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BLACK BOX. "Although complex traits are omnipresent in life at different biological scales, with examples ranging from butterfly wing patterning to the assembly of multiprotein complexes, little is known about the stepwise trajectories through which complex traits arise in nature." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.12416/full View in LinkedIn

STEPWISE ARGUMENT. "Thus, unicellular eukaryotes that, regardless of the exact dating, evolved more than a billion years after the prokaryotes, obviously attained a new level of complexity, and multicellular eukaryotic forms, appearing even later, by far exceeded the complexity of the unicellular ones. Arguably, the most compelling is the argument from the origin of cellular life itself: before the first cells emerged, there must have been some much simpler (pre)biological replicating entities." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201300037/full View in LinkedIn

IS COMPLEXITY VALUABLE? "Over billions of years, life has evolved into the extraordinarily diverse and complex organisms that populate the Earth today. Although evolution often proceeds toward increasing complexity, more complex traits do not necessarily make organisms more fit. So when and why is greater complexity favored?" https://lnkd.in/dUUFYJe View in LinkedIn

INEXORABLE COMPLEXIFICATION. "From a more general standpoint, there are effectively irrefutable arguments for a genuine increase in complexity during evolution. Indeed, the successive emergence of higher grades of complexity throughout the history of life is impossible to ignore." (Spoken by a simplicity advocate). http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201300037/full View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE for this and next weekend is a contemplation of the commonly held idea that complexity in nature continues to increase. This is an attractive concept, and aligns with our own self-image as the height of evolution. It makes for a tidy world view. But biology is rarely tidy, and is more frequently full of exceptions, and these exceptions are at the heart of the remarkable diversity of the natural world. View in LinkedIn

PLAYFUL BOTS. "Useful, playful robots are the future at Tokyo exhibition." https://lnkd.in/dT9eBni View in LinkedIn

INDISTINGUISHABILITY TEST. "Convincing conversation has been the notorious measuring stick of AI since Alan Turing first proposed a test – now known as the Turing Test – that would pit a computer against a person in a conversational contest." https://lnkd.in/d4iuTqi View in LinkedIn

DEEP FAMILIARITY. "Until that gap is closed, it will remain difficult for machines to exhibit even the sort of everyday creativity required for the simplest tasks – like stringing words together with sufficient cogency to carry on a conversation." https://lnkd.in/d4iuTqi View in LinkedIn

REAL WORLD GAP. "At least one AI researcher has sought to give worldly knowledge to computers by force-feeding them. Douglas Lenat...is now more than two decades into a multimillion-dollar project to cram all the conceptual and factual material in an entire encyclopedia into a computer program." https://lnkd.in/d4iuTqi View in LinkedIn

EQ IN BOTS. "Inspired from biological systems, the robot has emotions which play important roles of behavior selection. Each robot feels frustration when its determination does not suit to its environment. Then, it changes its behavior to change its situation actively. The results show a potential of emotional intelligence in robotics." http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=506527&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D506527 View in LinkedIn