“The problems of society can be solved entirely by mechanical people” is the bold statement by Mitsumi Frendee of Kyoto University. Mitsumi’s department deals with the application of Mechanical Person and Machine Intelligence technology to society at large. She goes on, “For nearly a century, one of the greatest outstanding problems in computer science has been achieving smooth interaction with society at large.”
Early attempts to achieve this were through “Human-computer interaction”, and there were whole university departments devoted to this. While many useful functions were performed by electronic computers at that time, their goals could not be achieved without the intervention of large numbers of humans, to perceive and assign the goal, and to interpret the results in a meaningful way.
“Much early work in Machine Intelligence [Artificial intelligence, as it was sometimes called] was distracted by the perceived need to involve humans” asserts Frendee-san. “What has happened here is a common phenomenon as you look through the history of technology: While seeking a solution to a problem, the nature of the problem has changed.”
Her report, which took the scientific world by storm last Thursday, admits that the problem of getting humans and machines to communicate smoothly is far from solved. However, it argues, the importance of this problem has reduced to insignificance. The problems of identifying and assigning goals, taking into account new factors that bear on a problem, and making the connection from abstract analysis to concrete action - traditionally the stronghold of the organic brain - have been satisfactorily addressed by Machine Intelligence technology. Indeed, in many cases, MI excels where OI gets bogged down.
Frendee-san expects to see Japan governed exclusively by Mechanical People by “around 2050″.
MPs currently occupy up 90% of manual jobs in Japan and 30% of middle managment jobs.
80% of MPs in Japan are female.
Timeline:
2005: Early prototypes are introduced to the public. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4714135.stm
2007: The Special Interest Group in AI in Physical Human Machine Interaction is formed headed by MIT’s Akira Morimuto.
2009: SIGAPHMI publishes its now famous mission statement in which it claimed the principal fault with all former AI work was the paucity of data gathered from the environment.
2009: Project “Lilee” commences, placing a small number of Repliees into education as if they are human infants.
2010: Project “Congree” commences, where Repliees are turned loose in a controlled environment to learn from each other and their surroundings. The Discovery Channel Asia-Pacific runs a popular series following their progress. Public demand for Repliees as companions booms.
2011: Congree Frendee is launched in Japan and is very popular amongst those that can afford it.
2016: With the release Sport Frendee, the fourth-generation Congree Frendee, the market in used Frendees overtakes that of used cars in Japan.
2017: the first Repliee take a responsible job outside of the lab.
2018: the first Repliee-staffed research team is formed at Osaka University. An extension of Congree, its focus is in the ability of Repliees to acquire abstract knowledge and to learn indirectly, through self-started projects and interaction with other university departments.
2023: Controversy over a brawl involving two Repliees and five businessmen in a Kyoto restaurant results in a “special citizen” legal status being assigned to Repliees. Repliees are subject to the same obligations, and afforded some of the protection of, the law as applied to human citizens.
2029: In what is now known as EMPA (the Emancipation of Mechanical People Act), after 8 years of increasingly sophisticated lobbying and PR activities by the Repliees themselves, “special citizens” are allowed to function without the patronage of a “full citizen”.
2030: Department of MP Studies formed at Berkeley by Repliees
I’m smart enough to spot this situation but not yet good enough to address it.
I’m at a decision point now. I have an old car, a house purchase, a salsa teaching business, and a dream of latin drum workshops all competing for my focus. I keep
- deciding to sell the car, then accidentally buying bits for it online.
- finding estate agents’ letters unopened a month after receipt
- changing my mind about whether to go to two or even three salsa classes a week
- pulling back from buying more percussion cos I have nowhere to play it, yet discussing the “oldyorikan all-stars” with various potential members.
Gotta resolve some of those before too much more time passes.
Heheh, found this in my drafts… already showing its age since mongers has retired from daily bloggage…
If your blog is one of the rare few that has readers, then I reckon blogging daily is the surest way to keep ‘em. Unfortunately in my case, this is a surefire recipe for a bunch or really rubbish blogs. I started to write one today which wasn’t finished in my head so wouldn’t have made any sense, but if I wait until it is finished in my head it simply won’t get blogged. My Drafts list is a testament to that.
Fortunately, while I’m not as hard-working or dedicated as Mongers, he is dedicated enough to compensate for my shortcomings. If you are unable to blog daily the LEAST you can do for your readers is provide some mechanism by which they can tell whether there’s anything new to read. For this there is of course Maurice, and Mongers’ extremely handy sidebar being sorted by posts’ recentitudinalness.
Here’s to Mongers and Maurice!
