The UN Secretary-General's High Level Panel: Biolobical Weapons Related Issues

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Is Discussion an Exchange of Ideas? On Education, Money, and Speech

How do we learn the link between speech and money? What is the process of formation that legitimates the logic whereby speech is equivalent to money? What are the experiences, events, and subjectivities that render the connection between currency and speaking/listening intuitive? As educators and researchers, what do we do and say to shore up this connection, and—as we may be inclined—are there things we can do or say to loosen it? Educational discourse theory, specifically examining classroom discussion, is one of the most prominent arenas of educational research where the equivalence between money and speech is active. While it may seem tautological to say that “discussion is an exchange of ideas,” it is not trivial to do so. Definitions of discussion in both reference and academic texts use the word “exchange” for discussion like Kant would use the word “unmarried” to define a bachelor. Yet the exchange case carries connotations and denotations that the bachelor case does not. There is more to say about it. Take this one small case—whether discussion is an exchange of ideas—as a part of the more general inquiry about education and money/speech. Discussions happen throughout classrooms and other educational contexts in society, and the phrase most likely passes person-to-person in such a way as to make it obvious that what is happening in the discussion is an exchange, perhaps making it equally obvious that money and speech are equivalent. In other words, the claim in this article is that continually referring to discussion as an exchange of ideas teaches that speech and money are equivalent, a proposition that has serious political consequences. It is not obviously the case that discussion is an exchange of ideas, as I will show, and demonstrating this with a careful philosophical comb can go some distance towards showing (and therefore teaching) that money is not equivalent to speech

You had me at hello: How phrasing affects memorability

Understanding the ways in which information achieves widespread public awareness is a research question of significant interest. We consider whether, and how, the way in which the information is phrased --- the choice of words and sentence structure --- can affect this process. To this end, we develop an analysis framework and build a corpus of movie quotes, annotated with memorability information, in which we are able to control for both the speaker and the setting of the quotes. We find that there are significant differences between memorable and non-memorable quotes in several key dimensions, even after controlling for situational and contextual factors. One is lexical distinctiveness: in aggregate, memorable quotes use less common word choices, but at the same time are built upon a scaffolding of common syntactic patterns. Another is that memorable quotes tend to be more general in ways that make them easy to apply in new contexts --- that is, more portable. We also show how the concept of "memorable language" can be extended across domains.Comment: Final version of paper to appear at ACL 2012. 10pp, 1 fig. Data, demo memorability test and other info available at http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~cristian/memorability.htm

Real-time decoding of question-and-answer speech dialogue using human cortical activity.

Natural communication often occurs in dialogue, differentially engaging auditory and sensorimotor brain regions during listening and speaking. However, previous attempts to decode speech directly from the human brain typically consider listening or speaking tasks in isolation. Here, human participants listened to questions and responded aloud with answers while we used high-density electrocorticography (ECoG) recordings to detect when they heard or said an utterance and to then decode the utterance's identity. Because certain answers were only plausible responses to certain questions, we could dynamically update the prior probabilities of each answer using the decoded question likelihoods as context. We decode produced and perceived utterances with accuracy rates as high as 61% and 76%, respectively (chance is 7% and 20%). Contextual integration of decoded question likelihoods significantly improves answer decoding. These results demonstrate real-time decoding of speech in an interactive, conversational setting, which has important implications for patients who are unable to communicate

The First Amendment and Modern Technology: The Free Speech Clause and Chatbot Speech

Our contemporary conversations with chatbots raise a constitutional question not previously considered: is the speech produced by chatbots constitutionally protected? If so, whose speech is the Constitution protecting—that of the chatbot or the human who programmed it with algorithms? If the Supreme Court recognizes the human programmer as the speaker of chatbot speech, as this Note contends it should, what are the potential liabilities the programmer could face as a result of such recognition, and how would this change the doctrinal landscape of the First Amendment for government regulation of speech? This Note proceeds in five parts. Section I defines “chatbot” and discusses its evolving capabilities and limitations. Section II delves into three theories that the Supreme Court has used to interpret freedom of speech issues, specifically, the marketplace of ideas, the reader-response criticism, and the chilling effect. This section provides a philosophical perspective on the Free Speech Clause to identify overlapping themes present in traditional speech and chatbot speech. Section III analyzes the United States Supreme Court’s Opinion in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, and the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York’s opinion in Jian Zhang v. Baidu.com Inc. to present a standard under which federal courts could recognize chatbot speech as constitutionally protected speech. Section IV considers the Supreme Court’s controversial opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission to illustrate the Court’s willingness to afford Free Speech Rights to non-humans, and to demonstrate that existing precedent could be adapted to include chatbot speech. Lastly, Section V explains the constitutional implications and outlines the potential dangers of extending free speech protection for society

