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

Maybe it's a good thing they failed

[ShatteredDream]

Skynet anyone? The problem with any project like this is, what happens when the program learns about hacking? If it is as adaptive as a child, then it should be able to mature and pretty soon you have a terribly devious artificial blackhat hacker on your hands.

Artificial intelligence is not bad in and of itself at all. The problem is when we want a machine that thinks like humans, especially a program that could potentially control our military. Given the record of flesh and blood humans toward each other in the 20th century alone, an artificial life form with the same basic psychological makeup as a human would be potentially an evil that'd make Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot look like church ladies.

AI that is capable of adapting to only one scenario is probably for all intents and purposes totally safe. AI that is capable of adapting in general and learning like a human will probably ultimately have the same psychological defects as a human, including a propensity for violence.

You nerd!

[ElGanzoLoco]

Nerdiest. Ask. Slashdot. Ever.

(and most scary too)

Re:Doublethink

[northcat]

I want to fucking stick a fork in your eye. It's an "A or B" question, bitch, don't answer it with "yes".