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"EU funding 'Orwellian' artificial intelligence plan to monitor public for "abnormal behaviour" The European Union is spending millions of pounds developing "Orwellian" technologies designed to scour the internet and CCTV images for "abnormal behaviour"." SNIPPET: "A five-year research programme, called Project Indect, aims to develop computer programmes which act as "agents" to monitor and process information from web sites, discussion forums, file servers, peer-to-peer networks and even individual computers. Its main objectives include the "automatic detection of threats and abnormal behaviour or violence"." SNIPPET: "Project Indect, which received nearly £10 million in funding from the European Union, involves the Police...

A detailed, functional artificial human brain can be built within the next 10 years, a leading scientist has claimed. Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project, has already simulated elements of a rat brain. He told the TED Global conference in Oxford that a synthetic human brain would be of particular use finding treatments for mental illnesses. Around two billion people are thought to suffer some kind of brain impairment, he said. "It is not impossible to build a human brain and we can do it in 10 years," he said. "And if we do succeed, we will send...

Amnesty International attacks Poland abortion policy New York City, N.Y., Jun 27, 2009 / 05:04 pm (CNA).- Amnesty International has continued its promotion of abortion with a report on the state of human rights which criticizes Poland for denying Polish women “access to abortion.” The organization’s actions could reflect its partnership with a pro-abortion group to redefine abortion as a “human right.” The Amnesty International (AI) 2009 report’s entry on Poland cites May 2008 criticism of its abortion policy by the Human Rights Council, the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) reports. Amnesty also criticized the Polish government for...

. For Ladyinred

American Idol contestant disqualified LOS ANGELES – One of the contestants on "American Idol" who made the top 36 has been disqualified. "American Idol" has issued a statement saying Joanna Pacitti of Philadelphia is ineligible to continue, but without saying why. Felicia Barton of Virginia Beach, Va., has replaced Pacitti in the top 36.

American Idol 2009 For Ladyinred

Institute of Robotics in Scandinavia (iRobis) has announced commercial availability of Brainstorm®, the world’s first “complete cognitive software system for robots”. The system turns robots into self-developing, adaptive, problem-solving, “thinking” machines. The system automatically writes control programs for any robot on which it is installed, dramatically shortening development time and cost. The same technology is used to allow robots to adapt to new circumstances and solve other problems while in operation. ... read more

Gothenburg - Institute of Robotics in Scandinavia (iRobis) has announced that the world’s first “complete cognitive software system for robotics” is ready for application. The system turns robots into self-developing, adaptive, problem-solving, “thinking” machines. http://mensnewsdaily.com/2007/05/16/robobusiness-robots-with-imagination/ Brainstorm automatically adapts to onboard sensors and actuators, immediately builds a model of any robot on which it is installed, and automatically writes control programs for the robot’s movements. It can then explore and model its environment. Through simulated interaction using these models, it solves problems and develops new behavior using “imagination.” Once it has “learned” to do something, it can use its imagination...

Stanford computer scientists have developed an artificial intelligence system that enables robotic helicopters to teach themselves to fly difficult stunts by watching other helicopters perform the same maneuvers. The result is an autonomous helicopter than can perform a complete airshow of complex tricks on its own. The stunts are "by far the most difficult aerobatic maneuvers flown by any computer controlled helicopter," said Andrew Ng, the professor directing the research of graduate students Pieter Abbeel, Adam Coates, Timothy Hunter and Morgan Quigley. The dazzling airshow is an important demonstration of "apprenticeship learning," in which robots learn by observing an expert,...

TROY, N.Y. - Edd Hifeng barely merits a second glance in "Second Life." A steel-gray robot with lanky limbs and linebacker shoulders, he looks like a typical avatar in the popular virtual world. But Edd is different. His actions are animated not by a person at a keyboard but by a computer. Edd is a creation of artificial intelligence, or AI, by researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who endowed him with a limited ability to converse and reason. It turns out "Second Life" is more than a place where pixelated avatars chat, interact and fly about. It's also a frontier...

Machines will achieve human-level artificial intelligence by 2029, a leading US inventor has predicted. Humanity is on the brink of advances that will see tiny robots implanted in people's brains to make them more intelligent said engineer Ray Kurzweil. He said machines and humans would eventually merge through devices implanted in the body to boost intelligence and health. "It's really part of our civilisation," Mr Kurzweil said. "But that's not going to be an alien invasion of intelligent machines to displace us." Machines were already doing hundreds of things humans used to do, at human levels of intelligence or better,...

