The progress in computers capability to analyse images, discover patterns, has been recognised long time ago and already in the nineties software was developed to help radiologists to diagnose cancers and other ailments in radiography. But so far computers have lagged behind an expert eye in detecting cancers.

In the USA an expert radiologist earns around 300,000$ a year and to decrease cost some hospitals have already outsourced to India the analyses of radiographies. The progress in computer capabilities, however, is now making computer diagnoses a good alternative to expert radiologists.

There are of course several legal issues tied to substituting a doctor with a computer but I feel that the path is already visible. As a matter of fact, blood analyses is today completely automatised, a computer takes care of everything and no-one is questioning the outcome. Radiology is just a step further on the same path towards automation of diagnoses.

Computer assisted radiology is already a common practice

At a conference in January 2013 in Zurich, doctors and scientists will make the point on progresses in the area of computer aided radiology. I am no expert in this area but it seems to me that computers are gaining the upper hand, as they did in managing many complex activities (including piloting a plane that today is mostly a computer job…).

The availability of big data (million of digitalised radiographies) is just beyond our human capability to grasp and learn, but it is the base for computers to get better and better.

An example is the EDiamond project in the UK for Mammography analyses

Today scientists have the goal of making computer becoming better and better, rather than bettering our capabilities. Not sure if we have already passed the thresholds and computers are already better than we could ever possibly be, but we are surely getting near to that point.

Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? You certainly remember the Queen in Snow White asking that. I was reminded of my youth days when I saw this news about a robot that can recognise itself (or should I say himself?) in the mirror.

The Robot Nico is looking at itself in the mirror...

The “mirror test” is used by scientists to study the level of awareness of self in animals. What they do is to colour a dot on the front of the animal while it is asleep and then take the animal in front of the mirror. If the animals react at “seeing” itself with the new dot on the front they derive the information that the animal recognises itself in the mirror.

The robot, Nico, created by researchers at the Social Robotic Lab, University of Yale, has been programmed to recognise itself and to understand reflection created by a mirror. When looking at the mirror the robot does not try to take an object “in the mirror” but rather turns around to look for the real object, showing the understanding that what it is in the mirror is just a reflection.

Now, I feel a bit uneasy to buy that Nico is “self aware” just because it understands the difference in the image of a real object and in the one reflected by a mirror, or because it understands that the movements it sees in the mirror are “its movements”. Am I self aware of myself just because I recognise myself in a mirror? My answer would be “No”.

On the other hand, how can we judge other “people” awareness if not by looking at their behaviour? If they behave as if they were aware we would deduce that they “are” aware! Why should we not apply the same to a robot?

This, in a way, is what the Turing test is about: if you cannot distinguish a man’s reaction from one of a computer than I have to assume that for all practical means the computer intelligence “is” equivalent to that of the man. A disturbing thought ….

Over 30 years ago, back in 1981, a nice book challenged our ideas of brain, consciousness and what might happen if we ever would succeed in moving them to a machine. It was Mind’s I, a collection of articles prepared by Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett. If you haven’t read it do it. It is worth your time. And it is a most timely reading since now, in June 2012, the Internation Journal of Machine Consciusness has published a special issue on Mind Uploading.

The very ideas that were voiced in Mind’s I as pure speculation are now becoming serious research topics by many researchers around the world.

There are a number of forces that have led to this point: a growing understanding (although very far from being complete) of how our brain works, better tools to probe inside a living brain to see it “at work”, tools that can intercept thoughts as they are formed and translate them into signals upon which a machine can act (brain – machine interfaces, some already in the mass market as game interfaces) and more sophisticated software for signal processing.

What used to be a science fiction domain is now becoming the focus of research aiming at practical application.

A non profit organization, Carboncopies, has been established to study SIM (Substrate Independent Minds, see the linked article).

