Space elevators, teleportation, hoverboards, and driverless cars: The top-secret Google X innovation lab opens up about what it does--and how it thinks.
Group items tagged
1More
1More
Transformation of concentrated sunlight into laser radiation on small parabolic concent... - 0 views
12More
Will robots be smarter than humans by 2029? - 2 views
-
Nice discussion about the singularity. Made me think of drinking coffee with Luis... It raises some issues such as the necessity of embodiment, etc. - ...9 more comments...
-
-
The biggest problem with embodiment is that, since the passive walkers (with which it all started), it hasn't delivered anything really interesting... -
The problem with embodiment is that it's done wrong. Embodiment needs to be treated like big data. More sensors, more data, more processing. Just putting a computer in a robot with a camera and microphone is not embodiment. -
I like how he attacks Moore's Law. It always looks a bit naive to me if people start to (ab)use it to make their point. No strong opinion about embodiment. -
-
Embodiment has some obvious advantages. For example, in the vision domain many hard problems become easy when you have a body with which you can take actions (like looking at an object you don't immediately recognize from a different angle) - a point already made by researchers such as Aloimonos.and Ballard in the end 80s / beginning 90s. However, embodiment goes further than gathering information and "mental" recognition. In this respect, the evolutionary robotics work by for example Beer is interesting, where an agent discriminates between diamonds and circles by avoiding one and catching the other, without there being a clear "moment" in which the recognition takes place. "Recognition" is a behavioral property there, for which embodiment is obviously important. With embodiment the effort for recognizing an object behaviorally can be divided between the brain and the body, resulting in less computation for the brain. Also the article "Behavioural Categorisation: Behaviour makes up for bad vision" is interesting in this respect. In the field of embodied cognitive science, some say that recognition is constituted by the activation of sensorimotor correlations. I wonder to which extent this is true, and if it is valid for extremely simple creatures to more advanced ones, but it is an interesting idea nonetheless. This being said, if "embodiment" implies having a physical body, then I would argue that it is not a necessary requirement for intelligence. "Situatedness", being able to take (virtual or real) "actions" that influence the "inputs", may be.
-
@Paul While I completely agree about the "embodiment done wrong" (or at least "not exactly correct") part, what you say goes exactly against one of the major claims which are connected with the notion of embodiment (google for "representational bottleneck"). The fact is your brain does *not* have resources to deal with big data. The idea therefore is that it is the body what helps to deal with what to a computer scientist appears like "big data". Understanding how this happens is key. Whether it is the problem of scale or of actually understanding what happens should be quite conclusively shown by the outcomes of the Blue Brain project.
-
Wouldn't one expect that to produce consciousness (even in a lower form) an approach resembling that of nature would be essential? All animals grow from a very simple initial state (just a few cells) and have only a very limited number of sensors AND processing units. This would allow for a fairly simple way to create simple neural networks and to start up stable neural excitation patterns. Over time as complexity of the body (sensors, processors, actuators) increases the system should be able to adapt in a continuous manner and increase its degree of self-awareness and consciousness. On the other hand, building a simulated brain that resembles (parts of) the human one in its final state seems to me like taking a person who is just dead and trying to restart the brain by means of electric shocks.
