Arquivo para a ‘Computer – Software’ Categoria
The fallacy of the assistant competition
14
Aug
Wizards have different roles, and in many cases can integrate and work cooperatively, is what has been happening since greater between Cortana, 
Microsoft’s assistant and Amazon’s Alexa, for the simple reason that they work in different markets and both can win with this since May there is a beta version.
Both are “behind” Google Assistant, but again it has a different function as it works with “Web databases”, Google is a search engine, it works on a larger basis, but this can mean more errors and more inductions to Google. mistake, because the “base is bigger” and we know, not always reliable.
Command like asking Alexa to open Cortana and work with her, is already available, and ask can also ask for tasks like “send an email” or open an application, which are great examples of different from Google Now, for example .
So much you can bring Alexa into the interface Cortana in Windows 10 and have the ‘abilities of Alexa, how to embed in the Cortana Alexa and use it with Windows skills which reduces typing tasks and interaction with applications .
The integration work between Microsoft and Amazon, which have already released a beta (test), but no company is still committed to say when end users will be able to enable and finally use the features of this integration remains in suspense, but you can follow live on a website if registering on a Microsoft website.
Is it possible measure the evolution of AI ?
30
Jul
Now it seems that yes, it is necessary to establish more precise tests and exactly the accuracy
of these tests, but researchers of the Computer Vision Lab, of the Federal Institute of Technology of Zurich have created a test system (benchmark) that tests the performance of neural network´s platforms used to perform common Artificial Intelligence tasks, such as answering questions, finding certain data, and other smartphone applications already used in common neural network tasks.
The idea is to measure the performance of AI systems, such as and done on today’s computers and on applications useful in smartphones, which use Artificial Intelligence.
The basic plan + and measure the performance in the systems, as already done for some answers: time, locators, flights, restaurants, etc. and growing in complexity, which will make manufacturers and application vendors make their models more sophisticated.
The application calls AI Benchmark and allows, among other things, the comparison of the speed of AI models to run on different Android smartphones, punctuating performance, already found in the Google Play app.
The device that has the dedicated AI chip dedicated to some devices (at least with Android OS 4.1 installed already will be fast enough to do these functions.
Some applications may be more complex, for example sorting images with easy recognition and the ability to segment and improve photos, indicating that this type of application can grow and evolve to more complex applications.
Basic Questions of Semantic Web and Ontologies
05
Jul
We are always faced with concepts that seem common sense and are not, is the case of many examples:
social networks (confused with the media), fractals (numbers still too generic to be used in everyday life, but important), the artificial intelligence, finally innumerable cases, being able to go to the virtual (it is not the unreal), the ontologies, etc.
These are the cases of Semantic Web and Ontologies, where all simplification leads to an error. Probably so, one of the forerunners of the Semantic Web Tim Hendler, wrote a book Semantic Web for Ontologists modeling (Allemang, Hendler, 2008).
The authors explain in Chapter 3 that when we speak of Semantic Web “of a programming language, we usually refer to the mapping of language syntax to some formalism that expresses the” meaning “of that language.
Now when we speak of ‘semantics’ of natural language, we often refer to something about what it means to understand the utterance – how to go from the structured lyrics or sounds of a language to some kind of meaning behind them.
Perhaps the most primitive part of this notion of semantics is a representation of the connection of a term in a statement to the entity in the world to which the term refers.” (Allemang, Hendler, 2008).
When we talk about things in the world, in the case of the Semantic Web we talk about Resources, as the authors say perhaps this is the most unusual thing for the word resource, and for them a definition language called RDF has been created as a Resource Description Framework, and they on the Web have a basic identification unit called URI, along with a Uniform Resource Identifier.
In the book the authors develop an advanced form of RDF called RDF Plus, which already has many users and developers, to also model ontologies using a language of their own that is OWL, the first application is called SKOS, A Simple Organization of Knowledge, which proposes the organization of concepts such as thesaurus dictionaries, taxonomies and controlled vocabularies in RDF.
Because RDF-Plus is a modeling system that provides considerable support for distributed information and federation of information, it is a model that introduces the use of ontologies in the Semantic Web in a clear and rigorous, though complex, way.
