This week we lost Pucci. He was with us for almost 17 years and a part of the family. It is difficult to find the words to describe him. He was as clever as any animal I have ever seen. He had a big heart and a big personality and seemed to make an impression on everyone. We will miss him.
My old friend and office mate has written a book about his adventures in tech, professional gambling and Wall Street. I believe I may have taken him to his first casino in Las Vegas on a drive from the Midwest to the Bay Area. I’m told that part isnt in the book, but that I may have a small mention. On preorder.
I had the good fortune to meet Rodney Brooks in the late 1980s, before Roomba. He had some little toy cars he had fitted with programmable logic to do fairly sophisticated behaviors. It was actually an early inspiration for my own work in programmable logic. I kept up with AI over the years and my opinions tend to track Brooks. Some would say it is pessimistic, but I would call it realistic. In a nutshell, these systems will fail (perhaps a sign of intelligence itself) so you need to be ready for failures. A short, readable one from IEEE.
Steven A. Guccione 