Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Oh I wish....
I can't stop thinking about this creativity machine stuff. I spent 3 more hours so far today scouring the internet for anything I can find on it. I have been reading some of Dr. Thaler's papers, news reports, other people's blogs. Apparently many of these neural networks of his are implemented in excel spreadsheets! I want so badly to be able to play around with this technology and see what I could do with it. I am hoping that I can extract enough information from his papers to perhaps try and emulate some of the things he has accomplished. Am I even allowed to do that since all his work is patented? I don't even know.....patent laws can be so confusing sometimes. I think I am ok to do stuff with it so long as I don't commercialize anything based on his concepts. I wonder if he would be willing to be a guest speaker at one of the meetings for the student chapter of ACM over here. It sucks so bad sometimes when you want to peek under the hood of something but you aren't allowed to or the chance to do so isn't available to you. There are so many open-source computer programs out there that I could look at and learn stuff from, but they are nowhere near as interesting to me as something like this. I don't want to look at the source code for firefox or linux, I want to look at the source files for one of these neural network implementations. Gah...
Monday, September 18, 2006
SIFE Project
I was studying at a table in the place where Whitney works today and I overheard parts of a SIFE (Students In Free Enterprise) meeting. Turns out that they had found someone from DeVry last year to program this game on the web for them to teach middle schools students about tariffs and imports and stuff. Unfortunately, it turned out like garbage as you can see by visiting its current state of existence. It doesn't really work properly, the interface sucks, and it doesn't scale to the size of the browser window (and apparently it was designed for a higher res than 1024x768). They were discussing how to go about finding someone here on campus to rebuild it from scratch for them. I decided to help em out, so it looks like I will be making a web application.....YAY! This should be a fun project and it will be a great learning experience for me given my limited experience with web apps. When I finish it I will post a link to the results.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Regarding creative machines....
I've been scouring the internet for more information about Dr. Thaler and his so called "Creativity Machine". It turns out that he has a company called imagination engines, inc. that sells applications for his technology. I highly suggest checking out their homepage. There is some amazing information on it. This news article is also fascinating.
Apparently this guy has been doing things with this technology for quite some time now. You will be flabbergasted by what it has accomplished. Ever heard of the OralB Crossaction toothbrush? That toothbrush was invented by this machine after it learned from existing examples of toothbrush designs and their effectiveness. This technology has created music. In fact, as stated in the news article I linked to above, Dr Thaler has technically created more music than any composer in the world (of course it was his machine that did it, not him). The list of its creations, in fact just, goes on and on. There are endless applications for something like this. What seems most ironic is the fact that this technology invented itself in a way. You see, there are multiple neural networks involved in this technology. Some of the networks are like the trainees, and some are the trainers. One network is creating ideas while the other network evaluates these new ideas and rewards the good ones. Basically, this thing is self training! But get this...the segment of the network that evaluates the other network's ideas was created by one Thaler's neural networks. Thaler's second patent was created by his first...as in his first machine created the component of the second. It was like a team effort...the most revolutionary computing paradigm created to date (in my opinion) was developed by a team made up of a human and his created machine. Amazing.
If you want to see some of this technology for yourself I suggest downloading the screensaver that you can find under the product menu on the imagination engines web site. I have it running on my laptop as we speak and it is truly fascinating to watch. The web site stresses that this screensaver is NOT pre-scripted video....it is a real time rendering and the simulated robot IS actually learning during the screensaver's execution. It starts off with a simulated hexapod robot located in a maze-like room with a bunch of walls. When the program first starts running the robot is unable to walk effectively. It just flails its legs wildly about in an attempt to move. As time passes, it learns what movement patterns work effectively and which ones don't. This eventually leads to a coordinated tripod walking gait! Obviously this walking gait is familiar to anyone who has worked with this kind of bot before, but this bot actually learned how to do it on its own. Over time this simulated hexapod figures out how to turn when it runs into walls and even avoid walls to some extent with its sonar sensing. I can't imagine how well a full blown version of this AI would work with a robot or swarm of robots considering how impressive this toned down screensaver is!
I think Google should buy this company...with their computing resource and access to such large amounts of data they could probably make this technology do things that are absolutely insane. I bet there are endless applications for this technology in regards to search. Can you imagine how much better their video or image search engine would be if it didn't rely on filenames or user labelling (which people sometimes change to purposefully mislead) but instead used a creativity machine to tag each image automatically with relevant information? This would also be great for content filtering used by schools or parents.
Anyways, I wonder if any of the computer science department researchers here have experimented at all with technology like this? I would love to do research with someone here if they were doing that. I hope that I get to work with technology like this someday. For now I just want to keep reading more about it :)
Apparently this guy has been doing things with this technology for quite some time now. You will be flabbergasted by what it has accomplished. Ever heard of the OralB Crossaction toothbrush? That toothbrush was invented by this machine after it learned from existing examples of toothbrush designs and their effectiveness. This technology has created music. In fact, as stated in the news article I linked to above, Dr Thaler has technically created more music than any composer in the world (of course it was his machine that did it, not him). The list of its creations, in fact just, goes on and on. There are endless applications for something like this. What seems most ironic is the fact that this technology invented itself in a way. You see, there are multiple neural networks involved in this technology. Some of the networks are like the trainees, and some are the trainers. One network is creating ideas while the other network evaluates these new ideas and rewards the good ones. Basically, this thing is self training! But get this...the segment of the network that evaluates the other network's ideas was created by one Thaler's neural networks. Thaler's second patent was created by his first...as in his first machine created the component of the second. It was like a team effort...the most revolutionary computing paradigm created to date (in my opinion) was developed by a team made up of a human and his created machine. Amazing.
