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This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th Portuguese Conference on Artificial Intelligence, EPIA 2003, held in Beja, Portugal in December 2003.

The 29 revised full papers and 20 revised short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 119 submissions. In accordance with the five constituting workshops, the papers are organized in topical sections on artificial life and evolutionary algorithms, constraint and logic programming systems, extraction of knowledge from databases, multi-agent systems and AI for the Internet, and natural language processing and text retrieval.

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This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 2nd International Joint Conference of the 10th Ibero-American Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IBERAMIA 2006, and the 18th Brazilian Artificial Intelligence Symposium, SBIA 2006, held in Riberão Preto, Brazil in October 2006.

The 62 revised full papers presented together with 4 invited lectures were carefully reviewed and selected from 281 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on AI in education and intelligent tutoring systems, autonomous agents and multiagent systems, computer vision and pattern recognition, evolutionary computation and artificial life, hybrid systems (fuzzy, genetic, neural, symbolic), knowledge acquisition and machine learning, knowledge discovery and data mining, knowledge engineering, ontologies and case based reasoning, knowledge representation and reasoning, natural language processing, planning and scheduling, robotics, theoretical and logical methods, as well as uncertainty.

Product Description
This volume contains thoroughly refereed full versions of the best papers presented at the 5th European Workshop on Modelling Autonomous Agents in a Multi-Agent World, MAAMAW '93, held in Neuchâtel, Switzerland in August 1993. The volume opens with a detailed introduction by the volume editors bringing the papers in line and offering a readers' guide. The 15 full research papers reflect the state-of-the-art in this dynamic field of research; they are organized in sections on emergence of global properties, emergence of sociality, multi-agent planning, multi-agent communication, and multi-agent architectures. ... Read more

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This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference documentation of the First Asia-Pacific Conference on Simulated Evolution and Learning, SEAL'96, held in Taejon, Korea, in November 1996. The 23 revised full papers were selected for inclusion in this book on the basis of 2 rounds of reviewing and improvements. Also included are invited papers by John L. Casti and Lawrence J. Fogel. The volume covers a wide range of current topics in simulated evolution and learning e.g. evolutionary optimization, evolutionary learning, artificial life, hybrid evolutionary fuzzy systems, evolutionary artificial neural networks, co-evolution, novel evolutionary approaches to computer tomography image reconstruction, power systems load flow control, and water flow control in cropped soils. ... Read more

Product Description
As computers and the tasks they perform become increasingly complex, researchers are looking to nature—as model and as metaphor—for inspiration. The organization and behavior of biological organisms present scientists with an invitation to reinvent computing for the complex tasks of the future. In Imitation of Life, Nancy Forbes surveys the emerging field of biologically inspired computing, looking at some of the most impressive and influential examples of this fertile synergy.

Forbes points out that the influence of biology on computing goes back to the early days of computer science—John von Neumann, the architect of the first digital computer, used the human brain as the model for his design. Inspired by von Neumann and other early visionaries, as well as by her work on the "Ultrascale Computing" project at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Forbes describes the exciting potential of these revolutionary new technologies. She identifies three strains of biologically inspired computing: the use of biology as a metaphor or inspiration for the development of algorithms; the construction of information processing systems that use biological materials or are modeled on biological processes, or both; and the effort to understand how biological organisms "compute," or process information.

Forbes then shows us how current researchers are using these approaches. In successive chapters, she looks at artificial neural networks; evolutionary and genetic algorithms, which search for the "fittest" among a generation of solutions; cellular automata; artificial life—not just a simulation, but "alive" in the internal ecosystem of the computer; DNA computation, which uses the encoding capability of DNA to devise algorithms; self-assembly and its potential use in nanotechnology; amorphous computing, modeled on the kind of cooperation seen in a colony of cells or a swarm of bees; computer immune systems; bio-hardware and how bioelectronics compares to silicon; and the "computational" properties of cells. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Couldn't Get Past Page 15
Be warned.I only read the first tenth of "Imitation of Life: How Biology is Inspiring Computing" by Nancy Forbes. I claim no expertise and the following is strictly my opinion.What little I read, I mostly disliked.

