The Pentagon is Investing $2 Billion into AI (cnn.com)

The Pentagon's high-tech research agency laid the groundwork for the Internet, stealth aircraft and self-driving cars. Now, it's going big on artificial intelligence. From a report: At its 60th anniversary conference on Friday, DARPA announced a $2 billion investment to push the frontier of AI forward. "We think it's a good time to seed the field of AI," John Everett, the deputy director of DARPA's Information Innovation Office, told CNNMoney. "We think we can accelerate two decades of progress into five years." [...] DARPA's investment will focus on creating systems with common sense, contextual awareness and better energy efficiency. Advances could help the government automate security clearances, accredit software systems and make AI systems that explain themselves.

Comments

You want Skynet?

[jeadly]

"we can accelerate two decades of progress into five years" Cause that's how you get Skynet.

Money to burn

[PopeRatzo]

It's no problem. We can afford it by borrowing the $2billion from China, as part of the $700billion defense budget, piling it on the budget deficit and adding it to the national debt so we can blame the next Democratic president for the debt being too high. You don't need an AI to see where this is going.

Deficits don't matter when a Republican is president, but like night follows day, they will become a huge issue as soon as a Democrat takes office.

It's called the "Two Santa Claus Theory" and was created by a Republican "strategist" and pundit named Jude Wanninski in 1976.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view...

Re:Money to burn

[chispito]

Found the libtard. This kind of mindless lies is why many many of us no longer bother with Slashdot.Org. Too much liberal bias and no way to have meningful discussion because then they get angry and use insults instead of the facts and information.

You only just now found PopeRatzo? Somehow I don't think you're as familiar with this site as you imply.

More to the point, if you want Slashdot to be better, then sign in, make good comments, earn mod points, and use them judiciously (not just blindly modding along partisan lines).

Re:And now we know

[EndlessNameless]

Are you being dense on purpose?

They're already making money with AI. This is just going to be extra on top---and believe me, the government is a latecomer here.

The government has finally realized that they can automate some of their most atrocious bureaucracy. The time and cost associated with background investigations and accreditation are insane.

Re:Five year plan

[ausekilis]

To be fair, at the rate the government moves 20 years is roughly 5 years for a corporation. Just look at the computers being used on the air field - go ahead, I'll catch up with my 5.25" floppies in a minute.

Re:And now we know

[110010001000]

Yeah, my mistake. I forgot the US government was making money with AI. Thanks!

We know what AI means. Please no derailing.

[ljw1004]

We know what AI means in the industry today. It means machine-learning of some sorts - putting together a parameterized classifier, training those parameters against a training data-set, and then running it against real-world input. Yes there is considerable work needed to figure out what precise things to classify, what kind of parameterized classifier to use, and to gather the training data-set. Yes it is indeed very different from coding a classification algorithm directly. Yes it will be used in impactful ways. No it's not what we colloquially refer to as "intelligence". Yes it will have blind spots that can be gamed.

Please, I'm so tired of reading posts saying "this isn't really artificial intelligence" when we're all aware of what the industry jargon means, and all aware of the utility and limitations of the current approaches.