-
Actually on a neuronal level all information gets processed. Not all of it makes it into "conscious" processing or attention. Whatever makes it into conscious processing is a highly reduced representation of the data you get. However that doesn't get lost. Basic, low processed data forms the basis of proprioception and reflexes. Every step you take is a macro command your brain issues to the intricate sensory-motor system that puts your legs in motion by actuating every muscle and correcting every step deviation from its desired trajectory using the complicated system of nerve endings and motor commands. Reflexes which were build over the years, as those massive amounts of data slowly get integrated into the nervous system and the the incipient parts of the brain. But without all those sensors scattered throughout the body, all the little inputs in massive amounts that slowly get filtered through, you would not be able to experience your body, and experience the world. Every concept that you conjure up from your mind is a sort of loose association of your sensorimotor input. How can a robot understand the concept of a strawberry if all it can perceive of it is its shape and color and maybe the sound that it makes as it gets squished? How can you understand the "abstract" notion of strawberry without the incredibly sensible tactile feel, without the act of ripping off the stem, without the motor action of taking it to our mouths, without its texture and taste? When we as humans summon the strawberry thought, all of these concepts and ideas converge (distributed throughout the neurons in our minds) to form this abstract concept formed out of all of these many many correlations. A robot with no touch, no taste, no delicate articulate motions, no "serious" way to interact with and perceive its environment, no massive flow of information from which to chose and and reduce, will never attain human level intelligence. That's point 1. Point 2 is that mere pattern recogn
-
All information *that gets processed* gets processed but now we arrived at a tautology. The whole problem is ultimately nobody knows what gets processed (not to mention how). In fact an absolute statement "all information" gets processed is very easy to dismiss because the characteristics of our sensors are such that a lot of information is filtered out already at the input level (e.g. eyes). I'm not saying it's not a valid and even interesting assumption, but it's still just an assumption and the next step is to explore scientifically where it leads you. And until you show its superiority experimentally it's as good as all other alternative assumptions you can make. I only wanted to point out is that "more processing" is not exactly compatible with some of the fundamental assumptions of the embodiment. I recommend Wilson, 2002 as a crash course.
-
These deal with different things in human intelligence. One is the depth of the intelligence (how much of the bigger picture can you see, how abstract can you form concept and ideas), another is the breadth of the intelligence (how well can you actually generalize, how encompassing those concepts are and what is the level of detail in which you perceive all the information you have) and another is the relevance of the information (this is where the embodiment comes in. What you do is to a purpose, tied into the environment and ultimately linked to survival). As far as I see it, these form the pillars of human intelligence, and of the intelligence of biological beings. They are quite contradictory to each other mainly due to physical constraints (such as for example energy usage, and training time). "More processing" is not exactly compatible with some aspects of embodiment, but it is important for human level intelligence. Embodiment is necessary for establishing an environmental context of actions, a constraint space if you will, failure of human minds (i.e. schizophrenia) is ultimately a failure of perceived embodiment. What we do know is that we perform a lot of compression and a lot of integration on a lot of data in an environmental coupling. Imo, take any of these parts out, and you cannot attain human+ intelligence. Vary the quantities and you'll obtain different manifestations of intelligence, from cockroach to cat to google to random quake bot. Increase them all beyond human levels and you're on your way towards the singularity.
1More
Quantum Physics and Game Theory - 1 views
-
Players with access to quantum resources can outperform classical ones. This will lead to novel joint strategies, impossible to achieve classically. Moreover, some of these strategies represent equilibrium points, leading to the notion of quantum/no-signalling Nash equilibrium.
5More
Climate scientists told to 'cover up' the fact that the Earth's temperature hasn't rise... - 5 views
-
- ...2 more comments...
-
I would avoid reading climate science from political journals, for a less selective / dramatic picture :-) . Here is a good start: http://www.realclimate.org/ And an article on why climate understanding should be approached hierarcically, (that is not the way done in the IPCC), a view with insight, 8 years ago: http://www.princeton.edu/aos/people/graduate_students/hill/files/held2005.pdf -
True, but fundings are allocated to climate modelling 'science' on the basis of political decisions, not solid and boring scientific truisms such as 'all models are wrong'. The reason so many people got trained on this area in the past years is that resources were allocated to climate science on the basis of the dramatic picture depicted by some scientists when it was indeed convenient for them to be dramatic.
-
I see your point, and I agree that funding was also promoted through the energy players and their political influence. A coincident parallel interest which is irrelevant to the fact that the question remains vital. How do we affect climate and how does it respond. Huge complex system to analyse which responds in various time scales which could obscure the trend. What if we made a conceptual parallelism with the L Ácquila case : Is the scientific method guilty or the interpretation of uncertainty in terms of societal mobilization? Should we leave the humanitarian aspect outside any scientific activity?