I felt the author demonstrated little subject expertise. On page 5 she defines synapses as "the connection points between the dendrites and the axons."That had me running to Wikipedia.In my opinion, the discussion of neural logic here is confusing. I don't think anyone not already familiar with it will understand the model of a neural net she tries to present.

Consider this from a sentence on page 13:"Darwin's theory of natural selection -- a radical departure from currently accepted beliefs...." Gosh, I though a large body of currently accepted beliefs originated with Darwin. This strikes me as typical of stylistic or logic problems in the writing. In general, I found the writing unenlightened, uninspired, verbose, clumsy, and pedantic.

I didn't read much of this book because I trusted it so little that reading became a chore. It reminded me of when I wasa programmer reviewing a draft produced by a technical writer.There the minimal goal was to correct mistakes both detailed and conceptual. I don't have the expertise to do that for Ms. Forbes, or the patience. Doesn't MIT press have editors? Can't they find computer scientists to write a popularization?

I am not an expert in computer science or biology.Beyond the 15 pages of this book I read,the rest may be good. But from what little I did read, I imagined the author as someone who took a few undergraduate biology and computer science courses and decided to do an interdisciplinary senior thesis about biologic-inspired computing. I think she did it without a lot of help from subject experts reviewing the text although she states in the preface that, and I quote,"Contentwise...," [long list of names here] "... were especially helpful ...."Me personally, I didn't find the content wise.

I don't know anything about the academic press, but I'm disappointed that MIT Press published this book. When I arrived at the misspelling "accomodate" on page 15, I declined to read further in a book on computer science that hadn't been spell checked. I would expect better from MIT.

[Because I read so little, I rate it a neutral three stars.]

Does it cover the Enteprise Software?
No, it doesn't.

The author is a gifted technical analyst, working for Government Agencies. The text teaches what is the "bio-inspired" computationin high level research at universities and research agencies

As commercial software coverage, the mention of RSA In. for encription software, IBM and SAP DNA algorithms

One of the most stringent needs is to apply learning algorithms in Enterprise Computing. Huge data centers must havepolicies decided by humans, designed for autonomic self-healing.

The theory of change management claims new idea in business - enterprise software is nothing but a reflection of the business idea - is a seed that must grow naturally.

The use of bio-inspired , self-evolutionary software code would be not only a great fit, but a commercial success. The market for such software is every business that operates a data center and/or a compute grid.

As I work in creating enterprise software products, I bought the book with great expectations. This explains my probably biased disappontment with an otherwise a good book that opens the gates of new possibilities.

There is an Enterprise Biology Software Project ongoing http://www.enterprisebiology.com/report_2004.htm . It's mere existence and name illustrates the need described in this review. ... Read more

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The advent of powerful processing technologies and the advances in software development tools have drastically changed the approach and implementation of computational research in fundamental properties of living systems through simulating and synthesizing biological entities and processes in artificial media. Nowadays realistic physical and physiological simulation of natural and would-be creatures, worlds and societies becomes a low-cost task for ordinary home computers. The progress in technology has dramatically reshaped the structure of the software, the execution of a code, and visualization fundamentals. This has led to the emergence of novel breeds of artificial life software models, including three-dimensional programmable simulation environment, distributed discrete events platforms and multi-agent systems. This second edition reflects the technological and research advancements, and presents the best examples of artificial life software models developed in the World and available for users.

Customer Reviews (1)

a sequel to the Game of Life
Remember Conway's Game of Life? Surely you must, if you are interested in this book. The Game has been around since the 70s. The editors have cultivated recent research papers that demonstrate how far the field has advanced. Reinforced by some pretty colour plates that depict artificial entities [dare we call them living?] in some surroundings. These include the modelling of bee flights through a garden, and simulated trajectories of a group of bacteria.

Nor is the Game of Life ignored. One plate shows it in three dimensions. The Game is played in 2 dimensions, with time as the third dimension. An obvious choice that gives interesting trajectories of the cells.

The narrative adds to the illustrations. By describing a variety of computer simulations [worlds?]. Where the experimenter can tweak many parameters, and watch her world unfold. Some worlds are impressively rich in complexity of observed behaviours.

