by controlling avatars in virtual worlds.

Initially the AIs will be embodied in pets that will get smarter by interacting with the avatars controlled by their human owners.

Novamente said it eventually aimed to create more sophisticated avatars such as talking parrots and even babies.

It may not be very long before you are socializing with an artificial person in Second Life. So keep you eyes peeled and your ears to the ground, and as always, stay tuned.

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Out-of-Body Virtual Reality: Are You Ready?

Researchers are finding out what it feels like to have an out-of-body experience. An interesting use of VR, don't you think? Placing VR goggles on test subjects that show them the view from a set of cameras actually situated behind them, then giving them a poke in the chest while simultaneously poking at the air in front of the cameras, gives subjects the feeling that they are being poked in the chest while outside their bodies. Very weird, but cool, they say.

Researchers equipped subjects with virtual-reality goggles that showed images from a video camera setup — two cameras spaced like a pair of eyes. When placed behind the person wearing the goggles, the cameras acted as a "virtual self" that looked at the subject's back.

As subjects watched themselves from behind, an experimenter prodded their chests with one hand while prodding the air just below the cameras at the same time. Because subjects could see the experimenter's hand but not the spot it was poking, researchers said subjects felt as if they were being poked in the chest — outside their bodies.

“This was a bizarre, fascinating experience for the participants," Ehrsson said. "It felt absolutely real for them and was not scary. Many of them giggled and said ‘Wow, this is so weird.’”

I can't wait till this is available for the rest of us!

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated daily; the easiest way to get your daily dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Are We Real? Martin Rees Explores Simulation Hypothesis

Ever since I read the hypothesis that we might be living inside a simulation, the possibility has intrigued me. Not so much that it has affected the way I live in any way, but as an interesting thought-experiment; for example, what might glitches in the software look like?

In this very cool video, Martin Rees, an esteemed British cosmologist, explores this hypothesis, first postulated by Nick Bostrom. It's a five-part, one-hour Channel Four production. Check it out below.



The other parts can be found here.

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated daily; the easiest way to get your daily dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

DOD Creates Sentient World Simulation

The Register is reporting that the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) in building a digital world with billions of nodes representing every human being on the planet.

Called the Sentient World Simulation (SWS), it will be a "synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information", according to a concept paper for the project.

"SWS provides an environment for testing Psychological Operations (PSYOP)," the paper reads, so that military leaders can "develop and test multiple courses of action to anticipate and shape behaviors of adversaries, neutrals, and partners".

SWS also replicates financial institutions, utilities, media outlets, and street corner shops. By applying theories of economics and human psychology, its developers believe they can predict how individuals and mobs will respond to various stressors.

This news brings to mind the intriguing question: Are we already living in a simulation? The thinking behind this admittedly far-fetched idea comes from just this scenario, whereby sentient races will find benefit in research projects that simulate different types of worlds.

Alok Chaturvedi wants SWS to match every person on the planet, one-to-one.

Right now, the 62 simulated nations in SEAS depict humans as composites, at a 100-to-1 ratio.

One organisation has achieved a one-to-one level of granularity for its simulations, according to Chaturvedi: the US Army, which is using SEAS to identify potential recruits.

Chaturvedi insists his goal for SWS is to have a depersonalised likeness for each individual, rather than an immediately identifiable duplicate. If your town census records your birthdate, job title, and whether you own a dog, SWS will generate what Chaturvedi calls a "like someone" with the same stats, but not the same name.

Of course, government agencies and corporations can add to SWS whatever personally-identifiable information they choose from their own databases, and for their own purposes.

And with consumers already giving up their personal information regularly to websites such as MySpace and Twitter, it is not a stretch to imagine SWS doing the same thing.

"There may be hooks through which individuals may voluntarily contribute information to SWS," Chaturvedi said.

SEAS bases its AI "thinking" on the theories of cognitive psychologists and the work of Princeton University professor Daniel Kahneman, one of the fathers of behavioural economics.

How long can it be before PCs are powerful enough to allow home users to play around with complex simulations?

Source

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated daily; the easiest way to get your daily dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Choose Your Pleasure: VR or AR?

Taking a glimpse into the near-term future, we can see the advents of both virtual reality (VR), and a subset of VR called augmented reality (AR). We have all heard of VR and seen a rudimentary version of it in the movie Disclosure. But virtual reality is headed in the direction of total immersion VR, which will take place at the level of your neurons themselves. Nanobots will stimulate your neurons directly so that you will not be able to tell the difference between real reality and the VR environment, except for some type of indicator inserted for safety reasons. Every one of your senses will be engaged, and your entire environment will be virtual.

So what is AR? AR is a mixture of the virtual and the real, sort of a virtual overlay that is superimposed upon real reality. This could also be activated at the neuronal level, or even projected onto your retinas by means of special contact lenses. Think of how much fun this would be, and how it could increase your productivity.

Imagine the fun part first. Think about people appearing as characters in a game, or dressing up the local environment to appear to be coming straight out of another world or another time. How cool would that be? As far as productivity, there could be educational or informational overlays on people and objects that would give you vital information about them. As you look at the person you're meeting for a business lunch, you see above their heads their name, company, position, etc. As you get started, you could bring up an agenda you had prepared earlier and either share it with your associate or view it privately, like a heads-up-display hanging in the air. The possibilities are virtually endless.