When you ask a man on the street where revolutionary advanced robots are being developed, he is likely to name Japan and the United States. Japan is well known for such amazing mechanical creations as ASIMO and HRP, as well as robots that dance, engage in martial arts, transform, and play musical instruments. In the United States, the success of iRobot in both military and consumer markets is legendary. The DARPA Grand Challenge demonstrated advanced work on autonomous vehicles. GM has its own autonomous vehicle and expects driverless cars to be on the roads in a few years. (Lexus...

Amnesty International (AI) is sponsoring an event in Los Angeles under the title,“Human Rights in Iran: How to Move Forward” on February 22, 2008. Mr. Trita Parsi, president of National Iranian American Council (NIAC) an extremely dedicated activist for the establishment of normal and unconditional relations between the religious dictatorship in Iran and the U.S. [1] is one of the panelists in this event. This is not the first time NIAC has manipulated AI. On July 26, 2007, AI was one of the sponsors of an event organized by NIAC under the title, “Human Rights in Iran and U.S. Foreign...

Scientists Invent Robots That Lie, Real Bender Closer Than Ever Holy crap! The Age of The Machines is nigh: a bunch of scientists in Switzerland have created learning robots that can lie to each other. Okay, so they don't swill beer or put bends in girders—they just communicate to each other with benign flashing lights, thank goodness, instead of using lasers to destroy humans: The team at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Federal Institute of Technology created the little experimental learning devices to work in groups and hunt for "food" targets nearby while avoiding "poison." Imagine their surprise...

Do robots deserve rights? The question is less ridiculous than it sounds. As scientists develop ever more sophisticated robots, we are faced with an ethical dilemma: When does artificial intelligence demand humane treatment? In the last month, Japanese scientists have unveiled robots capable of serving food and even playing the violin and trumpet. These aren't self-aware robots – many scientists deride the notion of ever creating a robot capable of self-awareness – but self-awareness isn't the sole qualifier for rights. Certain severely brain-damaged human beings and newborns lack general self-awareness, but there is little doubt that they have rights, no...

Despite Pleas, Ontario Bishop Refuses to Direct Catholic School on Amnesty International Local branch of AI still meets regularly in St. Sault Marie Catholic High School Hilary White SAULT STE. MARIE, Ontario, September 7, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Despite ratifying its parent organization's decision to support abortion as a human right, the local branch of Amnesty International in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario still meets regularly at St. Basil Secondary Catholic school.  Since the AI decision was announced this spring, two Catholic bishops in the UK have joined the Vatican in condemning the move. Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council...

Abortion Fallout: Scottish Cardinal is 2nd Bishop to Quit Amnesty International EDINBURGH, August 28, 2007 - (CWNews.com/LifeSiteNews.com) - Cardinal Keith O'Brien of Edinburgh, Scotland, has become the latest Catholic leader to drop his membership in Amnesty International to protest the group's support for legal abortion. The Scottish cardinal wrote to Amnesty International leaders explaining that after 40 years of involvement he felt obliged to sever his links with the human-rights group. "As a matter of conscience and great sadness," he wrote, he could no longer support what he had long considered "this noble organization."

Bishops to Amnesty International: We work with orgs who "do not oppose the fundamental right to life" By John-Henry Westen WASHINGTON, D.C., August 27, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has decried Amnesty International's recent decision to - as the bishops put it - "promote worldwide access to abortion," telling the organization that the Bishops' Conference will work with other organizations rather than with Amnesty International (AI) to carry out the good ends which AI was traditionally associated with. Bishop William S. Skylstad, the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops released a statement to...

On the last day of the RoboBusiness Conference in Boston, something wonderful happened. Institute of Robotics in Scandinavia (iRobis) introduced robotic imagination. I don’t mean imaginative robot designs. I mean; robots that imagine. And by imagine, I don’t mean simply creating images in a simulator. I mean imagination as part of reasoning and problem solving. This capability is part of a new software system, with the working title: Brainstorm™, that is set to be available to researchers and product developers this year. The presentation by iRobis co-founder Peter Nordin began with an extraordinary claim of work toward “A complete...

Iran: Arrests of peaceful demonstrators and activists continue Source: Amnesty International 4/21/07 Amnesty International is calling on the Iranian authorities to release immediately and unconditionally all those detained in connection with recent peaceful demonstrations by teachers, students and others, to halt all trial proceedings that could result in the imprisonment of prisoners of conscience and to cease harassment of those campaigning to uphold human rights, including trade union and political rights. The organization is concerned that such protestors have been increasingly targeted since Minister of Intelligence Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie publicly accused the womens' movement and student campaigners of being...