Allemang, D. Hendler, J. Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist: Effective Modeling in RDFS and OWL, Morgan Kaufmann Publishing, 2008.
AI learning with animals
03
Jul
Beavers, termites and other creatures build structures in response to environmental problems,
the idea of using these strategies in autonomous robots was made by researchers at the University of Buffalo. In the new system the robot continuously monitors and modifies its terrain to make it more mobile, similar to the beaver that reacts to the water flow building a dam, what kind of intelligence is this, Thomas Nagel would ask what it’s like to be a beaver?
The problem is not so simple and the algorithms must change when there are unpredictable and complex spaces, for this resorted to a biological phenomenon called stigmatics, which is an indirect co-ordination reacting to a problem, biologists and zoologists study this. Researchers using this new algorithm, equipping the robot with a camera, a specialized software and a robotic arm that lifts and deposits objects, placed bean bags of different sizes around the area, in 10 tests, the robot changed from 33 to 170 bags, each time creating new ramps to reach their destination.
A release of this work is on the University of Buffalo website, and the paper will be presented last week (June 25-30) at the Robots: Science and Systems conference in Pittsburgh.
Mixed and Virtual Reality
18
Jun
In an article entitled “A Taxonomy of Mixed-Reality Visuals”, Paul Milgram and Fumio Kishino, 
published in the ACM Information System Magazine, coined the term “Mixed Reality” and applied it for the first time.
The article of these researchers is fundamental because they did not dodge the question what virtual reality is, and responded simply and directly by separating the virtual concept from the real, saying that “these two terms constitute the now ubiquitous basis of the term Virtual Reality” .
In this universe the intention is not so complex, but the “basic intention is that a ‘virtual’ world be synthesized by computer to give the participant the impression that this world is not really artificial, but is ‘real’, and that the participant is “really” present within this world, “say the authors in this article.
This is what made them create the term mixed reality, when talking to different researchers, realized that “dealing with questions as to whether specific objects or scenes being displayed are real or virtual, whether images of scanned data should be considered real or virtual. if a real object should look “realistic”, while a virtual one does not need it. ”
The idea of Mixed Reality lies between Virtual Reality (RV) and Augmented Reality (RA), but the important thing about this idea is access to everyday life, helmets and virtual reality devices provoke a feeling of evil -established in many people, and mixed reality allows the easy and simple use of these concepts.
Summarizing mixed reality is a way of merging the real world with the virtual to produce new environments and forms of visualization in which physical and digital objects coexist and can interact in the real world in real time.
In 2015, Microsoft had an impact on the market by launching its HoloLens product, but what looked like a great strategy quickly fell into disrepute because the cost was too high, now companies like Acer. Samsung, Asus, Lenovo, and Dell are making their headsets, and Microsoft’s “Reality Viewer” environment gives these products popularity.
Milgram, P. and Kishino, F. IEICE Transactions on Information Systems, A taxonomy of Mixed REality Visual Displays, Vol E77-D, No.12 December 1994
Cicadas, bees and nets
28
May
It was studying the cris-cris of the cicadas in flocks, which are synchronized that Duncan Watts decided
to study nets and found the adviser Donald Strogatz and began to study nets, the phenomena of the small worlds and the six degrees of separation, Duncan’s doctoral thesis which later became an article was “The structure and dynamics of the small-world system” (1997).
The study was a success and to this day the article is one of the most read in studies of Social Networks.
But now we have a reverse case, the bees seem to gradually lose their strength and as polemizers of nature their threat of extinction begins to worry ecologists, researchers and now also researchers in Computing.
A study being developed by the University of Exeter in the UK seeks to create a “safe virtual space” for the threats faced by bees, creating a computational model of bee population dynamics in response to variables such as pesticides, parasites and loss of habitat.
The predictive tool called Bumble-BEEHAVE was developed by Grace Twiston-Davies to be a “free and easy to use system” that “takes into account the many complicated factors that interact to affect the drones.
The + result and a secure virtual space to test different management options, this model can test “six British bee species in an environment that has multiple sources of nectar and pollen.”
