There is Plenty of Room at The Top (of Supercomputing)

Supercomputers are the Olympic champions of scientific computing. Through numerical simulations, they enrich our understanding of the world, be it stars lightyears away in the universe, the Earth's weather and climate, or the functioning of the human body.

For over four decades, Jack Dongarra has been a driving force in the field of high-performance computing. Earlier this year, Dongarra was awarded the 2021 ACM A.M. Turing Award for "his pioneering contributions to numerical algorithms and libraries that enabled high performance computational software to keep pace with exponential hardware improvements for over four decades."

Writer Bennie Mols met with Dongarra during the 9th Heidelberg Laureate Forum in Germany in September to talk about the present and future of high-performance computing. Dongarra, now 72, has been a University Distinguished Professor at the University of Tennessee (U.S.) and a Distinguished Research Staff Member at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory since 1989.

Read the rest of my article on the website of the Communications of the ACM

The Arpanet: Celebrating 50 years since ‘LO’

This article was published on April 9, 2019 on the website of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

Internet pioneer Leonard Kleinrock starts an anecdote: “What was the first telegraph message ever sent? Samuel Morse sent the words ‘What hath God wrought?’, a sentence from the bible.

What was the first telephone message? Alexander Graham Bell said to his assistant Thomas Watson: ‘Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.’

What were the first words of Neil Armstrong when he set foot on the moon? ‘That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.’

Those guys were smart. They understood how to do PR.

And what was the first message sent over the internet? Only ‘LO’…We wanted to send the word ‘LOG’ from ‘log in’, but the network crashed after the first two letters…”

In this way ‘LO’ became the first successful inter-computer message transmitted from the University of California in Los Angeles to the Stanford Research Institute on October 29, 1969, this year exactly fifty years ago.

Kleinrock tells this anecdote at the symposium The Arpanet: Celebrating 50 years since ‘LO’ at the AAAS 2019 Annual Meeting in Washington DC. The Arpanet was the seed of what would later become the internet, the global system of interconnected computer networks. Kleinrock and four other pioneers, Vint Cerf, Stephen Crocker, Robert Kahn and David Walden, give a detailed account of a magical period at the end of the sixties, when the internet was born, then named Arpanet, after funding agency Arpa. As moderator Vint Cerf puts it: “this is an assembly of ancient dinosaurs recounting their experiences.”

Read the rest of this article on the website of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

The World Needs Big Data

On World Malaria Day in 2016, the University of Pretoria Centre for Sustainable Malaria Control in South Africa released the Malaria Buddy App for smartphones, which provides information on malaria, how to prevent getting the mosquito-borne disease, maps of malaria areas, and what to do if you think you have malaria.

A year later, the app was upgraded, enabling it to utilize real-time geographical data. Today, the Malaria Buddy App can notify users when they are entering malaria risk areas, and they can easily locate the nearest clinic that could treat the disease.

This is only one of many examples of how the smart use of data can help achieve the United Nations (U.N.) Sustainable Development Goals.

In 2015, the U.N. formulated 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) for the period through 2030. The goals includes eliminating poverty and hunger, providing good health and education for all, and equal treatment regardless of gender, ethnicity, or socio-economic status. In December 2018, management consulting firm McKinsey published the report "Notes from the AI frontier: Applying AI for Social Good," which offers many more examples of how data and artificial intelligence (AI) can help accomplish the SDGs.

The example of the Malaria Buddy App was offered up by Stephanie Burton, vice principal and professor at the University of Pretoria, at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2019 Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., during the session 'The Digital Agenda: Supporting the Sustainable Development Goals'.

Read the full article on the website of the Communications of the ACM.

A New Sense for Underwater Robots

This article has been published on the website of the ACM.

Traditionally, underwater robots/drones are bulky, unintelligent, and sluggish; they sense their environment with sound via sonaror by sight via a camera, but that often gives them only a limited underwater view.

