Pentagon to Merge Next-Gen Binoculars With Soldiers’ Brains
May 3rd, 2007If you think that the ultimate goal for this project is a set of “Star Wars”-style binoculars, you’ve got another thing coming. Of course, we can’t leave it up to the Wired reporter to connect the dots.
The article asks, “Why all the rush?”
Three years ago, I wrote:
The ultimate goal is to replace front line soldiers (the shooters) with robots. Humans will be used as middleware to overcome the temporary limitations of artificial intelligence and machine vision in these early systems. For example, a human operator can interpret standard video information and provide guidance for the robot via remote control. The goal, however, is fully autonomous robot soldiers.
And ASAP!
The project described below appears to be related to a target acquisition and identification system; one of the holy grails of the killer robot industrial complex known as neuroscience in more polite circles. (If this sounds nuts to you, simply visit any neuroscience department in any U.S. university and follow the money. I was so shocked by what I found, I wanted to make a documentary film about it. I can’t do that now, but I hope someone else does!)
When companies outsource staff, the bosses who run the thing will sometimes try to get the employees—who are about to be fired—to train their replacements. Artificial intelligence hasn’t lived up to the hype. Everyone knows it. And that’s where the wet work comes in: Living brain tissue hooked to electrode arrays; neuro implants; endless numbers of tortured animals. etc. Record everything. Develop, “advanced statistical algorithms.” Mimic the cognitive functions of living organisms in hardware and software and then attach a gun to it. That’s it. That’s THE goal. (I’ve worked for these criminals in the past, I’m sorry to have to admit.)
Oh well, if your Terminator Robot file folder is already full, go a head and put this one with your Men-Who-Stare-At-Goats materials.
Via: Wired:
U.S. Special Forces may soon have a strange and powerful new weapon in their arsenal: a pair of high-tech binoculars 10 times more powerful than anything available today, augmented by an alerting system that literally taps the wearer’s prefrontal cortex to warn of furtive threats detected by the soldier’s subconscious.
In a new effort dubbed “Luke’s Binoculars” — after the high-tech binoculars Luke Skywalker uses in Star Wars — the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is setting out to create its own version of this science-fiction hardware. And while the Pentagon’s R&D arm often focuses on technologies 20 years out, this new effort is dramatically different — Darpa says it expects to have prototypes in the hands of soldiers in three years.
The agency claims no scientific breakthrough is needed on the project — formally called the Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System. Instead, Darpa hopes to integrate technologies that have been simmering in laboratories for years, ranging from flat-field, wide-angle optics, to the use of advanced electroencephalograms, or EEGs, to rapidly recognize brainwave signatures.
In March, Darpa held a meeting in Arlington, Virginia, for scientists and defense contractors who might participate in the project. According to the presentations from the meeting, the agency wants the binoculars to have a range of 1,000 to 10,000 meters, compared to the current generation, which can see out only 300 to 1,000 meters. Darpa also wants the binoculars to provide a 120-degree field of view and be able to spot moving vehicles as far as 10 kilometers away.
The most far-reaching component of the binocs has nothing to do with the optics: it’s Darpa’s aspirations to integrate EEG electrodes that monitor the wearer’s neural signals, cueing soldiers to recognize targets faster than the unaided brain could on its own. The idea is that EEG can spot “neural signatures” for target detection before the conscious mind becomes aware of a potential threat or target.
Darpa’s ambitions are grounded in solid research, says Dennis McBride, president of the Potomac Institute and an expert in the field. “This is all about target recognition and pattern recognition,” says McBride, who previously worked for the Navy as an experimental psychologist and has consulted for Darpa. “It turns out that humans in particular have evolved over these many millions of years with a prominent prefrontal cortex.”
That prefrontal cortex, he explains, allows the brain to pick up patterns quickly, but it also exercises a powerful impulse control, inhibiting false alarms. EEG would essentially allow the binoculars to bypass this inhibitory reaction and signal the wearer to a potential threat. In other words, like Spiderman’s “spider sense,” a soldier could be alerted to danger that his or her brain had sensed, but not yet had time to process.
…
For example, another key aspect of the binoculars will detect threats using neuromorphic engineering, the science of using hardware and software to mimic biological systems. Paul Hasler, a Georgia Institute of Technology professor who specializes in this area and attended the Darpa workshop, describes, for example, an effort to use neural computation to “emulate the brain’s visual cortex” — creating sensors that, like the brain, can scan across a wide field of view and “figure out what’s interesting to look at.”
Ah, delicious liquid fear, right to the vein.
The upside is this: if we give the militaries toys to act out their aggressions, maybe they’ll be content to turn war into a competitive sport, rather than a nightmare that destroys everything in its path.
