Martian Anniversary

At 686.98 days, the Martian orbital year is roughly twice the length of the Earth year, so perhaps we can be forgiven for being jubilant early. as it has not been a full Martian year. However, it has been an Earth year since the Mars rover, Curiosity landed on the red planet, and scientific community is abuzz with excitement with what has been gathered so far. The rover has sent back to Earth over 70000 images and has tested rock samples, the presence of water and methane in its bid to discover signs of past life. All indications are that water has existed, but methane (an emission of organic life). Curiosty's findings are seen as the prelude to the much talked about manned colonisation. (I wouldn't mind myself!)

Of course the debates about the billions spent on the project do surface when this kind of attention is paid to the mission. This counter balances the argument and are very valid. After all we still haven't solved the imbalances on this planet - from poverty, to diseases, lack of opportunity and so on. 

Two post from the comments left on the BBC news article about this:

dpr1017 

So theory behind the 'spend more money on education argument'. Spend more money on education, our children grow up to be smart. Maybe they become successful scientists & meet up with other scientists. Since they are smart, they will probably have a sense of curiosity, they will want to learn new things. They might even send something to another planet to learn about that planet. Oh wait...
 
George

To all those decrying the costs of this and other exploratory space missions when millions of humans live in hunger and poverty - perhaps you should send your comments to the governments of India, Pakistan etc. They have staggering amounts of poverty and hunger yet seem well able to afford nuclear weapons and space programmes

Oh yes - we stupidly give big dollops of cash to them as "aid". 

 Read more: Independent, BBC, National Geographic, NASA

Earth Calling Mars

or rather Mars Calling Earth ...

Curiosity, the name given to NASAs latest Mars exploration rover touched down yesterday on the red planet itself, to start its 2 year mission (1 Martian year). I've always been fascinated with Space and the human pursuit of pushing back the frontiers to learn more about what lies beyond. This little animated video from NASA offers an insight into how Curiosity will send messages back to Earth. Oh, and you can connect to Curiosity via Twitter. Apparently, this robot has "her" own Twitter account.

The Hunt for Artificial Intelligence

I ran a 'series' of posts on the prospects and dilemmas of Artificial Intelligence a couple of months back and this past week, the BBC featured a Horizon documentary exploring how close we are to developing machines that think like us. In this clip, Marcus du Sautoy comments how robots have been programmed to learn like children and in the process develop their own independent spoken language. I still retain considerable ambivalence around a future of fully automated truly intelligent machines. This aspect is not explored, though the full programme, available here, makes for interesting viewing as we work towards that. 

A.I. Super-Toys Last All Summer

In several direct references to events that run parallel to the Pinnochio narrative, the 2001 film, A.I. Artificial Intelligence by Stephen Spielberg tells the story of a robot who wants to become a real boy and be loved by his mother. The events in the film stretch over a 2000 year span and highlights a state of emotion in robots that would otherwise - by today's standard of computer machinery - be considered irrational. Even with artificial 'intelligence' the robot-child is unable to understand his design purpose and the emotional 'need' - in fact part of the programming that has been unlocked by code - would be described as singularly obsessive. Ultimately there are clear limits to this version of artificial intelligence if the robot cannot self-realise. See this for a further commentary on the film.

The film is based on the Brian Aldiss short story entitled Super-Toys Last All Summer Long. Both the film and the short story take an interesting look at the subject, and highlight the ethical aspect around how desirable it is to try to build complex 'emotional' responses into machinery, and whether this is always likely to be fraught with shortcomings. Click here to read the story.

Artifical Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence is a topic that captures my interest and over the next few postings I hope to explore some of the ethical thoughts and issues around this. 

In particular what inspires these postings are Sebastian Thrun's keynote speech at TED last year in which he spoke about Google's driverless car. Thrun's conjecture is that driverless cars can be programmed to scan the entire environment around them and react accordingly, thus making them safer than human-driven cars.

Master/Machine

I like the idea of developing technologies to make the world safer, though in the next posting we will explore a little more about what it means to be 'safe', bearing in mind that 'pilotless' drones do not inspire ideas of safety for those living in the Pak-Afghan border regions. Admittedly, some of these drones are operated remotely and thus there is still a human-control element to them, but there is a pattern of military needs shaping advances in technology. For now, Sebastian Thrun makes a plausible case for going driverless:

Find out more on Sebastian Thrun's speech at TED last year.

Avatar

War or Peace?

I would rather avoid jumping onto a bandwagon, and there are greater things to be pre-occupied about, but the film Avatar by James Cameron, is, I must confess, one, that on seeing the 3D version, I am, overall, impressed with. I'm not sure about 'white' man sympathy for native people mind - Hollywood doesn't seem to be able to quite get over this tired cliché .

Apart from the spectacle of 3D images and surround sound etc., the story - about a people's resistance to an invading force - is one that on an emotional level, is both ethical and one that I find myself having some empathy for.

The message here is very much pro-people and pro-independence. I'm all for it.

The Elephant Clock of Al Jazari

A Most Ingenious Mechanical Device

One of the centre pieces of the India Court at the Ibn Battuta Mall in Dubai is the Elephant Clock, based on a medieval invention by Al Jazari, celebrated craftsman, mathematician and astronomer.

Al Jazari, born in 1136, upper Mesopotamia served as a engineer to the court of the Turkish Artudid dynasty that ruled Eastern Anatolia and the areas that are now northern Syria and Iraq. The elephant clock, featured in Al Jazari's manuscripts, The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices, is an early humanoid robot featuring a mechanical mahout who strikes a cymbal every half hour.

The Book of Knowledge

The elephant clock above photographed by me at the Ibn Battuta Mall is a stunning reproduction of the original and is featured below in illustrative form in the book of knowledge.