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Game Technology Helps Drive Military Training
longacre writes "With the gaming industry now spending more to develop user interfaces than the Pentagon, the Army has begun putting all that R&D to good use in weaponry and training. Reversing the traditional role of games attempting to simulate real life killing machines, it is now the weapons makers using gaming technology to make their products more effective. Popular Mechanics notes, 'Already, [Mark Bigham, director of business development for Raytheon Tactical Intelligence Systems] says that Raytheon has been experimenting with Wii controllers to explore the possibilities for training simulators and other applications that require physical movement. Just think, one day, the R&D that Nintendo put into Wii bowling could end up influencing basic training.'"
Not shocking at all...
"Just think, one day, the R&D that Nintendo put into Wii bowling could end up influencing basic training [which includes how to kill people]"
Although I highly doubt a business would pass up the chance to get funding from the military, I would hope that a company that for the most part builds games for kids (or at least promotes "fun"), would decline working for the military in any regard, except to deviate away from phsyical combat. Maybe one day the wars could be settled with a good game of Guitar Hero...
However it could be argued that better killing skills leads to less fatalities and injuries, it still promotes taking, or imposing stuff by force, and all that goes along with that.
Or something... that's what it's called. Essentially a glorified computer game. The first time I got to train on it was during my pre-mobilization training before I deployed to Iraq in 2005. The second time I got to train on it was a few months ago during weekend drill.
You basically have actual M-16's, M-4's, 240-B's, M-249's and 50 cals hooked up to the system. When you fire, the weapon shoots a laser to the screen in front of you. (It's a really big projector screen). You have different scenes (one was an oil-refinery scene of some kind, and the other was an urban setting) where you have to engage the enemy.
The graphics aren't all that great, but it's still pretty fun. I wanted to hook up Halo or GoW to that big-ass screen. That would have been pretty sweet.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
You get what you pay for. In the US, money gets spent on fear.
The Intestate highway system was not sold to Congress as a vital transportation network, but rather as a defense system that could be used to truck around ICBMs to shoot at the ruskies.
The foundations of the Internet were all funded out of DARPA research as ways to communicate during wars, where communication links might be severed and need to be routed around.
Many medical advancements have originated from the efforts to stitch people back together during wars.
If you look at how much money the US spends on being ready to kill, compared to how much it spends being ready to compete, it's no surprise why there's all this technology spilling from the military. They're the only ones being funded because fear results in funding.
If we poured money into education, transportation, information technology, health, etc, we'd see significant paybacks from those investments too. But Americans only think they're getting their money's worth when fear is involved. They haven't quite figured out why Pentagon toilet seats costs $10,000.
I don't think Republicans are entirely to blame, they've just corned the market on fear and have become great at selling it to the "I'll pay you to scare me" American public. Democrats also enjoy the funding that comes with fear, making it a key issue both sides can agree on.
Obama's Apple, McCain's Microsoft: the Politics of Tech
http://www.singinst.org/media/singularitysummit2007
http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/people-blog/?p=207
That transcript for the talk doesn't including the question and answer session, so I'll transcribe it here:
The question is, can I talk about the inspiration for the user interface on the combat robot?
Yes, on the combat robot, we started out with engineers designing it, very expensive, joysticks with force reflecting, we put it out in the field, the kids out in the field, the 19 year old started doing *bang* *bang* *bang* pulse width modulation with their hands, umm, we changed it then to a game controller and now the 19 year olds in Iraq pick it up, zero training, know what to do.
Great.
[question about flat worms, etc]
[different question about humans merging with ai, losing emotions, etc]
[question about research funding]
The question is, I used to talk about insect level intelligence, what's my attitude to that.. well, I've got 3 million robots out in people's homes with insect level intelligence. It's a real commercial success. But it doesn't mean we should stick with just that. Some of the principles from that we've been using in these humanoid robots and I was trying to explore a different set of space, but really, I tend to think that, humans are just bit insects. [laughter] Ha ha, we're not as smart as we like to think we are. I still believe that, at its core.
