| Have you ever heard a song on the radio and tried to figure out the name of it? Scientists at Phillips are working on a technology that will do just that. To use the service, you dial up a new computer system they’ve devised, and then hold your cell phone up to the radio for a few seconds. The Phillips system will listen to the song and compare it with a database that, so far, contains 100,000 tunes. Once it matches the song to a title, the answer will pop up on the screen of your cell phone.
Remember when IBM’s supercomputer beat chess master Gary Kasparov? That was interesting but unlikely to change the world in any fundamental way. Now a supercomputer experiment by Jeffrey Kephart at IBM’s research center really may have long-lasting impact. He pitted the computer against six human commodity traders, all experts. The computer made more money on its trades than the experts. “The impact might be measured in billions or dollars,” he said. |
