Jim Carnicelli's AI Blog

[ Audio Version ] Now that I've gotten back into AI research after all these years, I'm starting to reach out to find out more about other research in the AI field. I recently started reading abstracts of articles in the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR), which stretches back to 1993, in hopes of finding out more about the state of the art. When I started from the latest volumes, I was surprised by how inapproachable so many of the articles appeared to be. For starters, they appear to be written exclusively for those already deeply entrenched in the field. For another, rather than positing new theories or discoveries, they appear largely to be small extensions of concepts that have been explored for decades. So I decided to start reviewing abstracts from the beginning. What a difference that makes. I recently read an interesting article from 1995 titled An Integrated Framework for Learning and Reasoning , by C.G. Giraud-Carrier and T.R. Martinez and publi

[ Audio Version ] I suppose I should have announced that I have a new project called " Mechasphere " on my AI site. It's largely an extension of the " Physical World " project, but the software is greatly updated. I suppose it can be said to finally be an end-user-friendly application. The main reason I hadn't announced it earlier is that I didn't consider the site to be done. But I suppose it's moot, now, because I don't think I'm going to continue it as it is. I'm developing a second version of Mechasphere now from scratch in hopes of improving on a lot of the techniques and interfaces I have now as a result of the slow evolution of the product. Iterative development is a good way to clean up past mistakes.

[ Audio Version ] I just got done watching the movie Bicentennial Man . Since the movie relates profoundly to the subject of artificial intelligence, I think it most appropriate to share my thoughts in an AI blog. For those who have not seen the movie and are intending to do so, you may not wish to read the following spoiler. Bicentennial Man is essentially a Pinocchio story. A machine named "Andrew" that looks mostly human wants nothing more in life than to make humans happy. He manages to do so in so many ways, but the one thing always standing between him and the fullest measure of intimacy with people is the fact that he's not human. Little by little, he makes himself ever more human-like. By the end, he has chosen to become mortal and to die of "old age" with his wife and, as he lay dying, the "world court" finally announces its acceptance of him as a human being and therefore validate his marriage to his wife of many years. To add to the happin

[ Audio Version ] I learned of artificial neural networks sometime around 1991. The concept has intrigued me ever since, but it was not until early last week that I finally got around to making my own . I decided to write an introduction to neural nets from my novice perspective and make the sample program I wrote, along with source code, available for other people to experiment with. Click here to check it out.