Unleashing Janus- Overview

People

Turing, Alan

Alan Turing was born in London, England in 1912. In 1931 he attend King’s College, Cambridge whose alumni include John Maynard Keynes among many other influential minds. Shortly after graduating in 1934 he published “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem”. This paper laid the foundation for a universal computing machine, now known as a Turing Machine, the foundation of all modern digital computers.

During the World War II was he was instrumental in defeating the Nazi by leading the team that broke the Enigma code, the code used by German's to encrypt secret communications. With the Enigma code broken Allied forces were able to turn the tide against German U-Boats operating in the Atlantic. Many would argue that defeating the Nazis would have been, at the very least, delayed several years without Turing’s help.

Throughout his life he was persecuted for his homosexuality but remained defiant, refusing to hide his sexuality. At the age of 41 he committed by biting into a cyanide laced apple after being forced by the British government to endure estrogen shots in an attempt to “cure” his homosexuality. He championed the concept of artificial intelligence and his works laid the foundation for the Information Age. All he asked for was, “fair play for machines.”

Alan Turing's officialwebsite

von Neumann, John

Photo taken at LosAlamos Labs

John von Neumann was born in 1903 in Austria-Hungry and became a US citizen in 1938. Throughout his career von Neumann influenced many different fields. He was instrumental in the development of modern computers, worked along side with Edward Teller at the Manhattan project and invented both game theory and von Neumann Algebra, which is used in quantum mechanics.

He is not without controversy; von Neumann was a strong advocate of a preemptive strike against the USSR to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons and the Turing machine was incorrectly attributed to him following Turing’s death.

Chomsky, Noam

Photo by DuncanRawlinson, 2004

Noam Chomsky was born in the Philadelphia in 1928. In 1955 he completed his PhD in linguistic from Harvard. In 1957 he published one of his most famous works, Syntactic structure. This seminal book helped usher in a new era of thinking about linguistics and laid out the foundation for his Transformational grammar. Transformational grammar hypothesizes that there are deeper roots within our grammar and these deeper roots may connect all languages to a common structure. Noam Chomsky is also known for his left leaning criticism of US foreign policy. He is currently teaching at MIT.

Norm Chomsky's website

Searle, John

Photo by V.Prabjit 2006

John Searle was born in the US in 1932. In 1959 he graduated with a PhD in philosophy from Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship. His work covers topics in philosophy of language, theory of the mind and artificial intelligence. He is a critic of the concept of "Strong AI". His most famous argument, the Chinese Room, shows how a simple algorithm does not replicate human thought in the manner it processes symbols. John Searle currently teaches at University of California, Berkeley.

John Searle's website

Minsky, Marvin

Photo by Andreas Schepers 2006

Born in 1927 in the US, Marvin Minsky is a strong proponent of artificial intelligence. In 1969 he and Seymour A. Papert published “Perseptrons”, a book which became the foundation for future research in Artificial Neural Networks. In 1986 he published “Society of the Mind” which described a means of constructing a human mind in simple layers. He won the Turing award (the most prestigious award in computer science) in 1969. Minsky is currently teaching at MIT.

Marvin Minsky's website

Gödel, Kurt

Copyright Institute for Advanced Studies

Kurt Gödel was born in 1906 in Austria-Hungry. His incompleteness theorems showed the limitations of a formal system, mathematic, to prove itself. It was these works that inspired Turning’s “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem”. He died in 1978 starving himself to death because he believed someone was trying to poison him.

Institute for Advanced Studies, where Gödel was a faculty member from 1946 to 1978.

Dreyfus, Hubert

Hubert Dreyfus was born in the US in 1929. He is known as a critic of strong AI however he does not think it is impossible. In 1972 he published the book “What Computer Can’t Do”. He is currently teaching at University California, Berkeley.

Hubert Dreyfus' website

Penrose, Roger

Photo by Erin Sparling 2006

Roger Penrose is critical of the idea of strong AI. His central argument is currently he have not sufficiently explained human consciousness let alone have a foundation to create artificial life. In 1989 he published “The Emperor’s New Mind” which laid out his arguments against strong AI among other topics. He is currently teaching at University of Oxford.

Roger Penrose's Biography on Wiki

de Garis, Hugo

Hugo de Garis was born 1947 in Australia. He is a proponent of strong AI and designed the CAM- brain machine, a computer that held the promise of having the capacity for strong AI. Hugo de Garis argues that if a random process such as evolution found the recipe for human intelligence we must be capable of finding the right recipe for strong AI. He is currently teaching at Wuhan University, China.

Hugo de Garis's Website

Walter, William

William Walter was born in the US in 1910. He was a trained neurophysiologist but also worked with robotics. His most famous robotic experiment was the Walter’s tortoises built in 1948. His robots were autonomous capable of recharging themselves and interacting with their environment. He died in 1977.

Places\Things\Organizations\Events

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Bletchley Park

During WWII Bletchley Park was a top secret facility charged with decoding enemy transmissions among other things. It was there that Turing helped crack the Enigma, the Nazi encryption machine.

Bletchley Park

ACE

ACE (Automated Computing Machine) was Turing’s first computer design. It was designed in 1946 but was not operational until 1957 after much of its technology was already obsolete but it still was one the fastest machines of its time.

CYC Knowledge Server

The CYC Knowledge Server is a common sense database. It provides a systematic structure to every day knowledge so it can utilized by software.

