DEMO: Numenta and Vitamin D want to bring us out of ‘the dark ages of computer video’
Numenta and Vitamin D both showed off cool new technology at today’s DEMOfall 09 conference that makes video footage “smarter.”
Numenta is the new(er) company from the co-founders of Palm Technologies. Since launching four years ago, the company has been building a platform around a new model of processing data, starting with video. Specifically, it demonstrated technology that can “learn” to distinguish between different types of visual data.
While on stage, Numenta created an application that could… Continue Reading
Can Novamente’s virtual dogs make a Nintendog look dumb?
Nintendogs for the DS was a brilliant game. Its premise — pick a puppy and nurture it to adulthood — played on the digital pet theme that has driven high sales from Tamagotchi to Pikachu, and let you teach your dogs fancy tricks and skills that would improve over time, almost like it was learning.
But it wasn’t. A Nintendog’s behaviors were scripted, its personality restricted to a handful of breeds. On the other hand, Novamente,… Continue Reading
How big an opportunity is the external memory?
Before the advent of the written word, the story goes, humans had to either store all their memories in their own heads, or by oral tradition passed down through designated members of their tribes. With trade came notation of facts and figures, and later alphabets, books and libraries. With them came the modern brain, which treats recorded knowledge as an extension of itself.
Throughout these developments, previous generations have grumbled that each new advance leaves us… Continue Reading
Technology is getting more human-like: Audience, Numenta and more
Some very smart people believe machines will take over — directing human affairs — sometime soon, perhaps within the next thirty years.
So much malarkey, you might think, until you consider the sorts of technologies being developed lately — some of which are starting to replicate human intelligence, one step at a time.
There’s Silicon Valley’s Numenta, the company started by Palm founder Jeff Hawkins, which is building a computer system that aims to think like the… Continue Reading