-
I do not think there is anyone arguing that the question is not interesting and complex. The debate, instead, addresses the predictive value of the models produced so far. Are they good enough to be used outside of the scientific process aimed at improving them? Or should one wait for "the scientific method" to bring forth substantial improvements to the current understanding and only then start using its results? One can take both stand points, but some recent developments will bring many towards the second approach.
2More
The Truth About Google X: An Exclusive Look Behind The Secretive Lab's Closed Doors - 4 views
-
Interesting insight indeed, I see quite some overlap with the ACT mantra, athough they have 250 people and an outdoor playground.. To Teller, this failure-loving lab has simply stepped into the breach. Small companies don't feel they have the resources to take moonshots. Big companies think it'll rattle shareholders. Government leaders believe there's not enough money, or that Congress will characterize a misstep or failure as a scandal. These days, when it comes to Hail Mary innovation, "Everyone thinks it's somebody's else's job," Teller says.
11More
shared by Luís F. Simões on 22 Sep 10
- No Cached
Singularity University, class of 2010: projects that aim to impact a billion people wit... - 8 views
www.kurzweilai.net/ty-webinar-today-sneak-preview
AI robotics biomedicine biotechnology electronics energy nanotechnology singularity futures social ethics space synthetic biology computer science defence
shared by Luís F. Simões on 22 Sep 10
- No Cached
-
At the link below you find additional information about the projects: Education: Ten weeks to save the world http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100915/full/467266a.html
- ...8 more comments...
-
-
-
-
hmm, wonder how easy it is to get funding for that, 25k is a bit steep for 10weeks :) -
well, we wait for the same fundings they get and then we will do it in nine.... as we say in Rome "a mettece un cartello so bboni tutti". (italian check for Juxi)
-
-
I like the fact that there are quite a lot of space projects .... and these are not even bad in my view: The space project teams have developed imaginative new solutions for space and spinoffs for Earth. The AISynBio project team is working with leading NASA scientists to design bioengineered organisms that can use available resources to mitigate harsh living environments (such as lack of air, water, food, energy, atmosphere, and gravity) - on an asteroid, for example, and also on Earth . The SpaceBio Labs team plans to develop methods for doing low-cost biological research in space, such as 3D tissue engineering and protein crystallization. The Made in Space team plans to bring 3D printing to space to make space exploration cheaper, more reliable, and fail-safe ("send the bits, not the atoms"). For example, they hope to replace some of the $1 billion worth of spare parts and tools that are on the International Space Station.
-
and all in only a three months summer graduate program!! that is impressive. God I feel so stupid!!!
-
well, most good ideas probably take only a second to be formulated, it's the details that take years :-)
-
I do not think the point of the SU is to formulate new ideas (infact there is nothing new in the projects chosen). Their mission is to build and maintain a network of contacts among who they believe will be the 'future leaders' of space ... very similar to our beloved ISU.
5More
Dropship offers safe landings for Mars rovers / Technology / Our Activities / ESA - 2 views
-
“StarTiger is a fresh approach to space engineering,” explains Peter de Maagt, overseeing the project. “Take a highly qualified, well-motivated team, gather them at a single well-equipped site, then give them a fixed time to solve a challenging technical problem.”
-
StarTiger stands for ‘Space Technology Advancements by Resourceful, Targeted and Innovative Groups of Experts and Researchers’ working within the Agency’s TRP Basic Technology Research Programme. It brings team members together on a single site to work on a set challenge, aiming to produce a working prototype by the end of the project’s time limit.
-
StarTiger: similar, yet different from the way the ACT does things. Seems like a very interesting programme.
