Joseph Novak and Learning/Sharing through Concept Mapping

We very actively used some of Prof Joseph Novak's work to capture knowledge and use it to capture, understand and improve process.  That story is told in the Concept Mapping tag below.  The method is not used enough. I happened on this piece where he tells the story of his life and research.  Links to free PDF and videos.   Highly recommended.

Joe Novak tells his story
Prof. Joseph Novak is a Senior Research Scientist at IHMC and Professor Emeritus at Cornell University. He is recognized worldwide for the development of concept maps, but his lifelong effort as a researcher, professor and business consultant paints a much  broader picture of a relentless scientist fighting to have his ideas accepted by peers and the community in the US, while widely accepted in the rest of the world.

Prof. Novak has shared his lifetime work in his autobiography and a presentation recorded in videos. In his words:

This book and the videos present the story of my life-long search for better ways to help people learn. It begins with the story of my early family life that shaped and sustained my commitment to improve educating by building better theoretic foundations and better tools to understand and facilitating learning. Some of the academic challenges I faced are also discussed, as well as some of the successes we have had, especially with the development of the concept map tool now used in schools, businesses and organizations all around the world. My wife, Joan, my children, and my students have played an important role in my work, and some of their stories are included. I have chosen to publish these stories on the WWW so it would be available to anyone who is interested at no cost .... "

Space Exploration with CMaps

Been a while since I mentioned concept maps, but I use them often.  In a Linkedin conversation I saw mention of their use in an example to provide motivation for space exploration.  Alberto J. Cañas, Associate Director at IHMC (Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition) writes:

" ... We are developing new technology for the CmapServer that should make the integration much nicer. Hope to have it out in the next few months. Uses the same viewer technology we use for the SpaceExploration site (http://spaceexp.ihmc.us). ... "

Shopping by Scanning Images

In MarketWatch:   We experimented with approaches that used watermarks embedded in packaging.   Includes a short video demo to show it in operation.

" .... You can now shop on Amazon by taking photos
App’s new “Flow” feature allows for point-and-shoot shopping

 " ...  Amazon app's image recognition
Amazon is integrating product recognition software, called “Flow,” into its main shopping app. Point your phone’s camera at a labeled product, and if Amazon sells it, you’ll see it pop up.

Flow—as its name suggests—aims to make it as seamless as possible to shop. MarketWatch carried out its own “showrooming” with the app. Scanning a three-bottle package of the hair growth serum Rogaine, Flow immediately found the item on Amazon for $43.85, 30% cheaper than the $62.99 price in a Duane Reade store. .... "  

Institute of Human and Machine Cognition

I was just reminded of the IHMC.  Who we worked with for several years experimenting with the capture of internal and customer knowledge.  " ... Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition ... The Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition is a not-for-profit research institute headquartered in Pensacola, Florida with scientists and engineers investigating topics related to understanding cognition in both humans and machines  ... "

Police Robotics

In Time: With video.  An old idea, but here apparently a commercial available system.   I always ask, how are these different from a remote movable camera?  How much autonomy is involved?  A number of relevant sensors are included,  like facial recognition and thermal imaging. Detection versus reaction.   The Knightscope company.

Deep Learning Innovation from Mobile Sensors

Out of Research at Purdue:   Interative contextual learning and reasoning is a powerful concept that will radically change how we use computing.  It will bring sensors to many new environments.   And analytics to the data gathered.

" ... Researchers are working to enable smartphones and other mobile devices to understand and immediately identify objects in a camera's field of view, overlaying lines of text that describe items in the environment.

"It analyzes the scene and puts tags on everything," said Eugenio Culurciello, an associate professor in Purdue University's Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Psychological Sciences.

The innovation could find applications in "augmented reality" technologies like Google Glass, facial recognition systems and robotic cars that drive themselves. ... " 

Watson as a Cognitive Technology

Was told that IBM has just refreshed their Watson site.  Just examined it. IBM now positioning it as a cognitive technology. No longer called AI or Expert Systems, which was the common parlance in our day.  The positioning is interesting too: " ... Watson is a cognitive technology that processes information more like a human than a computer—by understanding natural language, generating hypotheses based on evidence and learning as it goes. ... ".  

I emphasize the statement that it is 'more like a human', rather than any claims of intelligence.    Sounds good.  Also, because humans use many tools beyond raw intelligence, as Watson will as well.  Key is how to integrate analytics tools, data and cognition.  Interacting with human expertise.  Site includes video, and implication that early applications are in health care.

Example given: " ...  Revolutionizing Genomics and Personalized Medicine with IBM Watson After a decade of R&D, an IBM Watson™ prototype for genomic research is planned to be used in a clinical study to fight brain cancer. ... "  Just discussed this with a company that have been doing a proof of concept in the area.  More will follow.

