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Keeping up with Darpa's challenges is a good way to see into the future a couple of their current projects: 1) A machine-learning competition to overcome scarc

Keeping up with Darpa's challenges is a good way to see into the future a couple of their current projects: 1) A machine-learning competition to overcome scarcity in the radio frequency which is INSANELY fascinating and, if they pull it off, hugely impactful -> https://spectrumcollaborationchallenge.com https://spectrumcollaborationchallenge.com 2) A program to build technology to drive “swarm sprint” exercises to inform tactics and technologies for large groups of unmanned air and ground robots in urban environments. Yes, like how do we build a collaborative air drone army. And PS they are having a hacker fest in the bay in a couple of weeks, registration is closed but bet you can get in if you email via - https://darpahackfest.com https://darpahackfest.com

vkou 9y ago
The technologies that will be developed in #2 will be absolutely, unquestionably used by governments to repress their own people.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > The technologies that will be developed in #2 will be absolutely, unquestionably used by governments to repress their own people One can go to the dawn of self-driving cars, the Internet, really any potentially game-changing technology, and throw this out. It's an inconsequential assertion that provokes no follow-on thought. Just emotion. Graduating this seed from FUD to a chain of critical thought involves asking how the technology in question might evolve detrimentally and what we can do, today and specifically, preferably in a technical capacity, to mitigate that risk.
  - vkou 9y ago
    Every technology has a spectrum of usefulness, between applications that make people's lives better, and worse. It's not FUD to point out that a particular technology will be primarily used for the latter. We generally don't hold people responsible for direct effects of their work. Working on drones that will kill people for the military is a direct effect. 'Game-changing potential', whatever that means for this kind of work, is not a first order effect.
    - browep 9y ago
      sorta. the same arguments against the drone fleet is the same against the atomic bomb. What something is designed for (death in both cases) is not always their effect. For example, the atomic bombs were used to incredible devastation and death when used but it could be argued they prevented the next war with Russia since a war between two nuclear powers meant total destruction on both sides. I'll venture into prediction here. Do you think a regional warlord or rogue state ( ISIS or whatever comes after it ) would enter a conflict with another state that was backed by the US? They might, knowing that the US would be unlikely to do more than give airstrike and strategic support. But what if the US had a drone army/fleet that could do close air-support, block to block firefighting, differentiate combatants and non-combatants? It could mean a tougher fight for a group like that since little but money is risked on the side of the US.
      - dragonsky 9y ago
        Seems to me that at the moment there are a number of state and non state actors who seem happy to pull that tail of the US tiger, knowing that the consequences of the US reacting badly is the significant destruction of their country. Doesn't seem to deter them. Expecting terrorist orginisations or rogue states to act in a rational way is the same as expecting the US to back down when their pride or national interest is threatened.
  - hnaccy 9y ago
    Anyone who thinks deeply on the ramifications of the computer and related technology should come to the conclusion that they will inevitably lead to the destruction of individual liberty and total subjugation or annihilation of a significant portion of humanity. This is not gunpowder, the printing press, or the cotton gin and to compare them you're either naive or being disingenuous. There is little hope for us to deviate from this path barring significant technological regression due to cataclysmic events or mass enlightenment of the human character. The former is a problem in and of itself and the latter is comically unlikely.
    - imcrs 9y ago
      What is the solution? I would rather have automated drone armies in the hands of the US government than anyone else. The same could be said of the atomic bomb. A weapon made purely for mass scale indiscriminate destruction of humanity. But if not us, then who would we trust to develop such a technology?
      - hnaccy 9y ago
        There isn't one. The atomic bomb is a blunt instrument with no finesse. The ability to vaporize large groups of people in a flashy infrastructure destroying display is not particularly conducive to control. Atomic bombs don't let you watch, record, and analyze the movements of millions of people. They don't let you record and analyze the personal lives, conversations, and secrets of millions of people. They don't eliminate the need for human labor.