-
Nice initiative and also a good approach, problem-oriented within a fixed time frame. Could definitely be a highly motivating approach, similar to GTOC... I think the ACT should do this more often, targeted at future technologies and/or missions. The team could be structured around 'problems' instead of 'research areas', this will promote multidisciplinary work as well, plus it will also focus activities more. The problems, or more broadly concepts, are identified by the team and a few get chosen as main activities. Subsequent RF and YGT hiring is then done to strenghten the research team. These projects have a maximum lifetime maybe of 1 year? Thoughts?
-
I'm impressed already by what an innovative group of experts and researchers was able to achieve when resourcefully targeted at coming up with the project's name...
1More
Heisenbergs Dog, the foundation of quantum computing - 1 views
-
A Heisenberg's dog is the central unit in a quantum computer that factors prime numbers. We report the outcome of a proof-of-principle Gedankenexperiment in which the number 3 was factored and good agreement was found both with an analytical theoretical prediction and with the results of a quantum Las Vegas calculation. Other future applications of Heisenberg's dog are hinted at. The anonymous reports of the referees and our reply to them are reproduced in appendix A and appendix B respectively.
1More
OpenLuna Picks Up Where NASA's Moon Mission Leaves Off - 0 views
-
The ambitious project will tap the resources of private enterprise to build several small scout rovers that will be shipped to the south pole of the moon via a single lander. Rock and earth samples will be returned to Earth for testing, then auctioned off to secure funding for the next phase of the plan
6More
File-Sharing Group Mulls a Floating Pirate Ship of Servers in the Sky | Popular Science - 1 views
-
The problem: Where can servers that store data frequently seen as unsavory be kept? The solution: Hanging from a giant balloon in the sky?
-
this idea isn't totally practical, since the group has limited resources and an airborne server presents a whole host of problems
-
ther suggestions included a low-level satellite
5More
Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups - 2 views
-
- ...2 more comments...
-
Great! Women perhaps are not more intelligent as individuals, but now at least they have more collective intelligence... Interesting research topic, though, but I doubt that any of these results can be generalized to real live situations. -
Maybe by passing the message to ensure some men understand it would be their interest to have (more) women in their teams ? No problem at the ACT, this maybe why it works so well ? :-))
-
Well, that's perhaps the reason, why meetings were always so f... boring while I was at ACT :D
-
7More
Meet The Man Who Paid A Record $335,000 For Virtual Property - Oliver Chiang - SelectSt... - 7 views
-
- ...4 more comments...
-
"He says he made the purchase partly because he wants to be able to spend more time in the virtual world. Before, he was averaging 10 to 20 hours per week. He wants to be able to spend about 40 to 60 hours a week now, basically making running the virtual asteroid a full-time job. (He'll also be cutting back on the time he spends developing software in real life.)"
-
From what I remember when I visited the developer/producer company HQ, he wouldn't have to pay any taxes. If he has a virtual business he might have to pay them a license fee. If you want to start a virtual bank, you would need to buy a banking license. The money thing is quite regulated in this enviroment, so probably that's why property prices can be quite high. -
-
Remember the study but have completely zapped that this was with this company ... GSP rules :-)
-
so how does that state get his money from this type of economy? where is the VAT in there?
-
Last time I checked the "state" was still loosing money. But their main income is the sale of resources. Mostly new land, but I believe at some point they wanted to sell their initial planet too.
