In my class yesterday we practiced framing a proposed scientific program within the constraints of a given Request for Applications from an agency. I think this is quite an important exercise for trainee scientists because success in grant writing depends on it. It’s not enough just to have great ideas and some great experiments planned to test those ideas. Additionally, one needs to develop the facility to take those ideas and plant them firmly in the context of a funder’s ideas and goals.

Jim

George, as you may recall, moderated the recent Decade of the Mind conference at Krasnow in May. Here is his take on where AI is these days: human brains mated with computer algorithms are powerful tools.

Money quote:

What is spreading through the Web is not exactly artificial intelligence. For all the research that has gone into cognitive and computer science, the brain’s most formidable algorithms — those used to recognize images or sounds or understand language — have eluded simulation. The alternative has been to incorporate people, with their special skills, as components of the Net.

Go to Google Image Labeler (images.google.com/imagelabeler) and you are randomly matched with another bored Web surfer — in Korea, maybe, or Omaha — who has agreed to play a game. Google shows you both a series of pictures peeled from the Web — the sun setting over the ocean or a comet streaking through space — and you earn points by typing as many descriptive words as you can. The results are stored and analyzed, and through this human-machine symbiosis, Google’s image-searching algorithms are incrementally refined.

This is an article about the Mcgovern Institute up at MIT….and a proliferation of similar institutes funded by super-wealthy individuals. Money quote:

McGovern is not the only technology billionaire to dedicate a fortune to the brain. Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder, donated $100m to establish the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. And Jeff Hawkins used his fortune from Palm Computing, creator of the Palm Pilot, to set up the Redwood Neurosciences Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.

Jim

Money quote from Joel Achenbach….

Ten years and $4 billion: That’s a reasonable cost. The evolution of the human mind is arguably the most important biological event in the history of our planet since the origin of life itself.

Jim

Here’s a really interesting piece from Cnet News about a rather strange Russian Institute that claims to “manipulate the subconscious minds” of terrorists.

Money quote:

SSRM Tek is presented to a subject as an innocent computer game that flashes subliminal images across the screen — like pictures of Osama bin Laden or the World Trade Center. The “player” — a traveler at an airport screening line, for example — presses a button in response to the images, without consciously registering what he or she is looking at. The terrorist’s response to the scrambled image involuntarily differs from the innocent person’s, according to the theory.

My students know I have a dim view of meetings in academia. My colleague Tyler Cowen has a different view.

Money quote:

Meetings also confer a sense of control. Attendees feel like insiders who have a real voice in decisions. This boosts their motivation to implement ideas discussed as a group. For this reason it is especially important to listen to the blowhards and the obstructionists, who otherwise would pursue their own agendas rather than support a common plan.

Jim

First, I’ll have my news regarding Decade of the Mind up on Sunday.

Second, I’ll try to get my slides up from my recent talk on the next five years at Krasnow. Also probably over the weekend.

I’ll also link to a couple of faculty job opening advertisements, also probably over the weekend.

Jim

Stay tuned for some important Decade of the Mind updates here. I’ll be announcing some substantive next steps to the May meeting.

Jim

From the NY Times on-line:

But last week Alex, an African Grey parrot, died, apparently of natural causes, said Dr. Irene Pepperberg, a comparative psychologist at Brandeis University and Harvard who studied and worked with the parrot for most of its life and published reports of his progress in scientific journals. The parrot was 31.

We send our condolences to Irene, Alex was a remarkable animal.

Jim

From PLoS via today’s Financial Times: Craig Venter’s genome revealed.

Money quote:

The study, carried out at his J. Craig Venter Institute in Maryland, shows that Dr Venter carries genes that may predispose him to Alzheimer’s and heart disease, novelty seeking behaviour and a preference for evening rather than morning activity. Never before has anyone revealed so much personal information in a scientific paper.