A Peek Inside DARPA's Current Projects

dthomas731 writes to tell us that Computerworld has a brief article on some of DARPA's current projects. From the article: "Later in the program, Holland says, PAL will be able to 'automatically watch a conversation between two people and, using natural-language processing, figure out what are the tasks they agreed upon.' At that point, perhaps DARPA's PAL could be renamed HAL, for Hearing Assistant That Learns. The original HAL, in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, tells the astronauts how it knows they're plotting to disconnect it: 'Dave, although you took thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.'"

Comments

The Real Issue

[Atlantic Wall]

The Real issue is some idiot programming a computer to defend against someone just trying to turn it off.A computer should be programmed to know it can make mistakes.

Re:The Real Issue

[Ucklak]

Conscious thought has everything to do with mistakes.

A machine is mechanical and is incapable of mistakes as it can't set expectations.

From your quote, "Mistakes are when you have some kind of expectation and those expectations fail to be met.", machines aren't capable of setting expectations, only following a basic 'to do' list.

If a machine adds 1+1 and returns 3 to the register, then it didn't fail, it added 1+1 in the way it knows how to.

AI today is nothing more than a bunch of IF..THEN possiblities run on fast processors to make it seem instantaneous and 'alive'.

You can program a machine to be aware of it's power (Voltage) and you can have a program set to monitor that power with cameras and laser beams and whatever else with commands to shoot laser beams at any device that comes near that power but the machine still isn't aware of what power is.

Not to get philosophical here but IMO, AI won't ever be real until a machine has a belief system and part of that belief system relies upon it's own ability to get energy, just like animals do.

It's possible that a program can be written so that a machine is aware of it's own requirements but then we're back to a bunch of IF..THEN statements written by programmers.

Re:The Real Issue

[AK Marc]

I don't think computers are capable of making mistakes, because they are incapapble of thinking, they can process and store but this does not entail thought.

Then they can't make mistakes, but can make errors. What do you call it when a brownout causes a computer to flip a bit and give an incorrect answer to a math problem? How about when it is programmed incorrectly so that it gives 2+2=5? How about when a user intends to add 2 and 3, but types in 2+2? In all cases, the computer outputs a wrong answer. Computers can be wrong and are wrong all the time. The wrong answers are errors. A "mistake" isn't an assigning of blame. I agree that computers can be blameless, but that does not mean that mistakes involving computers can't be made. I think your definition of "mistake" is not the most common, and would be the point of contention in this discussion, not whether computers have ever outputted an erroneous answer.

REAL sneak peak

[Prysorra]

Here's a LOT of stuff to look through....don't tell anyone ;-)

Top Secret Stuff at DARPA. [DARPA]

Not "Strong" AI

[hypermanng]

The DoD funds a huge percentage of AI research, but at the end of the day they're interested in things that can be easily weaponized or used for simple intelligence sifting heuristics. The most fundamentally interesting research in AI is in the humanoid robotics projects such as those at the MIT shop, and it is from these more humanly-modeled projects that anything like HAL could ever issue. Search-digest heuristics like PAL aren't much like humans and will never lead to anything approching a human's contextually rich understanding of the world at large any more than really advanced racecar design will lead to interstellar craft.

The difference, as Searle would say, between Strong (humanlike) AI and Weak (software widget like) AI is a difference of type, not scale.

Re:Paranoid

[Gorm the DBA]

Actually, it was over long before that. HAL was just following it's programming, perfectly.

HAL was programmed to eliminate any possibile failure points in the mission that he could. Through the spaceflight, HAL observed that the humans in the mission were failable (one of them made a suboptimal chess move, a handful of other mistakes were made). HAL had the ability to complete the mission on it's own. Therefore, HAL made the decision, in line with it's programming, to eliminate the human element.

It makes sense, really, when you think about it. And truly, if Dave had just gone along with it and died, HAL would have finished the job perfectly fine.

DARPA Slogans

[Paulrothrock]

DARPA: We don't make the things that kill people. We make the things that kill people better. DARPA: We bring good things to life... that are then used to kill people. DARPA: Who do you want to kill today?

I worked will on a DARPA...

[WED Fan]

DARPA has yet to acknowledge the project that I was working on 3 years from now in 2010. Last week, January 14, 2012 we will successfully tested the Time Redaction Project. So, I gave myself the plans tomorrow so that I will be submitting them a few years ago to get the grant money. DOD has used this to send a nuke to kill the dinosaurs. I hope it works.

Re:I worked will on a DARPA...

[Slightly Askew]

So, I wiollen have given myself the plans tomorrow so that I wiollen be submitting them a few years ago to get the grant money.

There, fixed that for you.

vaporware and PR

[geekpuppySEA]

IAA graduate student in computational linguistics.

Later in the program, Holland says, PAL will be able to "automatically watch a conversation between two people and, using natural-language processing, figure out what are the tasks they agreed upon."

PAL's role here is not clear. The 'easier' task would be to monitor the body language of the two conversers and, by lining up a list of tasks with the observation of their head movements, correctly predict which points in the conversation were the ones where someone performed an "agreement" gesture.

The much, much more difficult task would be to actually read lips. There are only certain properties of phonemes you can deduce from how the lips and jaw move; many, many other features of speech are lost. Only when you supply the machine with a limited set of words in a limited topic domain do you get good performance; otherwise, you're grasping at straws. And then taking out most of the speech signal? Please.

But no, DARPA is cool and will save all the translators in Iraq (by 2009, well before the war ends.) PR and vaporware win the day!

the real research behind this

[kneecramps]

WRT to "watch a conversation between two people and, using natural-language processing, figure out what are the tasks they agreed upon":

Here's a link to the actual research that they are likely talking about:

http://godel.stanford.edu/~niekrasz/papers/PurverE hlenEtAl06_Shallow.pdf

As you might expect, the ComputerWorld article's summary of the technology is rather optimistic. Nonetheless, this stuff really does exist, and shows some promise in both military and general applications.

Same sex conversations only...

[haggie]

using natural-language processing, figure out what are the tasks they agreed upon.

This would only work for conversations between people of the same sex. There has never been a conversation between a man and a woman in which both participants would agree on the tasks...

M: Want to continue this conversation at my place?
F: Take a leap!
Computer: Agreed to move conversation to male's residence by leaping.

F: When are you going to mow the lawn?
M: Yeah, I'll get right on that.
Computer: Male agreed to mow lawn at earliest opportunity