DARPA Unveils System Using Human Brains For Computer Vision 82
MrSeb writes with news about our coming cybernetic overlords. From the article: "After more than four years of research, DARPA has created a system that successfully combines soldiers, EEG brainwave scanners, 120-megapixel cameras, and multiple computers running cognitive visual processing algorithms into a cybernetic hivemind. Called the Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System (CT2WS), it will be used in a combat setting to significantly improve the U.S. Army's threat detection capabilities. There are two discrete parts to the system: The 120-megapixel camera, which is tripod-mounted and looks over the battlefield; and the computer system, where a soldier sits in front of a computer monitor with an EEG strapped to his head, looking at images captured by the camera, wedding out false threats. In testing, the 120-megapixel camera, combined with the computer vision algorithms, generated 810 false alarms per hour; with a human operator strapped into the EEG, that drops down to just five false alarms per hour. The human brain is surprisingly fast, too: According to DARPA, CT2WS displays 10 images per second to the human operator — and yet that doesn't seem to affect accuracy."
Welcome to the Machine (Score:5, Interesting)
This is scary to me, being wired up and used as a machine. Though I suppose it's actually no worse than other kinds of human slavery, and probably quite a bit better than some.
Re:Welcome to the Machine (Score:5, Funny)
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BRAINS IN VATS
C'mon. You know that this is where this is headed.
I say: "We don't want another Frankenstein in the castle!"
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Sonic Ejaculate?
Re:Welcome to the Machine (Score:5, Funny)
Abbey...
Abbey...
Abbey... Normal! Yea, that was it: "Abbey Normal!"
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Think about it. Robocop will soon be a documentary.
Futurama, too!
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Think about it. Robocop will soon be a documentary.
Well, the first thing that came to *my* mind were those funny guys in Emperor Ming's palace (in that 1980's Flash Gordon movie), hooked up to the computer consoles. (I hope I remember them correctly.)
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Do we really want politicians, of all people, to be charge of identifying threats?
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You just have to run through his answers on a NOT gate to achieve high accuracy.
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Re:Welcome to the Machine (Score:4, Interesting)
The way I see it, finding methods to unlock the power of our subconcious is a useful delay to being replaced by robots.
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Eventually, if/when robots can do everything better than us (A long, long way away), we'll basically be zoo animals, but zoo animals in nice accommodations.
Re:Welcome to the Machine (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Welcome to the Machine (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't, so I expect to live in squalor when robots can do 90% of all jobs.
So, uh, what jobs are those robots going to do? Work in factories making stuff to sell to... oh, but 90% of humans live in squalor so they have no money.
Hmm, perhaps your glorious vision of the future makes no sense?
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So, uh, what jobs are those robots going to do? Work in factories making stuff to sell to... oh, but 90% of humans live in squalor so they have no money
Sounds exactly like the current economy: All industries cutting jobs and lowering salaries to 90% of their employees, to more efficiently sell products to...oh but 90% of the consumers are laid off or cutting their spending.
Things don't have to make sense for the decisions of our cooperate management overlords. Unless they too get replaced by robots...hmm.
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Don't worry, the solution is to have the robots process humans into furniture and arrange it in aesthetically pleasing ways.
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You may note he used the word 'squalor', not the word 'glorious'.
Also, our corporate overlords? They don't seem to spend much time caring about long-term sustainable economic plans.
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2. They will become self aware and try to kill Sarah and her son John
3. We will lose the war, and be enslaved in a virtual reality until Neo sets us free.
4. Serena will lead us in a jihad to destroy all machine intelligences.
5. Profit?
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If there are no jobs for humans because robots are doing all of them, then the idea of making stuff to sell to people will go away. We'll need a new kind of economic system.
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Re:Welcome to the Machine (Score:4, Insightful)
The sad part is that we have such a dysfunctional view of economic systems that the dream of all mankind for centuries (replacing human labor with machine labor) becomes a nightmare.
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That isn't the goal of the system at all. The goal is to integrate the system with a person on the battlefield so that humans and computers can work together to identify threats (possibly miles away) far faster than either could do alone. Mount that on a tank or helicopter, or eventually even on a Google Glass-like display, and you have soldiers who are vastly better informed than they would otherwise be.
Of course, being DARPA technology, it is quite likely it will never be used by the military. It might,
Finder of Lost Children (Score:1)
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Finding people who are doing something wrong isn't "abuse."
Using it to identify and persecute political dissidents? That would be abuse.
Voluntary acts aren't slavery (Score:2, Informative)
It's a job, and therefore not slavery any more than any other one. Also you are very stupid for even making the comparison, though I suppose you hear that often enough.
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Also you are very stupid for even making the comparison, though I suppose you hear that often enough.
What an adult, mature response... Sheesh...
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What an adult, mature response... Sheesh...
This phrase doesn't make any sense to me. The statement you are replying to is almost never made by a child. Of course it's an adult response!
