The Baby Bootstrap?

An anonymous reader asks: "Slashdot recently covered a story that DARPA would significantly cut CS research. When I was completing graduate work in AI, the 'baby bootstrap' was considered the holy grail of military applications. Simply put, the 'baby bootstrap' would empower a computing device to learn like a child with a very good memory. DARPA poured a small fortune into the research. No sensors, servos or video input - it only needed terminal I/O to be effective. Today the internet could provide a developmental database far beyond any testbed that we imagined, yet there has been no significant progress in over 30 years. MindPixels and Cycorp seem typical of poorly funded efforts headed in the wrong direction, and all we hear from DARPA is autonomous robots. NIST seems more interested in industrial applications. Even Google is remarkably void of anything about the 'baby bootstrap'. What went wrong? Has the military really given up on this concept, or has their research moved to other, more classified levels?"

Comments

The baby boomers grew up?

[Audacious]

Ahem.... :-)

I think that this will be revived when nanotechnology becomes a bit more stable as well as nanobots. The reason is that it would be easier (IMHO) to program a mechanical machine to bootstrap an electronic based machine due to the fact that there is a greater mechanical knowledge available than there is an electronic one. To put that another way, when you get into your car and turn the key a computer is not necessary to make the electrical connection which starts the car. (And yes, I understand that there is a computer which NOW controls many of the functions of your car as it operates - but that is a recent [timewise] thing. It used to be all mechanical.) Therefore, if nanobot technology continues at its current pace it will be easier to take a large [and known] item and reduce it down than it would be to try to program something to emulate the mechanical device.

As a for-instance, I remind Slashdot readers about the nano-turbine technology which is beginning to show up around the world. This is [basically] a baby-boot situation where a mechanical boot occurs. That is to say - you have to "boot" the turbine but the turbine could boot itself if it had a battery who's on/off switches were determined by the power line's need. If the voltage for the line dropped below a certain level, the turbine could turn itself on and bring the voltage back up to the given level. (Imagine a line of these nano-turbines strung along an electrical line. A simple on/off current detection device constantly monitors the line. At first, all of the turbines would come on, then those which are farther down the line would determine there was too much current flowing and shut themselves down. This would continue until only the necessary turbines were running. If one of them failed, the extra turbines would then repeat the test cycle until enough turbines would [again] be running and maintaining the proper power level.)

This is [basically] a baby-bootstrap but it is mechanical in nature rather than electronic. :-/

Ah, you've found me

[writertype]

I lik /. It r00lz! But lik any k1d, I use IRC. -DARPA AI 312 Mark 26.12