Artificial intelligence, the holy grail of computer science for decades, is becoming a reality — not Skynet nor Cylons, but as a versatile tool for some types of complex problems, the kinds of problems with which our squishy, human brains struggle. (Cue the “I, for one, welcome our robot overlords” cubicle stickers.) In an article (free registration required) in New Scientist this week, a new way of problem-solving — one in which humans help machines — is discussed. Already widely-used examples include reCAPTCHA (the clever OCR crowdsourcer) and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, but ambitious plans from Dafna Shahaf and Eric Horvitz (a member of the CCC Council) would create a labor pool […]
Computing Community Consortium Blog
The goal of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is to catalyze the computing research community to debate longer range, more audacious research challenges; to build consensus around research visions; to evolve the most promising visions toward clearly defined initiatives; and to work with the funding organizations to move challenges and visions toward funding initiatives. The purpose of this blog is to provide a more immediate, online mechanism for dissemination of visioning concepts and community discussion/debate about them.
Archive for June 29th, 2011
CISE AD Issues Letter to the Community on Robotics Initiative
June 29th, 2011 / in big science, policy, research horizons, resources / by Erwin GianchandaniNSF/CISE Assistant Director Farnam Jahanian has issued the following letter to the community, describing the National Robotics Initiative (NRI) launched last week: Dear CISE Community, On Friday, in a speech at Carnegie Mellon University, President Obama announced the plan for major federal investments in next-generation robotics. The National Robotics Initiative (NRI) is a bold program that supports the development and use of robots that work beside, or cooperatively with, people and that enhance individual human capabilities, performance and safety. NSF is the lead agency in this multi-agency program that also includes NASA, NIH and USDA. NRI calls for cross-agency investments of up to $70 million in the first year […]