Teaching robot’s proactive behavior using human assistance

The final publication is available at link.springer.comIn recent years, there has been a growing interest in enabling autonomous social robots to interact with people. However, many questions remain unresolved regarding the social capabilities robots should have in order to perform this interaction in an ever more natural manner. In this paper, we tackle this problem through a comprehensive study of various topics involved in the interaction between a mobile robot and untrained human volunteers for a variety of tasks. In particular, this work presents a framework that enables the robot to proactively approach people and establish friendly interaction. To this end, we provided the robot with several perception and action skills, such as that of detecting people, planning an approach and communicating the intention to initiate a conversation while expressing an emotional status.We also introduce an interactive learning system that uses the person’s volunteered assistance to incrementally improve the robot’s perception skills. As a proof of concept, we focus on the particular task of online face learning and recognition. We conducted real-life experiments with our Tibi robot to validate the framework during the interaction process. Within this study, several surveys and user studies have been realized to reveal the social acceptability of the robot within the context of different tasks.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Software for a Service Robot

Service robots are becoming more commonplace every year due to advances in artificial intelligence, substituting humans in increasingly more complex tasks. By having an autonomous and competent service robot performing routinely tasks instead of its human owners, their productivity increases. The search for better service robots has led to the creation of competitions where such robots are tested and the state of the art technology is pushed further. Socialab acquired a Turtlebot2 robot to serve people around the university campus and one day participate in such competitions. With hopes of achieving these goals, the laboratory has proposed a variety of projects over the years, each adding new layers offunctionality to the robot. With each studentthathas tackled their respective project,thedeveloped softwarehasbeencontinuously stacking. However, each completed project has remained separate from each other andhasn’t been used ever since. Hence,the developed software is being wasted. Therefore, it is imperative to integrate all the available software into the robot. Yet, as new projects are proposed, the problem of scattered software can reoccur after the integration of the currently available ones. Furthermore, with more functionality that is developed, the harder and longer it takes to complete their integration. To preventthis entirely, itis necessary to create structural software that eases the development of new functionality as well as its integration with the current software. To achieve this, a class was developed which is responsible for controlling the execution of all processes running in the robot, of which the different software depends on. Additionally, research was done on multiple competitions to identify the most commonly required functionality traits, which we refer to as modules. Afterwards, an implementation of each of these modules was developed. Because of their universality, their implementation allows future software that requires any of the modules to simply import them, rather than having to re-implement them. In line with good software quality practices, if any of the modules needs an upgrade, this upgrade simply has to be performed on the respective module, instead of upgrading every adjacent software that uses this module. This was the first goal of this thesis. After creating a solid foundation for robot software development, the focus shifted towards the creation of new functionality. The different tasks were obtained from the previous research of various robotic competitions. The idea is that if the robot can perform such tasks then it can participate in the competitions, while the same functionalities can be used around campus. The list aimed to be as long as possible with the goal of leaving the robot with as much functionality as possible while taking into consideration the time restraints of the development of this thesis. Seven tasks were selected. The implementation of each task is explained in detail. As each task was developed, the implemented steps were turned into modules, therefore respecting the initial goal of flexible and reusable software. Because of this, as more tasks were developed the following task’s implementation was increasingly simpler as some of the requirements were already available from the development of their predecessors. The tasks required knowledge from different areas of artificial intelligence. This lead to the broadening of my knowledge rather