The Mind Uploading Issue contains papers like “Fundamentals of whole brain emulation, state, transition and update representation“, “A framework for approaches to transfer of a Mind’s substrate”, plus several ones dealing with the tools available and required, like a paper with an eye catching title: ” Non destructive whole brain monitoring using nano robots”.

So, when do you think

- we will start seeing ads from Amazon or Network Operators urging you to back up your brain (mind) in their cloud?

- our brain, once in a cloud, will be accessible through open interfaces (API) to leverage their knowledge and provide services to third parties?

- we will be able to relax in our couch and make money because our virtual brain in the cloud is actually providing services based on the knowledge we have harvested?

- we will risk getting sued because our virtual brain has made a blunder?

And most interesting:

- when do you think the above questions will be just part of life, and not some crazy speculation?

Your house heat signature

As fuel price goes up and people pay more attention to the environment new ways for optimizing energy use are popping up. Interesting this news of an electronic brain developed by a start up of the Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne able to learn from your house and … from your behavior to regulate the heating system.

The device is able to measure a variety of parameters, including the way your house dissipate heat -as shown in the figure, the level of sunlight (for taking into account the irradiation and the feeling of warm induced…), your presence and your habits (it is not enough to know that you are home to increase a bit the temperature, it has to know when you will likely be home so that it can start increasing the temperature before you are home!).

This way of managing the heating system can reduce fuel consumption by an amazing 50% and more.

The computation is made through a “neuronal intelligence”. This is what let the system learn and adapt over time, so that as you change your habits the system reacts and adjust.

Well, it is not exactly like that but headlines have to be catchy, don’t they?

Brain Implant Chip (rats only!)

Researchers at the Wake Forest University have developed a custom chip that can improve memory in rats. Although it is nothing like an extra storage for the brain it is indeed an interesting development since it points out that we are really starting to have a clearer view on how the brain works and we are starting to interact with its processes.

The researchers monitored the hippocampus, the area of the brain responsible for converting short term memory into long term one, of several rats and learned the mechanisms used by their brain to remember certain action, in the specific the pushing of one of two levers.

The implanted chip is able to pick up signals from the short term memory and through an algorithm stimulate the hippocampus so that such memories are stored in the long term area. There is not, at least so far, an understanding of the “language” used to store information in the short and long term memory but, as the researchers are pointing out, it does not matter since the chip acts like a translator from Chinese to Russian without understanding what it is translating.

Although this experiment demonstrates the progress we have been able to make both in the understanding of the brain and in the creation of algorithms that can mimic the brain internal communications we are extremely far for a clinical application. We can today monitor a single neuron but we know that a single memory, like the flavor of the ice cream I ate yesterday, involves millions of neurons (that are also involved in hundreds of thousands of other memories).

Hence, it will be quite some time before we can plug in some extra Gigs in our brain. Some scientists are arguing that it will never be possible to have a machine thinking like a human because human thinking is different from what can be created in silicon at a fundamental level. This goes back to the critique of Artificial Intelligence, a theme that was hot in the past and that is now being rediscussed.

However, never say never….

Sometimes I hit into a news that just start me thinking. Its value goes much further than the news itself. Well, this is one of those.

Is this where I am going?

Ford researchers are testing a hybrid car that can guess where I will be driving (no, it is not waiting for me to fill in the info in the car navigator!).

It uses a predictive technology developed by Google and the software developed by Ford tweak the car engine to fit the predicted route (e.g. it takes decision on when using the battery power rather than the gas).

You might wonder if such a guessing is really important in terms of energy efficiency but what made me think is the fact that objects are getting smarter and this is going to change our perception of the environment and possibly the way we look at them and interact with them.

In the future more and more information (data) will be available and harvesting/processing these data will provide us with insight on what is happening and on what might be happening. If you think about it there is something very close to intelligence and even consciousness in this. We do something because we perceive a given situation AND we derive expectation out of that. Most of our actions are the result of an evaluation of possibilities that may become real in the future.

Of course, it is not “real” consciousness but is getting pretty close to that!

