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: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.
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.
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?
Yay, we're pigeons! (Score:5, Interesting)
A trained neural network can be more accurate and faster than one would think