"Confusionists and superficial intellectuals move ahead while the 'deep thinkers' descend into the darker regions of the status quo or, to express it in a different way, they remain stuck in the mud." -- Paul Feyerabend (1988)

Latest News Items

Lord of the Robots -- "The director of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab says the age of smart, mobile machines is already beginning. You just have to know where to find them—say, in oil wells." (Technology Review) (3/17)

Are You Being Served? -- "A new breed of customer service agents will be so attentive to your needs that you’ll never guess you’re talking to software." (Technology Review) (3/17)

Point, Shoot and Translate Into English -- IBM researchers have developed a prototype system which can be used to provide travelers with translations of foreign language signs and other short texts. An Ipaq with a small camera is used to capture an image of the sign which is wirelessly transered to a server which OCRs the text, translates it and sends back the translation. (3/16)

IM Gains More Virtual Agents -- Artificial Life Inc., which until now has provided intelligent agents for Web sites and electronic customer-relationship management (eCRM) applications, said it has released a new IM interface module for its SmartEngine technology, as well as for its ALife's WebGuide product line and eCRM suite. (3/16)

Linkrot considered harmful -- Linkrot has been a growing problem since the conception of the world wide web, and the problem has attracted attention from internet watchers in very high places. Some believe that the only solution will be the evolution of a 'semantic' internet which allows machines to process and 'understand' data rather than merely display it. ..." (3/15)

Latest Directory Additions

Altruistically Inclined? -- In Altruistically Inclined?: The Behavioral Sciences, Evolutionary Theory, and the Origins of Reciprocity ( Univ of Michigan Press; ISBN: 0472112244, November 2001), Alexander J. Field examines the implications of recent research in the natural sciences for two important social scientific approaches to individual behavior: the economic/rational choice approach and the sociological/anthropological. (3/17)

Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution -- In Foundations of Language : Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution (Oxford Univ Press; ISBN: 0198270127, March 2002), Brandeis linguist Ray Jackendoff proposes his own overall theory of language, drawing on and complementing research in neuroscience, psychology, and biological evolution. (3/17)

Columbia Newsblaster -- The Columbia NLP group's Newsblaster service automatically condenses multiple online news accounts about a single event into one story. (3/16)

AAMAS 2002 Deception, Fraud and Trust in Agent Societies -- The workshop will feature a special track on Privacy and Protection with MAS, July 15/16th 2002, Bologna, ITALY. (3/16)

Description Logics Handbook -- The handbook is meant to provide a thorough introduction to Description Logics, covering all aspects of the research in this field, namely: theory, implementation and applications. The book will be published by Cambridge University Press and the introductory chapter, An Introduction to Description Logics, is available on line. (3/16)

DAML 102 -- Introduction to DAML: Part II by Roxane Ouellet, Uche Ogbuji is the second part of a DAML+OIL tutorial on http://xml.com/. (3/15)

empolis Semantic Web Server -- empolis.com has released SemanticWebServer described as "Combining powerful metadata standards such as TopicMaps and RDF with scalable back-end persistence, easy deployment, a SOAP enabled metadata service and powerful UI components" (3/15)

Rod Brooks Fresh Air interview -- The NPR Fresh Air radio show interviewed Rod Brooks on Marcy 4, 2002 about his work at MIT on developing intelligent robots. (3/13)

AAMAS workshop on embodied conversational agents -- The workshop: "Embodied conversational agents - let's specify and evaluate them!" will be held at the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, Bologna on the 15th or 16th July. Submissions are due on 10 April. (3/11)

papers on agents and networking -- This page contains several Journal and Conference papers that deal with the integration of two approaches, namely the Mobile Agents and Active Networks. (3/11)

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