

US Air Force says decision-making attack drones will be here by 2047 - mcantelon
http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/28/us-air-force-says-decision-making-attack-drones-will-be-here-by/

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eagleal
They set the 2047 as deadline, beacuase by 2037 they would have ground tested
various weapons and aircrafts (eg. LM FB-22).

However several papers and articles I read time ago, reported that the DoD was
searching for advanced methods (read AI-like) to recognize enemy vehicles (and
personnel). Unfortunately I can't find the links.

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anamax
Does anyone know how long the folks making the prediction expect to live? I
ask because this sounds like an instance of "AI will be good enough right
around the time that I should die", as in
[http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2007/03/the_maesgarre...](http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2007/03/the_maesgarreau.php)
(which was recently mentioned in HN).

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d0mine
It reminds me of a story (how to apply for a job to teach a mule to speak):

 _Before ten years pass, I die, the mule dies or the sultan dies..._ </quote>
<http://nasredin.blogspot.com/2007/11/ibn-khaldouns-mule.html>

taken from <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=411695>

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lionhearted
Ah, that was a fantastic story, thanks for sharing. Reminds me of Arabian
Nights, which is really a fine read. Lots of proverbs and fun little stories -
you might want to check it out, I'd recommend Husain Haddawy's translation.
Looks like the Deluxe Edition is on sale right now for $12, which is a steal.
One of my favorite books.

<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393331660/> (no affiliate link)

On an unrelated note, it's worth reading the general summaries of Ibn
Khaldun's works too. A lot of things we take for granted now but were
incredibly advanced back then, as well as some good observations generally on
how to think and consider things. It'd appeal to the sort of man who generally
likes Adam Smith, Carl von Clauswitz, Plato, etc.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Khaldun#Works>

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waterlesscloud
I could say nearly anything will be here by 2047.

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eru
I want my jet pack and flying cars.

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Dilpil
How long did the atomic bomb take to develop? 10 years?

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philwelch
4-6, but under highly exceptional circumstances that are probably impossible
to reproduce in peacetime.

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saucetenuto
It's always fun to watch non-programmers underestimate the difficulty of
human-equivalent AI.

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ramchip
I don't really know what you mean by "human-equivalent", but I'll assume you
mean an AGI. I don't think an actual programmer is the most qualified to build
it. It could equally be a neuroscientist or a mathematician (who does some
Maple or Python on the side for their job), and more realistically a
multidisciplinary team.

I've seen plenty of programmers underestimating the problem of AGI as well!

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ewjordan
_I've seen plenty of programmers underestimating the problem of AGI as well!_

...though for every one that underestimates it, there are plenty that
overestimate it.

Solving this problem doesn't necessarily mean that we do anything at all
clever; it really may just boil down to having decent brain scanning
technology and lightning fast processors to run the simulations. We'll
definitely have the computers, in time, so the only question is whether brain
scanning improves. If that's what it comes down to, programmers and computer
scientists are pretty much irrelevant, and the real heroes will be the guys
doing medical tool development.

Granted, it would be deeply unsatisfying to "solve" the problem by blindly
copying nature. But there's a very real possibility that it's going to turn
out to be our first viable solution to the problem, and let's be honest: it's
not going to be very difficult to do if the enabling technologies are already
in place.

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robotrout
> deeply unsatisfying to "solve" the problem by blindly copying nature

The image that jumped to my mind, was the wing flapping airplane prototypes
that, quite literally, never got off the ground, and that we all laugh at
today.

Perhaps, in the end, our solution won't match natures.

That also leads me to another thought, which is the definition of the problem.

Going back to the airplane. If the problem had been defined as "to build a
machine with birdlike agility and control", than we still wouldn't be there.
Instead of patting ourselves on the backs, we would still be miserably
failing, over 100 years later. But we didn't really need birdlike agility, we
just wanted to fly, which, it turns out, is much easier.

The problem statement for a lot of AI research seems similarly ambitious. Do
we really want to create some sentient being, trapped in a box? Or is what
we're really after, a little more practical and obtainable?

I think folks like the military, get this. They have a definite objective that
they are trying to accomplish. Autonomous desert navigation, autonomous urban
navigation, autonomous enemy identification. These are things you can define,
measure, and make progress on.

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kingkawn
Did they say 2047 instead of 2050 in order to make it sound like less of a
guess?

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InclinedPlane
Seriously. 38 years in the future? That's the same span as from 1909 (the dawn
of heavier than air flight and radio) to 2047 (computers, nuclear weapons,
aircraft carriers, ballistic missiles, radar, submarines, jet aircraft). And
from there to 1985 (guided missiles, ICBMs, satellites, GPS). With such a long
time frame damned near any prediction may come to pass.

It's plenty likely that by 2047 we'll not only have fully autonomous combat
aircraft but we'll have automated aircraft fabricators and aircraft fabricator
fabricators.

It's almost as valid to say that we'll be fighting sentient robots in hand-to-
hand combat in a post-apocalyptic world in 2047.

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wayne
Your point is a good one but I think it's somewhat cheating to pick 1909-1947
as your arbitrary 38 year period since both world wars happened during that
period. A world war has a way of spurring innovation in killing technologies
more than anything else. I guess it's possible we have two more world wars
between now and 2047, but that seems unlikely to me.

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InclinedPlane
Well, I picked two periods, 1909-1947 and 1947-1985, in one two world wars
occurred, in the other the Cold War occurred. But that's the point isn't it?
Over time history happens. The time line is not a steady state. People thought
that the end of the Cold War was the end of history, but that wasn't the case
at all, plenty of history happened and is still happening, throughout the
world. Plenty more history will happen in the next 38 years. Perhaps that
history will include a war between nuclear powers (somewhat unlikely) or
perhaps it will include things we cannot anticipate today, but it's a bit
silly to imagine that we can predict what the technology of 2047 will look
like.

That's BDUF at its worst. Better to look at the technology needs of today
while planning for flexibility and be able to iterate rapidly if we see a need
for change down the road. If the US had locked itself into some grand
technology road map in 1909 it would have most assuredly lost WWII because it
could not have anticipated the technological needs of that war.