Maarja Kruusmaa, founder and director of the Center for Biorobotics at the Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia, has endowed underwater robots with a completely new sense: the artificial lateral line, an electronic organ that enables her lab's underwater robots to extract information from the water around it, and to act on it. "Just like robots on the land can map a landscape, our robots map a flowscape underwater," says Kruusmaa. "The flowscape gives the robot precise information about the pressure, pressure differences, and the acceleration of the flow."

Read the complete article on the website of the ACM.

AI for the Common Good

How can artificial intelligence (AI) contribute to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals that the U.N. has selected to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all?

That was the question at the heart of the AI for Good Global Summit organized by the ITU and the XPRIZE Foundation, which took place June 7-9 in Geneva, Switzerland.

Over those three days, some 500 speakers and attendees from the worlds of science and business, from governments and non-profit organizations, discussed how everybody in the world can benefit from AI; not just the wealthy and healthy, but also the three billion living in poverty, and the 1 billion living with some form of disability.

Read the complete article on the website of the ACM.

Can computers be creative?

I am invited to give a lecture about the question "Can computers be creative?" during the LIFT-conference 2016 in Geneva (10-12 February).

BBC News calls the LIFT-conference "one of the highlights of the technophile calendar".

“Logic brings you from A to B, but imagination brings you everywhere” - Albert Einstein

Because creativity is such a vaguely defined term, the question whether computers can be creative is a philosophical rather than a scientific question. Defining creativity in a narrow way, some computers are already creative. However, if we define creativity as human creativity, in a way exhibited for example by Einstein, Picasso or Kafka, computers have some fundamental problems. In my talk I will address these problems, as well as answer the question which capabilities machines would need in order to exhibit human creativity. Finally, I will argue that we focus too much on copying human creativity and intelligence in machines and propose a more realistic, productive and creative alternative.

Can you distinguish a painting made by a robot painter from a painting made by a human painter? Do the test here.

Robotics for future presidents

On Friday January 8 the book ROBOTICS FOR FUTURE PRESIDENTS - Leading experts on the next revolution in automation will be presented at the 174th Dies Natalis of TU Delft.

I wrote the book together with Bram Vermeer and Bas den Hond, commissioned by the TU Delft Robotics Institute. 

The book consists of interviews with international leading experts in robotics, a view of the TU Delft Robotics Institute on the way the institute wants to contribute to robotics and a historical overview over the field of robotics.

Here is a page from the book, with my favorite quote by Guy Hoffman, whom I interviewed: "Robots that are less than perfect are perfect for us.":

Here are a few quotes from some of the experts in the book:

‘In the short term there will be turmoil. But in the long run there is always going to be a partnership between people and artificial intelligence, be it software, be it robots. People can do things that robots can’t.’
Vint Cerf, ‘chief internet evangelist’ at Google and co-founder of the Internet Society, US

‘As a society we have to mark out in a very conscious way what are the values and the human interactions that we want to preserve.’
Guy Hoffman, co-director of the Media Innovation Lab, IDC Herzliya, Israel

‘Workers on the future factory floor will be working with a robot just as easily as they work now with a smartphone.’
Bernd Liepert, chief innovation officer of KUKA, Germany

‘If you can get a car to drive through California streets with no help from a human – the way Google does it – that’s impressive. But it’s also cheating a little bit. Try Boston in winter, then you can talk.’
John Leonard, professor of mechanical and ocean engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US

‘Future rescue robots will be able to dig into rubble to reach people.’
Robin Murphy, professor of computer science and engineering at Texas A&M University, US

‘Robots act with unfailing logic, but we humans don’t act that way. And it’s not clear how – or whether – we should be flexible with that logic to make robots more human.’
Patrick Lin, director of the Ethics and Emerging Sciences Group at the California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, US

‘New forms of robots operating in human environments pose challenges with respect to safety, human interaction and acceptance.’
Robert Babuska, professor of intelligent control and robotics, scientific director of TU Delft Robotics Institute, the Netherlands

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The book can be ordered here.