      - smithmayowa 9y ago
        Permit my inquiry but whenever i see comments like this, I can't help but think that your main reason for believing in this train of thought is majorly because the negative effects of U.s military industrial complex has pretty much never affected you. because if you were perhaps an Arab who watched his/her home town bombed to shit by a us drone and had the us write off the human casualties that resulted there in from this act as collateral damage you most likely will not feel this way about a single country trying to amass absolute power, particularly when it is a specific country that seem to have a very itchy war finger, which also just elected a very racist man as president. If the table were turned will you still feel this way, i wonder. And p.s i am not an Arab, I am African so yes i do sympathize somewhat with what they go through. I also do not hate the U.S but i do feel it that it was time the rest of the world closed the military and technological gap the U.S and the west really had over the rest of the world as this will stop a lot of their bullshit.
  - vlehto 9y ago
    Anything that increases the destructive capacity of armed forces while lowering the manpower requirements is going to make it easier for politicians to misuse those armed forces. Most obvious example would be the Vietnam disaster. It was eventually shut down because of "bring our boys home". Not because of international reputation, human rights violations or the capability to win or lose the war. Another example would be how Germany used mechanized forces and air power in the start of WWII as force multipliers. Without sophisticated war machines, attacking France and Great Britain would have been suicidal. Simply because they combined matched German population. The best bet to mitigate such technology? In those examples it was probably MANPAD that killed helicopter cavalry after Vietnam war. And evolutionary steps of Bazooka helped to keep west Europe from soviet tank invasion during cold war. Those specific inventions increased the manpower requirement while adding relatively small and very specific firepower advantage.
    - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
      > Anything that increases the destructive capacity of armed forces while lowering the manpower requirements is going to make it easier for politicians to misuse those armed forces Anything that (a) improves peoples' lives and (b) has a logistical dependency, e.g. requires or becomes better with electricity, an Internet connection, package delivery, et cetera, improves the standing of a centralized power. This will be true as long as those logistical dependencies are subject to economies of scale. Leaving society in the 18th century, before electricity, antibiotics or daily disposable contact lenses, wasn't easy. But you'd have to give up fewer luxuries to do that then that you would today because there are more luxuries today. This is why saying "this will be used for evil things that centralized powers do" is so inane. It's a corollary of economic progress.
      - rxhernandez 9y ago
        All this and you couldn't see that the fault in your logic was that sufficiently enforced rules and regulations could mitigate the usage of evil things that centralized powers do. Obviously that infrastructure minimally exists now, but should we keep running as quickly in a direction that makes it more difficult to create such infrastructure? I mean there's so much more to life than new technology and the corresponding progress in economies. But beyond that,do you genuinely believe that lawmakers are going to keep up with the necessary rules and regulations to keep sufficiently advanced AI under control in more hedonistic acting entities? Obviously that's the extreme case but it's a good thought experiment to test these models of innovation just for the sake of innovation and money. As someone whose job is innovating where the current state of the art is, it's getting beyond ridiculous that everyone is ignoring the bloated elephant in the room.
- xapata 9y ago
  Nearly all technology can/will be used for that purpose. I think swarm AI is likely to help people more than it will harm. It's a critical step in big tasks like terraforming Mars.
- qq66 9y ago
  Most technology since the plough has eventually accelerated the consolidation of power of institutions over individuals.
EGreg 9y ago
Anyone here in NYC that wants to meet up? Any cool hacket events here?
- hbvvvbgvv 9y ago
  Have you considered getting a life instead of soliciting one from strangers on the Internet?
  - costcopizza 9y ago
    Who pissed in your Soylent today?