The only drawback in the book is its skimpy index. A mere two pages. It should have been more detailed. ... Read more

Product Description
Seeing a patient die under his hands because there is noadequate treatment causes an emotion and a frustration in a doctor,which sometimes stimulates him to try to develop a new type oftreatment. Seeing so many wounded young soldiers die due to renalfailure in World War I incited the German doctor Georg Haas to try todevelop an artificial kidney. He had to give up in despair in 1928.

Ten years later doctor Willem Kolff saw a young man die in his ward inthe University Hospital of Groningen due to renal failure. By thattime two essential factors for an artificial kidney had becomeavailable: a drug to keep the blood from clotting outside of the bodyand an efficient dialysing membrane through which waste substances canpass from the blood into the dialysing fluid. Kolff succeeded increating the rotating artificial kidney which he started using in thetown hospital of Kampen in 1943. The rotation of this artificialkidney started a revolution that made it possible for thousands ofkidney patients all over the world to keep on living - and sometimesto forget their disease for the time being. In addition it gave riseto the development of other artificial organs such as the heart-lungmachine, the artificial heart and the artificial eye.

Doctor Jacob van Noordwijk, the author of this book, was Kolff's firstassistant in the treatment of the first 15 patients. How Kolffsucceeded in spite of all the limitations imposed by the Germanoccupation of the Netherlands and in spite of the absence ofantibiotics and other medical tools which are common nowadays makes astory which may sound incredible. Yet it did happen and visitors tothe town of Kampen can still see the hospital building where it alltook place. ... Read more

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Constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on Evolutionary Robotics, ER 2001, held in Tokyo, Japan, in October 2001. Topics addressed are imitation of life and machine consciousness, autonomous vision based robots, evolved robots, living machines, artificial evolution, and mobile robotic systems engineering. ... Read more

Product Description
Since its inception in the 1980s, Artificial Life is an interdisciplinary field of science focused on abstracting the essential features and dynamics of living systems in order to create artificial life-like and living systems. In 1995, the first German Workshop on Artificial Life (GWAL) was organized by young researchers who were interested in this newly emerging science and wanted to discuss their projects and results in an open, informal atmosphere. The 7th GWAL, which was held in Jena 2006, continued the successful series of these workshops. It was attended by young scientists not only from Germany but also from several other European countries and from Japan. The submissions were intensely reviewed by renowned members of an international program committee. The finally accepted contributions cover many different topics of Artificial Life, such as information and category theoretical models of living systems, the computational relevance of the physical substrate of life, the logic of genetic regulatory networks, and new approaches to artificial chemistries.

IOS Press is an international science, technical and medical publisher of high-quality books for academics, scientists, and professionals in all fields.

Some of the areas we publish in:

-Biomedicine
-Oncology
-Artificial intelligence
-Databases and information systems
-Maritime engineering
-Nanotechnology
-Geoengineering
-All aspects of physics
-E-governance
-E-commerce
-The knowledge economy
-Urban studies
-Arms control
-Understanding and responding to terrorism
-Medical informatics
-Computer Sciences ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (3)

Relevant to Knowledge Management and Web Marketing
Some people may be put off by the author's referrences to magic and sorcery in his titles.In my opinion, Peter Small has something important to say to those of us interested in knowledge management and Web marketing.An avatar is an animated character on a computer screen and may represent a real person in a virtual world.In my opinion, the importance of avatars is not so much in the programming behind them (as impressive as that may be) but in the human willingness to attribute emotion and intelligence to avatars.An avatar that can access a variety of forms of multimedia, can learn from a variety of sources, and can visually represent emotion is of great potential consequence.Peter Small is a visionary and makes some pretty "radical" statements in his books.This is about the juncture of artificial intelligence, object-oriented programming, and animated interface design.That is potentially a very rich juncture.I wish there was a virtual community of people interested in the practical applications of Mr. Small's ideas.

Beware of books with too-cool titles
Although the too-cool title made me suspicious,I got this book because I read an excellent reviewof it (on this page).I was hoping to read a forward-looking thesis on multimedia avatars, but got instead a book whichshould have been called "Having Fun with Director."It's notabout programming, artificial life or avatars.If you have never heard ofgenetic algorithms or object-oriented programming and think the internet isan incredible source of useful information, then perhaps this book is wortha quick read.Otherwise skip it.

