Fear of Thinking War Machines May Push U.S. To Exascale

dcblogs writes "Unlike China and Europe, the U.S. has yet to adopt and fund an exascale development program, and concerns about what that means to U.S. security are growing darker and more dire. If the U.S. falls behind in HPC, the consequences will be 'in a word, devastating,' Selmer Bringsford, chair of the Department. of Cognitive Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, said at a U.S. House forum this week. 'If we were to lose our capacity to build preeminently smart machines, that would be a very dark situation, because machines can serve as weapons.' The House is about to get a bill requiring the Dept. of Energy to establish an exascale program. But the expected funding level, about $200 million annually, 'is better than nothing, but compared to China and Europe it's at least 10 times too low,' said Earl Joseph, an HPC analyst at IDC. David McQueeney, vice president of IBM research, told lawmakers that HPC systems now have the ability to not only deal with large data sets but 'to draw insights out of them.' The new generation of machines are being programmed to understand what the data sources are telling them, he said."

Comments

Another arms race?

[Ambvai]

"...compared to China and Europe it's at least 10 times too low..."
"Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap!"

Re:Another arms race?

[dreamchaser]

Shame the space race died once America made target and the USSR fell apart. If that had kept going, we'd be living in apartments on Mars by now.

Or perhaps deploying weapons on Mars by now...

Why? Is there oil on Mars?

Don't exascale or you will go bliind

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't your mamma teach you that?

Re:wow, stupider than MAD!

[ahabswhale]

I agree especially since we can defeat their war machines by just making them play tic-tac-toe and realizing their is no real winner.

Ob. "Forbin Project" quote

[Anonymous Coward]

"There is another system."