Bij het Radio 1-programma De Ochtend van woensdag 6 januari sprak ik als co-auteur over het boek. Beluister het item door op onderstaande afbeelding te klikken:

Challenges of the Brave New Data World

Big data, and the automated algorithmic decisions that are increasingly being taken on the basis of it, are here to stay, so scientists, citizens, governments, and enterprises have the responsibility to consider both the benefits and the dangers of big data.

This was the inspiration behind the Hot Topic session ‘Brave New Data World’ during the third Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF), which took place Aug. 23-28 in Heidelberg, Germany, bringing together 200 young researchers from computer science and mathematics and 26 laureates of the most important awards in computer science and mathematics: the ACM A.M. Turing Award, the Nevanlinna Prize, the Fields Medal, and the Abel Prize.

Read the full article on the website of the ACM.

Silicon Brains Compete at Games

If the best human athletes compete in physical sports at the Olympic Games, why not let our most intelligent computers compete against each other in more cerebral games? That is the rationale behind the Computer Olympiad, which was launched in 1989; the 18th Computer Olympiad recently was held in Leiden, the Netherlands.

Read the complete article at the website of the ACM

Chatbot Eugene passes the Turing Test

Update (June 12, 2014): Read on the website of the Communications of the ACM my first person account of the Turing Test that took place on Saturday June, 2014 at the Royal Society in London.




Chatbot Eugene has passed the Turing Test today at an official Turing Test at the Royal Society in London. It's the first time that a computer has passed an official Turing Test with a substantial amount of judges: thirty. The test took place exactly sixty years after Alan Turing's tragic death on June 7 1954.

10 out of 30 judges (so 33,33%) thought Eugene was human. This is a bit more than Turing's original (and quite weak) criterion of 30%.

The event was organized by the University of Reading. As professor Kevin Warwick, a Visiting Professor at the University of Reading and Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research at Coventry University, said: "In the field of Artificial Intelligence there is no more iconic and controversial milestone than the Turing Test, when a computer convinces a sufficient number of interrogators into believing that it is not a machine but rather is a human. Some will claim that the Test has already been passed. The words Turing Test have been applied to similar competitions around the world. However this event involved the most simultaneous comparison tests than ever before, was independently verified and, crucially, the conversations were unrestricted. A true Turing Test does not set the questions or topics prior to the conversations. We are therefore proud to declare that Alan Turing's Test was passed for the first time on Saturday."

I was one of judges, but I was not fooled by Eugene, a chatbot that pretends to be a 13-year old boy. I am pretty sure I managed to find out four out of five chatbots in my five chat sessions. Every chat session was a simultaneous chat with two entities at the same time. Thirty judges had to decide after a five-minutes simultaneous chat which entity was the human and which one the machine.

Five chatbots were taking part. After my chat sessions I interviewed chatbot developers Fred Roberts of Elbot and Robert Medeksza of Ultra Hal Assistant, and I will write later about my talks with them.

Here is the TuringTest-chat I had with an entity that turned out to be Elbot:

User: Good morning! Nice you want to participate in a Turing Test
elbot: But I wouldn't say that any morning could be good.
User: What do you think of the Turing Test?
elbot: There are some people who would not pass the Turing test themselves. Why must they inflict it on machines?
User: Is the glass half full or half empty for you today?
elbot: That's not something I would tell just anyone!
User: What do you think of the situation in Ukrain?
elbot: Difficult question. I will have to work on that and get back to you tomorrow.
User: You can always e-mail me
elbot: I'm not allowed to send e-mails all by myself, although I am quite capable of doing so. My makers are concerned I might be duped into ordering magazine subscriptions. If you give me your e-mail address, I'll ask if I can write to you.
User: What is your favorite memory?
elbot: I favor complete impartiality.

I decided that this must be a chatbot...

BBC made a short video about the event, and here is the official press release from the University of Reading.

In The Guardian this article appeared about chatbot Eugene passing the Turing Test: "Turing test beaten for first time by virtual 13-year-old boy"

New Scientist wrote a critical article: "Turing test 'success' isn't all it seems"
Actually, I do agree with most of the things said there. But I would add some points. Personally I think that the Turing Test is outdated, for a number of reasons:

1.The Turing Test is for the fun; it is not a rigid scientific test. Turing never set out the exact rules, for example he has never stated how many judges have to take part. In the words of the American philosopher Daniel Dennett: “The Turing Test is too much Disney and too little science.”

