I have to preface this post by saying that I happen to be reading Douglas Hofstadter’s latest book, I Am A Strange Loop, and, while some of these topics are covered in it, my discussion predates (and presages) my encounter with them in the text. In other words, while I am riffing on Hofstadter, I’m not ripping him off.

I believe that it will be extremely hard - well beyond the current estimates of futurists and Singularitarians like Ray Kurtzweil - to duplicate human cognition in silicon and code. While I was, and still am to some degree, wildly optimistic about the future of the computational study of cognition, reading Hofstadter’s new book has made me reflect more deeply on what has been called “Strong AI,” its possibility, its likelihood, and the form it would take.

I have become skeptical of predictions of human-equivalent artificial intelligence for three reasons, explained below. First, though, I have to say that I don’t think the limits will be strictly technological. In other words, I believe we will, within a couple of decades, have the raw processing power to emulate a sophisticated (if still somewhat simplified model) of a human mind, the sticking point being how to coax the hardware and software to give rise to such a thing.
(more…)

I’ve been a hacker since before I can really remember. But one common factor present during my whole hacking experience is a tendency toward short-sightedness.

Specifically, the adjectives “quick” and “dirty” are hardlinked to the concept of hackery, and one would be hard-pressed to find such things as “discipline,” “process,” “design,” or, God forbid, “UML” heralded as the flying buttresses of the craft, though crafty it is.

Recently, though, it’s become apparent that the hardasses that do champion these notions might actually have something going for them. And that’s consistency.
(more…)

Here are some projects I’ve hacked on in the last couple of years:
Caffeine (Game Engine)
Amphetrace (Raytracer)
APOTAX (Automated Theorem Prover)
Bash-Em Smash-Em Robots (Fighting Game Demo)
Project:Ominous (FPS Game Demo)
SolarSystemBrowser (3D Solar System Model)
Wander (Text Adventure Game Written in 1 Day)

Some projects that never really got off the ground:
Decaf (Software Renderer)
Barista (Game Scripting System + Editor)
COED (3D Modeling Package)
Golem (Rigid Body Physics Framework)
SpeechVis (Speech Interest Metrics Analyzer)
Tonk (2D Networked Tank Combat Game)
REVIS (Real-Time Video Blending Suite)
Cocorun (Casual Game Demo)

…and some projects I’ve worked on with other people:
Roswell (3rd Person Game Demo)
Native Conflict (Turn-Based Strategy Game Demo)
Metabolic1491 (Metabolic Pathway Modeling Tool)