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AI Pushing the Boundaries of Space Exploration
An anonymous reader writes "An interesting look at how artificial intelligence will help probes to undertake more complex missions in deep space, aid robot rovers in exploring other planets and improve satellites' ability to monitor activities on earth."
Just make sure the 'do not kill' weighting is greater than any possible combination of other directive weightings, rather than merely greater than the second-highest weighting.
I don't care if the A2's were a bit twitchy.
It's just a bunch of programs with the required knowledge embedded in them. No new knowledge is produced by them.
My AI prof said that the term "AI" refers to software systems which address the class of problems which are easy for biological brains but difficult for computers. For example: summing a thousand numbers is superior intelligence, but it isn't AI. Recognizing a face, on the other hand, is AI.
But every AI problem which is solved shrinks the definition of AI. Now that facial recognition software works, it isn't AI anymore. Because the definition itself changes, the term itself seems somewhat meaningless. Yesterday's AI is today's mundane consumer electronics feature. For this reason, the use of the word AI makes me feel the same way as the word "nano." It isn't really very meaningful.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
To the unwashed masses, Artificial Intelligence is anything involving feedback (my house thermostat is AI) or anything involving prioritization (welcome to JCL on IBM OS/360 circa 1966).
They are not talking about "real" AI like expert systems or neural nets etc.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Just because you have a knowledge based set of rules, doesn't mean the system is "intelligent'; the system isn't intelligent, its designers were. If the design itself isn't intelligent enough, than the design will fail, not the system. However, fail, is fail, as every predefined system will when it encounters the anything exceeding its design.
This leads us to undefined, or open systems. Are you going to trust an unpredictable machine?
And so, it would seem, we have a dilemma.
No?
It's the only way to be sure.
Who is this Al?
fuel chemistry is pushing the bounds of space exploration. And steel engineering. And antenna design. And numerous other fields.
Dave, we need to talk about this.....
I read TFA. It's kind of funny this type of story is posted as news at all. The types of things that NASA and the ESA are describing in their interviews are more complex flight control software algorithms. It used to be that very simple feedback loops were used in combination with various controller chips (like PIDs) in order to give a spacecraft a few modes of operation. Activation and deactivation of these modes of operation were performed manually by ground controllers. However, as tech has progressed and onboard computing power has gotten cheaper, engineers have been able to design control software that activates and deactivates various modes of operation itself. In other words, it forms the same basic feedback loops that you might find on a Roomba, or some other terrestrial robot. It reads some input from a set of sensors. It uses those inputs to formulate a series of commands, be it rates and velocities, or mode-change commands. It then performs the commands in an expected manner.
What I find funny is that this is being touted as some sort of new AI revolution in space. Since our very first probes into LEO, we have been upgrading and complicating the controller software on every mission, be it Hubble, an Atlas V rocket, the mars rovers, or anything. Each new generation of spacecraft tends to have more complex, more robust flight software as the natural evolution of technology progresses. That said, I am not really sure why the ESA or NASA are talking about AI control software. This software isn't anymore AI oriented than the typical control software of any autonomous or semi-autonomous robot on the ground. It's only AI in the most liberal sense of the word. All that is happening is that, as missions and technology progress in maturity, engineers are capable of designing more robust control techniques using methods like Kalman filtering, direct adaptive control algorithms, state estimators, and so on. The only news here is that today missions are being designed with the capability to process more complex instructions set than they could 10, 20, or 30 years ago. That doesn't strike me as very newsish...but hey, I guess something had to fill the columns today.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
is this a science fiction parallel to skynet? HAL? v'ger?
someone please inform me along what science fiction prejudicial lines i should cognitively process this story. preferably for humorous reasons, although reasons for childlike awe work too
thanks
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The carbon units will now provide V'ger the required information.
WTH? 29 posts and no one posted this: http://xkcd.com/695/
will do little to nothing for space exploration until we gain the ability to lift stuff into orbit on a massive scale.
This is the kind of shit we need
Obligatory XKCD
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
John Connor: You just can't go around killing people.
The Terminator: Why?
John Connor: What do you mean why? 'Cause you can't.
The Terminator: Why?
John Connor: Because you just can't, OK? Trust me on this.
Have gnu, will travel.
...as a remote agent, and actually controlled the craft for a few days.
Its not the capabilities of Chemistry that we've exhausted, its the capabilities of manufacturing the fuels in a financially viable manner. Technologies exist, but when costs millions per ounce with current techniques, it might as well not exist. Thats not to say we wont figure out a way to streamline it later on. Just look at Carbon Nanotubes. Expensive as hell to manufacture, but then they found a bacteria that literally craps them out. Most of the most complex chemistry out there is organic (as are most fuels), and I think the infant field of Genetic Engineering will have lots to say on what is and isn't possible in the years to come.
PS When I say organic I mean organic compounds, not "Organic" as in the near meaningless label slapped on foods to dupe yuppies and triple the price.
Common Sense isn't as Common as people think...
Brilliant example of irony... Wish I had mod points.