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It is the sort of statement typically made by a child in a physically mature body.
Re:Welcome to the Machine (Score:5, Funny)
EEG strapped to his head, looking at images captured by the camera, wedding out false threats
I think it's the perfect marriage of man and machine.
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Jack in the Box is using a similar system. At one franchise in my area, you only order via a vending-machine like interface at the counter. In back, the ingredients roll out and an electronic beep instructs the human component to perform each food assembly step.
People who originally wrote about alienation at the hand of industry would have no idea what to make of this stuff...I assume they'll be replacing the human with robotic elements once they become cost effective, though.
sounds like people.. (Score:2)
..never heard of supervised learning [wikipedia.org]
We can optimize for efficiency in the next sprint. (Score:5, Funny)
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Ron Popiel approves.
Resistance is futile. (Score:2)
Go Army.
Re:Resistance is futile. (Score:4, Funny)
Don't forget to send in the Marines!
This gives a whole new meaning to "Jarhead"!
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Head jar?
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New camo techniques required (Score:4, Interesting)
I see an easy way to break this system
where a soldier sits in front of a computer monitor ... wedding out false threats.
Human soldier brain pretty good at telling the difference between a bush and a AK-47 wielding freedom fighter / terrorist / same difference when that's what he's looking for.
So give him a different type of bush to look at. I've never really been "into" the whole "naked chicks with guns" genre of pr0n but covering the walls of a village with posters like that would probably totally screw the guy up. "That's a bush! No the other kind! No wait she's holding a AK-47. No wait, she's not moving, thats a poster. No wait, she's moving, she's for real..."
Another tool would be psyops type stuff. So rather than your stereotypical naked woman, trust me straight guys REALLY like to look at that, you could put up 2G1C posters, goatse, rotten dot com pics, tubgirl with a 9mm, stuff like that. Too many icky false positives gross the guy out. Like a weird game of duck duck goose... OK soldier goatse goatse goatse goatse... Oh oh thats a taliban! goatse goatse ...
Another thing is screwing around with image capture. So as a kid I had a "wolf's head" tee shirt. Rather than relying on hacking the pattern matching algo in a human brain to mess up by using all kinds of paint blotchy, ghillie suit-y, digital cammo-y stuff, just take two poor bastards and put them in a halloween horse costume and have them walk right in front of the camera. Cam sees "horse" walking around, doesn't bother showing soldier who might not notice anyway. Also hack the rangefinder. Cam algo detects movement. Zooms in and see's VLM's wolf's head tee shirt. Shows soldier a pic of a wolf's head. Soldier says WTF.
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Are you implying the 'prophet' is an insignificant speck?
You kids and your low resolution 1080 wide screen monitors.
Here's a quarter, get yourself a high res monitor like my 1600x1200 CRT from back in 1999 and look again.
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Except in most places if you could get away with covering the village walls with pictures of naked chicks we wouldn't be there in the first place.
Looks like France is gearing up for more rioting for some damn cartoon or another, and they've got those Kate Middleton pictures everywhere...
I think its more the concept of confusing and distracting the enemy anyway. So put up 500 (homemade?) Nintendo Mario posters to distract, and dress the real insurgents in genuine Mario halloween costumes. Heck, if you wanna go star wars, stormtrooper armor might actually work. Put up Escher drawing posters just to piss off the digital algorithms trying to model wha
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSQJP40PcGI [youtube.com]
I Wonder If They Can Make It Duplex? (Score:2)
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Blind spot (Score:3)
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Wedding out false threats? (Score:3, Funny)
Weddings? I love weddings, drinks all round!
oh crap... (Score:1)
We are Borg. Resistence is futile. (Score:3)
Listen to me... (Score:2)
That's nice an all (Score:1)
Yay, we're pigeons! (Score:5, Interesting)
A trained neural network can be more accurate and faster than one would think
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But I'm not willing to spend $20 to read the paper and see if it confirms this anecdote.
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Now bring it all together. (Score:2)
Now you just put the guy in a vehicle, link the weapons systems to it, link drone control to it, network it all back to a control hive. Write the interface up like a game.
I love this kind of stuff. We need it in case we have to fight the screaming hordes who out number us, or if we want to be sneaky sneaky and take out nasty bastards who hide in other countries where we can't put boots on the ground without lead in the air.
So, everyone stop panicking, unless you are douchebag bad guys, let's embrace the mad
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Forget operatives, lets get away from that pesky element. Let's deliver payloads of small surveillance drones to areas, tap their communications lines, set up listening posts with them. We could coordinate them with satellites, or my favorite idea, small balloon/zeppelins, drop communication link drones along the way like a chain so you have secure communications. Perhaps even work some some line of sight data communications, so that RF isn't involved in case the bag guys are a bit tricksy.
This way, there a
Subjected to 10 images per sec. and react to them (Score:2)
Oh yeah, it's called a video game!