“Simulation allows researchers to understand the individual and interactive effects of multiple stressors that affect the survival of the bumblebee and feedback mechanisms that can protect a colony against environmental stress that can lead to collapse,” said Juliet Osborne of Exeter. the spiral colony. ”
Seeing in Portugal the amount of pollen in the air, which causes many respiratory diseases, I began to think about this serious problem that can affect the whole of nature.
Androids has dreams?
18
May
The two films of Blade Runner were inspired by the book Androids dream of electric sheep ?
by Philip K Dick is reissued in 50-year commemorative edition (1968-2018) with unpublished writings: a letter from the author to the producers of Blade Runner in which prophesies the success of the production and the last interview granted by Dick, published in 1982 in the journal The Twilight Zone Magazine at the time of the launching of the film.
The exclusive preface signed by Argentine writer and journalist Rodrigo Frésan, a lover of science fiction and Dick’s work chronicling the troubled and impressive life of the author, and a brilliant scenarios they call “post-apocalyptic” by Douglas Kellner and Steven Best, professors respectively from the University of California and the University of Texas.
Add to this a postface written by the translator of the book, Ronaldo Bressane, who compares Androides with Blade Runner and comments on aspects of the work not explored in the cinema, such as environmental concern, besides the religious and metaphysical questions present in the text.
Religious and metaphysical issues are so current that they deserve an up-to-date view of what we think is our inner universe, our values and our relationship to the natural and yet transcendental world, in the non-immediate sense.
What is nature beyond nature and what is man beyond human is neither trans-nature nor trans-human only, but to look at it properly it will be necessary to have a transdisciplinary look, not to see from the side apocalyptic and pessimistic only.
Artificial Intelligence is undoubtedly an inspiration for the next few years, thinking of it is not thinking outside the spirit and human interiority, but it’s just questioning what it is, Blade Runner 2049 did this, but success was small, we preferred Robocop.
If inner life was reduced in modernity it is not due to current and upcoming advances, but due to the fact that sometimes we attribute to humans robots attitudes and not the opposite, because the current robots still have mechanical reasoning and a limited logic.
Agent environments and an example
17
May
The example that Norvig and Russel (2010) will give to describe what an environment in 
Artificial Intelligence is happy and unhappy at the same time, happy because it has become something real 8 years after the edition of the book, a taxi as a stand-alone vehicle, and unfortunate because there are already cases of accidents with autonomous vehicles.
What is called environment is described as PEAS (Performance, Environment, Actuators and Sensors) (figure on the side), whose first stage is to design the task environment.
The agent will be different from a software (a softbot or webcrawler), but it is didactic.
The suggested environment was a stand-alone taxi, which at the time was “little beyond the capabilities of existing technology,” but on page 28 will describe a robot with this function, the fortuitous side of the example as the authors say is a ” completely open” and “there is no limit to the new combinations of circumstance that may arise”. (Norvig, Russel, 2010: 40)
What performance measures will be desired: arrive at the correct destination, minimize the correct destination time, fuel consumption and wear, traffic violations, disturbances and safety to passengers and other drivers, and if there are conflicts make decisions (this is one of the reasons for the accident to protect the passengers caused a hit by a passer-by).
The next step is to map an autonomous car environment, it must deal with a variety of roads, from rural lanes and urban lanes to 3, 4 and up to 5 lanes, with lanes, other vehicles, road works, police cars, puddles, and potholes, and should interact with potential and actual passengers.
Actuators for an automated taxi include those available to a human driver: control over the engine through the throttle and control over steering and braking. some optional choices of communication with other vehicles with arrows and even horn, and with passengers who will need voice synthesizers.
The basic taxi sensors will include one or more controllable video cameras so they can see the road; you can increase them with infrared or sonar sensors to detect distances to other cars and obstacles.
The problems of safety and conviviality with human drivers is evident, but thanks to this example of success made in 2010, today we have maps, GPS, road signs, and many others advances.
NORVIG, P.; RUSSEL, P. (2010) Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach 3nd ed., Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Possible and impossible changes
11
May
At other times, the proportions, the changes that occurred in previous stages, also caused a strong
impression on the people, but the most influential disruptive technologies, glasses and telescopes, allowed the first printed books to be read, and thanks to the telescopes, the Copernican revolution took place.
