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DARPA Files Patent On Predictive Simulation
An anonymous reader writes "New Scientist has a post on a patent filed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), seeking to control a new potent predictive simulation. The patent outlines the process, which may someday allow researchers to accurately predict the behavior of observed subjects. They're not there yet, but not for lack of trying. It already works in some military war game scenarios, says the patent. 'Parunak says his model can successfully detect players' emotions, and then predict future actions accordingly. He believes the technique could one day be applied to predict the behavior of adversaries in military combat situations, competitive business tactics, and even multiplayer computer games. The patent application gives an interesting insight into DARPA's goals. The agency has pumped a lot of money into AI in recent years without reaping major rewards. One day computers may find a way to accurately second-guess humans, but I suspect we may have to wait a little longer yet.'"
have these scientists not watched a single sci-fi movie. Military machines that can predict human behavior always lead to human enslavement. and the only way to stop them is by sending those machines back in time to stop us from building the machines in the first place.
-I only code in BASIC.-
Step 1: Patented behavior-prediction computer
Step 2: Beowulf cluster
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Psychohistory!
I have already predicted with 100% precision that this patent will be granted.
When a genuinely new way of doing something is patented, I don't see much of a problem. Even if you don't agree with software patents in principle, patents that introduce a new technology tend to expire before the technology matures enough to become profitable. In that case, the patent filer gets the honestly deserved upper hand of having better in-house knowledge about the technology by the time it gets to production stage, instead of having the unfair advantage of forced monopoly over its production.
Some patents are harmful - such as those which either patent a well known technology they didn't really invent, or patentsquatting (patenting something with the only reason of preventing others from using this technology, even if you have no intention of using it yourself either), but it doesn't seem this was one of these cases.
If the copyright system worked like the patent system (requires novelty and expires in a reasonable amount of time (~5 years)) then we'd be living in a much better world.
This is not as far fetched as one might think - if you have ever played a game like counter strike and observed the players on a public server, you can see the follow a very predictive pattern.
That's what I didn't get: if you want to use something like that for war games, why patent it? Then you have to disclose how you did it, no? Betting that your enemy will not use this because of patent laws, is quite optimistic thinking.
USA: Please stop using our wargame simulation technology, you're only making it worse.
Enemy: Making it worse? How can it possibly get any worse? Coca-Cola! Coca-Cola!
USA: And don't abuse our trademarks!
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Seems that someone else got this idea earlier.
/Z
Just see that:
Isaac Asimov's Psychohistory
Is that patent valid since the prior art arleady exists?
That's exactly what the simulator WANTS you to do!
My prior art told me yesterday.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
The military people can already make predictions. They need others to make predictions too. They're sick and tired of propagandists and politicians who can't make even the simplest and most evident predictions.
The military people know, for example, that adventures like the invasion of Iraq only serve to fuel terrorism and make everything a hundred times worse. That's simple common sense. But since the propaganda machinery and the politicians lack all common sense, the military people want this predictive technology to become widespread, so that maybe someday common sense will prevail over craziness.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
Someday I'm gonna be walking around an apartment in Paris to find a computer program that greets me with a full summary of my file...
This sig is false.
It becomes a bit like land mines: it forces you to use a less optimal route to your target than what you would have preferred. There must be a term waiting to be coined here. Idea space denial?
sigs are hazardous to your health
Someone should tell Hari Seldon his work is already done!
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
DARPA issues a 2 million $ challenge to build a driverless car.
A brilliant engineer built such a car, that was able to navigate in complex environments at high speeds by predicting the size, shape and behavior of surroundings on its path through simulation, according to the behavior of similar environment and path structures it has already passed. This causes the car to actually gain speed and statistical confidence in its own upcoming actions simply by acquiring enough experience of driving in similar environment.
Same kind of algorithm can of course be applied to any machine that is expected to operate for a long time in a complex semi-predictable environment - such as forex trading, poker, or a battlefield
This is the story on Wired
My Starcraft 2 Blog
But because of the patent, if the enemy wins the war then the USA can take them to court and seek a good amount of the spoils of war in compensation. Now that lawyer would be one earning his commission!
Folks likening this to Harry Seldon's psychohistory in Isaac Asimov's books are missing the point. Psychohistory was predicting the movements of a society as a whole. What DARPA is striving to do is predict the behaviour of individuals faster than those individuals can act.
An "obvious" method for doing this is to somehow capture the individual's state vector and that of its surrounding environment, and simulate it in faster than realtime. Stuff of science fiction for now, and it is usually referred to as possessing one's theory of mind (Charles Stross likes to use the phrase a lot). For combat environments, I can't fathom how this'd work. At best, it looks like it'd be feasible for strategy planning, but not in a tactical situation in physical operations.
Sig erased via substitution of an identical one.