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Computers can beat some of the world's top chess players, but the most powerful machines have failed at the popular Asian board game "Go" in which human intuition has so far proven key. Two Hungarian scientists have now come up with an algorithm that helps computers pick the right move in Go, played by millions around the world, in which players must capture spaces by placing black and white marbles on a board in turn. "On a nine by nine board we are not far from reaching the level of a professional Go player," said Levente Kocsis...

Law and order is President Calderon's top priority Mexico's human rights record has been severely criticised in a new report by the rights group Amnesty International.The group says that arbitrary detention and torture are systematic and that it is Mexico's poor who suffer most. It also highlights the problem suffered by millions of indigenous peoples at the hands of the authorities. The government's use of soldiers to tackle drugs gangs is criticised but the Mexican government has said that it is working to clean up the abuses. 'Systematic abuses' Amnesty International cites case after case of people who it...

South Korean scientists are working on a new-generation robot resembling a human which will be able to walk the walk as well as talk the talk, one of the team said Thursday. The first walking "android" will make its debut within two to three years, said So Byung-Rok, one of the team of researchers at the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology. Androids present particular technological challenges in cramming complicated modules, motors and actuators into a life-size body. The team has already developed two android prototypes designed to look like a Korean woman in her early 20s, which can hold hold...

For all the music fans on FR, especially those who followed AMERICAN IDOL, Chris Daughtry's first album was released yesterday. The CD is just great, but more importantly, what rock star, on his first album, would start his THANKS page inside the CD with this: "First off, I'd like to thank God for the gift of music and my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, for being the greatest example of LOVE I know." I don't think Snoop Dog has those words in his new album.

A new robot, dubbed "Starfish" because of its size and shape, has the unusual ability -- in the mechanical world, that is -- of fixing itself. The Starfish is programmed to recognize its parts, but not how they're arranged or meant to be used. It figures that out for itself, using trial and error. Cornell University researchers have created a robot capable of self-awareness, learning and adapting -- all keys to the intelligence and technology needed for robots Latest News about robots to function in adverse and changing environments. The Cornell researchers, who published their findings in the Nov. 17,...

A car that can drive itself is the fantasy of any designated driver, but the dream of owning a vehicle that does all the driving while you sit back and relax is one step closer to reality, as in-car artificial intelligence being developed by a team at Stanford University is ready to be used on city streets in the ultimate test of robot cars. Winning the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenge last year with a car called Stanley, Sebastian Thrun and his team at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory developed a form of robotics that went beyond...

Norfolk-based sailor uses Web to channel opposition to war By LOUIS HANSEN, The Virginian-Pilot © November 5, 2006 NORFOLK - Jonathan Hutto graduated from Howard University with a degree in political science and a résumé of social activism. He worked for the American Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International after college. He whipped up grass-roots protests against police departments and college administrators. One day in 2003, broke and seeking direction, Hutto enlisted in the Navy. The Navy couldn't have known it then, but they know it now: They had signed up a sailor strongly opposed to the Iraq war. Seaman...

Experiments involving real and simulated robots suggest that the relationship between physical movement and sensory input could be crucial to developing more intelligent machines. Tests involving two real and one simulated robot show that feedback between sensory input and body movement is crucial to navigating the surrounding world. Understanding this relationship better could help scientists build more life-like machines, say the researchers involved. Scientists studying artificial intelligence have traditionally separated physical behaviour and sensory input. "But the brain's inputs are not independent," says Olaf Sporns, a neuroscientist at Indiana University, US. "For example, motor behaviour has a role to play...

Oct. 26, 2006: The Indonesian volcano Talang on the island of Sumatra had been dormant for centuries when, in April 2005, it suddenly rumbled to life. A plume of smoke rose 1000 meters high and nearby villages were covered in ash. Fearing a major eruption, local authorities began evacuating 40,000 people. UN officials, meanwhile, issued a call for help: Volcanologists should begin monitoring Talang at once. Little did they know, high above Earth, a small satellite was already watching the volcano. No one told it to. EO-1 (short for "Earth Observing 1") noticed the warning signs and started monitoring Talang...

