the rise of the machines? too flipping scary.....

[ElsewheresDaughter]

Anyone else thinking Skynet??? Watch T2 again, it's a whole different perspective.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/index.php?p=51

DARPA's new plan for machine learning

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is starting a new project to develop "computer software able to learn and reason in complex military planning jobs by being shown how to perform a task only once," according to Military & Aerospace Electronics. The Integrated Learner will be able to combine external inputs with its own knowledge generated through reasoning. The goal is to replace military decision by software technology. The project, which is in the proposal stage by now, will last four years. And its possible applications include Air Tasking Order (ATO) planning, CAD for Mechanical Assembly Planning, Bioinformatics or eScience Workflow Management. Once the project is completed, the Integrated Learner should exceed human performance by at least 25%.

Here are some short quotes from the Military & Aerospace Electronics article:


The software has to combine limited observations with subject expertise, general knowledge, reasoning, and by asking what-if questions. The Integrated Learner also will have explicit learning goals, keep track of what it does not know, what it needs to know, as well as track and reason about its uncertainties

The Integrated Learner software will attempt to figure things out, as well as tolerate errors and missing information by using whatever information or reasoning is available.


As the future Integrated Learner software will have to handle many types of information, including the ones it will produce, and to interact with humans to improve its own skills, it can even get confused:


When this happens, the software must find information that proves or disproves one conclusion or the other. If the software is able to learn or be told which components are likely to be right or wrong in a given circumstance, it can better manage inconsistencies.


All companies or organizations — providing they comply with DARPA rules — can participate in this program which will consist of four one-year phases.

[unpossibles]

1. wow

"The goal is to replace military decision by software technology."

I was going to say this is a horrible idea, but if it means taking the bad decisions out of the current hands that are making them.... well...

Just kidding. This is exactly what we don't need: a better excuse to be inhumane.

[BlueJazz]

2. I won't be very scared or concerned about all this until.....

..I hear a Computer say: "I'll be Back!" :)

[Seansky]

3. if the private and public sector haven't yet perfected the biometric, face

recognition, people counting software, NASA space shuttle program, crops growing in space, and just basic software we use (think about the failure for a full blown Unix/Linux environment or the hundred of patches we regularly get from MicroSoft) no matter how much talent is put into them, this is nothing to worry about.

Also, in 1995, IBM printed a full page in the New Yorker or Atlantic Mag. insinuating they had broken into teleportation (had a lady teleporting a food recipe to a friend that seem to be in Asia somewhere) and haven't heard a word from that yet.

Software, and software development, is still in it infancy (if you haven't been member in a software development team, you might not be aware of the nightmares they go thru just to release a product in the timeline originally predicted) and to make it reason is an enormous mathematical effort, not to mention that reasoning is barely understood by even the most versed Neuroscience and the like.

Finally, the first time I heard about a project like this was in the late 80s and here we are, opening a new project...hmmm, and what about the VOTING machines???

[ToolTex]

5. AI; Exactly this was big stuff in the EARLY 80s. Japan had a

major decade development push to get ahead of the entire world in Artificial Intelligence. There are still people working but it seems much more difficult than hoped 25 years ago.

Still, I don't mean to suggest that there are not very frightening military developments underway. There are. Predator unmanned aircraft, now stationed in Texas. Swarm robots. Military plan to have 50% of mil vehicles be unmanned and autonomous by 2015. Terror Information Awareness data mining and Dept of Energy long term 1/3 of budget to develop massive computer expansion. RFID in general and implanted in citizens. Face recognition and security cams everywhere. Pre-flight registration database, coupled with TIA. Dept of Homeland Security embedded in AOL traffic and accounts. Bunker buster nukes. And on and on and on!

Why is it they name everything as though the target is foreign terrorists but the resulting accomplishment is always directed at domestic citizens? Anyone else noticed this?

[Seansky]

10. I know what you are saying, but I also know the amount of failures

the military has experienced in those technological promisses they have made public.

Have you ever heard of a project of this scale ever made it on time, or even made it? Also, when you look at the rest of the world and evaluate who is REALLY progressing with robotic technology and the like, it ISN'T US military by a long, long shot and US private sector? Check out who owns the largest corporations in technology today (formerly US). These are stockholders from everywhere else...

If such progress are made, they will not, I'm afraid, come from our side of the ocean. One of the largest tech projects I worked in was delivering IBM products to GM...Over 500 people in a single project...That was 98...After years of trying, I understand it never got delivered, at least no as originally promissed, and that is just products for regular users, not reasoning machines...

I believe that we will not see these kind of machines in our lifetime, and if we do see any progress, it will be from another(s) country(ies) because all the innovation has been outsourced so quickly our local talent hasn't had the R&D budget to keep up, much less the jobs....

Again, they started working on biometric and face recognition at least in the early sixty and made this hugh thing about delivering in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and today, if you do have access to the behind scenes software use, you would laugh at how clumsy it is...and that is just basic reasoning, basic.

[niyad]

4. anybody remember "colossus: the forbin project" or that episode of star

trek where the two planets' computers told each planet how many people died in their "exercises"?

this goes beyond creepy.

[Enraged_Ape]

8. "Colossus: The Forbin Project" was my very first thought

Great, GREAT movie. Absolutely chilling.

It was just released on DVD a few months ago. Every bit as frightening and relevant now as it was when it was made.

[Selatius]

6. If you teach a machine to recognize threats and...

then teach it to come up with measures to address those threats, wouldn't there come a point where the machine concludes everybody is a threat? Since it is being taught to consider certain groups of humans a threat be it a terrorist organization or a nation? If it wanted to make sure no more humans emerge that could become a threat in the future, wouldn't it reason that getting rid of all humans drops the possibility down to 0 percent?

[ElsewheresDaughter]

7. HAL 9000

[The2ndWheel]

9. What's good for DARPA

We'll all be obsolete soon.