An entirely new way of approaching the Internet
This book has three subject matters which all run in parallel, informing and commenting on each other.

These subjects are: * the relationship between biological entities and computer objects * the future of theinternet * OOPs programming in Director

The book is very clearly andcleverly written. The Lingo scripting, for example, is discussed in themain text in terms of its underlying principles, and the actual scripts areshown in illustrations, reproducing Director's script window. This meansthat the underlying arguments can be read without interruption, and byreaders who have no Lingo experience.

Indeed many of the arguments in thebook are addressed to a much wider audience than Director users and Lingoprogrammers. Peter Small suggests through a series of analogies andpractical examples that there may be less difference between human andartificial intelligence than is normally thought - if we concentrate on theeffects of intelligence rather than getting caught up in arguments as towhat intelligence is and where it comes from.

He uses a wide range ofexamples, introducing the idea of Hilbert Space as his final conceptualflourish. Against the odds he even manages to explain this abstrusemathematical concept clearly and simply, and then demonstrate convincinglyhow it can be a useful tool for thinking about the future development ofmultimedia.

Peter's concern with multimedia lies in the development of'intelligent' multimedia entities that he refers to as avatars - entitieswhich can grow and change, accessing information on local hard disks, onCD-Roms and on the world wide web. The primary difference between these andtraditional bots is that they are designed to operate from a clientoriented perspective, rather than the more usual server side emphasis. Theyare designed to grow organically, to exceed the original intentions of theoriginal programmers. They are designed to be diverse and different, and touse that as a strength.

In many ways Peter is proposing a completeinversion of the way we currently see the Internet. It is usually seen as anew broadcasting medium - I have a website and you can tune into it. Petersuggests that this is a very limited and limiting way to see what isessentially a huge repository of information, all able to be communicatedin any way we can imagine. He suggests that the idea of the standard,generalised browser is an idea whose time has more or less gone. Instead heproposes specialised avatar systems who can respond to their users needsand desires and extend themselves across the web to bring back informationin useful and structured forms.

One of his demonstrations concerns theconstruction of a café which can be used to bring like-minded peopletogether, while another concerns avatar web-bots which can be sent off insearch of like-minded people to bring to the café. Both of these aredescribed in terms of the fundamental principles, their likely effects -and the Lingo necessary to construct them.

For readers with no Lingoexperience Peter provides convincing arguments with just enough technicaldetail to demonstrate that what he is talking about is not science fictionbut can be done today with standard software.

For readers who do haveLingo experience, there is plenty to chew on in the accompanyingillustrations of scripts. Here Peter provides the details of how variousavatar systems can be built and extended. In addition to the café andweb-bots, these include a chemist who is able to work out the correct setof ingredients from sixty million possible combinations in less than 38steps, taking a second or less in total. Peter uses this as the basis fordiscussing genetic algorithms, which can be used to model complex thoughtprocesses, and which can learn from their experiences, becoming moreintelligent the longer they are allowed to 'live'.

Most interestingly ofall, though, Peter intends to work out the implications of what he issuggestingin practice on the web. The book is therefore a starting pointfor an experiment which will be carried out by Peter and anyone who wishesto join him.

The book is, in effect, an invitation to participate in auniquely exciting experiment - and there aren't many books you can say thatabout. ... Read more

Product Description
British Telecom are teaching small packets of software to have sex. Telephone traffic is now so huge that it cannot be run by a single large program, so BT are experimenting with various species of small "ant" programs which are autonomous and can breed and evolve better offspring by trial, error, and natural selection. The most efficient number of sexes is three, they have discovered. Meanwhile harmless artificial life forms are already loose on the Internet; computer viruses and even robots are now able to evolve randomly like their biological couterparts. Protein-based computers are on the agenda: a team in Japan aim to build an organic brain as clever as a puppy. The convergence of technology with biology has big implications. Artificial life is evolving beyond its designers' control. This book is a "tour d'horizons" of who is developing what artificial life around the world. Mark Ward has interviewed the researchers and developers of artificial life and has some scary predictions for the directions in which they are taking us. ... Read more

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Product Description

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Anticipatory Behavior in Adaptive Learning Systems, ABiALS 2006, held in Rome, Italy, in September 2006, in association with SAB 2006, the 9th International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behavior.