The question, is about [soldiers] becoming emotionally attached to the robots and has that caused us to rethink at all. No, we haven't done that in the military space, but in the home space we've seen people getting attached.. there's a whole set of third party industry making clothes for roombas, there are skins for roombas that you can get, there's some web sites, so I think those, ya know, we'll have Facebook for robots [laughter] I mean, there really is part of this attachment that's an interesting phenomena going on there. Sherry Turpils looked at it with Furbies a lot. There's a lot of projection onto these devices which they don't really deserve from a rational point of view. But we're not rational beings.
The question is, there have been reports of packbots being equipped with machine guns and what do you do worrying about friendly fire. Actually, that's not true, none of the packbots have had a machinegun, the Talon from Foster Miller has had a weapon on it,
all with safety circuit and a human in the loop. I think it is an interesting question, when (if ever) do we want to allow robots to have independent targeting authority. I think now is the time to act. There's a bunch of ethics conferences coming up in the next year. I think its time to put this into the Geneva Conventions - some governments do go along with the Geneva Conventions - and [laughter] I think its time to think about that. Absolutely.
[Audience member asks a follow-up:] You said "some governments" follow the Geneva Conventions, but apparently not that you've done some work for. Is it a good idea for you to be developing AI and robotics for the US government? and, umm, in my mind, that could lead to some of the worst nightmare scenarios and I'm wondering how, ya know, what your thoughts are on mitigating against...
Yeah, I think that, in a sense is nothing to do with AI, that's been a question which has faced scientists in the past since the time of Da vinci, who was completely funded by military, doing military work for his patrons. So that's an issue that scientists have had to deal with for hundreds of years. Independently, of AI. And I think it is a big responsibility of scientists to worry about controls of how things are used and I think, actually, the Geneva Conventions have been a good way of
How we know is more important than what we know.
My stepson, an avid FPS gamer, joined the Army in 1999. They put him in an ultra-realistic tank simulator, and he destroyed everything that moved on the virtual battlefield. When he came out, they were all standing there staring at him...
He asked, "What are you looking at?"
They replied, almost in unison, "A tanker."
He ended up driving a tank to Baghdad with the elite 3rd Squadron of the 7th Cavalry, and fought in the only force-on-force tank battle of the war at Objective Montgomery (out near the airport).
I don't think Nintendo would accept funding from the US Govt's Overseas Killing Dept. (as it's facetiously nicknamed in certain academic circles).
Nintendo, as a post-war japanese company subscribes fairly heavily in the "war is bad: look what it does" philosophy. In fact, many have commented that Japan's seemingly stratospheric lead in advanced tech research, with it being responsible for a disproportionate number of advances in many tech fields, like video games, mobile phones, digital cameras, hi-fis, walkmans etc. probably owes a good deal to the fact that Japan's greatest minds are busy cracking out new video games and stereo players, rather than, as is the case in Western countries, designing new fighter jets or laser weapons.
Japan is a fairly pacifist nation, and that's a good thing. Retaining the ability to go to war if you are threatened = good.
Having 65% of the worlds aircraft carriers endlessly on patrol/exercise just-in-case as a backup to make sure no uppity neighbours say no to a new trade deal = bad.
Think I prefer the Japanese "fun".
The truth shall always be free: Boris Floricic is Tron.
What about America's Army? The game has been out for a while, and has some great potential for training simulators. Integrate it into actual weapons, and it's even better :)
Having a smoking section in a public restaurant is like having a peeing section in a public swimming pool.
Not sure why this is pathetic. People (myself included sometimes) complain about wasteful military spending. If a cheap and adequate solution is designed, how is that pathetic? I don't agree with war but while it happens, I expect the taxpayer's money to be spent efficiently.
Remember 1980 ? Naw, 'course you don't, most of you weren't even born I bet.
In 1980 there was this little Atari game called Battlezone, where you'd drive around in a tank, blowing shit up.
The army commissioned Atari to produce a special simulator based on Battlezone, called the Bradley Trainer (named after Bradley tanks). It was built into a high-end arcade cabinet, with a fancy controller that became the Star Wars flight yoke a few years later.
The army has been using gaming tech since video gaming was born.
-Billco, Fnarg.com