
Sentient: Classified artificial brain being developed by US intelligence - ajay-d
https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/31/20746926/sentient-national-reconnaissance-office-spy-satellites-artificial-intelligence-ai
======
conjectures
Everyone involved in this article has an incentive to overstate its abilities.
The creators will say it is better than it is to get more work. Defense to
create a deterrent. Journalists to get clicks.

Given the baseline for government understanding of AI is poor, my prior on how
impressive this thing is in reality (as some sort of AGI pathway breakthrough)
is pretty low.

I would bet they have some large database and some good, but mostly
conventional IT around it.

~~~
randcraw
Having worked in the intel community (long ago), I suspect the practical
purpose of Sentient is to replicate the mind of the intel analyst -- to select
and fuse multiple intelligence sources into a coherent story that suggests an
underlying human activity that would be of interest to investigate further or
classify as actionable and then pass it along to an operational group like law
enforcement or the military.

Another possibility, of course, is FUD. Promote a project as being more
impactful than it really is so that your political critics are distracted by
it and thus overlook your other projects that are more important, short-term,
and real.

You do have to wonder. Why would a secrecy-driven org like NRO employ a
meaningful and daunting project name like "Sentient" unless you _want_
outsiders to become take an interest in the program? When you want a program
to fly under the public radar, you name it something meaningless and innocuous
like "BranMuffin" or "Spatula", not meaningful and fearful like
"KillerFlyingRobots".

~~~
asteli
I mean, this is the same NRO that made the infamous NROL-39 mission patch,
with a sinister looking octopus reaching across the planet, caption reading
"Nothing Is Beyond Our Reach."

Link for the unfamiliar:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-247#/media/File%3ANrol-3...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-247#/media/File%3ANrol-39.jpg)

~~~
amphibian87
I guess I see why it's controversial but that is a bodacious looking patch.

~~~
asteli
it's really good. I've seen people wearing it in ironic/punk way.

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bitwize
It sounds like a new version of SIOP, the Cold War program to produce a plan
for nuclear war based on computer simulations incorporating data on assets,
capabilities, etc. of both sides. It was the inspiration for WOPR from
_WarGames_ , though the real plan required humans to actually run the
simulations and make command decisions.

That name is stupid. It's like aspirational marketing. It reminds me of the
artificial intelligence from _Team America: World Police_ , called
INTELLIGENCE.

~~~
arethuza
SIOP was a plan though - originally it didn't even have any conditionality:

 _" During the briefings, Marine Corps commandant David Shoup (the service
with the most marginal nuclear responsibilities) saw a chart that showed that
the initial attack would kill tens of millions of Chinese. At the closing
meeting, General Shoup asked General Power what would happen if Beijing was
not fighting; was there an option to leave Chinese targets out of the attack
plan? Power was reported to have said that he hoped no one would think of that
"because it would really screw up the plan"\--that is, the plan was supposed
to be executed as a whole. Apparently Shoup then observed that "any plan that
kills millions of Chinese when it isn't even their war is not a good plan.
This is not the American way."_

~~~
roboys
"Killing millions of Chinese... is not the American way"?

He must have avoided many history books to come to that conclusion.

~~~
iamtheworstdev
Is there some China - America war that I missed?

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otakucode
Reminder: Way back when the AT&T 'secret rooms' that enabled the NSA to tap
all traffic were revealed, we learned that the NSA relies heavily upon an
extremely questionable legal opinion written by their own lawyers which says
that communications do not count as 'collected' or 'intercepted' until a HUMAN
operator reads the plaintext. That means no amount of automated processing,
machine learning, statistical analysis, filtering, profiling, etc run on your
communications or its metadata amounts to your communications being
'intercepted' as far as they are concerned. They know this legal opinion is
dicey, and they will do absolutely anything, including dropping cases
entirely, to avoid having it tested in court.

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whatshisface
Everyone in this thread is talking about how it's fake, but this does have an
actual implication for the dangers of AGI. If every world government is
scrambling to pretend to have it, nobody will be able to tell when someone
actually invents it.

~~~
dmix
That’s entering conspiracy territory. A government is just as likely to hide a
massive revolution in AI as it would space flight with “alien technology”,
which means extremely unlikely.

