What is Artificial Intelligence?

Sir David Cope in his room with Emmy

Ever heard of a musical genius that's a robot? A creative composer of beautiful pieces of music that's probably you never heard of, but it's true and her name is Emmy.

Emmy is just the "nickname" of Sir David Cope's musical genius EMI, which stands for Experiments in Musical Intelligence.

Sir Cope started this dream project 20 years ago using an old Apple Workstation. With his passion and love for unconventional music, he designed a musically intelligent cyborg that's able to create or mimic famous musical scores of Mozart and Beethoven. And so Emmy was born.

EMI or Emmy used to be the world’s most sophisticated artificial intelligent musical composer, and because Sir Cope managed to bring her to life, he somehow became the musical Dr. Frankenstein of our time. Emmy composed several hundreds of musical scores of classical heavyweights styles, with very impressive scores that classical music intellectuals failed to recognize "her music" as computer-generated. But not until 6 years ago, when Emmy was gone from the spotlight.

However, just recently, we heard news that Sir David Cope is back with a daughter version of Emmy, which was formally introduced to the public last month. And now, we will hear once again great musical scores of Emmy and see more of her as Emily Howell.

Click here to listen to Emmy.

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Do you like taking some things apart and see how it works? Have you been attracted with robots ever since you first saw R2D2 and C3PO steal the stage in Star Wars?

If so, artificial intelligence and robotics could be a good major for you. For many years, robots were used in many fields, from manufacturing, to transportation, to medicine. In this exciting program, you’ll gain computer, engineering, and scientific know-how to create your own robots.

Artificial intelligence and robotics is a multi-disciplinary field, and the courses you pursue depend on which aspect of the major interests you most.

If you want to create the robots body, take classes in mechanical and electrical engineering. If you’re more interested in designing robot minds and behaviors, then you’ll need a background in both electrical engineering and computer science. And, if you like animal-inspired robotics, then take biology, animal behavior, and cognitive science classes, so you will know exactly what you’re trying to create.

No matter what your specialty is, an artificial and robotics major will include math and computer classes that covers the basics of programming languages, algorithm design, operating systems, data structures, logic, and probability theory and statistics.

Lastly, as with most experimental sciences, you’ll also need to take classes in ethics and philosophy.

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A prototype brain implant that uses light to change the behavior of neurons in the brain is currently being developed by the researchers at Medtronic.

They based the device to the emerging science of opto-genetic neuro-modulation where brain cells are genetically engineered to respond to light.

According to Medtronic, the aim of developing such brain implant is to understand more how electrical therapies are used to treat Parkinson's and other disorders. They said that they will use their findings to improve their electrical stimulators. But they also hope to use optical therapy directly as treatments.

While academic scientist are on the process of developing new apparatus to bring light to the brain, Medtronic is working on optogenetically based brain implant for commercial use. Their module which has the size and shape of a small USB flash drive has a power management unit, a wireless data links, a microcontroller, and an optical stimulator. And it uses fiber-optic wire to target light from a green or blue LED at target neurons in the brain.

Medtronic plans to use the device for in-house research on the effects of DBS and advertise it to neuroscience researchers.

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The left brain indicates a normal state while the right brain indicates general intelligence correlated to IQ scores.

Recently, a study about mapping the human brain has been published in the the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A team of neuro-scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the University of Iowa, the University of Southern California (USC), and the Autonomous University of Madrid collaborate to have successfully mapped the brain to measure general intelligence.

According to Ralph Adolphs, one of the authors, "general intelligence is also referred to as the Spearman's g-factor" but the underlying concepts are quite vague.

Using brain imaging techniques, the team examined a uniquely wide range of data set of 241 brain-lesion patients who all took the IQ tests.

Then, the scientists mapped the area of each patient's lesion in their brains, and correlated them with the patient's IQ score to produce a map of the brain regions that affect general intelligence.

During the examinations, the researchers were amazed to find out that, instead of living in a single structure, general intelligence is distinguished by a network of regions across both sides of the brain.

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NTU new supercomputer uses water-cooled technology to save on enery usage

New supercomputers nowadays compete each other not only in terms of speed and accuracy of memory data but also of efficiency in using energy.

A new supercomputer is well-anticipated to be released at the High Performance Computing (HPC) Center inside the campus of Nanyang Technology University or NTU to sustain the increasing international research profile and capacity of the university.

NTU's new supercomputer is prototyped on the first IBM System x iDataplex group in ASEAN and controlled by the Intel® Xeon® chip 5500 series. It decreases electricity consumption as it automatically regulates recognized energy usage levels and specified processing speeds.

This new supercomputer HPC system optimizes performance with an exceptional water-cooled technology, an IBM's Rear Door Heat eXchanger for the iDataplex Rack. This technology reduces the necessity for in-house computer air conditioners, allowing for room temperature processing.

After a laboratory trial, the result is a lessening in electrical utilization and saving more than 30% when compared with the typical accuracy cooling system available in most supercomputers.

NTU's new supercomputer is ranked 6th as most energy-efficient in the world on x86 computer architecture, and ranked 29th as the most energy-efficient system on the list of Green500 at 274.64 Mflops (millions of floating point operations per second) per watt.

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