Yesterday’s strife was largely due to having undone step 34.4.3 paragraph 2(f) in my task by getting to step 34.4.3 paragraph 3(a) and thinking I’d already done it but made typos. The two steps do near-identical things with a couple of characters different. If I can make it to 34.4.3 para 24 with no more cockups I may make my deadline for COB today :-(
I definitely have bad days. They tend to come in groups. Today I was comprehensively beaten at Go, despite being given a 9-stone handicap AND being openly told what my opponent was planning. Even with all that I didn’t expect to win, but what did bother me was that I was unable to make any kind of judgement about what to do at any point during the game.
This afternoon I have been mostly completely failing to behave in a coherent manner with respect to building and testing software. My natural response would be to go to bed, but they would stop paying me if I did that. It’s getting rather trying.
Looked at a couple of houses last weekend. Both very nice bijou dwellings, one for 5k more had a garage, a lovely upstairs but a funny shaped boundary. The cheaper one had an allocated plot for a garage but a larger, nicer garden, and a larger, nicer kitchen. But it was situated at the end of a three-hour* drive over speed bumps.
* subject to speed of driving, rest breaks etc. aw, ok, about 6 minutes of speedbumps.
I don’t think I can afford either. Well, I could, but if interest rates went up by a single percent that would be it. Without the interest rate rise it would be two years of rice & cabbage, taking my own bottled water to the pub and fixing my bicycle with bits of string I’ve found in the gutter.
I got a nasty awakening when I went for my last mortgage interview. They’re lending over 35 year period nowadays, which means it’s cheaper to borrow, so you can BORROW MORE. Except I’m too old, so I can’t borrow as much more.
Every year that passes now, my borrowing strength decreases.
I have to come up with a convincing scenario that doesn’t end in impoverished old age, nor a sudden repossession due to negative equity.
He fixed my mouth…
and as I slept,
he filled my mouth with IIIII-ron
That made me laugh when I heard it in about 1984. It was the Baron Knights’ version of “Rivers of babylon” by Boney-M, and it was what kept going through my head while I had my first ever filling today.
I went in there blazé as anything. It wasn’t till the seat when back and the range of metal implements came out and they stuck a needle in my gum that I realised I was terrified. I said so, and asked if I could have a running commentary. The dentist was surprised and said usually people would rather be in denial, but I got a brownie point for admitting I was scared, since apparently boys don’t tend to do that. After a brief explanation of what was involved and roughly how long it took, we commenced and I felt a lot better. Now, over 3 hours later, I’m just getting the feeling back in my cheek and tongue, and I’m having to get used to having whole teeth where there were formerly craggy landscapes which, scaled up 500 000 times and drained of their saliva, would inspire local tribespeople to worship and visiting colonials to great feats of physical endurance.
I couldn’t help thinking, lying there with my reflexes screaming at me to swallow and boney-M going round and round my head, that that must have been something like what Joe Simpson must have felt. But scaled down by 500,000 times, obviously.
but this one flattered me enough that I thought I’d post it.
Which Trickster Are You?
Take the Trickster Test at www.isleofdreams.net.
phones should have a “timed off” button, e.g.:
you hit “off” and it says “off”. If you leave it more than 2 seconds it turns off. If you press the off button again, it reads “off: 0:30″ you can use up and down to change the value, hit off to go through 0:30 1:00 1:30 2:00 2:30 4:00 6:00 8:00 0:00 when you leave the controls for more than 2 seconds it goes off for that amount of time. Great for cinema, meetings, snoozes, 8-hours sleep…
Bro posted on his blog about some of the things his mind requests that he do for reasons purely of order. This was going to be a comment to that post but it turning out rather long.
I too have many obsessive or compulsive tendencies, but though they influence my life I try to avoid them standing in my way, which in my view is the point when it becomes a problem. Examples:
When I’m walking and I hear music I try to synchronise my paces, with the left step on the down beat.
When walking hand-in-hand I try to synchronise on the opposite foot to my partner
When walking arm-in-arm I try to synchronise on the same foot as my partner
If I have flat laces I try to tie them with no twists in.
When I enter the house I must empty my pockets and put everything in one place.
I cannot shower without washing my hair.
I had a girlfriend who couldn’t put the stereo’s volume on an odd number, it had to be even. I could sympathise, having had a similar tendency in the past. But then a number that isn’t even may still be divisible by 5, which is nice and orderly - one hand’s worth of digits, or maybe 3, which I regard as an enlightened number because where it’s tempting to think in terms of good and evil, positive and negative, we always forget passive, neutral, zero. Most dichotomies are really trichotomies… ahem, where was I… or divisible by 7, which is lucky for some, or 13 which is less lucky.
I still don’t like 11, although numbers divisible by 11 are extra cool…