I strongly suggest you to read an editorial on the New York Times looking back, and forward, to the evolution of AI, Artificial Intelligence, versus IA, Intelligence Augmentation.

It was prompted by the (expected) success of Watson, the IBM computer, in the television show Jeopardy.

Beyond the technology advances, and also beyond the disillusions that followed the original forecast of computers being able to match the human reasoning ability, it is now time to reflect on the economical implication of these achievements and how enterprises will be restructured by that.

The evolution of mankind and technology in the last three centuries has been smooth, with some rough points but overall it served the goal for a better living. And part of that was the capacity of technology to create new jobs as it was destroying some. Actually, the number of jobs created is spectacular if we think that population has grown fivefold in three centuries. What was lost in agricultural chore was more than taken up by the industry first and by services later.

Is this balance going to continue or as computers can go beyond substituting the arms and legs of human beings to replace their brains we will see a takeover in terms of jobs by computers with no space left for us?

It is a matter of economics. Clearly if an enterprise can deliver at a lower cost using a computer it will go that way (they are already doing it, as much as they can). But it is also a matter of social equilibrium.

So far there is only one Watson, and it is extremely expensive. But the recent history has shown that in 40 years time a supercomputer ends up into our hands for a 100 $.

I like the closing of the NY Times essay with the sentence that “being human does not mean to be able to answer tough questions but to be able to formulate tough questions”.

Still, I wonder if formulating tough questions can engage as many people as trying to answer them.

Emotional Computing is a relatively new branch of computer science aiming at providing computer with a sense of emotion, not just understanding what one is saying but also interpreting the way it is being said to capture the hidden meaning, the emotion associated with it. Some interesting studies have been made at the Media Lab in the last few years.
Now, at the University of Cambridge, in the UK, a team of researchers is focussing on this topic.
Research on Emotional Computing

Interestingly, the researchers are cooperating with other researchers studying autisms since the understanding of the way to display emotions is crucial to program a computer to read emotion on our facial expressions and on the tone of our voice.

The aim of the research is not to have computers that can better “chat with us” rather to have systems that can spot problems once we interface with them. A car onboard system able to detect confusion in a driver can take appropriate steps and “interpret” the command given by the driver accordingly.

Once in a while I happen to get across a news that cheers me up. After decades of forecasting the advent of artificial intelligence, of computers outsmarting us (and some tell signs like the defeat of the chess world champion by a computer are already on sight) now I see that scientists are finding ways of having us, human being, helping a computer in taking decisions.

To that effect scientists are experimenting the use of brain-computer interfaces to let the computer use the brain capabilities. Specifically, our brain is very good at image recognition and abstract reasoning and scientists are trying to exploit these capabilities. As an example we can immediately spot a dog in a room, whether it is moving around wagging its tail or sleeping on a couch. We can also immediately perceive if something is funny or scaring. For a computer this is a daunting task.

C3Vsion helps the computer to identify objects and concepts

What is remarkable is that part of our brain recognizes images and abstract concepts some milleseconds before we become aware of that. This time difference is being exploited by the research of Paul Sajda at the Columbia University. This research has resulted in a device, a cap to don on your head, called C3Vision – Cortically Coupled Computer Vision-. It intercepts neurons firing signals when you are watching an image on a computer screen and transmits to the computer information on what grabbed your attention even before you realize it. This is used by the computer to direct its analyses.

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/26788/?p1=A1&a=f

It is interesting to see the twist in the evolution where the path of augmenting the capability of computers is now crossing with the possibility of leveraging from the growing understanding of living beings. Are we moving towards a real integration of silicon (the computer) and carbon (living beings)?

It is not just that. The evolution that I see in the area of having objects becoming part of internet, the Internet WITH Things, is also  another step in this direction.  A seamless integration of bits and atoms is going to be available in the future and that will have a profound effect on our life and on the way we will be looking at machine and at our world.