Apparently the US military is looking into developing a massive simulation of the entire geopolitical canvas of the Earth, with a node representing "every man, woman and child." Although I'm sure it involves lots of data and some serious computation, I sincerely doubt the predictions made by this system will be any better than that of a seasoned human analyst.
I suppose you could turn over strategic nuclear decisions to this thing and just wait for Judgment Day...
While articles of this type are often titillating, I know from first-hand experience that most far-out projects involving the military don't live up to the hype. For one thing, the military plays fast & loose with commonly used terminology. The word "sentient" actually means something; it shouldn't be used as a vacuous buzzword designed to woo congressional funding.
Maybe they should call it WOPR 2.0?
(Sometimes I just can't help myself with the cultural reference one-liners!)
Showing posts with label war on terror. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war on terror. Show all posts
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Attack of the Drones
The editors of DefenseTech.org are covering the Unmanned Systems Demo sponsored by NAVAIR and AUVSI with a series of articles regarding the current and future states of naval UAVs. Here are the first two:
The Robot Plane Lives - As earlier reported by DefenseTech, the US Navy has selected the Northrop Grumman X-47B as their platform of choice for future unmanned combat air systems development. Notwithstanding the lukewarm announcement by Navy leadership, hopefully the USN will prove not to be as shortsighted as the USAF.
War Shaping Drone Plan - As to be expected, current use of unmanned systems in support of the Global War on Terror by special ops and other forces are affecting the short-term development of UAVs.
The Robot Plane Lives - As earlier reported by DefenseTech, the US Navy has selected the Northrop Grumman X-47B as their platform of choice for future unmanned combat air systems development. Notwithstanding the lukewarm announcement by Navy leadership, hopefully the USN will prove not to be as shortsighted as the USAF.
War Shaping Drone Plan - As to be expected, current use of unmanned systems in support of the Global War on Terror by special ops and other forces are affecting the short-term development of UAVs.
Monday, May 14, 2007
A Field Study in Human-Robot Relationships
The Washington Post published an intriguing article about the emotional connection forged between U.S. soldiers in Iraq & Afghanistan and their robot companions. It seems many soldiers attribute personalities to the machines they interact with on a daily basis, and are considerably upset when one is damaged or destroyed. While many critics are quick to point out the vast differences between mankind and its robotic creations, our frontline troops prefer to treat them as valuable team members worthy of praise & honor.
Saturday, August 20, 2005
The tech behind Able Danger
All politics aside, an NPR program covering 'Able Danger' and pre-9/11 intelligence (Real Audio & Windows Media) includes a look into the technology enabling the sophisticated data-mining software that allegedly identified four of the Al Qaeda hijackers in the U.S. well before the 2001 attacks.
The Lieutenant Colonel who oversaw the program explains how the smart algorithms sifted through 2.5 terabytes of open souce intelligence looking for patterns in the unstructured data that would lead to terrorists links.
The Lieutenant Colonel who oversaw the program explains how the smart algorithms sifted through 2.5 terabytes of open souce intelligence looking for patterns in the unstructured data that would lead to terrorists links.
Thursday, August 18, 2005
When the flaw in the software is the human element...
If you read between the lines of the most recent controversy concerning the intelligence failures and the 9/11 commission you'll find an interesting story concerning artificial intelligence and human error.
The NY Post has a piece covering the "Able Danger" data-mining software (registration required) used to identify and track suspected terrorists. It seems as though Able Danger located several of the 9/11 hijackers (including mastermind Mohammed Atta) in the United States well before September 2001. This information, however, was not disseminated or acted upon by intelligence personnel (for whatever reason), and the terrorists were allowed to continue planning their attack. So what we have is software designed to protect American citizens executing its mission successfully, but poor judgement (granted, in hindsight) on the part of the human actors possibly led to the deaths of thousands. Like I've said before, until we become comfortable with fully automated systems making life and deaths decisions on our behalf, society will insist on keeping humans in the loop. This will only change after the human element is repeatedly identified as the single point of failure in the decision chain, and I fear this example will unfortunately be the first of many yet to come.
The NY Post has a piece covering the "Able Danger" data-mining software (registration required) used to identify and track suspected terrorists. It seems as though Able Danger located several of the 9/11 hijackers (including mastermind Mohammed Atta) in the United States well before September 2001. This information, however, was not disseminated or acted upon by intelligence personnel (for whatever reason), and the terrorists were allowed to continue planning their attack. So what we have is software designed to protect American citizens executing its mission successfully, but poor judgement (granted, in hindsight) on the part of the human actors possibly led to the deaths of thousands. Like I've said before, until we become comfortable with fully automated systems making life and deaths decisions on our behalf, society will insist on keeping humans in the loop. This will only change after the human element is repeatedly identified as the single point of failure in the decision chain, and I fear this example will unfortunately be the first of many yet to come.
Sunday, March 13, 2005
Natural Language Processing in the Global War on Terrorism
I came across a NY Times article recently discussing software used by the CIA to scour the web for terrorist messages.
The company behind the sofware, Attensity Corporation, has developed tools which can take the near-infinite masses of unstructed data on the Internet, and turn it into meaningful information. They've developed algorithms that can parse sentences, extracting the subject, object, verb, etc. enabling the computer to process the plain text and take contextually relevant actions.
This type of software, teaching a computer to read and extract read information from text, is exactly the sort of project I have in mind. I guess all those grammar lessons spent diagramming sentences in elementary school were actually important.
The company behind the sofware, Attensity Corporation, has developed tools which can take the near-infinite masses of unstructed data on the Internet, and turn it into meaningful information. They've developed algorithms that can parse sentences, extracting the subject, object, verb, etc. enabling the computer to process the plain text and take contextually relevant actions.
This type of software, teaching a computer to read and extract read information from text, is exactly the sort of project I have in mind. I guess all those grammar lessons spent diagramming sentences in elementary school were actually important.
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