Internet & Technology

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The pace of science and technology using the world wide web is really quickening.  Some things are just extensions of existing technology.  They appear amazing, but 100 years from now will just merge with the graph of the history of our times. Pad technology will flow into the progression, while Google will be judged as a turning point.  But, there are other breakthroughs that are really game changing too.

The tremendous community of researchers doing things changes the rules.  We wrote about one called Watson a week or so ago. 

 

Internet & Technology Elementary my dear Watson!

We now direct your attention to Eureqa.  That's right spelled with a q.

Years ago, we became acquainted with Dr. Greenberg's work at Cornell.  He was doing some very interesting things.  He would fire up computers at night to design robots that could do a certain, seemingly simple task, let's say walk across the desk. 

 In the morning his students would come in and see what the computer had designed.  Ones that seemed interesting would be fabricated.  The results were Frankensteinian.  These tiny objects would lurch and crawl across the table like mutated tiny monsters.  Sometimes they would sprout limbs that would be superfluous.

This work has continued and we had not paid much attention to it until there was a wonderful lecture at the Perimeter Institute given by the engaging Dr. Hod Lipson of Cornell University.  To see lecture (Click Here)  He is a great speaker and very amusing. 

He describes the amazing commercially available Roomba, which dusts and vacuums your house for you.  He said they work fine except if you get too many of them and then they huddle in the corner in a paranoid group.  We've seen one at work and they do wonders, but scare the cat.

The researchers at Cornell have continued and perfected their work, but they had a "Eureqa" moment.  They kept improving their programs, but suddenly thought:   What if we turn the program loose on itself to improve it and thus was born Eureqa.

A self improving genetic program was developed that was directed not at robots, but at finding formulas for data that came from complex experiments in science and engineering. 

They worked with the program itself in a way that tries to get better and better results and be self improving at the same time.  Eureqa is both an able student and a helpful researcher at the same time.

Eureqa constantly makes both suggestions for solutions and improves itself by elegant techniques.

As soon as the scientific community became aware of Eureqa, they deluged Lipson and his staff with requests for help. 

They were sent data and Lipson and his staff would work with it and send the results back to the researcher.  Eureqa would work on a normal network at the University, looking around for other Eureqa computers for help.  Once found, they are allocated some part of the problem.  A very elegant solution.

The response was so large that they finally decided that you too can have a Eureqa moment by downloading the program to your computer and using it as you see fit.

The Internet and these new elegant programs are allowing scientists to look deeper into things than ever before.  Will there be a singularity whereby the computers become self aware and like Hal try to take over.  We are some ways from that, but the pace has been accelerating magically.

Eureqa downloads and tutorials.

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Wednesday, January 26, 2011