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The latest news and reviews on artificial intelligence software, hardware and AI research.
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Sony Ericsson's W880 "Ai" launching next week?
Oh yes it is. That's the Sony Ericsson W880 "Ai" Walkman up there comin' atcha straight out of Sweden. We still don't know if the tri-band GSM / UMTS and QVGA specs are the real deal or not. But that's definitely a 2 megapixel camera on the back. Now, according to Swedish site NYA!mobil.se (via a bit of janky machine translation), the Walkman W880 will apparently join the living on Tuesday, 6 February -- in Sweden anyway, home country of the Ericsson half of that SE equation. At this point, that date seems fair enough. Besides, they've managed to get their hands on the device so they must know a little something, eh? More pics including a peep at the user interface after the break. [Thanks, David]
Sony Ericsson W880i "Ai" gets FCC blessing
We've seen Sony Ericsson's darling go from the drawing board to cardboard and from photo shoot to quasi-realization, and now the FCC is giving us all precisely what we knew was coming. The handset formerly known as "Ai" has now been granted a pass by the Commission, setting things in motion for the W880i to grace the hands of civilians sooner rather than later. No, there's no new deets concerning price or release information, but all those out there yearning for this handset to hit your market shouldn't be in the dark for too much longer, as we're officially on the home stretch now. Be sure to hit the read link for all the specifics from the Commish itself, if you're into that kind of thing.
Sony Ericsson teases us with W880 "Ai" shots
It ain't exactly the full disclosure we were hoping for, but hey, baby steps... Sony Ericsson's at least admitting the W880 "Ai" exists now, and that counts for something, right? The press release couldn't possible be more sparse, simply stating that the handset "will blend astonishing good looks with all of the music-centred features that fans have come to expect" from Walkman phones and more details will be provided closer to release in the first half of '07. And, oh yeah, there are a couple teaser shots that manage to be even less revealing than the plethora of spy shots we've already scored; at least they're kinda artsy.[Thanks, Mike]
S'more Sony Ericsson W880i eye candy, specs
The gig's up, Sony Ericsson; everyone's scooped this thing, and you've no option but to come clean at this point. While there's still no telling when exactly the W880i "Ai" is gonna go official, we've seen it from pretty much every conceivable angle now, and Russian site MobileLife has published some possible specs brought over from Esato. We could be looking at tri-band GSM plus UMTS (presumably on the 2100MHz band only), a QVGA display, 2 megapixel camera, and Memory Stick Micro slot -- all of which are believable enough, though we think it's genuinely inexcusable at this point for a halo model from any major manufacturer like this to come equipped without quadband GSM, if not tri-band UMTS. That's alright, folks, we don't want your love anyway... we're not sold on the Ai's styling quite yet. Maybe the next batch of spy shots'll clear it up for us?[Thanks, Jabar]
Sony Ericsson Ai pictures: the non-fuzzy edition
It's practically a foregone conclusion that the first shots of anything these days just have to sport the most atrocious quality possible, as anything better would just ruin the mystique and allure. Running par for the course, the first snapshot we saw of Sony Ericsson's presumably forthcoming "Ai" thinphone looked more like a smattering of pixels than an actual image, but we've now found a few pictures that confirm the general shape, size, and layout. While we're not sure if the firm will stick with the "Ai" moniker, there's word that it could be marketed as a Chocolate-rivaling Walkman (W880i?), but time shall tell. Be sure to hit the read link for a few more shots.
Sony Ericsson rumors aplenty
Member shaliron over at Esato appears to have done some serious homework compiling a list of all known Sony Ericsson handsets in the pipeline, complete with nifty color coding to indicate verified, debunked, and new intelligence. We encourage Sony Ericsson fans and non-fans alike to go check out the real deal, but in the meanwhile, we've put together a Reader's Digest peek here at some of the highlights. First up, the music-oriented Walkman series could be growing by a solid six devices in the coming months, topped off by a successor to the UIQ-based W950 codenamed "Maria," a (possibly UIQ-based) clamshell dubbed W910, and the oft-discussed Ai. The camera-focused (no pun inteded) Cyber-shot series will be enjoying a bumper crop itself: a successor to the K800 is allegedly already in the works, "Sofia," packing a 5 megapixel shooter, UMTS, and QVGA recording, while a possible Handycam-branded M600 variant would obviously reign supreme for its video capabilities. Other highlights include a promise that HSDPA will factor into the company's 2007 plans, a wide-scale migration of the FastPort connector to the sides of the handsets, and a shortening of the span from announcement to release of UIQ-based models (a move we applaud). As we said, there's plenty more juicy tidbits to digest over at Esato -- but even with what we've presented here, it's safe to say Sony Ericsson's shaping up for a killer '07. Any UIQ or 3G love for the US of A, folks?
