Something that I realized this year is that I like pondering the future -- looking way out and imagining how the world will be different, what things people will be doing, etc. This probably stems from my interest in technology.
Projector cell phonesJanuary 12, 2009
Apparently the future is
here, because Samsung is selling cell phones with projectors in them.
I'm a stunned, actually. I thought these were a few years off, something you'd see in, say, 2012, but here they are at the beginning of 2009. Cool! Convergence blows my mind some days.
AI and search enginesJuly 26, 2008
One of the most sensible uses of an AI that can read information, update a data structure to reflect that information, and then answer questions about that information, is a search engine. In fact, that's exactly what a search engine is, the difference being that today the internal representation that search engines use doesn't contain much meaning.
What this brings to mind is that the Internet is an important aspect of AI: It serves as the raw knowledge base for an AI to read to learn about the world. Now, this has some serious limitations given that anyone can write whatever they want on the 'Net, but overall I think the Internet will serve as one of the primary means for AI's learning about the world.
Let's fast forward into the future and ask Google some questions that will test its understanding of the world:
Search: What is Bill Clinton's birthday?
Answer: August 19, 1946
Search: What year did World War II end?
Answer: 1945
Search: What month comes after November?
Answer: December
Search: How many feet are there in a yard?
Answer: 3
Search: What day of the week was it when man first landed on the moon?
Answer: ...
Prediction: The world goes solarJune 20, 2008
Once fossil fuels are dried up, where will we get our energy from?
More and more I'm convinced it will be directly from the sun in the form of solar power, with homes and businesses sporting solar panels as well as regional power production.
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