The 20 revised full papers presented were carefully selected during two rounds of reviewing and improvement for inclusion in the book. The introductory chapter of this state-of-the-art survey not only provides an overview of the contributions included in this volume but also proposes a taxonomy of how anticipatory mechanisms can improve adaptive behavior and learning in cognitive systems. The papers are organized in topical sections on anticipatory aspects in brains, language, and cognition, individual anticipatory frameworks, learning predictions and anticipations, anticipatory individual behavior, as well as anticipatory social behavior.

Product Description

Hopping, climbing and swimming robots, nano-size neural networks, motorless walkers, slime mould and chemical brains - "Artificial Life Models in Hardware" offers unique designs and prototypes of life-like creatures in conventional hardware and hybrid bio-silicon systems. Ideas and implementations of living phenomena in non-living substrates cast a colourful picture of state-of-art advances in hardware models of artificial life.

Product Description
The Star Trek series has inspired not only armchair fans, but also the researchers who are trying to better the human race, developing the devices of the future, and struggling to conquer space travel. The Star Trek series was also the inspiration for this book, which examines the artificial intelligences portrayed in the shows.

The question we’ll be asking throughout this book is, "How do we get from where we are now to the point where we are able to create truly exceptional artificial beings such as Holodeck characters, Lieutenant Commander Data, and the Emergency Medical Hologram?" In order to answer this, we’ll examine where we are right now and extrapolate where we are heading. Throughout the book a passion for Star Trek is integrated with academic research from the AI, A-Life, and Robotics domains, which are presented in an easy to understand way—bypassing the technobabble and mind-blowing mathematics.

The book examines the characteristics and capabilities of Star Trek’s artificial life forms and compares them with current technologies in an attempt to predict if we’ll ever create such advanced beings. It is written to provide both the serious Trekker and the occasional voyeur with a handbook of the current techniques and devices available in the fields of artificial intelligence, robotics, and artificial life. It examines the development of artificial life forms such as Data and the EMH from the bottom up, including their physical creation programming, and metaphysical aspects such as personality and emotions to determine if such beings might some day be a reality.

If you have ever wanted to know what a positronic brain is or how to write a personality subroutine then this is the book for you! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Good for Fans and AI Researchers
As a fan of the Star Trek series and as someone working in AI, this book was the obvious choice for me when I noticed it during a casual trip to the bookstore. There are 14 chapters on the characteristics we tend to associate with intelligent beings (e.g. sensing the environment, thinking and reasoning, imagination and creativity). In each, the author relates to episodes from the entire Star Trek series to date (i.e. the original series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise). Since I have seen all of them (except the original series), the explanations were familiar to me. It was also a nice refresher of certain episodes that I might just watch again. There is very little in this book in terms of technical information (thankfully, as AI can be quite complicated and mathematical) but a lot in terms of ideas and basic concepts. Dilettantes and fans of Star Trek would therefore enjoy this book more than academics and researchers. I have nothing against science fiction or television and I think many times, directions for further research can be inspired by it. This is why I still consider this book a contribution to the field. Overall, a worthwhile and light read.

Some minor errors in case there is a 2nd edition.

1. pg. 46, para 2, "pheromone trails" (not 'trials').
2. pg. 81, the second formula is the same as the first when it should be different i.e. p(success) cannot be the same as p(failure).
3. pg. 88, based on the second premise (i.e. It's temperate is always 50 degrees or above), the sentence in the following paragraph should be, "...any planet with a temperature of *less than* 50 degrees..." (not "50 degrees or less").
4. pg. 120, para 3, it's "Bajorans" (not Bajorians).
5. pg. 126, para 3, line 5, "...don't tend to always enjoy..." (missing 's'); same line, the endnote indicator should be after the period.
6. pg. 126, last line, "jokes...." (three periods are customary in an unfinished sentence, not four).

