Watson Beyond Jeopardy

John Markoff reports on the follow-up for IBM after the Watson win in a New York Times article titled, Computer Wins on ‘Jeopardy!’: Trivial, It’s Not.

For I.B.M., the showdown was not merely a well-publicized stunt and a $1 million prize, but proof that the company has taken a big step toward a world in which intelligent machines will understand and respond to humans, and perhaps inevitably, replace some of them.

Watson, specifically, is a “question answering machine” of a type that artificial intelligence researchers have struggled with for decades — a computer akin to the one on “Star Trek” that can understand questions posed in natural language and answer them.

Watson showed itself to be imperfect, but researchers at I.B.M. and other companies are already developing uses for Watson’s technologies that could have a significant impact on the way doctors practice and consumers buy products.

2000+ Ground Robots in Afghanistan

For every 50 US soldiers in Afghanistan, we have about 1 robot, but those numbers are getting better every year. From 2009 to 2010, 1400 terrestrial bots were sent to Afghanistan according to Lt. Col. Dave Thompson who spoke at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International program review earlier this month. The Marine Corps Colonel stated that about one third of these robots weren’t used for the explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) missions that such ground bots have become famous for. Instead, soldiers are increasingly employing these systems for reconnaissance and surveillance.

Read the full article for Singularity Hub.

BBC News on Japanese robot acceptance

BBC News has a story today on the limited success of humanoid robots in Japanese nursing homes. They report that there's greater acceptance of the emotion-engaging Paro, although it's not a commercial success. And then there are the high-tech toilet seats, appearing beneath you soon:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12347219

When, if ever, will a robot deserve “human” rights?

The IEET asked its readers when robots would deserve rights. Interestingly, 37% of the respondents said never. That might be considered a low number for the population at large, but those who follow the IEET tend to be techno-progressive. However, the finding was also distorted in that 22% of the respondents were dissatisfied with the options given and added their own reason. Another 10% selected the I'm not sure option. The full poll findings can be found here.

Ethical and Legal Aspects of Unmanned Systems. Interviews

The series of interviews by Gerhard Dabringer are now available in a single volume titled, Ethica Themen: Ethical and Legal Aspects of Unmanned Systems. Interviews. Contributors include:

John Canning, Gerhard Dabringer: Ethical Challenges of Unmanned Systems
Colin Allen: Morality and Artificial Intelligence
George Bekey: Robots and Ethic
Noel Sharkey: Moral and Legal Aspects of Military Robots
Armin Krishnan: Ethical and Legal Challenges
Peter W. Singer: The Future of War
Robert Sparrow: The Ethical Challenges of Military Robots
Peter Asaro: Military Robots and Just War Theory
Jürgen Altmann: Uninhabited Systems and Arms Control
Gianmarco Veruggio, Fiorella Operto: Ethical and societal guidelines for Robotics
Ronald C. Arkin: Governing Lethal Behaviour
John P. Sullins: Aspects of Telerobotic Systems
Roger F. Gay: A Developer’s Perspective


The volume is available as a PDF download.


To obtain a complimentary paper copy write to the:

Institut für Religion und Frieden
Fasangartengasse 101, Objekt VII
1130 Vienna
Austria (Europe)

For delivery to the U.S. or other overseas destinations, please allow USD 8 for postage and handling.

For delivery within Europe , please allow EUR 6 for postage and handling.

23 Civilian Killed by Drones Attributed to Data Overload

In New Military, Data Overload Can Be Deadly.

When military investigators looked into an attack by American helicopters last February that left 23 Afghan civilians dead, they found that the operator of a Predator drone had failed to pass along crucial information about the makeup of a gathering crowd of villagers.

But Air Force and Army officials now say there was also an underlying cause for that mistake: information overload.

At an Air Force base in Nevada, the drone operator and his team struggled to work out what was happening in the village, where a convoy was forming. They had to monitor the drone’s video feeds while participating in dozens of instant-message and radio exchanges with intelligence analysts and troops on the ground.

There were solid reports that the group included children, but the team did not adequately focus on them amid the swirl of data — much like a cubicle worker who loses track of an important e-mail under the mounting pile. The team was under intense pressure to protect American forces nearby, and in the end it determined, incorrectly, that the villagers’ convoy posed an imminent threat, resulting in one of the worst losses of civilian lives in the war in Afghanistan.

Note that the the monitoring station of video from Afghanistan at Langley Air Force Base pictured on the right has been nicknamed "Death TV."

Joint Israeli/US Development of Stuxnet?

Building on an article in the New York Times titled,Israeli Test on Worm Called Crucial in Iran Nuclear Delay, other news services are also claiming that the Stuxnet virus was , as Stratfor Global Intelligence writes, an "unprecedented and extensive operational cooperation among U.S. and Israeli intelligence services to develop and release the cyberweapon."

The New York Times report leaves questions about how intelligence was gathered in order to target that specific number of centrifuges. It also does not detail how the worm gained access to the Natanz facility. While the worm was designed to spread on its own, the United States or Israel most likely had agents with access to Natanz or access to the computers of scientists who might unknowingly spread the worm on flash drives. This would guarantee its infiltration into the Iranian systems and, hopefully for the developers, its success. In all probability, an operational asset with access to the Iranian facilities was used to help introduce the Stuxnet worm into the Iranian computer systems. Many secrets remain about how the United States and Israel orchestrated this attack, the first targeted weapon spread on computer networks in history.

What it does show is unprecedented cooperation among U.S. and Israeli intelligence and nuclear agencies to wage clandestine sabotage operations against Iran. Rumors of an agreement between the countries have been swirling since Washington denied permission for a conventional Israeli attack in 2008. On Dec. 30, 2010, French newspaper Le Canard Enchaine reported that U.S. and British intelligence services agreed to cooperate with Mossad in a clandestine program if the Israelis promised not to launch a military strike on Iran.