Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Astronomy, Expert systems, Galaxy Zoo, Science, Sloan Digital Sky Survey, Space
Humans are still much better than computers with many types of pattern recognition. And a new effort called Galaxy Zoo is tapping into that ability, and the desire of many people to participate in scientific endeavours, to help sorting out images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. From the press release on the site:
Astronomers are inviting members of the public to help them make major new discoveries by taking part in a census of one million galaxies.
Visitors to www.galaxyzoo.org will get to see stunning images of galaxies, most of which have never been viewed by human eyes before. By sorting these images into “spiral galaxies” (like our own Milky Way) or “elliptical galaxies”, visitors will help astronomers to understand the structure of the universe. The new digital images were taken using the robotic Sloan Digital Sky Survey telescope in New Mexico.
‘It’s not just for fun’ said Kevin Schawinski of Astrophysics at Oxford University where the data will be analysed. ‘The human brain is actually better than a computer at pattern recognition tasks like this. Whether you spend five minutes, fifteen minutes or five hours using the site your contribution will be invaluable.’ Visitors will be able to print out posters of the galaxies they have explored and even compete to see who’s the best virtual astronomer.
So, put your monkey brain to work in a good cause. You’re better at this than any current expert system or artificial intelligence program. Even Seth in my novel has limitations in this regard…well, at the beginning of Communion, anyway. Go sign up – Pretty pictures await.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, General Musings, movies, NYT, Philip K. Dick, Predictions, Press, Publishing, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Writing stuff
Brent Staples has a good opinion piece in today’s New York Times, titled: Philip K. Dick: A Sage of the Future Whose Time Has Finally Come. Staples notes that Dick is now getting the kind of recognition he deserves (see also this post on the subject previously), but I was particularly struck with the ending:
The science fiction writer’s job is to survey the future and report back to the rest of us. Dick took this role seriously. He spent his life writing in ardent defense of the human and warning against the perils that would flow from an uncritical embrace of technology. As his work becomes more popular, readers who know him only from the movies will find it even darker and more disturbing — and quite relevant to the technologically obsessed present.
I couldn’t agree more.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, CNET, Expert systems, Heinlein, Kromofons, Predictions, Psychic abilities, Science Fiction, Society, Synesthesia, tech, Writing stuff
A friend sent me a link to a CNET news item from last week about how a new ‘color alphabet’ was going to revolutionize communications. From the article:
Lee Freedman has waited a long time, but he thinks the moment is finally right to spring on the world the color alphabet he invented as a 19-year-old at Mardi Gras in 1972.
For 35 years, between stints as a doctor, a real estate agent and a pizza maker at the Woodstock concert in 1994, Freedman has been working on Kromofons–an innovative alphabet in which the 26 English letters are represented solely by individual colors–waiting for technology to catch up with him.
And now, thanks to the Internet, the ubiquity of color monitors, Microsoft Word plug-ins and his being able to launch a Kromofons-based e-mail system, Freedman thinks he is finally ready.
Well, maybe.
Science fiction authors have used various tricks at evolving language and written communications, one of the most memorable for me being Heinlein’s Speedtalk from the novella Gulf. And working in other senses is a common tactic, up to and including extra-sensory perception (such as telepathy). This is part of the way I use synesthesia in Communion of Dreams: as a method by which the human brain can layer meaning and information in new ways, expanding the potential for understanding the world. It is noteworthy that many synesthetes will associate colors with a given word or even letter – it may be possible that Lee Freedman drew upon such an experience to create his color alphabet.
(An aside – I have experienced mild episodes of synesthesia upon several occasions. Sometimes these episodes have been induced by drugs, sometimes by intense concentration, sometimes of their own accord. I think that this is a latent ability everyone has, but not something which we usually access, because it is poorly understood by the general populace.)
Anyway, while Kromofons or something similar is certainly possible in the context of computer display (of almost any variety, including nano-tech paint) , there are some real limitations that I can see. First off, you wouldn’t want to have to have a full set of color pencils/markers and keep changing them in order to just write something down in the ‘real world’. Printed material of whatever variety would also be subject to degradation from light-fading: some pigments fade more quickly than others, some inks are more frail than others, some colors react to different lighting conditions in different ways. (Those are all problems I’ve experienced as a book & document conservator, as well as owning a gallery of art.) Even in the world of computer display, variations in lighting and equipment could render some colors ‘untrue’. Not to mention problems experienced by people as they age and color perception skews, or from the small but real percentage of the population which suffers from one type or another of color blindness. Sure, a good AI or expert system would be able to ‘translate’ for people who had such limitations, in the context of augmented reality, but that tech isn’t currently available except in its very infancy.
So, while I enjoy a slightly-nutty idea as much as the next person, and can see some ways that Kromofons could be used for fun, I don’t really see the idea going too far.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Expert systems, Predictions, Science Fiction, tech
This is an old clip, from the TED2006 conference, with Jeff Han making a presentation about his multi-touch sensing interface. I got into a discussion with friends the other night, and had reason to look this up to share it with them, thought I would post it here:
This is pretty much the sort of interface I envisioned for Communion, though done entirely as a ‘virtual’ tech made possible by the AI entities I call ‘experts’, coupled with the integrated cyberware that the characters have. But of course, having it as a physical object first makes sense, and can be considered to be an antecedent to my predictions of how the technology will develop.
