Fifty Years of AI

This year AAAI is celebrating 50 years of AI.

AI has seen its premature glory days, an era of feeling lost, and now is again on upswing with lots of pragmatic research underway.

AAAI hosts various conferences of which annual AAAI conference is among the best, and the pragmatic nature of AI is most visible in IAAI conference. AAAI also holds fall and spring symposiums which are lively events to participate in.

AI courses have seen a change over the last five years, and this modern approach is best expounded by this course offered at University of Waterloo.

I am personally looking forward to IJCAI-2007@Hyderabad.India

Photo2search and other opportunities

Note the following project from MSR photo2search.

We ain't seen anything in the context how mobile phones and technology will change our lives.

With more proactive 'agents' in mobiles with appropriate learning and suitable configuration, along with corresponding value propositions very many opportunities are hidden.

First time, I heard about these possibilities (not all of them have led to commercial solutions, as yet) was from papers by Pattie Maes, software agents group between 1996-1998.

It has been about 10 years since she and others have proposed these ideas, now the time is ripe to take them into commercial products.

More than the commercial viability it is the social acceptance that is going to be crucial and challenging.

Create your own comic strip!

I got this from JonStar, a site where you can create your own comic strip.

And this is the strip I created in about five minutes .

Have Fun!!

Nanocar

Prof. James Tour /*who is Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Computer Science and Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science (what a combination) */ and his group have built World's first single molecule car.

Michael Crichton in his novel Prey writes about nano-factories that produce nano-assembly units to mass produce other nano-agents. It seems that the nano-technology world is not only moving very fast but will totally revolutionize the way we live. India still has lot of catching up to do in the world of nano-technologies.

Sidebar — In 1987 movie Inner Space Dennis Quaid shrinks a huge motorized vehicle to a microscopic size to get injected into human body. Well now, with nano-technologies we will have technology to build such vehicles molecule by molecule.

Civil Disobedience – a new begining

Check civil disobedience to know about it and its impact towards gaining Indian Independence. This movement in my opinion is to collectively stand for the truth and against any kind of injustice.

Arundhati Roy has been quite caustic about the diminishing individual freedom to fight against injustice. Any kind of civil disobedience is put under the scanner of being 'trouble shooter' and people are put in jail. Check out her excellent book An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire.

This article was motivated by the long struggle of Medha Patkar towards the rights of the farmers and underprivileged. It is depressing to see the lack of Govermental Action on the issue. An interesting piece of news today was that Amir Khan and part of Rang De Basanti gang visited her.

Just few weeks back there was an outcry over Jessica Lal murder case, and it took more than few weeks before some semblance of action was taken. It is not clear whether justice will be done.

Will this start "a begining of new proactive nature from prominent citizens" to address major issues of injustice in India? Only time will tell. So, even though I was troubled by lack of freedom for individuals to fight — may be there is a glimmer of hope that civil disobedience can still work.

Let us just hope for that.