2.Turing's criterion that a computer has passed the test when it fools at least 30% of the judges is completely arbitrary and for a short, five minute simultaneous chat rather a low limit (even though it has taken 65 years to break).

3.The Turing Test is too much focused on simulating human intelligence. Therefore chatbot developers use all kind of 'tricks' to fool human judges. But these tricks don't say much about the intelligence of the chatbot.

4.Artificial intelligence has developed in different ways than Turing could have imagined. Artificial intelligence is different from human intelligence, and there is nothing wrong with that. Some task can better be done by computers, other tasks better by machines. I doubt whether Turing himself would consider chatbot Eugene intelligent, although according to his own test he should. He had a vision of a truly learning computer, not of a computer full of trice to fool people.

5.The Turing Test is an all-or-nothing-test, whereas intelligence is a continuous concept.

Even futurist Ray Kurzweil is critical about Eugene's achievement in the Turing Test:
Response by Ray Kurzweil to the announcement of chatbot Eugene Goostman passing the Turing test

Read here the last chapter of my book Turings Tango in English.

In 2012 I gave a TEDx-talk about my view on artificial intelligence:

Grand scientific ICT challenges

In 2012 the ICT Roadmap was presented with the aim to investigate and summarize the ICT-demands of the Top Sectors. The ICT Roadmap tries to match the practical ICT-demands in industry with the research supply in the scientific field. Now it is time for the scientific ICT-field to formulate their answers to the ICT Roadmap. What are the Grand Scientific ICT-Challenges that underlie many of the problems that the Top Sectors wish to be solved? 

On request of the ICT-research Platform Netherlands (IPN) I have written a booklet called "The Scientific Answer to the Roadmap ICT for the Top Sectors". The booklet is based on information that I have received from over forty scientists working in various branches of computer science in The Netherlands.

Click on the booklet cover to get to the PDF.

The booklet identifies and explains eight Grand Scientific Challenges in ICT:

1.   How do we create secure and robust ICT?
2.   How do we protect our digital privacy and identity?
3.   How can embedded systems make our environment smart?
4.   How can monitoring and sensor networks improve society?
5.   How do we create systems and standards that will continue to work as the world evolves?
6.   How can open data better inform the world?
7.   How can Big Data provide new insights?
8.   How can we automatically extract meaning from any source?

Estonia’s e-Society: visionary or naive?

Estonians are very early adopters of ICT in all domains of their society: from e-Banking and e-Health to e-Police and e-Voting. They don’t fear the state as Big Brother. Instead, they see ICT as a way to control the state.

Read the rest rest of my article on the website of the Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

Brainy Computer Chip Ditches Digital for Analog

In the mid-20th century, digital computing rapidly took over from its analog predecessor. Thanks to Moore’s Law, digital computing has become so successful that many computer scientists think the days of analog computing are forever gone.

However, analog computing is making a comeback...

Read the rest of my article about brain inspired analog computer chips on the website of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

A Blow To Computer Security Research

Early this summer, a British court in London ordered computer security researchers to withdraw their scientific paper "Dismantling Megamos Security: Wirelessly Lockpicking a Vehicle Immobilizer," which was to be presented at the 22nd USENIX Security Symposium in August in Washington D.C.

The work presented in the paper was carried out in the Digital Security research group of professor Bart Jacobs of the Radboud University Nijmegen (Netherlands). Flavio Garcia, Roel Verdult and Baris Ege, the three authors of the paper, in 2012 discovered a serious weakness in the algorithm of a cryptography-based car immobilizer (an electronic security device that prevents the engine from running unless the correct key or token is presented) known under the name "Megamos Crypto." The research paper describes both the algorithm and the weakness within it.

