How an early experiment and subsequent reaction caused a chill on AI projects. Scientists are troubled over the ethical dilemmas artificial intelligence presents. More information about de Garis' machine, artilects, and Robokeneko. Jester A robot that tells you jokes based on your humor ratings. Two renowned AI experts share their breakthroughs and their fears.
Spontaneous gifts appear.
Across the ocean in Kyoto, Japan, a bot of a very different variety nears completion. CAM, short for Cellular Automata, describes the automatic behavior of the brain's neuron-like structures. Built around 64,000 Xilinx XC6264 chips, the brain will tell the robotic kitten how to jump, how to interpret 3-D objects around it, and whatever else de Garis and his international team, including 100 volunteers in Holland developing a video library of kitten antics, program the cat to do. No ordinary chip, the XC6264 is a type of field programmable gate array, each supporting thousands of gated circuits, or 1,000 artificial neurons. This type of programmable hardware is popular with engineers because they can program a circuit to behave anyway they please, says de Garis.