The future of AI systems
Penny Baillie-De Byl's ARTIFICIAL LIFE POSSIBILITIES: A STAR TREK PERSPECTIVEexamines what the future might bring in creating exceptional artificial environments such as Star Trek has featured. Using Star Trek's innovative concepts as a foundation, artificial intelligence researcher Dr. Penmny Baillie-De Byl considers artificial life forms depicted in the TV series and the state of current technology to consider the potentials behind creating advanced AI systems.

Interesting Way to Discuss Artificial Intelligence
The author has picked an interesting way to examine the state of the art in artificial intelligence. It is an interesting turn around. The originators of the TV series Star Trek looked at the research that was being done and extrapolated this research into their characters. In turn, these characters were looked at by researchers to see how their research might really be carried forward.

In this book, Dr. Penny Baillie-de Byl, an Australian university lecturer has in turned looked at the research being conducted and tied it back to the TV show characters. She looks at androids and at purely projection characters such as those that are generated on the holodeck.

The chapter I liked best was her discussion of the Turing Test, a test Alan Turing devised to determine if a machine could think - (what's think, what's a machine). Have we passed the test yet? Then again, I see some humans once in a while that I don't think could pass the test. ... Read more

Product Description
Alan Turing was one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. In 1935, aged 22, he developed the mathematical theory upon which all subsequent stored-program digital computers are modeled. At the outbreak of hostilities with Germany in September 1939, he joined the Goverment Codebreaking team at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire and played a crucial role in deciphering Engima, the code used by the German armed forces to protect their radio communications. Turing's work on the version of Enigma used by the German navy was vital to the battle for supremacy in the North Atlantic. He also contributed to the attack on the cyphers known as 'Fish,' which were used by the German High Command for the encryption of signals during the latter part of the war. His contribution helped to shorten the war in Europe by an estimated two years. After the war, his theoretical work led to the development of Britain's first computers at the National Physical Laboratory and the Royal Society Computing Machine Laboratory at Manchester University. Turing was also a founding father of modern cognitive science, theorizing that the cortex at birth is an 'unorganized machine' which through 'training' becomes organized 'into a universal machine or something like it.' He went on to develop the use of computers to model biological growth, launching the discipline now referred to as Artificial Life. The papers in this book are the key works for understanding Turing's phenomenal contribution across all these fields. The collection includes Turing's declassified wartime 'Treatise on the Enigma'; letters from Turing to Churchill and to codebreakers; lectures, papers, and broadcasts which opened up the concept of AI and its implications; and the paper which formed the genesis of the investigation of Artifical Life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

An excellent edition, long overdue
Enjoy this profound book by the father of the Digital Age. The Essential Turing is an excellent edition and long overdue. Turing's essential works are finally available in a single volume.Turing is one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century--he was rated up there with Einstein in Time magazine's 'The Century's Greatest Minds'. Copeland's lucid commentaries on Turing's work are fascinating and helpful. OUP is to be congratulated on putting Turing into the hands of the popular science book-buyer at long last.

a long overdue book
A long overdue book. Copeland collects together Turing's greatest papers. As in where Turing tackled the fundamentals of what is now called a Turing machine - ie. a universal computer. Plus other papers where Turing ruminated on artificial intelligence, and founded that field. Plus coming up with the Turing Test for AI.

Turing's papers are interleaved with chapters by Copeland that give extra context to the times in which Turing lived. Notably on Turing's crucial contribution to the Enigma project at Bletchley Park during World War 2. It is no exaggeration to say that his insight into decoding the German encryptions saved the lives of thousands of Allied soldiers.

Valuable also is a reprinting of Turing's "Treatise on the Enigma", which was only declassified in 1996. Though by then, its essence had been known for decades. Finally, the book letsyou read Turing's words on Enigma.

Most Accessible Introduction to Turing
This is a terrific book. Turing is one of the most important figures of our time.Copeland's lucid and helpful introductions to Turing's key works make fascinating reading.(The hundreds of footnotes are testimony to the depth of scholarship that underlies Copeland's smooth prose.)Copeland makes Turing, and so the origins of the digital age, accessible to all.