Anyway, it’s a long clip, but very intriguing.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, BoingBoing, Expert systems, General Musings, Government, Heinlein, Predictions, Science Fiction, Society, tech
The tech of Communion of Dreams is based on a seamless connectivity of almost all electronic components – it is what enables the AI/expert systems such as Seth to move freely through the world on behalf of their clients, augmenting reality in such a way as to allow for much deeper insight and understanding of the world. I don’t say it explicitly in the book, but in part this level of connectivity is what allows for the actual development of true artificial intelligence (an homage to Heinlein’sThe Moon is a Harsh Mistress).
Via BoingBoing comes news that Tim Wu has an excellent piece up about the forthcoming auction of wireless spectrum, and how it presents the opportunity to encourage the kind of innovation necessary for the world of Communion to become possible. Wu, a leader in the promotion of net neutrality and broadband tech, understands that establishing common standards and then allowing inventors to attach their gadgets to wireless networks will be the critical infrastructure of the future. An excerpt:
The right to attach is a simple concept, and it has worked powerfully in other markets. For example, in the wired telephone world Carterfone rules are what made it possible to market answering machines, fax machines and the modems that sparked the Internet revolution.
Attachment rights can break open markets that might otherwise be controlled by dominant gatekeepers. Longshot companies like Ebay or YouTube might never have been born had they first needed the approval of a risk-averse company like AT&T. If you’ve invented a new toaster, you don’t have to get approval from the electric company. Consumers decide how good your product is, not some gatekeeper.
It’s an excellent position paper, all the better for being brief and to the point. Read it, share it.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Expert systems, General Musings, Predictions, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Writing stuff
Sheesh.
So, I was reading one of my fav online comics today (Dinosaur Comics), and came across a term I wasn’t familiar with, even through I describe it and use it extensively in Communion of Dreams. The term? Augmented Reality.
I posit that the use of expert systems and the integration of computing applications will become so widespread by the time of the novel (2052) that there will be a fairly seemless overlay of additional information on everyday reality for anyone who wants it. In fact, this plays a rather important role in the plot development, and ties in with my vision of what will necessarily delineate the divergent tracks between human intelligence and true Artificial Intelligence (see yesterday’s post).
But I didn’t know that it had a common term. *sigh* I am so out of it sometimes…
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow, Expert systems, Feedback, Predictions, Ray Kurzweil, Science Fiction, Singularity, Singularity Institute, Society, tech, Writing stuff
A good friend of mine, who is a big science fiction fan, read an early version of Communion of Dreams and loved it, providing me some valuable feedback and support. And he was *really* excited when he heard that I was going to write more in the same ‘universe’ as the book, wanting to know what happens after the events portrayed in Communion. When I told him that I would be working on a prequel to the book rather than a sequel, he was disappointed. “But I wanted to know what happens after the Singularity!” he protested.
[Mild Spoiler Alert]
As you are probably aware, the notion of a technological Singularity occuring, when we create the first true artificial intelligence which is superior to human intelligence, has been a popular one in SF for some time, and actually took on the term Singularity following coinage (I think) by Vernor Vinge. In many ways, Communion of Dreams is my take on that moment when humankind crosses this threshhold, embodied in the character of Seth, the expert system who makes this transition.
The folks over at the Singularity Institute are working towards this goal, and wanting to help us prepare for it. Cory Doctorow has a brief blog entry up at BoingBoing this morning about his experience speaking at the Singularity Summit hosted by Ray Kurzweil at Stanford last year, along with links to some vids of that event now hosted at the Institute. It is worth a look.
I am intrigued by the notion of a technological Singularity, but think that it is fundamentally impossible for us to know what happens after such an event has matured. Oh, sure, there’s good reason to speculate, and it is rich and fertile ground for planting ideas as an author, but…
…but I think that in many ways, leaving Communion as the end-point perhaps makes the most sense. It is analogous to ending a book with the death of the character from whom everything is presented as a first-person account. Because just as we do not know what happens after death, we do not know what happens after an event such as a technological Singularity. For, in some very real ways, the same kind of transcendence will take place.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, General Musings, movies, NYT, Philip K. Dick, Predictions, Press, Science Fiction, Society, Writing stuff
There’s a pretty good article about Philip K. Dick in yesterday’s New York Times. Odd man. Fine author. Source of a lot of my musings on the subjects of society, artificial intelligence, the human condition – not things I would necessarily point to as being inspirational, but definitely a big part of the mix of attitudes I developed from a premature exposure to lots of science fiction as a kid. As an adult, I came to appreciate more his writing for what it was – inspired, drug-fueled, more than a little scary around the edges.
And as a writer I completely understand his desire for more ‘legitimacy’ – something to which many of us who work in the nebulous genre of SF share, I think. From the NYT piece:
So it’s hard to know what Mr. Dick, who died in 1982 at the age of 53, would have made of the fact that this month he has arrived at the pinnacle of literary respectability. Four of his novels from the 1960s — “The Man in the High Castle,” “The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch,” “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” and “Ubik” — are being reissued by the Library of America in that now-classic Hall of Fame format: full cloth binding, tasseled bookmark, acid-free, Bible-thin paper. He might be pleased, or he might demand to know why his 40-odd other books weren’t so honored.
Take a moment, read the article. And if you haven’t had a chance to do so, dive into some of Dick’s work. It may now be gaining some ‘respectability’, but that’s no reason to avoid it.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 