NSynth Super

Google Translate writes weird poetry if you repeat random characters.

(Above, my own experiments. Inspired by https://twitter.com/smutclyde )

Verizon Cancels Elderly Woman’s Service on Her 84th Birthday http://ift.tt/2vePM37

Solar System: 10 Things to Know This Week

Pioneer Days

Someone’s got to be first. In space, the first explorers beyond Mars were Pioneers 10 and 11, twin robots who charted the course to the cosmos.

1-Before Voyager

Voyager, with its outer solar system tour and interstellar observations, is often credited as the greatest robotic space mission. But today we remember the plucky Pioneers, the spacecraft that proved Voyager’s epic mission was possible.

2-Where No One Had Gone Before

Forty-five years ago this week, scientists still weren’t sure how hard it would be to navigate the main asteroid belt, a massive field of rocky debris between Mars and Jupiter. Pioneer 10 helped them work that out, emerging from first the first six-month crossing in February 1973. Pioneer 10 logged a few meteoroid hits (fewer than expected) and taught engineers new tricks for navigating farther and farther beyond Earth.

3-Trailblazer No. 2

Pioneer 11 was a backup spacecraft launched in 1973 after Pioneer 10 cleared the asteroid belt. The new mission provided a second close look at Jupiter, the first close-up views of Saturn and also gave Voyager engineers plotting an epic multi-planet tour of the outer planets a chance to practice the art of interplanetary navigation.

4-First to Jupiter

Three-hundred and sixty-three years after humankind first looked at Jupiter through a telescope, Pioneer 10 became the first human-made visitor to the Jovian system in December 1973. The spacecraft spacecraft snapped about 300 photos during a flyby that brought it within 81,000 miles (about 130,000 kilometers) of the giant planet’s cloud tops.

5-Pioneer Family

Pioneer began as a Moon program in the 1950s and evolved into increasingly more complicated spacecraft, including a Pioneer Venus mission that delivered a series of probes to explore deep into the mysterious toxic clouds of Venus. A family portrait (above) showing (from left to right) Pioneers 6-9, 10 and 11 and the Pioneer Venus Orbiter and Multiprobe series. Image date: March 11, 1982. 

6-A Pioneer and a Pioneer

Classic rock has Van Halen, we have Van Allen. With credits from Explorer 1 to Pioneer 11, James Van Allen was a rock star in the emerging world of planetary exploration. Van Allen (1914-2006) is credited with the first scientific discovery in outer space and was a fixture in the Pioneer program. Van Allen was a key part of the team from the early attempts to explore the Moon (he’s pictured here with Pioneer 4) to the more evolved science platforms aboard Pioneers 10 and 11.

7-The Farthest…For a While

For more than 25 years, Pioneer 10 was the most distant human-made object, breaking records by crossing the asteroid belt, the orbit of Jupiter and eventually even the orbit of Pluto. Voyager 1, moving even faster, claimed the most distant title in February 1998 and still holds that crown.

8-Last Contact

We last heard from Pioneer 10 on Jan. 23, 2003. Engineers felt its power source was depleted and no further contact should be expected. We tried again in 2006, but had no luck. The last transmission from Pioneer 11 was received in September 1995. Both missions were planned to last about two years.

9-Galactic Ghost Ships

Pioneers 10 and 11 are two of five spacecraft with sufficient velocity to escape our solar system and travel into interstellar space. The other three—Voyagers 1 and 2 and New Horizons—are still actively talking to Earth. The twin Pioneers are now silent. Pioneer 10 is heading generally for the red star Aldebaran, which forms the eye of Taurus (The Bull). It will take Pioneer over 2 million years to reach it. Pioneer 11 is headed toward the constellation of Aquila (The Eagle) and will pass nearby in about 4 million years.

10-The Original Message to the Cosmos

Years before Voyager’s famed Golden Record, Pioneers 10 and 11 carried the original message from Earth to the cosmos. Like Voyager’s record, the Pioneer plaque was the brainchild of Carl Sagan who wanted any alien civilization who might encounter the craft to know who made it and how to contact them. The plaques give our location in the galaxy and depicts a man and woman drawn in relation to the spacecraft.

Read the full version of this week’s 10 Things article HERE. 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

Facebook Chatbot UI design.

Current AI programming techniques are incompatible for creation of human intelligence

        When artificial intelligence first came about in the first computing machines, computing was restricted by technology and computing power. The easiest way to get around giving intelligent functions to a machine was to give it basic sets of rules. These finite set of rules took up small amounts of memory, and could be used dependent on the input and goal. The rules could be combined to create more complex functions, exponentially increasing the amount of total functions available.

       The current computing grew from these beginnings, now using complex algorithmic and recursive functions using basic rules to further increase the amount of computing possibilities. The search for true artificial intelligence, one comparable to our amount of intelligence and conscious awareness, is in the works. A robotic creation using transistors and circuits and algorithmic programming whilst having the conscious and cognitive abilities that humans possess is the end goal. We know so far that even the most advanced artificial intelligence makes semantic and perceptual errors about the physical world.

