Free will - even for robots

Human free will is a product of evolution and contributes to the success of the human animal. Useful robots will also require free will of a similar kind, and we will have to design it into them. Free will is not an all-or-nothing thing. Some agents have more free will, or free will of different kinds, than others, and we will try to analyse this phenomenon. Our objectives are primarily technological, i.e. to study what aspects of free will can make robots more useful, and we will not try to console those who find determinism distressing. We distinguish between having choices and being conscious of these choices; both are important, even for robots, and consciousness of choices requires more structure in the agent than just having choices and is important for robots. Consciousness of free will is therefore not just an epiphenomenon of structure serving other purposes. Free will does not require a very complex system. Young children and rather simple computer systems can represent internally ‘I can, but I won't’ and behave accordingly. Naturally I hope this detailed design stance will help understand human free will. It takes the compatibilist philosophical position. There may be some readers interested in what the paper says about human free will and who are put off by logical formulas. The formulas are not important for the arguments about human free will; they are present for people contemplating AI systems using mathematical logic. They can skip the formulas, but the coherence of what remains is not absolutely guaranteed.     

Robot selection expert ‘Rose’

One of the major problems facing the robot user in the future will be his choice of the optimum robot for a particular task. What is needed is a highly automated robot selection system which will eliminate the human decision-making process. The system presented will be used when a robot is being considered to replace a human at a particular task, while the rest of the workplace remains fixed. The purpose of this paper is twofold; firstly, to demonstrate the knowledge required in making an optimum robot selection, and secondly, to provide a tutoral in designing an expert system using EXPERT. The paper will provide (1) the data base, (2) rules for transforming that data base, and (3) the control strategy that is necessary in implementing an expert system to perform the aforementioned task. The system will query the user as to the characteristics of the desired robot and the expert system will choose an optimum robot from the choices in the data base. The user will construct the environment in which the robot will be working by using 3-D modeling techniques. The user will choose from a menu and place the various objects which the robot will have to conform to. Thus, constraints such as maximum space available, can be stripped out of the 3-D drawing rather than having the expert system query the user for dimensions. One very good feature of such a system is that as new robots are developed their specifications can be added to the data base very easily.     

The Impact of Software Growth on the Electronics Industry

Software growth has significantly impacted the computer industry and is changing many other electronics industries. It is not a question of whether intellectual property will be sold in the form of software, but which companies will do it successfully. The actions electronics companies take today will ultimately determine how large a role they will play in a world increasingly dominated by software     

A further note on the dual structure in information theory

This note is a continuation of the former one [2]. First, Duality Theorems in information theory will be explicitly presented. Secondly a communication scheme with side information will be considered. We shall construct another scheme without side information so that these two schemes will become equivalent in a cost-distortion duality sense, allowing the Duality Theorems to hold in the former scheme. An example will then be given with additional purpose to illustrate how the cost-distortion performance of communication will change according as side information is available or not.     

Will we consider ourselves better off?

A Moore's law “technology generation” is 18 months; an “Internet generation” is comparably short. Thus, over the next decade (2000-2010), we will experience perhaps six generations of technology change; a substantial amount considering its implied exponential character. The cumulative effects of such changes in information technology will be comparable to what earlier might have required a century of human events. Some straightforward predictions of what is likely to occur, include a continuation of current trends in bandwidth and connectivity. In technologically advanced societies, most people at work, at home, and in between will be equipped with powerful but widely affordable hardware. Moreover, they will be online with access rates that will put most quality-of-service complaints to rest. Benefiting from the goods and services available on the Internet will no longer require struggling with computers and software. A variety of information appliances will integrate the Net into the fabric of life, much as with transportation and entertainment today. Less advanced societies will also make substantial progress in these directions, and given time, a rough global technology equilibrium will ensue. But will we consider ourselves better off? What “better off” means depends on what we want the technology to do for us and what kind of world we want to create     

改进CLIMB聚类算法在图象数据库中的应用研究

CLIMB聚类算法是基于子空间的算法，基本思想是对每个样本在坐标维上投影，得到样本分布曲线。通过爬山法，找出波谷和波峰，每个山峰对应一个类。对于高维数据，由低维向高维逐步聚类，形成了对原样本集的自顶向下的层次分类。利用小波变换可以对样本分布曲线进行光滑化处理而得到近似分布曲线，该曲线平滑了样本分布曲线上一些变化较大的区域，可以去除噪声干扰。不同尺度下的近似信息去掉了不同程度的细节信息，从而得到不同的样本分类的粗糙度。实验表明，应用该改进后的CLIMB聚类算法对图象特征空间进行聚类可以起到很好的作用。     

Toward systematic design of fault-tolerant systems

After 30 years of study and practice in fault tolerance, high-confidence computing remains a costly privilege of several critical applications. It is time to explore ways to deliver high-confidence computing to all users. The speed of computing will ultimately be limited by the laws of physics, but the demand for affordable high-confidence computing will continue as long as people use computers to enhance the quality of their lives. Eventually, one enterprising chip builder will deliver the first fault-tolerant microprocessor at a competitive price, and soon thereafter fault tolerance will be considered as indispensable to computers as immunity is to humans. The remaining manufacturers will follow suit or go the way of the dinosaurs. Once again, Darwin will be proven right     

心音信号的自适应小波去噪

在采集心音信号过程中,难免要引入噪声,这些噪声影响到心音的分析结果。由于心音信号的非平稳性,普通的滤波方法在滤去噪声的同时,会丢失部分心音成分。文中提出了一种新的基于小波变换的自适应滤波方法,该方法能够有效抑制噪声,经实例验证,取得了满意的结果。     

Modelling congestion in closed queueing networks

We will consider the problem of identifying regions of congestion in closed queueing networks with state-dependent service rates. A particular queue will be called a bottleneck if the number of customers in that queue grows without bound as the total number of customers in the network becomes large. We will review methods for identifying potential bottlenecks, with a view to controlling congestion. We will see that the problem of identifying bottlenecks can be reduced to one of finding them in an isolated subnetwork with suitably modified routing intensities. Several special cases will be studied, illustrating a range of behaviour. For example, it is possible for a subnetwork to be congested, yet each queue in that subnetwork is not strictly a bottleneck.     

医疗美容仪器设计报告

在这个充满视觉诱惑的世界里,造型设计变得越来越重要。生活水平的提高和市场的开放必将引发新一轮的美容热潮,随着美容行业的逐步繁荣,与其密切相关的美容仪器也将随之风生水起,本文力主分析目前市场上优秀的医疗美容器械设计,预测此类产品未来设计发展方向。