Jordan Pollack

Bigname @ Scientist.com


 

I am a professor at Brandeis University working on solving the AI problem by understanding the open-ended evolution of complexity in nature. This off-campus website hosts some of my commercial and public affairs projects, as well as free games!

Visit the official DEMO laboratory at Brandeis University for access to all my science projects including the famous GOLEM robot-building-robots. Another science project is www.Beeweb.org, which exploits the power of Peer-to-Peer and a secret formula we discovered in co-evolution, to turn peers into each other's teacher. This educational technology could scale to provide tutoring to every child in the world when given broadband.

I wrote a BIG proposal for a science philantropist, who unfortunately went to jail soon after we met. But the ideas behind the endowed center are sound, just waiting for another billionaire science philanthropist to come along.

Scientist.com, by the way, is a free webmail domain. I adopted it when some media started covering my work:

 

 Commercial Interests

I sometimes consult to companies on long range vision as well as on how to limit the AI in their products and services. (Overexpectation always results in failure, while modest and predictable AI delights customers). A lifelong inventor with many patents, I also get involved in startups as advisor or board member, and have founded some myself. I've also been a scientific advisor to VC's like Flagship Ventures and Polaris Venture Partners.

 

  Thinmail was a breakthrough invention of mine in 1999, released by the University for me to pursue. It was the first cloud storage, mobile file access, software as a service, which 'thinned' email by stripping and caching attachments in the cloud. Unfortunately it was 10 years too early because people did not trust the cloud to hold their important files, and renting a server with 20GB cost $500/month. Its patents have been acquired by Intellectual Ventures, and we retain the right to operate under them and to sell the whole C-Corp with the operating rights intact. Thinmail is pursuing new patents in url shortening and remailing.
  NANNON Technology Corp. licenses a Nano- Backgammon game I invented and had released from the university. You can play in any browser for free at www.nannon.net. Nannon is now available for free from the App Store on Iphones and Ipads. I have been pursuing patents for its use in gambling both as a table game and a new concept in slot machines.
  I was chief Scientist at VC-funded Abuzz and helped design a limited AI knowledge-sharing portal for enterprises, and authored 5 patents. Abuzz was acquired by the NYTimes.
  Thinphone® was a spinoff of Thinmail that read text messages and wav/mp3 files out to telephones. The incontestible trademark and the domains are for sale in the next ICAP Ocean Tomo auction and holds real value for any competitor of trademarked phones like Razr® and Droid®.
  I was the first scientific advisor to VC-funded Affinnova, which uses blind-watchmaker technology in product packaging design.

 Public Affairs

  People's fears and expectations for Robots are so overblown that we worry about science fiction like self-replication and the singularity while much more mundane robots such as the ATM machine sneak by like ratbots. I wrote this piece for a interview and extended it for a talk at the Yale Bioethics before shrinking it to one page in WIRED. PDF Wired 13.01
  California vs Massachusetts? Due to risk-taking, history, vision, and luck, California ended up with Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and Ebay, while Massachusetts only got Lycos and CMGI. Now, with $3b voted for Stem Cell R&D via Prop 71, how should our state respond? Answer? A Billion for Robotics!
  Copyright has failed in the information age, leading to feudal lords, pirates, fascists and communists. Permanent licenses are perfect durable goods and I show how they can be traded like securities on a market which enables shared public ownership and solves all the problems including software monopolies and piracy. PDF or website
  People care about Shakespeare's EXPRESSION and would never read Bill Gate's knock-off of Romeo and Juliet. But software creativity isn't about expression, its about the story itself. Once an innovation is implemented it is easily copied. This proposal is for an alternative to software patents called the "software story board" which would recognise and reward software innovation yet allow it to be copied and extended.
  Universities are fighting professors and students over IP hoping for the next cure for cancer or Google. I believe all Universities can become IP commonwealths instead of IP Prisons. PDF
  This $100B business plan for Middle East Peace was sketched out on a napkin when the $200B price tag for the Iraq War was announced in October 2002. Buypeace has spread as an ideavirus ever since. Use hashtag #buypeace. PDF
 

 

 Greenvangelical: Spirit of the Third Millenium

 

We are regressing as a species, with superstition and ignorance driven by political psychological operations which unfortunately outperform science and reason. Therefore I have started a new Gaian co-religion which can fight back, with rational people bringing their spiritual and ethical clout to the issues facing the earth, including human population growth, nuclear waste, deforestation, etc. Green as a spiritual movement rather than a party or an infighting set of NGOs spreading through evangelization instead of overbreeding. We will collect 0.25% of members income (thats $250 on $100k salary) and build monuments wherever human greed and stupidity despoiled the earth.

   The tax code is too complex and cheating is too rampant. Income tax needs to be simplified, but not with a regressive flat tax. How can we simplify the tax code without throwing out progressiveness? Here is an income tax idea so simple it fits into a single cell of a spreadsheet! The hashtag is #simtax.

Games & Learning

Prior to the Beeweb project, one of my hobbies was
making educational video games for my children.
Bar Mitzvah Blaster

 

     
Hangemon (1.5M exe) motivates kids who know the Pokemon to try really hard to spell their names. Reademon (1.5M exe) motivates even the youngest Pokemon fans to start reading. These 7 games (1M exe) were co-designed by my son when he was between 2 and 4. Like Teletubbies, kids get it, but adults don't!