Fascinating video clip of Hertz’s Roachbot in action.

Very sci-fi, Giger-esque.

This is also a legacy that Mr. [Martin] Gardner leaves to generations of researchers, teachers and entertainers: don’t try to understand the whole world at once. Take only a small part of it. Or better yet: invent your own universe in which there are very few elements and very few rules — a game, a puzzle, a theory. These circumscribed and artificial worlds are like sheets of paper subject to the rules of folding, yet they can yield remarkable results having almost uncanny power.

The money quote:

To our intuition, it seems foreign that the neuronal correlate of that which we perceive as a solid, tangible object should be a highly abstract, spatially and temporally structured excitation pattern – and that, in this way, not only three-dimensional things, but also smells, feelings or intended actions are represented. And every such representation corresponds to one specific state out of a nearly infinite number of possible states. Or to put it differently, the cerebral cortex system continuously moves from one point to the next in an inconceivably high-dimension space. The trajectory – that is, the trail of this movement – depends on the entirety of all internal and external factors that impact the system.

He then explores the implications of this theory, touching on time, evolutionary adaptation, and social structures. The sense I get from this is that the brain at a given moment may be represented by a sufficiently large-dimensioned matrix of neural excitations, but that it may not be moved forward or backwards using that model due to the effect of the entirety of those internal and external factors.

The research done by Foster and Wilson at MIT seems to bolster this view. The rats they studied ran through their neural space-representation in reverse order when pausing in a maze run. This local reversing of patterns occurred when the rats were going the same route and when attempting new routes. Sounds like your brain plays Simon. This seems to implicate that the brain has hooks into specific patterns that repeat on call. Not the same as back-propagation algorithms.

Somebody pointed Singer link out, but I’ve lost track of whom. If you want kudos, feel free to leave a comment.

“What attracts you to artificial intelligence?”

“It’s more of a repulsion than an attraction. The proponents of ‘strong’ AI like Kurzweil that believe that machines will (or already are) literally intelligent makes me laugh. Strong AI is a joke…”

It remains to be seen if Hertz is going to ever take his work as science, and not art.

On the other tip, the same type of work, when presented as science, can sound like art. A a group at the University of Southampton powers a dark-seeking robot platform by using slime mould [Abstract]. No doubt, this is the same behavior that my little brother implemented in his MindStorms Lego project using the included light sensor. But the innovation is not the behavior, but in the implementation. I would be fascinated to see if there are indeed minute differences in recorded behavior.

And there’s always the ambitious mix of the two, like the Autonomous Flocking Blimps. They act like friendly whales, and have a haunting call as well. From the unique sounds, the ungainly proportions and size, and the flocking behavior, it’s clear that the designers, Jed Berk and Nihil Mitter of the Art Center, are trying to create a airborne Cetacea-like species, not just an arty experience.

This is a fascinating area, and one that I am just getting my feet wet in. I’ll take you along for the ride of my education process. Hopefully I’ll convince a few people with greater credentials than I to contribute to the discussion as well. And finally, I hope to draw some connection from Alife back to the regular interests of this blog: law firms, technology, philosophy, and whatever else catches my fancy. Watch this category for continued postings, or subscribe to it via RSS.

It’s the law of the jungle, baby.

Credit to a slashdot poster for first discovering this law.