The change of paradigms that happens causes astonishment, but what needs to be done in fact, what is possible in a more distant reality and what can happen in the next years, I already indicated in some post, The “Physics of the impossible”, by Michio Kaku (2008).
The author quotes Einstein’s phrase at the beginning of this book: “If an idea does not seem absurd at first, then it will not have any future,” it takes a strong and shocking thought like this to understand that if we should bet on innovation, is the historical moment of this, you must understand that most disruptive things will initially be absurd.
Speaking of more distant things, at the beginning of the microcomputers, it was stated that they would not be useful to many people, the mouse was clumsy and “little anatomical” when it appeared, and there is still a lot of distrust in “artificial intelligence”, not only between laypeople on the subject, among scholars as well, others idealize an “electronic brain”, but neither Sophia (the first robot to have citizenship) and Alexa Amazon really has “intelligence.”
What has to be stopped, and this in Copernicus’s time was worth for the theocentric vision, today there is also an anti-technology sociopathy that borders on fundamentalism, if there are injustices and inequalities they must be combated on the plane in which they are in the social and political.
Roland Barthes said that every denial of language “is a death”, with the adoption of technology by millions of people this death becomes a conflict, first between generations, and then between different conceptions of development and education.
To the scholars I make the recommendation of Heidegger, affirmed on the radio and the television that only half a dozen people understood the process and of course with the financial power can control the publishings of these medias, but also one can answer in the religious field.
The reading of the evangelist Mark, Mc 16,17-18 “The signs that will accompany those who believe will be these: they will cast out demons in my name, they will speak new tongues; If they take snakes or drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; when they lay their hands on the sick, they shall be healed. ”
This needs to be updated for the new interpretations of this bible text.
KAKU, M. (2008) The Physics of the Impossible: a scientific exploration of the world of fasers, force fields, teleportation, and time travel. NY: Doubleday.
Trends in Artificial Intelligence
10
May
By the late 1980s the promises and challenges of artificial intelligence seemed to crumble Hans Moracev’s 
phrase: “It is easy to make computers display adult-level performance on intelligence tests or play checkers, and it is difficult or impossible to give them the one-year-old’s abilities when it comes to perception and mobility, “in his 1988 book” MInd Children. ”
Also one of the greatest precursors of AI (Artificial Intelligence) Marvin Minsky and co-founder of the Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence, declared in the late 90s: “The history of AI is funny, because the first real deeds were beautiful things, a machine that made demonstrations in logic and did well in the course of calculation. But then, trying to make machines capable of answering questions about simple historical, machine … 1st. year of basic education. Today there is no machine that can achieve this. “(KAKU, 2001, p 131)
Minsky, along with another AI forerunner: Seymor Papert, came to glimpse a theory of The Society of Mind, which sought to explain how what we call intelligence could be a product of the interaction of non-intelligent parts, but the path of AI would be the other, both died in the year 2016 seeing the turn of the AI, without seeing the “society of the mind” emerge.
Thanks to a demand from the nascent Web whose data lacked “meaning,” AI’s work will join the efforts of Web designers to develop the so-called Semantic Web.
There were already devices softbots, or simply bots, software robots that navigated the raw data looking for “to capture some information,” in practice were scripts written for the Web or the Internet, which could now have a nobler function than stealing data.
The idea of intelligent agents has been revived, coming from fragments of code, it has a different function on the Web, that of tracking semi-structured data, storing them in differentiated databases, which are no longer Structured Query Language (SQL) but look for questions within the questions and answers that are made on the Web, then these banks are called No-SQL, and they will also serve as a basis for Big-Data.
The emerging challenge now is to build taxonomies and ontologies with this scattered, semi-structured Web information that is not always responding to a well-crafted questionnaire or logical reasoning within a clear formal construction.
In this context the linked data emerged, the idea of linking data of the resources in the Web, investigating them within the URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) that are the records and location of data in the Web.
The disturbing scenario in the late 1990s had a semantic turn in the 2000’s.
KAKU, M. (2008) The Physics of the Impossible: a scientific exploration of the world of fasers, force fields, teleportation, and time travel. NY: Doubleday.