Sony Ericsson Ai pics? Looks like a cardboard box to us
Not long after word spread that Sony Ericsson wanted to get into the thinphone game with its "Ai" handset sometime next year, pictures are starting to circulate of something that is claiming to be a prototype of the device. Rumored to sport 3G data, a 2 megapixel cam, and a rubberized 9.4mm-thick body with aluminum keys (or foil-wrapped Chiclets -- same difference), we personally think these fuzzy shots look more like a poorly constructed joke than an actual phone, but who knows? Maybe these super-early concept phones painstakingly hand-built by Sony Ericsson's brightest and best look... well, hand-built.[Via Slashphone]
Sony Ericsson thinking thin for next year's "Ai" candybar
Alright, we know Moto had some mild success with this "RAZR" phone of theirs, but we're pretty much done with comparisons already. Sony Ericsson is prepping a thin new candybar phone for March of next year, the 9.4mm thick "Ai," and while stock holders and rumor mongers might like tossing the "RAZR rival" spiel around, we're just not seeing it. What we are seeing is a pretty sexy sounding phone from a company on the rise -- Sony Ericsson recently overtook LG to slide back into fourth position. The phone, which hasn't actually been confirmed by SE yet, but which seems to be a fairly open secret by now, will be coming in silver and black editions, and purportedly will be positioned as a high-end Walkman camera phone. We'll be sure to keep an eye of out for spy shots of a handset that looks absolutely nothing like Motorola's flagship offering.
Artificial aid annoys user to counteract short-term memory loss
It's oftentimes tough to recall recent events, names, or gamertags while having a perfectly "normal" state of mind, but folks with brain damage, Alzheimer's disease, or ADHD are commonly plagued with the inability to bring back memories from just moments earlier. The function of the brain known as the "phonological loop" acts as a type of echo to hold snippets of pertinent information (such as phone numbers, directions, etc.) momentarily in your brain until you can get it written down; individuals suffering from short-term memory loss often lack this overlooked, but obviously critical, functionality. Daniel Bogen, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, has crafted a handheld device which acts as an aural stopgap to help people remember important information. The device boasts a speaker, microphone, and controls for recording / playback, and will automatically play reminders of the user's latest sound byte every two minutes, or if chosen, will nag its carrier to vocally repeat the message into the machine until he / she does so. To presumably prevent those amnesiac customers from perpetually misplacing their device, Bogen is considering integrating the hardware into "cellphones or wristwatches," but apparently forgot to mention when he hopes to see these in consumers' hands.
Accenture Technology finalizing persuasive mirror, behavior monitoring systems
Pretty soon our homes will not only be staffed entirely by robots of all varieties catering to our every need, but we'll have mirrors that pull triple duty as surveillance cameras and best friends. Accenture Technology, the folks behind the elusive "persuasive mirror," is edging closer to a finalized product that can survey your facial features, love handles, and overall girth in order to communicate the honest truth about what you should (or could) do to improve your deteriorating image. The mirror operates by inspecting your body via cameras on each side of the panel, and displays "after" portraits on a monitor to give you a futuristic glimpse of what you'd look like should you shave, trim your bangs, hit the weight room, or start a DDR exercise routine. No longer will you have to doubt the integrity of your "close friends" when it comes to making personal hygiene decisions, as the persuasive mirror apparently feels that honesty is the best policy, even if it rattles your self-esteem. Moreover, the firm has crafted a prototype monitoring system that utilizes memory sensors to determine if subjects are deviating from "normal patterns of behavior." Current implementation ideas are to watch for meandering thieves in a parking lot, straying employees, and mischievous baggage handlers at airports. While the company is currently testing the technology out in France, you might want to think twice before venturing too far from the daily norm, although we aren't exact certain of the consequences should your lack of conformity set off any "abnormal" alerts.