KEIHANNA, JAPAN — With little more than a train station and a few government buildings, the sleepy town of Keihanna is a far cry from the dazzling celluloid cityscapes of Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. But just as in those classics of science fiction, futuristic robots are coming to life here -- androids that are astonishingly realistic, and could challenge our ideas of what we consider human. Hiroshi Ishiguro is at the forefront of designing machines that look just like us. The senior researcher at Keihanna's ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories drew headlines around the world...

Scientists from the Korean Institute for Industrial Technology recently unveiled a new android capable of showing expressions on her face, only the second android to do this after Japan's Actroid. The Ever-1 takes its name from the Biblical Eve plus the r from "robot", can understand about 400 words and make eye contact while talking. We have to confess that we don't really care about any of this, only that we're looking forward to the day that Korea and Japan get both their androids to the point where they can, you know, fight each other. With lasers and missiles, even.

George, who is 39, single and light-hearted, is looking for friends on the Internet. He has gifts: the ability to speak in 40 languages and with 2000 people at the same time. There's just one quirk: he doesn't really exist. George is a piece of software, arguably the best of the speaking "chatbots" or talking robots, and he's recently received the Loebner prize in Britain ... ... George appears on the website www.jabberwacky.com and takes the form of a thin, bald man with yellow glasses who wears a white turtleneck sweater. He can smile, laugh, sulk and bang his fist...

Iran: Continuing Crackdown Against Peaceful Critics September 25, 2006 Amnesty International Public Statement Amnesty International is greatly concerned by new arrests and detentions in Iran targeting human rights activists, minority community activists and others peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression and association. Those detained in recent days include Iranian Azerbaijanis advocating a schools boycott and at least 10 people who sought to demonstrate against the imminent execution of four women. Meanwhile, a prominent human rights defender who has been detained without charge or trial for over 100 days has disclosed that he is being subjected to continuous pressure...

'Chatbot' king George looks for human friends on the internet Sep 15 6:00 AM US/Eastern George, who is 39, single and light-hearted, is looking for friends on the Internet. He has gifts -- the ability to speak in 40 languages and with 2,000 people at the same time. And one quirk: he doesn't really exist. George is a piece of software, arguably the best of the speaking "chatbots" or talking robots, and he's recently received the Loebner prize in Britain, a scientific award recognising the machines best capable of matching the most realistic human dialogues with their own. Seven years...

The software giant thinks it can make robotic engineering easier with a set of standards: its own of course Microsoft believes the demand for consumer, research, and military robots will grow significantly--and it wants to own the market. At the annual RoboBusiness conference this past June, the software giant released the first "community technical preview" of Microsoft Robotics Studio (MSRS). Now, in its second preview version, MSRS is both a product and the lynchpin of a new educational push: the Institute for Personal Robots in Education (IPRE). Founded by Microsoft Research, Georgia Tech, and Bryn Mawr College, the computer science...

The robots are on the move--leaping, scrambling, rolling, flying, climbing. They are figuring out how to get here on their own. They come to help us, protect us, amuse us--and some even do floors. Since Czech playwright Karel Capek popularized the term ("robota" means "forced labor" in Czech) in 1921, we have imagined what robots could do. But reality fell short of our plans: Honda Motor (nyse: HMC - news - people ) trotted out its Asimo in 2000, but for now it's been relegated to temping as a receptionist at Honda and doing eight shows a week at Disneyland....

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL Public Statement AI Index: EUR 37/002/2006 (Public) News Service No: 208 8 August 2006 Poland goes backwards: No to the restoration of the death penalty Amnesty International is deeply concerned about statements by the President of Poland, Lech Kaczyñski on 28 July 2006 in which he called for the restoration of the death penalty in Poland and throughout Europe. President Kaczyñski argued on the Polish Public Radio Programme 1 that “countries that give up this penalty award an unimaginable advantage to the criminal over his victim, the advantage of life over death". However, any society that uses the...

US advanced technology solutions firm BBN Technologies has been awarded $5.5 million in funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the first phase of the Integrated Learning Program. Over the next four years BBN will develop an artificial intelligence capability called “Integrated Learner” that will learn plans or processes after being shown a single example. The total value of the project, if all four years of the development programme are completed, could be up to $24 million. The goal is to combine specialised domain knowledge with common sense knowledge to create a reasoning system that learns as...

New research suggests that the source of bird flu may be factory farm chicken feces that are then used as commercial fish food and fertilizer in fields thus exposing humans and other birds to the H5N1 Avian Influenza virus (AI or bird flu).[1] This is thought to explain some of the outbreaks in China as well as the recent cluster of human deaths in Sumatra. Some feel that this may explain the reservoirs of avian flu in the wild - factory farms are infecting wild fish and birds. Government officials have been warning about the threat of migratory wild birds...