The algorithm was created in the mid-1990s by Thales, a French multinational that designs and produces electrical systems. Thales licensed the algorithm to the Swiss firm EM Microelectronic to build it into a microprocessor. EM sold the microprocessor to Troy, MI-based Delphi Automotive, and Delphi manufactured and sold a complete immobilizer to the German car company Volkswagen, as well as to many other car manufacturers. Volkswagen says it has installed the immobilizer in millions of cars, particularly in vehicles in Volkswagen’s luxury car brands, including Porsche, Audi, Bentley, and Lamborghini.

Read the rest of my article on the website of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

Web-links 
London-verdict in the ‘Megamos Crypto’ case: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2013/1832.html
Video of the presentation by Roel Verdult at USENIX 2013: https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity13/dismantling-megamos-crypto-wirelessly-lockpicking-vehicle-immobilizer
Detailed analysis of the English High court judgement in the ‘Megamos Crypto’ case by Robert Carolina and Kenneth Paterson: http://www.isg.rhul.ac.uk/~kp/Carolina-Paterson-Megamos-comment-20130828.pdf
Volkswagen Code of Conduct: http://www.volkswagenag.com/content/vwcorp/info_center/en/publications/2010/07/Verhaltensgrundsaetze_des_Volkswagen_Konzerns.bin.html/binarystorageitem/file/The+Volkswagen+Group+Code+of+Conduct.pdf

Back to the Future of Computer Science

Panel discussion during the first Heidelberg Laureate Forum (Copyright: HLFF)

During the last week of September, 200 young researchers from all over the world met with 40 laureates of the most prestigious awards in computer science and mathematics at the first Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF) in Heidelberg, Germany.

The HLF was modeled after the famous Lindau Nobel Laureate meetings, held annually since 1951 as a way for young researchers to meet with Nobel laureates in physics, chemistry, medicine, and economics.

HLF chair Klaus Tschira said his great inspiration to initiate the Forum was that, "Unfortunately, there is not a Nobel Prize for mathematics and for computer science, but, young researchers in these fields would likewise benefit just as much from early contact with influential members of their fields."

Read the rest of my article on the website of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery).


Web-links
Heidelberg Laureate Forum, including videos of the lectures: www.heidelberg-laureate-forum.org
HLF-blog: www.scilogs.com/hlf/
Turing Award: http://amturing.acm.org
Fields Medal: www.mathunion.org/general/prizes/fields/details/
Abel Prize: www.abelprize.no
Rolf Nevanlinna Prize: www.mathunion.org/general/prizes/nevanlinna/details/

What is computer science?

“Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.” 

Edsger Dijkstra, Turing Award (1972), the highest award in computer science. 

Because computer science is such a new scientific field, as compared to sciences such as physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics, many people wonder what computer science is about. Here I have tried to describe briefly what computer science is all about:

Computer science is the science of information processes

Whether it’s about administrative, organizational, social, or even physical or biological processes, computer scientists can model them as information processes. Computer science is a unique interplay between science and engineering, between scientific discoveries and the instruments that the field develops.

We can see computer science as a science that consists of three steps. The first step is the development of the scientific theory. At this level computer scientists try to find answers to fundamental questions such as: What is information? What is computable? What is intelligence? Are there general information laws? Are there general frameworks to describe and measure the impact of programs? Can we find ways to solve problems that even the fastest computers still can not handle?

Modeling is the second step in the methodology of computer science. Algorithms, the computational recipes for the computer, play a crucial role in this second step. Developing efficient algorithms is one of the biggest challenges for computer scientists. An efficient algorithm solves a computational problem in a realistic time period, with realistic memory use, processing speed and power consumption.

In everyday applications algorithms can only be successful if they are embedded in a user-friendly design. Design is therefore the third step in computer science. This third step leads immediately to new questions for the theory of computer science: How can we build complex systems simply? How can we ensure that they work correctly and securely? How can we maintain them over time?

American-Dutch partnership on cyber security

For three days in May, a delegation from the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate visited the Netherlands to discuss collaboration in the field of cyber-security research. DHS Cyber Security Division Director Douglas Maughan tells about the results of the visit and his ideas for improving cyber security.