Is AI Changing Business?

A piece in Smart Data Collective, makes some useful points.   I think it is no longer a question.  I was actively involved the last time we rode the AI hype in the late 1980s,   We spent millions on it then, derived more millions in results, but did not get the billions that management was expecting at the time.   Once again I am following it closely, and I think there are indications that real value is starting to emerge, like in the IBM Watson effort, that the world may finally be ready for this.

One reason this is more likely to work this time around is the Big Data explosion.  More data is available in more forms than ever before.  Artificial Intelligence methods are essentially predictive analytical methods.  Our own intelligence works this way.   We have memory that we search, operate on it with our business logic, which uses pattern recognition,  and predict some future state.

We then take that prediction and envelop it some decision we want to influence.  Failures can occur at each of these steps.  We can lack the data to search,  search it poorly,  have inadequate logic or not know how to link it to the actual decisions made in the business.

My own observation was that the failures in AI work occurred for two reasons.  First, we did not have adequate or complete data to understand the process, and secondly, we did not take sufficient care to blend the results into the decision process.

We are ready to address both failures now, the data is there.  The decision process aspect needs to be solved with more care in understanding the connection between prediction and useful decision. We have all the parts to do this now lets put them together.

Am still a believer that this will be useful for any size business.

This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines  of a smarter planet. More here.  

Facial Recognition Apps for Glass

Facial recognition app that matches strangers to online profiles.  " .... See someone on the train you'd like to date? NameTag, an upcoming app for Android, iOS, and Google Glass uses facial recognition technology to match passersby to their social-media and dating info. ... "   Getting the opportunity take a closer look at Google Glass in the coming days, and will make some comments on possible applications.

On the Re-Dawn of AI

Atlantic takes a look at a new dawn of AI.   See this blog for lots more on the topic. Always of interest here.  Our enterprise was an early industrial pioneer of the science.   With only partial success.  Were we just a few years too early?   Efforts like IBM's Watson are taking a similar, but more powerfully armed, approach.   We consulted with IBM actively during our experiments with related technologies.  Walter Riker, see his blog, sends me this short non-technical article from the Atlantic that takes another look, worth reading. Will follow with more thoughts.   Pass along any of your own.

" Digital machines have escaped their narrow confines and started to demonstrate broad abilities in pattern recognition, complex communication, and other domains that used to be exclusively human. We’ve recently seen great progress in natural language processing, machine learning (the ability of a computer to automatically refine its methods and improve its results as it gets more data), computer vision, simultaneous localization and mapping, and many other areas.

We’re going to see artificial intelligence do more and more, and as this happens costs will go down, outcomes will improve, and our lives will get better. Soon countless pieces of AI will be working on our behalf, often in the background. They’ll help us in areas ranging from trivial to substantive to life changing. Trivial uses of AI include recognizing our friends’ faces in photos and recommending products.  .... " 

Lots more in this blog on the history and direction
 of enterprise AI.

NantMobile and Macy's

A former colleague of mine now runs NantMobile.  In the press it is reported that they are working with Macy's    Its interesting too that the company is owned by major Chinese retailer BJ Hualian.   And more on the Macy's work. ( NantMobile, A NantWorks LLC company, The Beijing Hualian Group )

" ... NantMobile’s core product, iD Browser, is a mobile recognition platform that allows people to browse the physical world around them, unlocking digital experiences, coupons, content and information from featured brands that they know, like and trust.

Today consumers are limited to browsing the web. Why should we limit them? Imagine if consumers could browse the world, any time, any place, unlocking the physical world with digital content related to your brand. Now the physical world is browsable.

With your mobile device, the iD Browser, and our patented recognition technology, we are transforming the world wide web into the web enabled world. Get your branded presence up and running on the iD Browser today.NantMobile’s core product, iD Browser, is a mobile recognition platform that allows people to browse the physical world around them, unlocking digital experiences, coupons, content and information from featured brands that they know, like and trust. ...  " 

Behavioral Research in System 1 vs System 2

If you have been following some recent advances in thinking about cognition: " ... Charles Young examines what we can learn about measuring ad effectiveness by applying Daniel Kahneman’s System 1 and System 2 theory of cognition.  ... " via Jeff Goldstein of AcuPoll.