Maybe not.
I bet stuff like this is being built in China and the Soviet Union, oops, I mean Russia, though.
Scientists are constantly balancing the powers that be by giving technologies to all sides.
Like, the scientists who worked on our nukes immediately gave it to the Russians.
In fact, I remember watching the History Channel and seeing a show where they talked about how various Renaissance-era military scientists, like Leonardo da Vinci, would constantly sell their secrets to opposing sides. First a special kind of fortification, then a cannon to blow up the fortification, then a thicker wall, then a thicker cannon-ball.
Of course, sometimes things became unbalanced and lots of people died, but, so it goes.
Sigh.
Comforting Lie Makes Fear Subside. Life now more Livable.
“Ozzy” my dear man, do you think that it is always “your” scientists that make innovations, to be stolen or sold surreptitiously to Russia? I suppose “you” Westerners are the eternally gifted and creative ones, always churning out more than you can even digest, while we Russians have nothing but donkies and pumpkins for scientists… That is a naive fault of your “Western” vision, nevertheless belied by history.
All men are products of their own personal experiences. This, inadvertently, leads to familiar-centric thought processes. Ozzy is not to blame for this no more than you are, Makhumudov.
“I see an apple”, rather than “You would see an apple, if you were here”. Forgivable and quite understandable, simple human nature.
My apologies, I. Makhumudov, I am duly chastened. However, I would point out that a better of looking at it would be that the scientists don’t really belong to anyone, certainly not fictions like nation states, corporations, or universities.
I guess the point I was trying to make was that scientists who start out with one patron, have gone over to an opposing patron. I mean, Russians defected to the U.S., Americans defected to Russia, others played both sides against each other, or tried to help the weaker side. It’s gotta be rough to be a scientist, everyone constantly trying to crack open your brain and steal your secrets.
Additionally, I have only recently uncovered political biases built into “Western” science. You know they lie to us in our country too, telling us things like science is apolitical.
Also, you must note that I used the phrase “scientists who worked on our nukes,” I never said they were “our” scientists.
MURDER, DEATH, KILL:
Oppressing people and stealing their resources is tiresome work for human soldiers. You have to pay for their pesky family and cough up valuable resources to piece them back together when they get blown up.
Imagine the joy on your xbox-trained, unemployed teenagers face when they learn they can get paid to drive these things from the comfort of their suburban living room!
http://www.defense-update.com/newscast/0307/news/080307_viper.htm
“Elbit Systems Ltd. (NASDAQ: ESLT) introducing at AUSA Winter the Versatile, Intelligent, Portable Robot (VIPeR), the newest member of its unmanned systems family. The new robot is displayed at the company’s booth at the USA Winter Symposium and Exhibition. VIPeR was developed for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) within the framework of its Portable Unmanned Ground Vehicle (PUGV) program, and in close cooperation with The Israeli Ministry of Defence’s Directorate of Defense R&D (DDR&D). Following operational evaluation, the IDF plans on fielding VIPeR in its infantry platoons. ”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/08/israeli_mini_terminator/
“Israeli killer-robot maker Elbit Systems today unveiled the “Viper,” a small ground-crawling combat machine “roughly the size of a small television”.
The tiny war-bot is said to capable of engaging enemies with bursts of laser-sighted automatic fire, or even grenades.
In what can only be a remarkable, chilling coincidence the dwarvish cyber-assassin reportedly packs an Uzi nine-millimetre – one of the favourite weapons of the original, supposedly fictional Terminator.”
Indeed.
When I first read the register article, the first thing to pop into my head was Aah-nald’s heavily accented voice saying (to the Alamo Gun store owner):
“Oooh-zeeh Nien Millimeetah!”
If u go thru lots of this stuff, ure gonna find out the ‘cold war’ was never real. basically, none of the wars this planet has had are real in the sense that there’s real enemies between nations. The ppl are always the real enemy of the ones who build these byrocracies to shield them from the commoners. USA and russia (like the rest of the world) have both been owned by the same group of families for a long time. to get rid of the american ‘freedom’ and replace it with giant govt, the 3rd way of a mix of capitalism and communism a formidable enemy was needed. When the ‘enemy’ had served its purpose, it was deconstructed. Of course the ppl of those countries must think that the ‘war’ is real, but in the end they get their beliefs and information, their ‘reality’ all from just one source. And thats not the only reason, things dont happen because of just one reason, theres many, i’m just simplifying things. And yes I’m a kook and a foil head and proud of it.
this guy and his cat can explain a lot of things that go on in this reality that has been completely constructed from top down for about 6k years now. cuttingthroughthematrix.com