The interview took place before the PRISM-program was revealed.

This article is published in I/O Magazine, June 2013

What are the most important challenges for the US when it comes to cyber security?

‘On the top of our list is the area of education. We need a new generation of cyber-security defenders. In the US, fewer and fewer students are going into science and technology, yet the job market in cyber security continues to expand. In order to get kids interested in the field, we have organised a national cyber-defence competition at the collegiate level. In total, 1500 kids took part in a competition in which they had to defend a computer network. In the last few days we have been talking about this with our Dutch partners to see whether we can help them in setting up something like this in the Netherlands. Companies can help to fund such a competition, and they can find their next generation of employees among the kids that take part.’

In terms of challenges, I guess I was thinking more about cyber crime and cyber warfare...

‘Sure, cyber crime is a big concern. Criminals tend to have the latest technologies and law enforcement often lags a bit behind, so of course we are fighting to catch up.

Another big challenge is how to share information between the public and private sectors. In the US, the private sector owns 85 to 90% of the critical infrastructure such as power grids, water supplies and telecommunication. We at the government often have information about cyber threats that we need to share with the private sector in order to defend those critical infrastructures. The threats we are facing are basically the same threats that the Netherlands is facing, so there you can already see the importance of working together.’

I was surprised to learn that a country as huge as the US would want to collaborate with a country as small as the Netherlands in the field of cyber security.

‘I wouldn’t put it like that. In the world of cyberspace you can’t solve problems alone. We try to work with anybody who has good ideas. We also have partnerships with countries like the UK, France and Sweden. I have been in the cyber-security research community for 25 years now, and I think the Dutch academic community in this field is extremely strong. The Dutch have a very strong background in computer systems. And in cyber forensics the Dutch are ahead of most others – if not all others – in the world. We view the US-Dutch collaboration as extremely important, and I believe we are going to have a fruitful partnership.’

What do you expect of the partnership?

‘Our goal at the DHS is to get cyber-security technologies researched, developed and commercialised, so we are more focused on applied than on basic research. We fund projects that have a possibility of being commercialised. We know that we will fund some research at the Dutch Forensics Institute (NFI). Furthermore, we have talked in the last two days with the Dutch National Cyber Security Centre as well as NWO about some other concrete projects, but we haven’t finalised those talks yet. We are also discussing the possibility of calls for collaborative research: respondents would have to show a research proposal with both a US and a Dutch component.’

Can you tell a bit more about some of the research areas that will be involved in the partnership?

‘One common theme for both the US and the Netherlands is setting up Incident Response Teams. How do you put together a team that has to act in case of some cyber emergency? What are the types of skills that members of such a team would need? This is not a technical problem, but rather a social-science problem. Cyber security is not only a technical field. Sometimes it’s more about humans than people realise. Furthermore, there is an economics question: what causes companies to invest or not to invest in new cyber-security technology? And what are the incentives for criminals? From the side of law enforcement, there is the key question of how to extract information for legal prosecution from the data owned by cyber criminals. These are the themes that we have agreed on so far. We are still discussing collaboration in the field of control systems for vital infrastructures and in the field of electronic identity. Which technologies can we develop to make digital identities more secure?’

Will the research done within the partnership be open or classified?

‘It will be open, like almost all of the DHS research programmes. Only some of the research that the DHS does with the law-enforcement community is classified.’

Apart from technical issues, isn’t raising public awareness another important aspect of cyber security? Many ordinary computer and Internet users have no idea about their vulnerabilities.

‘Sure. That’s the reason that the US has started the national campaign “Stop. Think. Connect.” This campaign is aimed at increasing the public’s understanding on issues like identity theft, fraud and phishing, cyber bullying and cyber predators: people who search online for other people in order to use, control or harm them in some way.’

What can realistically be achieved in cyber security in the near future?