Facebook and Wal-Mart on Facial Recognition

In Adage:   Piece on the interests of retailers and the social media on facial recognition.  Not very surprising, given recent research in this domain.   " ... Facebook, Walmart to Help Write Rules On Facial Recognition Technology ... Retailers and Advertisers Hope to Use the Tech to Identify Consumers ... Facebook, Walmart, and other companies planning to use facial-recognition scans for security or tailored sales pitches will help write rules for how images and online profiles can be used. ... " 

Soft Biometrics

If face recognition fails, consider behavior biometrics:  " ... The US government is challenging researchers to use cameras to ID people by unique features like their gait or the shape of their ears ... " 

NEIL Learns from Images

I was involved with a startup system that used image recognition and categorization called Photrade several years ago.  There I got an appreciation of how difficult this problem was.   Also how closely it matched to the process of 'learning' we had mimicked using AI methods in the enterprise years before.  What we did was very primitive compared to what is underway at Carnegie Mellon University with The Never Ending Image Learner (NEIL) program.  This also sounds like it should be directly connected to the work at Cyc we also explored.  Will continue to watch.

In  BBC Technology: 

" ... The work is being funded by the US Department of Defense's Office of Naval Research and Google. Since July, the NEIL program has looked at three million images. As a result it has managed to identify 1,500 objects in half a million images and 1,200 scenes in hundreds of thousands of images as well as making 2,500 associations ... The team working on the project hopes that NEIL will learn relationships between different items without being taught. Computer programs can already identify and label objects using computer vision, which models what humans can see using hardware and software, but the researchers hope that NEIL can bring extra analysis to the data. ... " 

Detecting Mathematical Thinking

Can we detect reliably the specific nature of the thoughts in the brain?  Some work reported on in Nature Communications that show we can deferentially detect the brain working on simple math problems.  Still awaiting work on more complex thinking.    Remain skeptical in general.

Abstract:   " ... Human cognition is traditionally studied in experimental conditions wherein confounding complexities of the natural environment are intentionally eliminated. Thus, it remains unknown how a brain region involved in a particular experimental condition is engaged in natural conditions. Here we use electrocorticography to address this uncertainty in three participants implanted with intracranial electrodes and identify activations of neuronal populations within the intraparietal sulcus region during an experimental arithmetic condition. In a subsequent analysis, we report that the same intraparietal sulcus neural populations are activated when participants, engaged in social conversations, refer to objects with numerical content. Our prototype approach provides a means for both exploring human brain dynamics as they unfold in complex social settings and reconstructing natural experiences from recorded brain signals. ... " 

Google Glass Alternative in Japan

And yet more in the world of wearable devices, this from Japan: At least in its prototype this looks fairly clunky .... Note too that these are being billed as augmented reality implementations,  while Google Glass is positioned more as a wearable display.

" ... This week at Ceatec, a technology trade show in Tokyo, Docomo showed off so-called wearable technology that, among other things, provides nearly instant translation of written texts. The device, called Intelligent Glass, is Docomo’s answer to Google Glass — eyewear that uses technology to perform a variety of tasks.

Slip on the device and look at text and it can be translated into a different language before your eyes. The device also performs face recognition, providing a sort of virtual business card service for people whose names you struggle to remember. ... " 

Mapping Tutorials for Knowledge Capture

From Biggerplate, a set of tutorials on mind mapping.  Also related, from the IHMC site: Concept Maps, their theory and how to create them.   Examining for use in a knowledge capture problem.

App for Oral Health

Procter & Gamble launches an app with Oral-B that promotes oral health.   A novel use of the iPhone as sensor through its mic.  Available on the iPhone store now.  " ... “With sound recognition technology to track how long a user is brushing, a quadrant guide to ensure a user is brushing each area of the mouth sufficiently, and news, weather and oral care tips to keep users engaged throughout their brushing sessions, the Oral-B app allows for a smarter and more thorough clean,” he said. ... Brushing companion ... The app leverages the mobile device’s microphone to pick up on the sound frequency when either an Oral-B Professional or Oral-B Deep Sweep power brush is being used. ... " 

Hands Free Car Manual on Google Glass

Metaio's press release on their prototype augmented reality car manual, mentioned here before.    I note that this was precisely the area we explored, using 3D location to be able to do machine maintenance, by overlaying diagrams and physical spaces.   I think there are lots of opportunity in industry.   Includes a video of use at the link.

" ... The hands-free interactive car manual prototype developed by Metaio will be the first time that augmented reality on wearable computing will be shown to be productive and commercially viable.

Metaio R&D developed this new prototype as a proof-of-concept of the capabilities of its AR platform on wearable devices. A new type of 3-D tracking and recognition technology engineered by Metaio utilizes CAD models to recognize and overlay 3-D content onto the real world counterpart. Since no markers, GPS or point clouds are required, the stability of the augmented reality experience increases dramatically, while remaining almost immune to variable lighting, glare, position, and other environmental factors that tend to interfere with vision-based experiences ... "