If you want to see some of this technology for yourself I suggest downloading the screensaver that you can find under the product menu on the imagination engines web site. I have it running on my laptop as we speak and it is truly fascinating to watch. The web site stresses that this screensaver is NOT pre-scripted video....it is a real time rendering and the simulated robot IS actually learning during the screensaver's execution. It starts off with a simulated hexapod robot located in a maze-like room with a bunch of walls. When the program first starts running the robot is unable to walk effectively. It just flails its legs wildly about in an attempt to move. As time passes, it learns what movement patterns work effectively and which ones don't. This eventually leads to a coordinated tripod walking gait! Obviously this walking gait is familiar to anyone who has worked with this kind of bot before, but this bot actually learned how to do it on its own. Over time this simulated hexapod figures out how to turn when it runs into walls and even avoid walls to some extent with its sonar sensing. I can't imagine how well a full blown version of this AI would work with a robot or swarm of robots considering how impressive this toned down screensaver is!
I think Google should buy this company...with their computing resource and access to such large amounts of data they could probably make this technology do things that are absolutely insane. I bet there are endless applications for this technology in regards to search. Can you imagine how much better their video or image search engine would be if it didn't rely on filenames or user labelling (which people sometimes change to purposefully mislead) but instead used a creativity machine to tag each image automatically with relevant information? This would also be great for content filtering used by schools or parents.
Anyways, I wonder if any of the computer science department researchers here have experimented at all with technology like this? I would love to do research with someone here if they were doing that. I hope that I get to work with technology like this someday. For now I just want to keep reading more about it :)
Friday, September 15, 2006
Robot Sprinklers??!?!
Check out this site: http://www.accurain.com/
And watch this video: http://www.accurain.com/AccuRainII/AccuRainVideo.wmv
How cool is that? I wish I had thought of it. Such a simple, yet novel idea.
And watch this video: http://www.accurain.com/AccuRainII/AccuRainVideo.wmv
How cool is that? I wish I had thought of it. Such a simple, yet novel idea.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
First post!
So, I decided to give this blogging thing a try. It is the new web craze after all isn't it? Who knows how long it will hold my attention though.
My day has been pretty relaxing so far. I dropped Whitney(gf) off at school, hung out with her dad for a little bit, and now I am here on my computer. I came across an extremely interesting article while getting my daily dose of tech news today. Check it out
I wasn't aware that anyone had come so far with neural networks in robotics applications yet. How did I miss hearing about this before?!? Seriously, how amazing is it that someone is creating machines that can actually come up with creative solutions to problems? They can actually develop their own walking gaits without any programming and adapt them to different situations. These things are actually thinking in groups and for themselves. Is this scary? Maybe a little bit but it is still fascinating. I need to learn more about neural networks, I've always been fascinated by them but I didn't know they offered quite this much potential. I gotta keep a close eye on this Dr. Stephen Thaler guy's research (granted there probably won't be much information on it anywhere since he is developing all this for the military). This just adds one more thing to my ever increasing list of things I'm hungry to learn more about. I wish there were 50 hours in the day or something so I actually had time to read more about what's going on in the tech world!
In other news....Whitney's dad made the most awesome dinner suggestion to me last night and it turned out amazing. I'm really starting to like this cooking thing...it's fun and delicious! I couldn't believe how something so easy to make could taste sooooooo good. I just Sautéed some boneless skinless chicken breast in a pan with a little olive oil and seasonings (seasoned salt, pepper, fresh garlic, and some basil) and when it was done cooking I coated it with a thin layer of barbeque sauce and sprinkled grated cheese on top and let the cheese melt in the oven. SO GOOD!
That's all for now. I have to finish up my programming project for class.
My day has been pretty relaxing so far. I dropped Whitney(gf) off at school, hung out with her dad for a little bit, and now I am here on my computer. I came across an extremely interesting article while getting my daily dose of tech news today. Check it out
I wasn't aware that anyone had come so far with neural networks in robotics applications yet. How did I miss hearing about this before?!? Seriously, how amazing is it that someone is creating machines that can actually come up with creative solutions to problems? They can actually develop their own walking gaits without any programming and adapt them to different situations. These things are actually thinking in groups and for themselves. Is this scary? Maybe a little bit but it is still fascinating. I need to learn more about neural networks, I've always been fascinated by them but I didn't know they offered quite this much potential. I gotta keep a close eye on this Dr. Stephen Thaler guy's research (granted there probably won't be much information on it anywhere since he is developing all this for the military). This just adds one more thing to my ever increasing list of things I'm hungry to learn more about. I wish there were 50 hours in the day or something so I actually had time to read more about what's going on in the tech world!
In other news....Whitney's dad made the most awesome dinner suggestion to me last night and it turned out amazing. I'm really starting to like this cooking thing...it's fun and delicious! I couldn't believe how something so easy to make could taste sooooooo good. I just Sautéed some boneless skinless chicken breast in a pan with a little olive oil and seasonings (seasoned salt, pepper, fresh garlic, and some basil) and when it was done cooking I coated it with a thin layer of barbeque sauce and sprinkled grated cheese on top and let the cheese melt in the oven. SO GOOD!
That's all for now. I have to finish up my programming project for class.
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