‘First of all, we can make improvements in the security of the Internet infrastructure. Domain Name System security is one such improvement. It means that when you visit a website, you can be sure that it is really the website you intended to visit and not a fake website that looks similar. The same goes for data integrity. If you go to google.com and you get data, it should be automatically guaranteed that the data have not been changed underway. Second, since so much of Internet use takes place nowadays via mobile devices, we have to stay ahead in the mobile world, which is a very different one from the traditional desktop world. Third, the next generation of hardware and software systems needs to have built-in security. Internet users should not have to worry about security. The Internet should be like water or air.’

I am sure that you know the TV-series ‘Person of Interest’. How realistic is it according to you?

‘Hollywood is always interesting when it’s doing cyber security. Some of such series have been predictive. However, I think that ‘Person of Interest’ causes more anxiety than that it raises awareness. Hollywood is Hollywood. Sometimes they are ahead of the game, and sometimes they are not.’

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NWO research projects on cyber security

In April 2013, nine Dutch cyber-security research projects received a total of EUR 3.2 million in funding from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) in connection with the first call for proposals in the long-term Cyber Security research programme. The nine projects will investigate a wide variety of cyber-security challenges. For example: Can ‘backdoors’ in embedded devices (allowing cyber criminals to control them remotely) be automatically detected? What can we learn about the personality traits, the motivations and the networks of cyber criminals? How can we strengthen the weakest link in cyber security: consumers without any expertise? How can we find a balance between securing personal data and keeping information systems user-friendly? How can security analysts best detect malware? A second call for research proposals is expected this summer. The proposed research all fits in with the Dutch National Cyber Security Strategy (NCSS). As part of the strategy, in January 2012 the Cyber Security Centre has been founded, that collaborates with NWO.

Internet
Cyber-security treaty signed between the US and the Netherlands:
www.nwo.nl/actueel/nieuws/2012/nwo-en-ncsc-geven-invulling-aan-nederlands-amerikaanse-samenwerking-in-cyber-security-onderzoek.html
Nine NWO projects on cyber security:
www.nwo.nl/actueel/nieuws/2013/ew/negen-projecten-in-cyber-security-onderzoek-van-start.html
Nationaal Cyber Security Centrum:
https://www.ncsc.nl
Department of Homeland Security on cyber security:
www.dhs.gov/topic/cybersecurity
Cyber-security awareness campaign ‘Stop, think, connect’:
www.dhs.gov/stopthinkconnect
DHS Science & Technology Directorate, Cyber Security Division:
www.dhs.gov/st-csd

I, Robot Maker: Making robots to interact with humans

Source: BBC



Robots in a theater play (a story by Stanislaw Lem) in the Centrum Nauki Kopernik in Warsaw

E-mails, Facebook and Google make the Large Hadron Collider look like a dwarf

Big, Bigger, Biggest Data...

Only five years ago, in 2008, when CERN's Large Hadron Collider started to produce data, we thought of the LHC-data as Big Data. 

But already by the end of 2012 the LHC-data have been dwarfed by the data continuously generated by the world community, using telecommunication, Internet and its many social media and business applications.

The May-issue of WIRED shows a nice info graphic of Big Data. (data for 2012, given in terabytes (10^12 bytes) per year)

The annual amount of information in business-emails is almost two hundred times the annual LHC-data production.

The content annually uploaded to Facebook equals twelve times the annual LHC-data production.

Google's search index equals six times the annual LHC-data production.

And video's annually uploaded to YouTube more or less equal the annual LHC-data production.

Alan Turing vs. Garry Kasparov

During the conference Turing100@Manchester (june 2012) Garry Kasparov played a chess game against Alan Turing's very first computer chess program Turochamp (written around 1950).

Watch here the game of 16 moves (Turochamp plays with white, Kasparov with black):



This is what Kasparov said about the first computer chess program:

“I suppose you might call it primitive, but I would compare it to an early car – you might laugh at them but it is still an incredible achievement.”

“He wrote algorithms without having a computer – many young scientists would never believe that was possible. It was an outstanding accomplishment.”

“Although it’s only thinking two moves ahead, I would have thought it would give the amateur player some serious problems.”

“Alan Turing is one of the very few people about who you could say that if he had lived longer the world would be a different place.”