Last week Amy Harmon wrote the third installment of the awesome New York Times Magazine series “Smarter Than You Think.” The article, titled ‘Discovering a Soft Sport for Circuitry – Robot Machines as Companions,’ details the use of artificial intelligent machines as human companions. In particular, the article highlights Paro — a robotic baby harp seal — used in nursing homes as a therapeutic aid for the elderly. Paro uses 14 different sensors, two microprocessors, and a whole slew of AI algorithms to illicit compassionate responses from users and convincingly behave as a real-life animal. The Paro robot is used to help patients suffering with dementia and provide comfort in […]

NSF/CISE has just announced a new program at the Interface between Computer Science and Economics & Social Science (ICES): Computational thinking has the potential to change the types of questions considered by social and economic scientists. For example, Nash (and other) equilibria lie at the heart of theories about the behavior of economic agents. Computational thinking can help characterize the range and robustness of possible equilibria and markets for which the computation of equilibria is intractable. Theories of strategic learning by computational agents, studied both in economics and computer science, can shed light on the dynamics of how agents arrive at equilibria. Theories of the spread of contagion or gossip […]

I notice that CACM Editor-in-Chief Moshe Vardi’s letter in the July 2010 issue of CACM speaks to what he calls “Hypercriticality,” and cites my post of May 4 here on the CCC Blog. (You can find Moshe’s letter in CACM vol. 53, no. 7, p. 5; if you are logged into the CACM website, you can find it here.) Moshe appears to agree that we in the computing research community are often too harsh when reviewing one another’s work. (Contributed by John Leslie King, University of Michigan)

Last week it was Jeopardy! superstar Ken Jennings who was facing competition. This week it’s assistants everywhere. In the second in a fascinating series of articles titled “Smarter Than You Think” being published by The New York Times Magazine this summer, writers Steve Lohr and John Markoff illustrate how artificial intelligence is transforming how we answer questions, complete simple tasks, and assist one another. This Sunday’s story highlights the work of Eric Horvitz, a member of the CCC Council, whose team at Microsoft Research has developed a “medical avatar” that can understand speech, recognize symptoms of pediatric conditions, and reason according to simple rules. The avatar is able to interface […]

Please see the new NSF/CISE FY11 cross-cutting program, Smart Health and Wellbeing, which we announced on Friday, June 11: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2010/nsf10575/nsf10575.htm. We are looking for your great ideas for how advances in computer and information science and engineering can transform the nature and conduct of healthcare and wellness as we know it today. (Contributed by Jeannette Wing, Assistant Director for NSF/CISE)

The Computing Community Consortium recently prepared a white paper titled, “Information Technology Research Challenges for Healthcare: From Discovery to Delivery,” as a follow-on to the Discovery and Innovation in Health IT Workshop that the CCC co-sponsored with various Federal agencies in October 2009. The paper describes basic research opportunities that can catalyze transformations in healthcare — an enterprise that costs U.S. taxpayers $2.3 trillion (yes, that’s trillion!) each year but, by all accounts, is poorly equipped to handle the evolving needs of patients and providers. A multitude of factors — poor diet habits, stressful lifestyles, aging populations, etc. — is causing chronic diseases like cancer and arthritis to soar, and […]