A valuable addition in paraphrasing Turing
Copeland's "Essential Turing" reviews Turning's major writings and is a valuable source of knowledge for computer scientists and avid CS/Mathematics readers alike. Turing was a brilliant British mathematician, logician, and cryptographer and is widely considered to be the father of computer science. This book doesn't portray him merely as a code breaker but also provides commentary on his brilliant foundation work as on Artificial intelligence. Discussion on the ultimate Turing test (proposal for a test of a machine's capability to perform human-like conversation) and Entscheidungs Problem is worth reading.

I shelve this book next to Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming" which may state what it's worth.

A collection of Turing's papers
Copeland's book is basically a collection of some of Turing's original papers, completed with a short introduction for each part of the book. I was disappointed by this book as (1) one can easily find copies of Turing's work on the web, (2) there is very little additional value in Copeland's comments, and (3) the papers are not reproduced in their original typeset and layout. Elsevier's "Collected Works of A. M. Turing" (4 volumes) does a much better job and offers Turing's complete work. ... Read more

Product Description
Poetry. "This collection, ARTIFICIAL LIFE, includes several night scenes, lit as if by an expanding network of fireflies. From a lofty but wordless height, the poet suddenly swoops towards some arresting detail--a party spilling onto a street, a compromised accountant, a wedding photograph, an urban development site, a picnic by a lake, wrinkles on a dog's face, an old lady in the mountains. Even a casual relationship is approached by means of a kind of fidelity, its incompleteness illuminated by a valid unsentimentality. And before he departs again, the poet leaves behind, in his words, an indelible quality, rather as the music of Apollo's lyre is said, by Ovid, to have lingered in the masonry of the walls at Alcathoe"--Martin Turner. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Not so artificial life
Mike Gessner's new book, "Artificial Life," is a rare bird among the flocks of contemporary American poetry books
darkening the literary sky like so many passenger pigeons.Uniquely, the poems are both intellectual and alive, abstract and warmly breathing.In "Promiscuity," the customer "is paying/for clarity/not peace of mind,/not a day at the beach/with sand in the sandwiches."Gessner's poems drive toward clarity, not peace of mind, but he's too good a poet to leave out from even his most cerebral work the sand of our daily lives."Artificial Life" heals that age-old rift between
the body and the mind.

BEST READ -- Michael Gessner's ARTIFICIAL LIFE
ARTIFICIAL LIFE arrived here today and I keep picking it up to read a poem and then re-read a poem and then read it again.What I liked immediately about the book was its presentation.BlazeVOX has done a wonderful job of publishing Michael Gessner's varied work and formats and I like the oversized concept of the book.This is a book of BIG IDEAS and I feel I haven't even scratched the surface yet.
Any lover of words looking for original ideas would be immediately engaged by this book.You won't find the same-old Same-Old here:"Original minds are not necessarily what we think/ & may not produce artifacts as we know them"
--Michael Gessner's voice moves through the long poem and the short poem.Some of the poems are structured and tight and some are wide open.The poem "Cases - A Cosmography" is the longest poem and one of the most intriguing.All day I have "heard" it and pondered how to speak it.You can turn from this puzzle of language and meaning to a more straightforward poem like "The Mathematics/ of Adoration" -- and you will marvel at the skill to create such a compact poem that says so much about "things that are precisely now."
I highly recommend ARTIFICIAL LIFE by Michael Gessner and hope to see it on "Best of" lists for 2009.
... Read more

Product Description
In this work, I focus on the use of Anticipation in Multi Agent Systems (MAS), particularly on a preventive anticipation that consists of anticipating undesirable future situations in order to avoid them.In this thesis designed architecture is intended for intelligent autonomous agents that should behave in a complex Artificial Life (ALife) like environment. The primary motivation behind this research was to propose and integrate Anticipation Approaches in a designed simulator. I implemented 3 different types of Machine Learning Algorithms in my Anticipatory Agent System (Anticipator) to see which one gives the most promising results. (Markov Chain, Neural Net and Genetics Programming). After I included an Adaptation Behaviour Block in my (NMAS) system - it has been solved an Adaptation Anticipatory Multi Agent System (A2MAS). Finally, I suggested a concrete approach to a communication among agents in a system Round Contract (RCont) based on principles of the FIPA Contract Net Protocol. In the end, I applied designed systems with anticipation in daily life applications. One of the most useful applications in this area is a Smart Home project especially for Power Management. ... Read more