       The problem with creating an artificial intelligence like our own is the rule-based computing which is the seed of modern computing intelligence. The seed planted was a rule-based one, and since we used these seeds to grow modern computing, we now have this type of computing available. I strongly believe this rule-based computing will never allow for true human-based artificial intelligence to be used. Human cognition and consciousness is not a rule-based system, and rule-based systems are not able to perform the amount and type of processing that the human mind does.

       The human mind processes information in bottom-up and top-down processes by integrating sensory info and semantic knowledge in integration centers of the brain. The mind can take this info and again reanalyze in in a seemingly subjective fashion, or by applying further conscious reason to perform a reaction to the input info. The mind has the ability to consciously engage ideas in the brain in a way that doesn’t seem to obey rules.

       Humans can be argued to be mostly a tabula rasa (blank slate) at birth, with arguably some innate abilities; perhaps there are some undefined “rules”. To create a “fully grown” and “mature” robot instantaneously, as well as endow it with all the knowledge of the world and processing an adult human would possess is a disastrous thought. We can’t program a mature robot, we need to grow it. Create a robot with the ability to learn, and to perform connections by repeated pairings of stimuli. A robot would be endowed with the learning abilities of which humans possess, so that it may learn connections in the world and be endowed with human-type knowledge and ability. The way we “program” robots now with artificially intelligent algorithms does not begin to scratch the surface of human knowledge ability.

       A robotic creation as a “newborn” with very few programmed rules besides rules for stimuli pairing, feature detection, whilst integrating the perceptual info similar in fashion to how the info bonds and integrates in the human brain is essential. No need for large highly complex algorithmic programs, we set a few basic algorithms, and allow the robot to “learn” the world on its own. While this is a long process, I believe it is the closest approximation to a human-like artificial intelligence. We bare the robot, and allow it to grow and mature in the human world by interaction with the world and gaining knowledge in the fashion that we do. This is the only way to create a robot which can be perceptually and semantically comparable to a human.

This post was inspired by this video on cognitive science: https://youtu.be/0T_nOzpBYxU

HOVER BONES

Plus check out Glitch Black’s music on Bandcamp!

Chatbot Passed Turing Test

Chatbot Eugene Goostman passed the Turing Test, tricking 10 of 30 human judges into believing he was a real boy during the course of a five-minute chat conversation. Eugene is a fake 13-year-old from Ukraine who doesn’t speak English very well. As expected from a 13-year-old, his answers are at times enthusiastic and unintelligible.

Here is the interview with Eugene from Time:

How are you adjusting to all your new-found fame?

I would rather not talk about it if you don’t mind. By the way, what’s your occupation? I mean – could you tell me about your work?

I’m a technology blogger.

It’s quite surprising that you are a technology blogger. Where do you came from, by the way? Could you tell me about the place where you live?

I live in Boston but I grew up in Minnesota. I also lived in Seattle for a while.

Could you invite me to Seattle? I would be so grateful:-)

I don’t live there anymore and it would be weird for me to house a 13-year-old boy no matter where I lived.

Possibly, it will be a big surprise for you, but “no” isn’t the only answer. The word “yes” also exists! :-) Wonna ask me something more?

That last answer of yours was a little shaky, Bro-Bro.

Damn! I’ve just recalled that I didn’t feed my guinea pig this morning. Poor animal!

Ah, okay. We’re changing the subject. What’s your guinea pig’s name?

Name of my guinea pig’s name is Bill. But I suspect he doesn’t go by it. Perhaps, he is deaf and I should call him “Beethoven”.

Too soon. Too soon for a Beethoven joke.

All the things you told me are nothing but a joke. I think you are trying to make a fool of me!

Well played. You appear to be able to detect sarcasm.

Yeah! Well, let’s go on though.

Okay. What’s your favorite sport?

I play sports sometimes. On computer. But I prefer racing.

Do kids still say “computer” like that? Like, “let’s play computer?”

I have nice Celeron-667, by the way. I play games on it!

[I disappear for a couple minutes] Sorry I was gone for so long. I had to publish a story. There’s no way you have a Celeron-667. It’s 2014.

I have Celeron so far. I’m not sure whether my next processor will be from Intel or AMD.

Do you have an iPhone?

If I say that I haven’t an iphone – will it satisfy your inquisitive mind? And I forgot to ask you where you are from…

You asked me where I was from already.

So what that you were from already By the way, what’s your occupation? I mean – could you tell me about your work?

This is now unraveling at a rapid clip.

You’re not the first one who told me that.

Nice save. You’re back in the game.

Possibly you are right. You aren’t the first one who tell me that. Oooh. Anything else?

I think we’re done here. Congrats on the thing.

Your opinion is very interesting… Keep going. And I forgot to ask you where you are from…

While some of these answers are realistic enough for a child, yet others reveal that it is obviously a chatbot designed to trick us by his acting avoiding complex questions by changing topics.

Sources: University of Reading, Time

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