The USDA is still blocking US companies from testing their own beef to prove it is BSE free. This is hurting US beef exports to Japan. The USDA claims we need the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) which they developed to help with beef exports to Japan. With one hand the USDA forces heavy handed, expensive regulations on all livestock owners in the form of NAIS. With the other hand the USDA blocks a simple, foolproof test, that they developed, which would open up foreign markets to US beef. What gives? Is this all just an excuse for the government...

The big current excuse for Premises ID and the USDA's proposed National Animal Identification System (NAIS) is that wild birds were going to migrate over the poles, bring Avian Influenza (H5N1) to Alaska and then down the west coast of the United States. The scenerio presented by experts was that then it would come eastward to all the other state and infect our backyard flocks who would then kill off millions of people in the United States. There are a few problems with this. Chickens are terminal hosts to bird flu. It isn't normally transmissible to humans. Sure, if you...

Before it was terrorism. Then it was mad cow disease. Now the government is using fears of Avian Influenza (H5N1 or bird flu) to scare people into accepting reductions in their freedoms and more government control over our lives. The latest trampling of our constitutional rights is in the form of Premise ID and the USDA's proposed National Animal Identification System (NAIS). Maryland has bill HB709 to register all domestic birds including pet birds. Vermont is pushing Premise ID for bird flu prevention. ABC plans to do a TV movie about Avian Flu. Everyone wants in on the fear mongering....

snip…Privates Tucker and Menchaca were not simply ambushed, taken prisoner and killed. "The torture was something unnatural," said Major General Abdul Azziz Mohammed Jassim of Iraq's Defense Ministry, hinting at the state of the soldiers' remains. The corpses were so mutilated that they could be positively identified only through DNA testing. Here, then, is the enemy we face in Iraq: not nationalists or extremists or even fanatics, but something like a band of real-life Hannibal Lecters for whom human slaughter is both business and religious fulfillment. Following the killing, an Internet statement said to be from the Mujahadeen Shura Council...

Once American infantry got their hands on reliable, and portable, UGVs (unmanned ground vehicles), they did two things. First, they used their small robots as much as possible, especially for dangerous jobs like checking for roadside bombs, or bad guys lurking inside buildings or caves. The second thing the troops did was ask the UGV manufacturer to put weapons on the robots. So far, the Department of Defense has backed away from proposals to arm these MTRS (Man Transportable Robotic System), because of safety concerns. It's not that the armed robots would just be turned on, and turned lose. They...

Microsoft released the preview version of a software toolkit for building robot applications today, pledging to ignite the robot market in the same way it did the PC market some 20 years ago. The software maker sees robotics as being on the verge of a rapid take-off, fuelled by the availability of cheap, high-performance hardware components. But the market is being held back by a need for better tools and a common software platform that will let applications be reused on different types of robots, according to Microsoft. Enter its Robotics Studio, a package of tools and runtime software that...

The machinery of the human body is wonderfully complex, especially in its moving parts. That's why recreating it in metal and plastic is commonly thought to be the stuff of science fiction, androids and bionic men. But professor Hugh Herr, director of the Biomechatronics Group at MIT's Media Lab, has made a career of taking the fiction out of the science. His team has developed, among other marvels, a prosthetic ``Rheo Knee" that uses artificial intelligence to replicate the workings of a biological human joint ... ... ``The amputee can think, contract muscles, and directly control the artificial leg. It's...

IN 1981 Kenji Urada, a 37-year-old Japanese factory worker, climbed over a safety fence at a Kawasaki plant to carry out some maintenance work on a robot. In his haste, he failed to switch the robot off properly. Unable to sense him, the robot's powerful hydraulic arm kept on working and accidentally pushed the engineer into a grinding machine. His death made Urada the first recorded victim to die at the hands of a robot. This gruesome industrial accident would not have happened in a world in which robot behaviour was governed by the Three Laws of Robotics drawn up...

Immortality is within our grasp . . . In Fantastic Voyage, high-tech visionary Ray Kurzweil teams up with life-extension expert Terry Grossman, M.D., to consider the awesome benefits to human health and longevity promised by the leading edge of medical science--and what you can do today to take full advantage of these startling advances. Citing extensive research findings that sound as radical as the most speculative science fiction, Kurzweil and Grossman offer a program designed to slow aging and disease processes to such a degree that you should be in good health and good spirits when the more extreme...