2More
shared by LeopoldS on 23 Nov 10
- No Cached
French National Police Force saves €2 million a year with Ubuntu | Canonical - 0 views
www.canonical.com/about-canonical/resources/case-studies/french-national-police-force-saves-€2-million-year-ubuntu
INF
shared by LeopoldS on 23 Nov 10
- No Cached
-
Be careful, the article is written by the company who did the migration to Ubuntu. Here is a comment by a police guy from IT (in french...). In brief he says that tyhe migration was not a problem for most of the people; exepc for some probleme with access. But it did cost money ! and the saving was not the main argument. "Personnellement concerné par la news qui n'en est pas une, je peux vous assurer que le message de Canonical est surtout commercial... Le choix d'Ubuntu est dû à son hégémonie et le fait que ce soit basé sur du Debian qui est considéré comme très stable. La distrib est d'une maintenance plus aisée que la plupart de celles qui ont été testées. "4500 postes" veut dire "4500 unités de gendarmerie" donc dans les brigades que vous connaissez... Pour ce qui est d'OpenOffice, le passage s'est fait assez tranquillement sauf pour les applis Access qui ont eu un peu de mal à passer sur le module Base...La plupart ont été reprise au sein d'applis php/mysql ou d'applis centralisées... Aujourd'hui, les gendarmes qui je le rappelle ne sont pas informaticiens mais vivent pour vous (au sens le plus strict je vous l'assure) utilisent donc firefox/thunderbird et oppenoffice en clients lourds, le reste étant des applis sur l'intranet ou "invisibles" pour l'utilisateur. Le passage à Ubuntu ne gène en rien dans l'utilisation car le trio précédemment cité est déjà connu et maîtrisé par nombre de mes collègues. Je ne suis pas censé m'exprimer en lieu et place de mes supérieurs mais à titre personnel, le choix d'Ubuntu est un choix intelligent car c'est une distribution avec une prise en main très accessible et avec une maintenance vraiment aisée pour les spécialistes informatiques dont je fais partie...Il ne faut pas oublier qu'une distribution plus élitiste aurait été maîtrisée par moins de monde et donc la maintenance aurait été plus coûteuse... Donc aujourd'hui nous "maîtrisons" cette part de notre infrastructure et la trans -
5More
NASA will miss Congressional deadline for asteroid tracking - Science Fair - USATODAY.com - 0 views
-
he panel finds the 2005 order to find 90% of Earth-threatening asteroids 460 feet or larger infeasible,
-
No method for diverting asteroids has been experimentally demonstrated
-
Options include a "gravity tractor" orbiting slow-moving objects and tugging them off course with tidal tugs, a "kinetic" impact of a heavy spacecraft into an asteroid, or a nuclear explosion
- ...1 more annotation...
-
Unlike the dinosaurs, we are smart enough to do the math and figure out the answer that modest resources should be dedicated to the problem
-
"we are smart enough" is a completely subjective comment. Reading the article it does not give the same impression :|
-
14More
STLport: An Interview with A. Stepanov - 2 views
-
Generic programming is a programming method that is based in finding the most abstract representations of efficient algorithms.
-
I spent several months programming in Java.
-
for the first time in my life programming in a new language did not bring me new insights
- ...2 more annotations...
-
it has no intellectual value whatsoever
-
Java is clearly an example of a money oriented programming (MOP).
-
One of the authors of the STL (C++'s Standard Template Library) explains generic programming and slams Java. - ...6 more comments...
-
"Java is clearly an example of a money oriented programming (MOP)." Exactly. And for the industry it's the money that matters. Whatever mathematicians think about it.
