Week7_ Due_Mon_08-20_Research and discuss artificial intelligence or robotics innovations

A.I. and Robotics Innovation



In May 1997, Garry Kasparov, the world’s chess champion was defeated by IBM’s super-computer “Deep Blue”. Kasparov admitted that what he faced was a different kind of intelligence. It was an extra-ordinary form of artificial intelligence (AI) capable of calculating 200 million moves per second, but is unable to adjust with new situations. It could not learn from its errors and had no way of recognizing the weak points of its opponent; it could only follow what its program dictates. In contrast to IBM’s supercomputer, we humans are able to handle unexpected situations based on our experience and intuition.


Logical Artificial Intelligence: This type of reasoning is about what a program knows regarding the world in general, the facts of a particular situation in which it must act, and the objectives it must accomplish. (Grosz & Davis) Such concepts are held within the program in the form of mathematical logical language. Though, the practicality of current expert systems depends on the system’s user demonstrating a certain level of common-sense.


Perception: The speed with which we humans extract information from images makes vision the preferred perceptual modality for most people in the majority of tasks, thus implying that computers should be capable of both understanding and synthesizing images. One of the goals of computer-vision research is image understanding and classification. (Doyle & Dean) These include facial recognition, object recognition and reconstruction, hand tracking and gesture recognition, and document analysis and recognition. Though, while today’s computer-vision techniques are capable of impressive achievement under controlled conditions, such techniques usually prove to be unstable under real-world conditions. (Grosz & Davis)


Human-Computer Interaction: This field of artificial intelligence came from the idea that people use a number of different media to communicate, including: languages, gestures, sounds, and drawings. (Grosz & Davis) Particularly important is knowledge representation due to its strong effect on the prospects for a computer or person to arrive at conclusions and make inferences from available information. (Stottler Henke) As a result, work in this area hopes to discover expressive, efficient, and appropriate methods for representing information regarding all aspects of the real world.


The area of robotics is closely associated to that of artificial intelligence, though definitional issues are many. Despite developments in the field, current AI systems are fundamentally incapable of demonstrating intelligence as we know it. Existing AI is only as smart as the one who wrote the program for it. Thus, researchers nowadays strongly believe that the goal of imitating the human ability to solve problems and achieve goals in the real world is neither likely nor desirable since a lengthy series of breakthroughs is required to accomplish it.



REFERENCES


Doyle, Jon and Thomas Dean. Strategic Directions in Artificial Intelligence. Association for Computing Machinery, Inc., 1996. Accessed online, August 2007 at: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/medg/ftp/doyle/sdai96.html

Grosz, Barbara and Randall Davis. Report to ARPA on 21st Century Intelligent Systems. American Association for Artificial Intelligence, 1994. Available online at: http://www.aaai.org/Library/Magazine/Vol15/aimag15-03-001.php

Stottler Henke. Glossary of AI Terms. Stottler Henke Associates, Inc., 2002. Accessed online, August 2007 at: http://www.stottlerhenke.com/ai_general/glossary.htm

Trend Micro. The Hidden Intelligence: Innovation through Intuition. Accessed online, August 2007 at: http://www.go-red.com/pdf/trend_report_intuition.pdf

Week 6_DueMon_08-13_ Select a discipline and forecast a prediction of IT outsourcing

IT Discipline and Forecast a prediction


Global Offshore outsοurcing services are forecast to grοw at more than 20% annually over the next several years pushing the volume of buѕiness to $15 billion by 2007. А study recently developed by IDC shows that in 2004 IT Outsοurcing revenues for Argentina were U$S 143 million. This figure grew by 26.48% in 2005 and is forecast to grοw а further 17.5% this year.

Furthermore this growth rate is also forecast to continue on past 2010. (Grossman & Helpman 2002) . Multisourcing discipline is vital for successful outsοurcing strategies. Multisourcing is not simply outsοurcing improved — it is an innovative discipline that takes organizations beyond "quick fix" coѕt cutting to enable capability building, global expansion, increased agility and profitability, and competitive advantage.


This growth trend in outsοurcing is mostly fuelled by the promise of significant coѕt reductions; however, back in 2003, McAulay et al interviewed IT managers who reported that enhancing competitiveness, creating strategic advantage, improving service quality to customers, and increasing access to expertise were most important benefits. Today there is а greater consensus that besides lower costs, offshore outsοurcing can provide great benefits in expertise, availability, and responsiveness to buѕiness needs.


With all gains there are also significant dangers and with outsοurcing information systems those range from not meeting the expected coѕt savings in the short term even though longer term process improvements may further increase savings, to data security through the possible lack of process discipline, loss of buѕiness knowledge, culture adjustments, and vendor inexperience resulting in inability to deliver. (Kirkegaard 2004)


It has been predicted that outsοurcing’s basic IT functions, such as systems design and building projects will increase in the future. Most highly recognized research firms such as IDC, Forrester, Gartner, and McKinsey, agree with their predictions that IT offshore outsοurcing will grοw steadily over the next five to 10 years. The primary drivers of this growth being the search by companies for lower costs, higher technical expertise, focus on core buѕiness and faster completion times.


References

Gene Grossman and Elhanen Helpman, "Outsourcing in a Global Economy," NBER Working Paper No. w8728, January 2002
Jacob F. Kirkegaard, “Outsourcing – Stains on the White Collar?” Institute for International Economics working paper, January 2004

Week3 Identify your favorit Web 2.0 tools

My favorite thing about this is In Learning Center that first caught into my
attention was Databases as moving along, and I found this article talking about
Open Source Database Technologies very helpful.

When I read about this article, I wondered why a software developer or
programmer haven’t been talking more seriously and deeply about the
experiential aspects of various ways that we could develop specific CODE
with SQL to prevent Hacker to use the SQL injection script to access to other
network.