Talk about your killer apps. Let's see Apple and Microsoft battle it out in that arena! Stay tuned.

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated daily; the easiest way to get your daily dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Even Rudimentary Virtual Reality is Engrossing

I finally took the plunge into Second Life, and I have to tell you, it was hard to come back. Not really; I managed to quit the program without too much trouble, but I do miss the flying part.

I was persuaded to get my Second Life identity started by this article. Wade Roush, writing for Technology Review, talks about how "The World Wide Web will soon be absorbed into the World Wide Sim: an immersive, 3-D visual environment that combines elements of social virtual worlds such as Second Life and mapping applications such as Google Earth."

It's not there yet, but my point in this article is simply that even as rudimentary as Second Life is at this moment, it's still an engrossing, and somewhat freeing, experience. The learning curve is fairly steep, but as you master the various possibilities available, you find yourself living in a world that you might wish was real. I mean, come on, you can fly!

I wrote an article a few months ago that I titled Going All-Virtual: The Desire to Leave Reality Behind. In it I discussed the possibility that, as VR becomes fully immersive, many people will come to prefer it to the real world. What I have understood today is that even though it's far from fully immersive now, it is incredibly enjoyable. Why is this so? Here are some of my common sense speculations:

First, it's different. From your current life. Many, if not most, people enjoy taking a break from their routines, from the typical day to day stuff of their normal lives. That's what recreation is all about. VR takes you to a different life. You can be a different person, with a different job, in a different place, with different friends, and on and on it goes.

Second, it's malleable. It can be manipulated and changed far more easily than real reality. Ray Kurzweil envisages an entirely new field of work opening up for talented people to design VR environments that the rest of us can enjoy and experiment with.

Third, it's limited only by my imagination. I often have dreams in which I fly. Flying in Second Life is remarkably similar to what I experience in my dreams. The ability to rise into the air to get a better view of my surroundings, and then moving above earth-bound obstacles to go wherever I want, is intoxicating. How much more so when I the landscape beneath me is as well-defined as real reality and I can feel the wind in my face and hear it whistling past my ears?

I'm sure there are many other enjoyable aspects to VR that I haven't touched on here. Suffice it to say, VR is going to entice us more and more. So stay tuned.

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated daily; the easiest way to get your daily dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Want to Sound Like a Singularity Guru? Learn These Terms

George P. Dvorsky's blog, Sentient Developments, has an excellent list of "Must-Know" terms for the 21st century intelligentsia.

If you like to think of yourself as a knowledgeable person who is comfortable discussing the bleeding-edge developments of his or her day, you need to study this list. Here's a taste:

Artificial General Intelligence: This ain't your daddy's AI. Rather, AGI describes the kind of intelligence that you and I have -- the commonsense knowhow we have when we're put into unfamiliar situations. Once developed, artificial agents endowed with AGI will be non-specialized intelligent entities that will come to represent the bona fide synthetic equivalent to human intelligence, and then move beyond.

Cosmological Eschatology (aka physical eschatology): CE is the study of how the Universe develops, ages, and ultimately comes to an end. While hardly a new concept, what is new is the suggestion that advanced intelligence may play a role in the universe's life cycle. Given the radical potential for postbiological superintelligence, a number of thinkers have suggested that universe engineering is a likely activity for advanced civilizations. This has given rise to a number of theories, including the developmental singularity hypothesis and the selfish biocosm hypothesis.

Friendly AI: If we are going to survive the Singularity and the onset of greater-than-human AI, it had better be friendly. And if it turns out to be friendly, it won't be by accident. Computer science theorists such as Eliezer Yudkowsky and Ben Goertzel are already working on what may ultimately prove to be an intractable problem. A poorly programmed, malevolent, or misguided SAI could destroy all of humanity with a mere thought. Asimov's Three Laws will do little against incomprehensibly powerful autopotent entities (a term coined by Nick Bostrom indicating total self-awareness and ability to self-modify).

You don't want to be totally left behind, do you? Then get cracking!

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated daily; the easiest way to get your daily dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Multiple Personalities: It's Not a Disorder Anymore

I hope you've had a chance to watch Ray Kurzweil's presentation on yesterday's post. My interest was piqued by several things he mentioned. (I wish I could think about them all at the same time, but possessing that kind of capability will have to wait for some heavy duty augmentation.) One thing in particular got a good grasp on my attention. Ray spent about 2 seconds on the idea that technological advances in virtual reality and artificial intelligence will allow me to create several virtual personalities to perform the routine transactions made necessary by modern life.

Consider the massive increase in my productivity when I can create these personalities at will and dispatch them out into the world to take care of the mundane tasks that I, Barry Prime, am simply too busy to bother with. Barry-23 could appear and record the presentations delivered at a B-list event. Barry-51 would be available to open a new bank account to store my newly acquired wealth. And so on.

Each one would be built on a single template and given specific instructions and knowledge for the task at hand. Once the task was completed and the results transmitted to me, the VP (virtual personality) could be saved and stored or erased. (Here we run into those sticky ethical considerations I posted about earlier.) I could go to meetings, start business ventures, search for and acquire data, all at the same time. My people could meet with your people. Finally I would have people. Sweet.

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated daily; the easiest way to get your daily dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.