-
It is actually a good thing that it is "MOP" (even though I do not agree with this term): that is what makes it inter-operable, light and easy to learn. There is no point in writing fancy codes, if it does not bring anything to the end-user, but only for geeks to discuss incomprehensible things in forums. Anyway, I am pretty sure we can find a Java guy slamming C++ ;)
-
Personally, I never understood what the point of Java is, given that: 1) I do not know of any developer (maybe Marek?) that uses it for intellectual pleasure/curiosity/fun whatever, given the possibility of choice - this to me speaks loudly on the objective qualities of the language more than any industrial-corporate marketing bullshit (for the record, I argue that Python is more interoperable, lighter and easier to learn than Java - which is why, e.g., Google is using it heavily); 2) I have used a software developed in Java maybe a total of 5 times on any computer/laptop I owned over 15 years. I cannot name of one single Java project that I find necessary or even useful; for my usage of computers, Java could disappear overnight without even noticing. Then of course one can argue as much as one wants about the "industry choosing Java", to which I would counterargue with examples of industry doing stupid things and making absurd choices. But I suppose it would be a kind of pointless discussion, so I'll just stop here :)
-
"At Google, python is one of the 3 "official languages" alongside with C++ and Java". Java runs everywhere (the byte code itself) that is I think the only reason it became famous. Python, I guess, is more heavy if it were to run on your web browser! I think every language has its pros and cons, but I agree Java is not the answer to everything... Java is used in MATLAB, some web applications, mobile phones apps, ... I would be a bit in trouble if it were to disappear today :(
-
-
Well, I bet you'd notice an overnight disappearance of java, because half of the internet would vanish... J2EE technologies are just omnipresent there... I'd rather not even *think* about developing a web application/webservice/web-whatever in standard C++... is it actually possible?? Perhaps with some weird Microsoft solutions... I bet your bank online services are written in Java. Certainly not in PHP+MySQL :) Industry has chosen Java not because of industrial-corporate marketing bullshit, but because of economics... it enables you develop robustly, reliably, error-prone, modular, well integrated etc... software. And the costs? Well, using java technologies you can set-up enterprise-quality web application servers, get a fully featured development environment (which is better than ANY C/C++/whatever development environment I've EVER seen) at the cost of exactly 0 (zero!) USD/GBP/EUR... Since many years now, the central issue in software development is not implementing algorithms, it's building applications. And that's where Java outperforms many other technologies. The final remark, because I may be mistakenly taken for an apostle of Java or something... I love the idea of generic programming, C++ is my favourite programming language (and I used to read Stroustroup before sleep), at leisure time I write programs in Python... But if I were to start a software development company, then, apart from some very niche applications like computer games, it most probably would use Java as main technology.
-
"I'd rather not even *think* about developing a web application/webservice/web-whatever in standard C++... is it actually possible?? Perhaps with some weird Microsoft solutions... I bet your bank online services are written in Java. Certainly not in PHP+MySQL :)" Doing in C++ would be awesomely crazy, I agree :) But as I see it there are lots of huge websites that operate on PHP, see for instance Facebook. For the banks and the enterprise market, as a general rule I tend to take with a grain of salt whatever spin comes out from them; in the end behind every corporate IT decision there is a little smurf just trying to survive and have the back covered :) As they used to say in the old times, "No one ever got fired for buying IBM". "Industry has chosen Java not because of industrial-corporate marketing bullshit, but because of economics... it enables you develop robustly, reliably, error-prone, modular, well integrated etc... software. And the costs? Well, using java technologies you can set-up enterprise-quality web application servers, get a fully featured development environment (which is better than ANY C/C++/whatever development environment I've EVER seen) at the cost of exactly 0 (zero!) USD/GBP/EUR... Since many years now, the central issue in software development is not implementing algorithms, it's building applications. And that's where Java outperforms many other technologies." Apart from the IDE considerations (on which I cannot comment, since I'm not a IDE user myself), I do not see how Java beats the competition in this regard (again, Python and the huge software ecosystem surrounding it). My impression is that Java's success is mostly due to Sun pushing it like there is no tomorrow and bundling it with their hardware business.
-
OK, I think there is a bit of everything, wrong and right, but you have to acknowledge that Python is not always the simplest. For info, Facebook uses Java (if you upload picture for instance), and PHP is very limited. So definitely, in company, engineers like you and me select the language, it is not a marketing or political thing. And in the case of fb, they come up with the conclusion that PHP, and Java don't do everything but complement each other. As you say Python as many things around, but it might be too much for simple applications. Otherwise, I would seriously be interested by a study of how to implement a Python-like system on-board spacecrafts and what are the advantages over mixing C, Ada and Java.
1More
Ten Simple Rules for Providing a Scientific Web Resource - 0 views
-
May be an interesting reading for those who add auxiliary on-line materials to their publications. This reminds me... results of my topology study aren't on-line yet :-)
1More
Resource Efficiency: The Sixth Wave of Innovation | Epicenter | Wired.com - 7 views
