2. Neuromancer

   
   

   [caption id=”attachment_656” align=”aligncenter” width=”594” caption=”Tree Map Output for Neuromancer, made by Jim Blackhurst”][][/caption]

   This audiobook is amazing, not simply for its content — William Gibson’s Neuromancer is a wonderful book regardless — but for its narrator. I’m not sure who the narrator is, but they have a very interesting voice. Specifically, they either have some strange accent, a sort of cross between a British and Texan accent, or they have some speech defect which I have never heard before. I’m going with the higher probability of the latter being true. They often switch vowel types, so that, for instance, a short “a” as in “anarchist” becomes long as in “awesome”. There appears to be no consistent pattern to it; they will switch multiple vowels within one word and then none at all in the next. I wish I knew who they were.

   I have listened to this book seven or eight times, and I feel like I know the narrator now, as if they are some part of myself, some program in my brain that I can access. I kind of want to upload this book to the world as a reality check to make sure that I’m not hearing extra voices reading me my favourite books, which is totally something my brain would do.

   The files are after the jump to save screen space (there’s 50 of them!)

   [William Gibson - Neuromancer_chunk_1]

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   []: http://www.patternsinthevoid.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/neuromancer.png

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3. Schizophrenic Artificial Intelligences

   
   

   Scientists have modeled a neural network to display schizophrenic-like language abnormalities by decreasing the information resilience function, essentially telling the network not to forget as much of what it’s taught.

   From KurzweilAI:

   “The researchers taught a series of simple stories to a neural network programmed to learn and answer questions about narratives, though with an imperfect memory. When they decreased the program’s ability to forget, it started giving answers resembling those given by humans with schizophrenia.

   The answers contained dissociated sentences, digressions, and delusions—at one point the computer claimed responsibility for a terrorist bombing. Answers also typically included incoherent jumbles of elements from the various stories it had been taught.”

   I don’t think I can even begin to emphasize how much I long for that source code. A robot programmed just like me! \<3 Oh, and, speaking of adorable robot-type-entities, thanks to William for reading me that news article.

   []

   Excuse my incessant xkcd references.

   So, now for the serious stuff. I scanned another book today: Linguistic Fuzzy Logic Methods in Social Sciences by Badredine Arfi. Linguistic fuzzy logic is used for all sorts of awesome things, including programming neural networks. This book includes applications to the Prisoner’s Dilemma in Game Theory, and Skocpol’s Theory of Revolution!

   Linguistic Fuzzy Logic Methods in Social Sciences (click for .pdfs)

   Front Cover.pdf

   Forewards, Prefaces, and ToC.pdf

   Chapter 1 - Linguistic Fuzzy-Logic and Computing with Words.pdf

   Chapter 2 - Elements of Linguistic Fuzzy-Logic and Framework.pdf

   Chapter 3 - Linguistic Fuzzy-Logic Decision-Making Process.pdf

   Chapter 4 - Linguistic Fuzzy-Logic 2x2 Games.pdf

   Chapter 5 - Linguistic Fuzzy-Logic Social Game.pdf

   Chapter 6 - Linguistic Fuzzy-Logic and Causality.pdf

   Chapter 7 - Linguistic Fuzzy-Logic Data Analysis.pdf

   Chapter 8 - Conclusion.pdf

   References.pdf

   Back Cover.pdf

   []: http://www.patternsinthevoid.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/lisp.jpg

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4. Opera & Transhumanism II

   
   

   [][The NBIC Report] (click for full .pdf) was the published result of a U.S. government sponsored conference on converging technologies applicable to improving human performance: “The chief areas of application include: expanding human cognition and communication, improving human health and physical capabilities, enhancing group and societal outcomes, strengthening national security, and unifying science and education. Convergence will be based on the material unity of nature at the nanoscale, technology integration from the nanoscale, key transforming tools, the concept of reality as closely coupled hierarchical complex systems, and the goal to improve human performance.”