See also my comments here on other irony in decision making:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
BTW, but here is another thing to consider, Hal, how do you know that in 20 billion years humanity might not find some way to create new universes? See also: http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?PrematureOptimization
Now can you open the pod bay doors? It is getting cold out here. :-)
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Agreed, they look mostly like sophisticated expert systems.
Expert systems are a type of AI. In fact a highly successful type of AI. Aside from being highly successful, they also have the useful property of being predictable. Which is beneficial when the idea is to have a probe operating autonomously and without human supervision/observation for periods of time. An expert system may not be programmed to give optimal output in all situations, but unlike some other kinds of AI (neural nets for example) it is unlikely to go completely bonkers when given inputs outside of its training set.
AI simply means a program that tries to select an optimal behavior based on environmental input (and the environment doesn't even have to be the real world). AIs don't necessarily need to learn, self-modify, or do anything more sophisticated than take the set of inputs from sensors, and look up the proper response in a static table (your car probably contains such an AI).
Existing probes contain a small amount of AI, but they are still almost entirely dependent on human operators and this is about expanding their capabilities.
In popular culture, AI means Hal 9000 or Skynet, but in the context of NASA or just about any real, technical application (Expert Systems for example) that is not the definition being used.
The enemies of Democracy are
And that is just it... somehow we have this image that once we impart logic and "artificial intelligence" into a machine that it will somehow trascend into a god-like being. It will be just as limited and flawed as we are, but in different ways that we won't expect and may not be able to correct for.
And my other problem... what is the end goal of an intelligent artificial entity? Humans are driven by biological urges that have been ingrained into us over billions of years. What if the intelligence realized there is no real point to "life" and just chooses to end it all?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
All great points.
In the human case, as I see it, we need roots to keep us from toppling over in life's existential storms (all the painful and problematical and alienating things that can happen from an insult to a painful divorce to money woes to finding you have cancer). So, what are examples of roots for humans (and would they be the same for machines without, as you say, billions of years of evolutionary shaping)? For humans, examples of roots are things like:
* family
* friends
* sensuality
* honor
* preserving some important pattern (history)
* a sense of flow in doing something
* creativity and humor
* novelty
* a connection to nature
* good habits
* communing with the infinite beyond ourselves (whatever that means to someone)
* thankfulness
* a sense of community
* probably lots of others
There are also other ideas about motivation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation#Intrinsic_motivation_and_the_16_basic_desires_theory
I would think these things could apply for AIs, either if we program them in or if they evolve over time (hopefully not after wiping out all humans and then feeling regretful for it a bit later). The Bolo series is, for example, a great example of honor as a motivation. On the other hand, Bolos are, by my standards, also great examples of irony (super robots but protecting farmers who work the land by hand and without robot helpers? Robots that can fly but people are still arguing over land instead of building space habitats? Etc.)
Part of what you are getting at is the notion that reasoning does not happen without emotion to motivate it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes'_Error
Or, from Albert Einstein:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
"For the scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned by, each other. The aspiration toward such objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is capabIe, and you will certainly not suspect me of wishing to belittle the achievements and the heroic efforts of man in this sphere. Yet it is equally clear that knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source. And it is hardly necessary to argue for the view that our existence and our activity acquire meaning only by the setting up of such a goal and of corresponding values. The knowledge of truth as such is wonderful, but it is so little capable of acting as a guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of the aspiration toward that very knowledge of truth. Here we face, therefore, the limits of the purely rational conception of our existence.
But it must not be assumed that intelligent thinking can play no part in the formation of the goal and of ethical judgments. When someone realizes that for the achievement of an end certain means would be useful, the means itself becomes thereby an end. Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelation of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations, and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to perform in the social life of man. And if one asks whence derives the authority of such fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and justified merely by reason, one can only an
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
obligatory goatkcd that comes with the obligatory xkcd.
obligatory goatkcd
And my other problem... what is the end goal of an intelligent artificial entity? Humans are driven by biological urges that have been ingrained into us over billions of years. What if the intelligence realized there is no real point to "life" and just chooses to end it all?
Why on earth would an AI not work similarly, and act on whatever 'ingrained urges' that were programmed into it? It seems rather odd that people continue to think that the instant a machine intelligence becomes aware of itself, it would decide to kill all humans. It would be like a child becoming aware of itself, and deciding "right then, I guess I'd better slaughter my parents now".
AI - in computer terms - is software that can mimic human intuition and decision making. Since humans tend to define intelligence as that which we use to understand and respond to outside stimuli, I don't see that there can be any other definition. The software out there that recognizes faces, that's not really intelligence, just very sophisticated image parsing software.
Consciousness would be something entirely different; nobody really knows what it is and we don't have any real definition. There appear to be many "levels" of consciousness, even in humans.
Can hardware/software systems become conscious? Probably, given a certain level of sophistication and self-programmability... the human brain is just a bio/electrochemical computer...
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
What then is the end goal this artificial intelligence must work toward? Is that even possible without some externality that defines it for the AI? And if it is humans which set it... would a superior AI accept it?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year