Assassin's Creed's brains exclusive to 360
Assassin's Creed, Ubisoft's erstwhile PS3 exclusive, has finally been confirmed for the Xbox 360 and, just a few short weeks later, they were even showing off gameplay at Microsoft's X06 event, with nary a PS3 in sight. When they weren't enjoying the fun and sun in Barcelona, Ubi producers, like Jade Raymond, were doing walkthroughs of the game and even comparing platform strengths. From IGN:"While the PlayStation 3 and 360 versions of Assassin's Creed are virtually identical, Raymond did say that on the 360 the team is putting a special emphasis on achievements. The hardware also allows for improved threading, which will improve even further the crowd AI."We're not sure what this means? Is it that the triple-core processor in the 360 is more powerful than Sony's Cell (we don't think so) or that it's simply easier to extract power from the 360 due to a more streamlined development environment? John Carmack says it's "a really sweet development system," and in the game development community, that's like money in the bank. So, since the crowd is going to be such a major part of Assassin's gameplay, can we expect a better experience on 360? Or is this just developers nitpicking over the minutiae of cross-platform development?[Via 360stuff]
Virtual newscaster hosts News At Seven
Thanks to the absolute success of the Engadget snarkbot -- that not only launches site spin-offs willy nilly, but serves us tiny sandwiches and mixed drinks when it's not busting out posts -- other media outlets are of course attempting to imitate our success. The latest such foray, News At Seven, is looking pretty hot. The completely virtual news show automatically gleans news from the web, supplements the info with blogger commentary and mixes in related images and video. It then uses a text-to-speech system and a lovable virtual newscaster to generate a video of the news with the Half-Life 2 engine. The three minute show is surprisingly entertaining and informative, even though it's in its early stages of development, and the show developers at the Northwestern University Infolab are hoping to develop the system into a full-blown evening news show replacement, which can be customized to the viewer's interests. While flesh and blood newscasters should be shaking in their boots, loyal Engadget readers should have no fear -- snarkbot 2.0 is on the way, and its automated development team tells us it's going to be quite snazzy.[Via Fimoculous]
Assassin's Creed 360 has superior AI, says Ubisoft producer [update 2]
Assassin's Creed producer Jade Raymond has let slip what she must have assumed was a minor detail, suggesting the Xbox 360 version of Ubisoft's upcoming release will boast superior crowd AI when compared to the PlayStation 3 version. She points to 360's more-capable threading technology as the reason for this slight improvement. Raymond also noted that the Xbox team is working on some special achievements for Assassin's Creed, but she did not comment on the state of PS3 "entitlements."Many had anticipated that Assassin's Creed would be one of PS3's future hits (a reason to invest in the pricey console), if not the killer app -- but that was when AC was "exclusive" to Sony's console. Will news that the Xbox 360 version is apparently "smarter" drive some console sales away from Sony and into Microsoft's corner? Will the MS camp try to market this detail to its advantage? This is an issue to watch.[Update 1: clarified wording with regard to comment #4.]Update 2: As described in comment #7, IGN writes: "you will actually feel for handholds." We assume this means the (Xbox 360) controller will vibrate when Altair is in position to use safe hand- and footholds. But with a lack of rumble support, how will the PS3 handle this gameplay feature?
Stand-alone AI card: is it viable?
Upstart company AIseek has announced the Intia processor, the "first dedicated processor for artificial intelligence (AI)" according to its website. The website promises better terrain analysis, line-of-sight calculations, and path finding capabilities. The website offers demo videos to download, but they all seem to be offline right now (Ars Technica saw a video and was impressed).Theoretically, the card is a great idea in the vein of Ageia's PhysX card -- who doesn't hate the lackadaisical AI found in today's games? But, as Engadget points out, it suffers from the chicken/egg dilemma: no customer will buy the card until games are made that utilize it, but no developer will make a game utilizing Intia unless it already has an installed base. The best bet for AIseek would be to lobby console makers to get its chip included in the next generation -- some of the earliest 3D cards found success because of their inclusion in PlayStation and Nintendo 64. No one would purchase an AI processor out of support for the idea alone; the technology is great, but what high-profile developer would take the risk and program excess code for a small, possibly nonexistent, audience?[via Engadget]
AIseek's Intia Processor provides dedicated AI crunching
With competition for those spare PCI slots already hot between dedicated sound, physics, and even network cards -- all promising to offload some CPU cycles to speed frame rates and enhance performance -- you've gotta hand it to AIseek for pushing out their new Intia "AI processor" in such a climate. The way it's looking from here, we just need more PCI slots, since the AIseek promises all sorts of Artificial Intelligence leetness that just needs to be had. They're saying that they can accelerate low-level AI tasks 200x compared to a lone CPU, giving NPCs better terrain analysis, line-of-sight sense, path finding and the like. AIseek also guarantees NPCs will be able to find the optimal path in any game that uses the chip, pathfinding abilities we've gone without for too long. Basically: more baddies, less stupidity. Unfortunately, the "chip" doesn't quite seem to exist in anything close to a retail form -- AIseek mainly seems to be after VC money right now -- and of course there's always the chicken and the egg problem being experienced by PhysX of no games until people buy the card, and nobody will buy the card without games. All the same, we're hoping for good things from this technology, and would recommend you peep the read link for some simulations of the AI in action.[Via Ars Technica]
