The Pentagon Promises Smarter Robots

Posted 29 May 2003 at 21:13 UTC by The Swirling Brain

In what appears to be an obvious dup, yet actually appears to be real, the Pentagon wants to get all of your life experiences solely so that they will have data to create smarter robots. Right. Formally nicknamed Total Information Awareness, the Terrorism Information Awareness already keeps transaction information on people, but this new project called LifeLog will go far beyond that to track everyone's movements, and what they see, hear, and do, etc. As you could probably imagine, there are plenty of privacy groups up in arms. After losing all of our libertys and all, the good warm fuzzy news is that we will end up having Smarter Robots. Be careful what you think about this project.

Here's about 1984 similar articles to think about: Ars Technica: DARPA to citizens: you will be assimilated, Reuters: Pentagon Seeks to Sort, Store Lifetime Experience, NewZealand Herald: Pentagon seeks to sort and store lifetime experience, Star TechCentral: We can see what you see, hear what you hear, Al Jazeerah: Is individual privacy a privilege or a right, Reason: My LifeLog, and Yours, Washington Post: The Pentagon's PR Play, Slashdot: The Searchable Life, Sierra Times: DARPA meets Dr. Frankenstein, Net Security: A spy machine of Darpa's dreams.

---

Sick Orwell, posted 29 May 2003 at 21:52 UTC by The Swirling Brain » (Master)

I can't decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing. With the help of the freedom of information act, I could find out... Ah, nevermind, definately a bad thing.

He who controls the past controls the future, posted 29 May 2003 at 21:55 UTC by motters » (Master)

I also read the Orwell classic recently, and the parallels between the machinations of a ficticious totalitarian state and the gulf war going on on the telly at the time were striking.

What impressed me more than the thought police or newspeak (an early prototype for political correctness) was the way that "the party" tries to erase or distort history in order to justify current events. In the story history exists only in books and in people's minds, and the party controls both. The "two minutes hate" was also very reminiscent of some of the pre gulf war rhetoric, with people being whipped up into a blind frenzy of fear and then having their attention focused on the face of the enemy ("goldstein" in the book, "saddam" on telly) - a classical conditioning technique.

For anyone of a slightly nervous disposition the torture of Smith is the most grusome part of the book, but the basic underlying theme of the story one of freedom and its suppression.

One more link , posted 30 May 2003 at 02:42 UTC by steve » (Master)

The Swirling Brain left out one link - Noah Shachtman's original Wired article that all those other articles reference.

Amazing, posted 30 May 2003 at 17:09 UTC by ROB.T. » (Master)

I want to know who the salesman was who convinced the Pentagon that this could be done - hell of a snow job. I'm not even going to get into rights violations etc... because the technology for this concept is so far off.

Why doesn't the Pentagon RD folks work on something a little more practical, like replacing US troops at checkpoints with an armed telepresence.