First: I doubt the alternatives have equal probabilities. In a real world setting, there are hundreds if not thousands of different options at any moment, most of which are highly unlikely. Second, you're not playing against a single person, but against a whole bunch of them, which changes behaviour significantly. Third, you have to take the possible actions of your allies (also a large number of individual agents) into account. That makes computing the probabilities of the joint actions and the joint distribution of the utility quite hard.
This model is (if it works well) an approximation of the utility function (aka objective)...
*spit* on our new behaviour predicting overlord.
Dang it.
How did it manage to dodge that?
Ive always secretly believed that the NSA had this figured out decades ago, and has been quietly gaming the stock markets to fund its expansion. Thats why market volatility has increased dramatically. *Sure* those acres of supercomputer arrays are all doing code-breaking...
Depending on the legal interpretation. On one hand as a government agency all work done by DARPA should be public domain. On the other hand they somehow managed to patent this. Does this mean that this is an anti-patent, i.e. no one else can patent this anymore and everyone can use it? Or did they find a legal loophole which could prevent everyone else from using the tech? If it's the latter, it's pretty horrible. DARPA pays for a heck of a lot of fundamental innovation each year (with taxpayer money, of course). If they start patenting it a lot of things will come to a grinding halt.
Any lawyers on the thread?
Just another magic box solution, for when political appointees are placed in positions of authority when they have absolutely no idea what they are doing, they can now point to the magic box in the corner and blame it and the prior administration for all the problems that they themselves have caused. It always used to annoy me when staff would try to get me to produce magic box solutions out of the computers, I always used to politely remind if they could get the computers to do their job for them then why would they continue to pay their salary.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Skip this paragraph, it's filler to get around pointless Slashdot filtering: I'm typing this extra, useless sentence because, apparently, the Slashdot filter is choking on the above, claiming too few characters per line (35.2). Why that's a problem with this type of dialog, I don't know. Worse, it's probably not taking into consideration the extra CRs between lines for formatting reasons. It's clear the developers are trying to think too much, and, like developers of yore, have yet to learn they are in no position to predict every valid format of a message. Let's see if this is enough to bring the per-line character average up to snuff.
Skip this one, too: Wow. Their filter is completely poorly implemented. Even these extra sentences don't count towards the average, for some reason. I now must debug the poorly-thought out filters of inferior programmers, just in an attempt to post this humerous post to their system. Shades of pearls before swing. Why even try?
Nah...
Dr. Evil: Fire up the predictive simulation! We'll know our enemy's every move before they do!
Assistant: But Dr. Evil, they have one of these simulators, too! They may be using it on us!
Dr. Evil: Irrelevant! Depress the activation button!
Assistant: Yes, sir!
Dr. Evil: I see...I see...I see they are poking about their computers. It looks like they're reading a screen. What are they reading?
Assistant: Engaging simulation audio...
Audio, person 1 in simulation: "...and here we see Dr. Evil and his assistant in action in the simulator. Based on our previous intelligence and our analysis, it seems like they are doing...what?"
Audio, person 2 in simulation: "Sir, it looks like they're running a simulation of us."
Audio, person 1 in simulation: "What are they saying? Turn it up."
Audio, person 2 in simulation: "Yes, sir!"
Audio, Audio from within the simulation of the simulation's simulation: "Irrelevant! Depress the activation button" "Yes, sir!" "I see...I see...I see they are poking about their computers. It looks like they're reading a screen. What are they reading?" "Engaging simulation audio..."
Audio, person 1 in simulation: "What?!?!! They're simulating us simulating them? They can see what we're doing?"
Audio, person 1 in simulation: "It appears so. This is a disturbing development." (General waves his hand, flipping off Dr. Evil in the "outside" world...)
Dr. Evil: Well, I never! Can you run the simulation at greater than normal speed?
Assistant: Yes. I can essentially fast forward at will.
(simulation goes into fast forward, the "good guys" moving around like hyperactive ants...)
Dr. Evil: Stop! Listen!
Audio, person 1 in simulation: "Fast forward the simulation! Let's see what Dr. Evil is up to."
(General's assistant in simulation fast forwards the Dr. Evil simulation. Dr. Evil people start moving like ants.)
Audio, person 1 in simulation: "Stop!"
Audio, person 2 in simulation: "It's about seven hours later, around 1:30 AM, Dr. Evil time. He's apparently gone to bed."
Audio, person 1 in simulation: "He's not in his simulated bedroom. Where is he? FIND HIM!"
Audio, person 2 in simulation: "Searching...here he is. He's in someone's house."
Dr Evil within the General's simulation: "Hellooo?"
13 Year Old Girl: "Hi! Come on in and make yourself at home. There's some beer in the kitchen."
Dr Evil within the General's simulation: "Ok, that's...rad. I like beer and how it loosens one up."
(Dr. Evil Simulation gets a beer from the fridge and pops it, taking a slurp. Some guy walks into the kitchen.)
Strange man in simulation: Hi, why don't you put that beer down and have a seat right there at the counter.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.