Thinking and other Intelligent programs

Thinking and Other Intelligent programs

Introduction For over 50 years, the concept of robots and thinking machines has spawned continuous dialog on their potential to simulate human abilities. At various times, researchers created different criteria to evaluate the edge, where functionality of the software applications or robots could be similar to something belonging to human's behavior. As the technology evolved and became more sophisticated, so did the evaluation criteria. A.M. Turing in 1950 suggested a test for determining whether a computer were to be regarded as "intelligent". The Loebner prize contest is annual attempt to find the world's most "human-seeming" application or machine. The examples written below must have convinced everyone, that the possibility for realization of the main human functions such as abilities to think, create something, speak, see, hear, etc. have been mostly proved separately for each function, and partly in common for humanoid robots. Obviously, mankind is close to the solution of the complex problem which is the creation of a device that can be confused functionally with humans. Of course, it will not have what we call a soul. It is not difficult to predict, that this problem will be solved fully in this century.

There are many applications not covered, and some vendors could fit in multiple categories, but due to space limitations, there are only included in one.

Intelligent Software (Artificial Intelligence applications) covers the following field of knowledge (computer science): natural language input/output systems, perceptive systems, expert systems, creative programs, and so on. Here are the some Artificial Intelligence applications:

Natural language input/output systems are developed in the following ways: speech recognition, understanding natural words, automated translation from one language to others, and generation of speech. In the last decade, computer speech recognition reached a practical level for many purposes. Many companies have replaced former communication systems by the systems using speech recognition. Today, Nuance (ScanSoft) maintains the industry's most extensive portfolio of speech technologies, applications and services, comprising speech recognition, text-to-speech, dictation, auto-attendants, and so on.

Perceptive (Machine vision) systems are computer vision (optical, infrared and so on) systems including powerful tools for image pre-processing, measurement, analysis, and data transfer operations. These systems are primarily used for high-tech manufacturing applications such as: electronics, semiconductors, precision mechanical components and assemblies, aeronautics & aerospace, automotive, etc. Samples of this technology include:

Cognex is the leading supplier of machine vision systems and components that gauge, guide, inspect, and identify products on the fastest production lines. These systems help manufacturers worldwide to automate the production of a wide range of products.
Machine vision system manufacturer Sightech produces the self-learning PC- Eyebot, which assists companies inspect their products and manufacturing processes for visual defects. Eyebot improves quality control, increases throughput, augments yield, and raises customer satisfaction.
Optical Recognition Objectives Ltd (Russia) offers the outstanding technology GABITUS for face recognition. The GABITUS uses three fundamental methods: artificial neural networks, optimization techniques and combinatorial calculations. Later recognition algorithm has been included in new information system for person identification CRIMMET.

Expert systems: Expert systems are a category of applications of Artificial Intelligence which focuses on the development of computer systems to simulate the processes of knowledge acquisition, problem solving, etc. See the page: AI and Expert systems

Intelligent agents and bots: Intelligent agent is the software program which accomplishes some task automatically and autonomously once triggered. The term "bot" originates from the classification of intelligent agents as "knowledge robots", which subsequently got shortened to just "knowbots" or even "bots". Bots or Intelligent agents allow us, for example, to search for information; answer specific questions; inform customers about future events; provide custom news; check and sort resumes, etc.

The company Bot Knowledge collected information concerning many different types of bots, such as General and Specific search bots, Knowledge Management bots, News bots, Chatter bots, etc. Many agents are free, paid for either by advertising or venture capital.
The site Robotstxt.org is the main source of information about the Web robots

Creative software: This type of applications is capable of generating patterns or new knowledge as ideas derived from its absorbed knowledge or heuristics. Examples include:

Imagination Engines, Inc. builds special neural network cascades capable of learning from their own mistakes and generating a new knowledge. This company developed such products as PatternMaster(an extremely fast and versatile neural network trainer capable of dealing with extremely large problems on ordinary desktop or laptop PCs), Agenda (an artificial neural network based tool that allows users to rate isolated records within a database according to complex criteria, ClassArt (allows the user to automatically cluster database entries into self-similar families with the utmost speed and efficiency over other sorting/classification algorithms), Privateer (a fast, versatile neural network trainer block for the Simulink package from Mathworks, capable of modeling very complex systems built from Simulink blocks and replacing them with a smaller memory footprint simulations), Tailored Robotic Brains, and so on.
Artificial Development Inc. develops the technology CCortex - a complete emulation of the human cortex and peripheral systems. This technology performs a number of tasks previously unavailable to traditional computing by recreating the functionality of cortical regions of brain that are most likely responsible for processing higher-level functions of human intelligence. Artificial Development, Inc. today announced that it has completed assembly of the first functional portion of a prototype of CCortex, a 20-billion neuron emulation of the human cortex, which it will use to build the next-generation of artificial intelligence system.

Virtual Humans are just now on the verge of being truly useful in the roles of presenters, teachers, translators, and so on. Virtual people are like humans, with a huge difference: they can do superhuman things, like never forgetting anything and being able to immediately access the databases to find answers to questions, etc. Here are the following examples:

Main goal of Zabaware, Inc is to give any computer user the power of thought. Developed by Zabaware, Ultra Hal Assistant is digital secretary and companion. He (or she) can remember and remind you of appointment; can manage an address book, a phone book, and even dial a phone by order; can also launch and run programs and recent documents on command, and so on. Hal does all of this from natural language by voice. Can hold conversation and chat about anything at all.

Interactive Drama Inc. develops a Virtual Conversations Information system that allows users to conduct the illusion of a conversation with virtual human characters in real life situations. Seated face to face before a person's image on the screen , the user speaks and the person responds. Now company offers two products: ESMO Therapy and Brest Health Information. A Virtual Conversations language program allows also to intensify learning of the Arabic language.