Screaming Penguin

Maybe Ray Kurzweil isn't just some nut. Seem like there are a lot of AI/Expert System related things in the news the last few weeks. Here is a sampling of the things that blipped my radar:

• Cornell has an AI that can derive physical laws from raw data
• Wolfram Alpha (which seems like maybe not vaporware) can perform analysis on arbitrary datasets to answer questions
• IBM wants Watson to compete against Jeopardy contestants as a "Deep Blue" of natural language processing
• Univ. of Paderborn is attempting to pass a Turing Test in Second Life