RESEARCH UPDATES
RESEARCH 5: Professor Gianni's Talk:
1) Can you give both an operational and a philosophical definition of AI?
Operational artificial intelligence is a type of intelligence that is created for real-world usage and applications.
Philosophical AI relates to replacing humans with robots that act and think like humans.
2) Can you name at least three different techniques or sub-fields of AI?
- Neural Networks
- Evolutionary Computation
- Speech Processing
3) AI has been around since about 70 years so far. Why is it booming right now?
Artificial intelligence is booming right now because of the advances in hardware. These advances allow us to perform more complex algorithms in a shorter amount of time, which enables us to create more advanced AI that can respond quicker.
4) Can you name at least three application sectors where robots are being largely employed? What are the reasons?
Health Care: robots and AI in this sector (such as the da Vinci Surgical System) are used to enhance the precision of hand movements during surgeries inside the patient's body.
Agriculture: robots are used in this sector to minimise the overall costs while maximising productivity in farming.
Manufacturing: Robots are used in sectors where repetitive and monotonous movements are required, and are also used to increase efficiency while minimising production costs.
5) Can you identify three potential challenges for a wheeled autonomous robot that would perform a 24h surveillance task in a large facility?
-Part of the robot may malfunction and fail to repair itself.
-If it needs maintenance or repair, its surveillance task will be interrupted for a while.
-If the facility is too large, it might not be able to watch the entire place on its own.
CITATIONS:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_artificial_intelligence
https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~jxb/IAI/w2.pdf
https://becominghuman.ai/what-is-ai-and-why-now-79d94f77dc91
https://onlinemasters.ohio.edu/blog/5-industries-utilizing-robotics/
https://jmc.stanford.edu/articles/aiphil2.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_robot#Open_problems_in_autonomous_robotics
RESEARCH 4: Professor Giselle's Talk:
1) What are programming languages used for?
Programming languages are used to give a computer instructions to perform certain tasks, usually by using high-level programming languages such as Java, C++, etc.
2) How do we translate solutions to computer programs? What are the limitations?
In order for solutions to be translated into computer programs, the high-level language gets converted to machine language for the computer to understand the instructions, by a compiler or interpreter.
A limitation of this would be the difficulty of writing the code if the problem was too complex or if the programmer was not experienced enough.
3) How many programming languages are there? What does this number tell you?
There are 256 programming languages. This tells us that certain programming languages may not be efficient enough for certain purposes, and thus new programming languages are created for improved efficiency.
CITATIONS:
https://www.webopedia.com/TERM/P/programming_language.html
https://dzone.com/articles/big-list-256-programming
RESEARCH 3: Professor Hammoud's Cloud Computing Talk:
1) Why and what is cloud computing?
Cloud computing is used for storing or managing or accessing resources, databases, software, etc., over the internet instead of the computer's local hard drive.
Examples include Google Apps, Apple iCloud, Amazon EC2, and others.
2) Is cloud computing a new technology? In other words, what is unique about cloud computing?
Cloud computing, when compared to traditional IT infrastructure, is different in multiple ways.
For example, the data or applications that get stored in the cloud become available in all the servers. Additionally, cloud computing's performance is quite fast, due to its larger storage space and a wider range of server resources.
On the other hand, traditional IT infrastructures may not be as fast or have a storage space that is as large as the cloud's storage space, which lowers its performance quality.
3) What are the three major cloud service models, and which service model would you use to run your simple python programs?
The three major cloud service models are IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.
The service model that we would use to run simple python programs is PaaS.
4) What is the economic/business model of cloud computing?
The economic/business model of cloud computing is IaaS. It is used to develop PaaS, SaaS, and applications.
Examples of IaaS include Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, Google Compute Engine, and others.
CITATIONS:
https://www.salesforce.com/products/platform/best-practices/cloud-computing/
https://www.pcmag.com/article/256563/what-is-cloud-computing
https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-cloud-computing-817770
https://www.ibm.com/cloud/learn/iaas-paas-saas
https://www.mendix.com/blog/making-sense-of-paas/
https://www.computenext.com/blog/when-to-use-saas-paas-and-iaas/
https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/saas-vs-paas-vs-iaas/#examples-of-saas-paas-and-iaas
RESEARCH 2: Professor Ryan's Security Talk:
1. Who discovered the attack? How long has it been going on?
Google Project Zero researchers discovered the attack.
Google claimed that the attack lasted two years. However, Apple have said that their evidence implied that the attack lasted two months. (Reuters)
2. Who orchestrated the attacks? How do we know?
China officials orchestrated the attacks. The Chinese government has been cruel against the minority Muslim community in China, and this was their latest effort, according to news sources and tech websites. (TechCrunch)
3. What did the attack allow the attackers to do to a victim's phone?
The attack allowed hackers associated with Chinese officials to spy on the victims' phones and obtain the victims' passwords and live location. (CNN)
4. On a technical level, what did the attack do? How did it do it?
The attackers would "infect" the victims' phone with harmful code after the victims visit particular websites. As a result, attackers can then access the victims' passwords and live location. (TechCrunch)
5. Why were the security flaws not patched earlier?
The security flaws were not patched earlier because Apple finds new security flaws within its systems each time. Sometimes they do not identify a problem or realise that it exists until after it has been violated by hackers. (TheConversation)
CITATIONS:
https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/31/china-google-iphone-uyghur/
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/04/politics/china-uyghur-hack/index.html
RESEARCH 1: Professor Christos' Presentation
1. What is a decision problem?
A decision problem is deciding whether or not a solution(algorithm) to a problem is correct/efficient and can be proved.
2. What does it mean for a decision problem to be 'decidable'?
For a decision problem to be 'decidable', it needs to have a proper and efficient algorithm that fixes the problem.
3. What is the class P? What is the class NP?
The class P is short for 'polynomial time', whereas NP is short for 'nondeterministic polynomial time'.
Class P is a subset of class NP, and it consists of problems that can be solved with an efficient algorithm. An example of this is the problem that professor Christos explained ("Alex's problem"), in which a route that visited each street in a town only once was needed. As a result, an algorithm was developed to solve this problem.
On the other hand, class NP consists of problems and solutions that are theoretical; there are ways to describe them in imaginary algorithms, but they can't be implemented. Professor Christos also explained a problem in this case ("Bob's problem"), in which a route was needed in order to visit every point in the town's map only once. This was impossible to solve, as there was no efficient algorithm that can be implemented to develop a route that solved the problem.
4. What is the intuitive meaning of the "P versus NP" question?
The "P versus NP" question mainly talks about whether or not all hard problems that can be verified quickly can also be solved just as quick.
5. If you solve the "P versus NP" question, how much richer will you be?
1 million dollars is the prize for anyone that solves the P versus NP question.