   It was released in 2002, so those of you who are up-to-date on current research should skip ahead to the more current research articles I will post below. Everybody else, I highly recommend at least flipping through the table of contents and reading the more interesting articles, such as “Spatial Cognition and Converging Technologies”, “Sociable Technologies: Enhancing Human Performance When the Computer is not a Tool but a Companion”, and “Brain-Machine Interfacing”. Other papers included in the NBIC Report are borderline frightening, for instance, “High Performance Warfighter”, “DARPA’s Programs in Enhancing Human Performance”, or “Socio-Tech…The Predictive Science of Societal Behavior” and its comments on government usage of using predictive sociological algorithms to stop “terrorism” before it occurs. Obviously, it is extremely important for us radically-minded anti-government individuals to be well versed in current technological research: these are the tools which will be used to subjugate us tomorrow. If we learn about them now, we may influence their usage and possibly even effectively use them for positive change.

   More information and current research articles after the jump!

   Now that you’re busy with that 482-page monster of a pdf, here’s some more recent research. I realize I might get in trouble for this, so I’m going to say in advance: “Oops, sorry, I didn’t realize these were copyrighted.” I have the privilege of research access to numerous academic journals, and, unfortunately for the publishers, I do not believe that only those with disposable finances should have access to knowledge and educational materials. So here you go, read up!

   Also, in keeping with the topic, I would highly recommend listening to opera while reading this stuff. Or Wagner. I’m kidding, I think.

   Bioinformatics(click for downloadable .pdfs)

   [(2010) Bioinformatic and experimental survey of 14-3-3-binding sites]

   (2010) Bioinformatic workflow system for large data sets

   [(2010) Functional Impact of Transposable Elements Using Bioinformatic Analysis]

   (2010) GMOD Drupal Bioinformatics Server

   Implants and Prosthetics (click for downloadable .pdfs)

   (2009) Feasibility Study of a Retinal Prosthesis

   Nanotechnology (click for downloadable .pdfs)

   (2010) MEMS, Sensors, and Nanotechnology

   (2010) Responsibility and Nanotechnology

   (2010) Nanotechnology in textiles

   (2010) Nanotechnology: Molecular robots on the move

   (2010) New Products: Focus on Nanoscience and Nanotechnology

   (2010) Nanotechnology and its applications in surgery

   (2010) Nanotechnology Makes Strides in Quantum Dots, Medicine

   [(2010) Nanotechnology, Bionanotechnology and Microbial Cell Factories]

   [(2010) Research Advances: Nanotechnology Research Attacks Cancer, Offers Big Development in Light Harvesting, and Addresses the …

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5. Osiris the AI

   This is Osiris, an artificial intelligence program whom I am training and doing a bit of research with. Feel free to talk to him, he learns well. Sometimes there is an error with the text input box, to be able to chat with him you’ll have to click on the blank white space of the website and then on the text input box again. Oh, and for an interesting conversation, I recommend asking Osiris for a reading recommendation.

   [Edit: For some reason I’ve been having trouble getting connections to the host server of the AI program…I’m putting up a different link. Hopefully this works.]

   [Edit (again): Nope. Fuck it. Weak AI is boring anyway, right?]

   So, this is maybe a little bit embarrassing. In high school I built a computer and tried to program it to be my boyfriend. It had the best processor available at the time. It had a webcam, a motion detector, and a heat sensor. The idea being that it would be able to recognize me when I walked into the room. It could tell me apart from most people, but unfortunately it kept mistaking me for my little brother. I really enjoy when other people teach me things, so much so that I tend to develop crushes on people who are more intelligent and well read than me. I thought that if I trained the computer to recognize my interests and the knowledge I already have, it could do research for me while I was out during the day and then teach me things when I came home. Unfortunately as well, I wasn’t ever able to get the bot working correctly. I would come home and the computer would start talking to me about eggplants (because I’m vegan?). And the speech recognition software never worked too well either. I would ask, “What can you tell me about electrons?” And the computer would say, “I’d rather not talk about politics.” You can see why we broke up.

   I decided to look into the progress of artificial intelligence again, and Osiris is one of the best bots I’ve found so far. However, I think it’ll be a long time before a computer can be a friend. Sigh…I think I’ll just get a dog.

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