than specialization in a single area. With this work, we show how distinct robotic tasks were implemented. Due to the varied nature ofthe tasks, we show how to tackle a multitude of different problems that appear in the area of artificial intelligence. Additionally, the work presents an approach to create a solid foundation for the development and integration of increasingly more software. The tasks are benchmarked, meaning future updates ofthe tasks can be performed and proved superior through the comparison of their results.Os robôs de serviço são cada vez mais comuns devido aos avanços constantes na área da inteligência artificial, substituindo os humanos em tarefas cada vez mais complexas. Ao ter um robô autónomo e competente desempenhando tarefas diárias em vez do seu dono humano, a produtividade destes consequentemente aumenta. A pesquisa por melhores robôs de serviço levou à criação de competições robóticas onde tais tipos de robôs são avaliados e o estado da arte é forçado a avançar. Com o objetivo de possuir um robô de serviço que sirva as pessoas na universidade, bem como um dia participar em tais competições, o Socialab adquiriu um robô Turtlebot2. O laboratório tem proposto vários projetos ao longo dos anos, cada um adicionando novos níveis de funcionalidade ao robô. Com cada estudante que tem vindo a realizar o respetivo projeto, o software que foi desenvolvido tem estado continuamente a aumentar. Adicionalmente, cada projeto completado tem permanecido separado dos restantes e não tem sido utilizado desde o momento da sua criação. Por esta razão, o software desenvolvido está a ser desperdiçado. Portanto, é imperativo integrar todo o software disponível no robô. No entanto, como novos projetos serão desenvolvidos, este problema de projetos disjuntos poderá voltar a ocorrer após a integração dos projetos atuais. Ademais, com o aumento da funcionalidade que é desenvolvida, mais dificil e demorado será a sua integração. De forma a evitar este problema na sua totalidade, é necessário criar software estrutural que facilite o desenvolvimento de novas funcionalidades, bem como a sua integração com o software já existente. De forma a atingir este objetivo, foi desenvolvida uma classe cujo propósito é controlar a execução de todos os processos em execução no robô. Adicionalmente, foi efetuada uma pesquisa sobre diversas competições robóticas com o objetivo de identificar os tipos de funcionalidades mais comuns, que referimos como módulos. Depois foi realizada uma implementação de cada um destes módulos. Devido à universalidade destes módulos, a sua implementação permite que software futuro, que provavelmente depende de alguns dos módulos, apenas os tenha que importar, em contraste com ter que os re-implementar. Adicionalmente, emlinha comas práticas dequalidadede software, se cadaumdosmódulos precisa de uma atualização, esta apenas tem de ser realizada nos respetivos módulos, ao invés de ter de atualizar cada software adjacente que teve de o implementar. Este foi o primeiro objetivo da tese. Após a criação de uma fundação sólida para o desenvolvimento de software para robô, o foco transferiu-se para a criação de nova funcionalidade. Uma lista de tarefas robóticas foi obtida da pesquisa anterior sobre várias competições robóticas. A ideia é que se o robô é capaz de realizar tais tarefas então não só pode participar nas competições que as requerem, como também tem utilidade que pode ser utilizada pelas pessoas na universidade. A lista visava ser o mais extensa possível, tendo em conta as restrições temporais de desenvolvimento da tese, de modo a deixar o robô com o máximo de funcionalidades possível. Desta forma, sete tarefas foram escolhidas. A implementação de cada uma das tarefas é explicada em detalhe no seu capítulo respetivo. À medida que cada tarefa foi desenvolvida, os seus componentes individuais foram extraídos para novos módulos, passiveis de serem utilizados por outras funcionalidades, respeitando assim, o objetivo inicial de criar software flexível e reutilizável. Este fator tornou a criação das tarefas seguintes cada vez mais simples devido a estas dependerem de funcionalidades já implementadas nas anteriores. A implementação das tarefas exigiu conhecimento das diferentes áreas da inteligência artificial. Este facto levou à ampliação do meu conhecimento ao invés da especialização numa área, algo que é frequente na realização de teses. A realização deste trabalho demonstra como as distintas tarefas robóticas foram implementadas. Devido à natureza variada das tarefas, é demonstrado como enfrentar um conjunto diverso de problemas que podem aparecer na área da inteligência artificial. Adicionalmente, este trabalho apresenta uma abordagem para a criação de uma fundação sólida para o desenvolvimento e integração de novo software. Por último, as tarefas estão aferidas contra o estado da arte, significando que atualizações futuras às tarefas podem ser realizadas e provadas superiores através da comparação dos seus resultados