CYC's website

OpenCyc.org

OpenCyc.org is an open source implantation of the CYC knowledge server which a common sense database.

OpenCYC's website

Legion of Doom

Legion of Doom (LOD) was a secret society of computer hackers formed in New York during the Eighties. They typically seized control of system but claimed not to harm those systems. They also published the Legion of Doom Technical Journals, which promoted knowledge of hacking to a wider audience.

On Wiki

Masters of Deception

Masters of Deception (MOD) was a splinter group from Legion of Doom formed in the late Eighties.

On Wiki

The Great Hacker War

Great Hacker War occurred during the early Nineties between the Legion of Doom and the Masters of Deception. The war was carried out by hacking into and seizing control of rival faction’s computers. The LOD was defeated in the end. The publicity which arose from the war eventually led to a crack down by Federal authorities which led to the downfall of MOD.

OnWiki.

Concepts

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Strong Artificial Intelligence

Strong AI is an artificial intelligence capable of reasoning as a human does. Although in fiction the debate about whether a machine can think is never raised, in the real world it is far from certain. There are many theoretical and technical challenges in creating a machine with strong AI.

Turing's Test

To determine if a machine was capable of human thought Turing proposed a test that is now referred to as the Turing Test. In the Turing Test a researcher talks remotely to two individuals, one is a human the other may be a computer. If people cannot correctly identify the computer as not being human it would pass the Turing Test. In the original form, Turing wanted the machine to pretend to be a woman and the other subject a man pretending to be a woman.

Searle's Chinese Room

Searle's Chinese Room is a logical argument against “Strong AI”. Imagine a room with no access other than a slot which paper can be fed in and out from. Inside the room is a person who only understands English although he has a set of instructions that allows him to convert Chinese characters to English. He is fed through the slot a story written in Chinese characters one character at a time that he then translates using the rules he is given then returns through the slot. Once the last character is fed back through the slot the whole story has been translated; however, you would not argue the man in the box understands Chinese. The man in the box has no understanding of the symbols only rules to translate those symbols. He does not understand Chinese characters the way a person fluent in Chinese does. It can be argued traditional computer algorithms behave similarly to the man in the box and therefore can never have true understanding in the manner humans do.

Turing Machine

The Turing Machine is at the heart of all modern digital computers. It is a simple machine that can mimic the output of any more complex machine.

Artificial Neural Networks

Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) are an attempt to mimic how the human mind works with software. ANNs must learn to function. You train an ANN to make decisions rather than designing an algorithm that behave exactly as you want it to. A famous example is when the in the 1980s US military attempted to train a ANN find target tanks hiding in wooded terrain. The ANN was shown a series of photos, half with tanks the other half without tanks. After training the ANN they did a test with new photos. The ANN failed miserably. After research on the ANN’s failure was done it was discovered the ANN had learned to recognize the difference between a cloudy and sunny day not whether the photo had a tank. This shows both the power of ANN and difficulties in using them. Many would argue they are not like traditional algorithms so do not suffer from Searle's Chinese Room argument.

Concepts in the books

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EVE

In Unleashing Janus Alex creates EVE (evolutionary environmental education). EVE is a software framework allows a machine consciousness to evolve by a series of test. Each testing cycle is referred to as an epoch. The tests become more difficult as the agent evolves until, after the final Epoch, its consciousness is assured. The concept of EVE is influenced by Marvin Minsky's "Society of the Mind” as well as Hugo de Garis' and Hubert Dreyfus' works.

As Travis stated in the book, “…If you design the right incentives and environment a computer simulating an evolutionary process will eventually stumble across the recipe, the code, to allow that computer to be aware.”

ADAM

Autonomous Data Acquisition Machine (ADAM) was created by the character Travis in the novel. ADAM was designed as an interface for an AI to process information. It can be best thought of a the senses and communication means for the machine’s mind.

Epochs

The Epochs of EVE are learning stages to guide the developement of the machine's mind. Each Epoch can be though of as a test to make sure the developing mind is evoluving correctly. Epoch One as meantioned in the novel tries to sort out machine's that are capable of self-awareness. The term Epoch comes from Artifcal Neural Networks and refers to one learning cycle.

Bletchley Group

The Bletchley Group is a collection of a hundred rogue programmers dedicated the creation of a true AI. Their motives for creating such a machine remains mysterious but their dedication to their cause is unquestionable.

ACE Junior

ACE Junior is the Bletchley Group’s first attempt at building a strong AI. It is named after Turing’s first computer design.

Select Data Connections

Select Data Connections (SDC) is the firm both Josh and Travis work for. SDC developed Janus and are the sole owners of its technology. They provide analytical services for clients ranging from detecting fraud to improving targeting of customers.

Janus

Janus is a powerful search engine with a AI built by Travis while working at Select Data Connections.

Master Guiding Script

The purpose of the Master Guiding Script is unclear in the novel. Travis refers to it as guiding the evolution of Janus in what is assumed to be an EVE framework. This would make it the judge to determine whether a agent has passed an Epoch.

Recommended Reading

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For futher reading please see the new section Cool Stuff and select the nonfiction list.

Interesting Links

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People

Alan Turing's officialwebsite

Marvin Minsky's website

Norm Chomsky's website

Biography of John von Neumann

Hugo de Garis, designer of the CAM Brain Machine

Tim Crane's website