vkou 9y ago

The technologies that will be developed in #2 will be absolutely, unquestionably used by governments to repress their own people.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> The technologies that will be developed in #2 will be absolutely, unquestionably used by governments to repress their own people One can go to the dawn of self-driving cars, the Internet, really any potentially game-changing technology, and throw this out. It's an inconsequential assertion that provokes no follow-on thought. Just emotion. Graduating this seed from FUD to a chain of critical thought involves asking how the technology in question might evolve detrimentally and what we can do, today and specifically, preferably in a technical capacity, to mitigate that risk.
- vkou 9y ago
  Every technology has a spectrum of usefulness, between applications that make people's lives better, and worse. It's not FUD to point out that a particular technology will be primarily used for the latter. We generally don't hold people responsible for direct effects of their work. Working on drones that will kill people for the military is a direct effect. 'Game-changing potential', whatever that means for this kind of work, is not a first order effect.
  - browep 9y ago
    sorta. the same arguments against the drone fleet is the same against the atomic bomb. What something is designed for (death in both cases) is not always their effect. For example, the atomic bombs were used to incredible devastation and death when used but it could be argued they prevented the next war with Russia since a war between two nuclear powers meant total destruction on both sides. I'll venture into prediction here. Do you think a regional warlord or rogue state ( ISIS or whatever comes after it ) would enter a conflict with another state that was backed by the US? They might, knowing that the US would be unlikely to do more than give airstrike and strategic support. But what if the US had a drone army/fleet that could do close air-support, block to block firefighting, differentiate combatants and non-combatants? It could mean a tougher fight for a group like that since little but money is risked on the side of the US.
    - dragonsky 9y ago
      Seems to me that at the moment there are a number of state and non state actors who seem happy to pull that tail of the US tiger, knowing that the consequences of the US reacting badly is the significant destruction of their country. Doesn't seem to deter them. Expecting terrorist orginisations or rogue states to act in a rational way is the same as expecting the US to back down when their pride or national interest is threatened.
- hnaccy 9y ago
  Anyone who thinks deeply on the ramifications of the computer and related technology should come to the conclusion that they will inevitably lead to the destruction of individual liberty and total subjugation or annihilation of a significant portion of humanity. This is not gunpowder, the printing press, or the cotton gin and to compare them you're either naive or being disingenuous. There is little hope for us to deviate from this path barring significant technological regression due to cataclysmic events or mass enlightenment of the human character. The former is a problem in and of itself and the latter is comically unlikely.
  - imcrs 9y ago
    What is the solution? I would rather have automated drone armies in the hands of the US government than anyone else. The same could be said of the atomic bomb. A weapon made purely for mass scale indiscriminate destruction of humanity. But if not us, then who would we trust to develop such a technology?
    - hnaccy 9y ago
      There isn't one. The atomic bomb is a blunt instrument with no finesse. The ability to vaporize large groups of people in a flashy infrastructure destroying display is not particularly conducive to control. Atomic bombs don't let you watch, record, and analyze the movements of millions of people. They don't let you record and analyze the personal lives, conversations, and secrets of millions of people. They don't eliminate the need for human labor.
    - smithmayowa 9y ago
      Permit my inquiry but whenever i see comments like this, I can't help but think that your main reason for believing in this train of thought is majorly because the negative effects of U.s military industrial complex has pretty much never affected you. because if you were perhaps an Arab who watched his/her home town bombed to shit by a us drone and had the us write off the human casualties that resulted there in from this act as collateral damage you most likely will not feel this way about a single country trying to amass absolute power, particularly when it is a specific country that seem to have a very itchy war finger, which also just elected a very racist man as president. If the table were turned will you still feel this way, i wonder. And p.s i am not an Arab, I am African so yes i do sympathize somewhat with what they go through. I also do not hate the U.S but i do feel it that it was time the rest of the world closed the military and technological gap the U.S and the west really had over the rest of the world as this will stop a lot of their bullshit.
- vlehto 9y ago
  Anything that increases the destructive capacity of armed forces while lowering the manpower requirements is going to make it easier for politicians to misuse those armed forces. Most obvious example would be the Vietnam disaster. It was eventually shut down because of "bring our boys home". Not because of international reputation, human rights violations or the capability to win or lose the war. Another example would be how Germany used mechanized forces and air power in the start of WWII as force multipliers. Without sophisticated war machines, attacking France and Great Britain would have been suicidal. Simply because they combined matched German population. The best bet to mitigate such technology? In those examples it was probably MANPAD that killed helicopter cavalry after Vietnam war. And evolutionary steps of Bazooka helped to keep west Europe from soviet tank invasion during cold war. Those specific inventions increased the manpower requirement while adding relatively small and very specific firepower advantage.
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > Anything that increases the destructive capacity of armed forces while lowering the manpower requirements is going to make it easier for politicians to misuse those armed forces Anything that (a) improves peoples' lives and (b) has a logistical dependency, e.g. requires or becomes better with electricity, an Internet connection, package delivery, et cetera, improves the standing of a centralized power. This will be true as long as those logistical dependencies are subject to economies of scale. Leaving society in the 18th century, before electricity, antibiotics or daily disposable contact lenses, wasn't easy. But you'd have to give up fewer luxuries to do that then that you would today because there are more luxuries today. This is why saying "this will be used for evil things that centralized powers do" is so inane. It's a corollary of economic progress.
    - rxhernandez 9y ago
      All this and you couldn't see that the fault in your logic was that sufficiently enforced rules and regulations could mitigate the usage of evil things that centralized powers do. Obviously that infrastructure minimally exists now, but should we keep running as quickly in a direction that makes it more difficult to create such infrastructure? I mean there's so much more to life than new technology and the corresponding progress in economies. But beyond that,do you genuinely believe that lawmakers are going to keep up with the necessary rules and regulations to keep sufficiently advanced AI under control in more hedonistic acting entities? Obviously that's the extreme case but it's a good thought experiment to test these models of innovation just for the sake of innovation and money. As someone whose job is innovating where the current state of the art is, it's getting beyond ridiculous that everyone is ignoring the bloated elephant in the room.
xapata 9y ago
Nearly all technology can/will be used for that purpose. I think swarm AI is likely to help people more than it will harm. It's a critical step in big tasks like terraforming Mars.
qq66 9y ago
Most technology since the plough has eventually accelerated the consolidation of power of institutions over individuals.

EGreg 9y ago

Anyone here in NYC that wants to meet up? Any cool hacket events here?

hbvvvbgvv 9y ago
Have you considered getting a life instead of soliciting one from strangers on the Internet?
- costcopizza 9y ago
  Who pissed in your Soylent today?