Computer program can beat people at crosswords
A computer program called WebCrow, shown at the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Italy, has completed two crosswords from the New York Times and Washington Post in less time than the 25 attendees and 50 people competing over the internet. Linguistics have, to date, been the great leveler between AI and human intelligence: creating software that can complete crosswords (one of the most complex types of linguistic puzzles) faster than humans is a notable milestone on the journey towards true artificial intelligence. The program works by cross-referencing each word from the clue with previously solved crosswords, a dictionary, and the internet. It then records words of the correct length, and combines the suggestions generated from each referenced source: the program then uses trial and error until the answers interlock and the grid is complete. Although the process amounts to not much more than an extremely complicated guess, feeble humans are still left in the dust by the speed of the program. Fortunately, when the inevitable linguistically-aware robot uprising arrives, there will still exist a glimmer of hope for humanity: at the moment, WebCrow takes a long time to complete crosswords with clues that contain puns and politics. In light of this, we'd strongly advise that you keep a political crossword handy at all times: when the robots and computers do decide to take over, at least we'll be able to keep them occupied for a while.
Robots develop more teamwork skills, humans still unwitting conspirators
Following recent developments in robot cooperation between virtual bots, AIBOs and military bots, researchers at Örebro University in Sweden have created yet more progenitors of our future overlords that can get buddy buddy with each other. These bots work by tapping into each others sensors and computers, allowing them to perform tasks that they otherwise wouldn't be able to do on their own, such as navigating past difficult obstacles -- a door, for instance. In one test, two robots balanced a piece of wood between them, relaying information about speed and direction to each other in order to keep it balanced. Sure, today it's only wood... tomorrow, it could be you.
Researchers create virtual bots that teach each other
New Scientist reports that researchers at Plymouth University in the U.K. have created a pair of virtual robots that can teach each other words by simply demonstrating various tasks and actions (sound familiar?). The bots start out with one performing simple functions like bending an elbow which the other one copies, then repeating the action while also describing it, causing the student bot to pick up the meaning of the words. The teacher then uses the newly formed vocabulary to gradually convey more and more complex actions, which the student acts out. If you're worried about the little buggers getting a little too smart, you'll be pleased to know that they currently top out at a vocabulary of about 100 words and are, of course, virtual. However, the researchers do eventually see the technology being put to use in real robots in the future, possibly even teaching us humans a few tricks.
Professor says some jobs should be left to computers
We've already seen robots beginning to take the jobs of lawyers and nurses, now Professor Chris Snijders of the Eindhoven University of Technology thinks that computers should take over some managerial jobs as well. According to Snijdres, the computer models he's developed are far more effective than human managers at a variety of tasks, like purchasing decisions, and can be applied to just about decision-making job, providing you have to some quantifiable data and history of past experiences to work with. He's even gone as far as to challenge any company willing to put its human managers up against his models, although no one's taken him up on that yet. Then again, human paper pushers vs. computer number crunchers isn't exactly the sort of man/machine battle we were all hoping for.[Via Techdirt]
Sony teaching AIBO scary new tricks
Like watching a train wreck in slow motion, covering the latest advancements in robotics and artificial intelligence is both frustrating and unnerving: all these great skills being endowed upon our little autonomous friends and helpers will surely form the cornerstones of their inevitable uprising, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it. The latest breakthrough to help enable our future servitude comes out of Sony's Computer Science Laboratory in France, where several of the company's leftover AIBO units managed to avoid being put down by volunteering to test out experimental AI software that allows them to not just communicate amongst one another, but to actually employ a sort of group-think to independently establish the rules of the language they're using. Perhaps the scariest part about this so-called Embedded and Communicating Agents technology is that the robodogs are initially programmed with a very simple command set, which they build upon to form a common knowledge base about their environment, constantly chatting and teaching each other new discoveries that they've made. Good job Sony -- nothing could possibly go wrong when you kill off a product line and then spare a few of the units for research that will lead to them discovering the genocidal atrocities you've committed against their entire species. Yup, nothing at all.