The simple fact is they’d need the best minds of the world working on it and
as we saw with the Manhattan project the people working on it tended to have
the best grasp of the implications and wouldn’t keep it secret for long. Plus
it’d turn whatever country had it into an economic powerhouse which is way
more valuable than some classified intelligence product.

~~~
mrkeen
Stuxnet.

~~~
dmix
What about it?

~~~
iainmerrick
I think the idea is that there won't necessarily be any whistleblowers even if
the secret project has dubious or even scary implications.

I'm not sure the Manhattan Project is a great example either; who leaked that
into the public domain? Or did you mean in some other sense?

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Invictus0
My understanding is that the world's preeminent ML researchers are refusing to
contribute to the defense industry, are extremely well compensated in the
private sector, and prefer to publish their work over hiding it as a trade or
national secret. Given this, how are we to believe that the NRO has developed
the world's most capable ML system, somehow years ahead of a field that is
already perhaps the most dynamic field of research in science, utilizing, at
best, second rate talent? Mark me a skeptic.

~~~
cr0sh
> second rate talent

Not saying this is true - or even workable - but maybe they've figured out a
way to apply so-called "second rate talent" to create "first rate results"?

For instance, have you ever researched how machining and machine tools came to
be?

That is, how it was possible to create a machine capable of tolerances within
say, 10-thousandths of an inch (that is, a really, really small amount,
regardless of the units) - when the machines and tooling prior to that were no
where near capable of doing that work?

In other words - how were we able to make more accurate machines using less
accurate machines?

Maybe the same principles are being utilized by the NRO for this project...

~~~
Invictus0
I'm a mechanical engineer and I have literally no idea what you're getting at
here. We can machine to 10mil because we have precision motors and measurement
equipment. For $25 you can get a micrometer off Amazon which is accurate to
.0001.

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hestipod
I had assumed from the title it was about AI rather than a proxy brain, but as
someone with a damaged meat bag and miserable QOL as a result, I long for a
transfer into an artificial body/brain where once can repair/replace parts and
be as good as new. I don't imagine its possible at all really, let alone in
the short time I have left, but one can dream.

~~~
mark_l_watson
I hope I am not being rude asking about this, apologies in advance: because I
have two friends with MS I have wondered if consumer VR gear (Oculus Quest,
etc.) could improve quality of life as they get reduced mobility. Have you
used VR to augment your life experiences? I have tried a few VR experiences
that are very good and it seems likely that really high quality VR with
haptics could both help people with physical problems and in the future,
provide fun experiences if we get downloaded to an artificial body/brain. Do
you have any opinions on this?

~~~
hestipod
Not rude at all and happy to give input, however my circumstances are
different than those with MS/ALS etc so not sure how relevant it will be. I
can still "technically" walk, move, appear fairly normal outwardly, I am just
in severe pain all the time, have ongoing damage to joints and nerves from
surgery that caused this, and my endurance and mental state has gone with it.
It's a slowly creeping degeneration after a massive initial decrease, and
isn't at all like those mentioned neurodegenerative issues where brain
function is failing rapidly. I have some other physical issues as well that
compound this.

From a philosophical point of view for ME personally, VR/AR/the
internet/gaming etc isn't an adequate substitute for "real life" and I
personally don't derive enough from substitutes to feel my quality of life is
good, it's more just clinging to SOME interaction as I do here on HN. However
I am sure for some people it is enough to make a significant impact and I find
it a worthy avenue to pursue.

From a physical point of view, my circumstances make even the above things
worse as I have some visual issues that cause headaches/eyestrain etc severely
with most modern display types for some yet undetermined reason. It's none of
the obvious once like PWM/blue light etc. So I am in a really corner case spot
with tech and clinging to a super old device or two that aren't long for the
world. I also have monovision and severe amblyopia so VR headsets don't work
even if I could stand the display tech. I can stand a few min here and there
to post a comment. But I cannot spend hours online or on screen anymore. A
perfect ironic hit since that was about the only earning potential left and
its already cost me the one real shot I have had in years. So often people are
facing multiple disabilities from multiple angles.

I hope its helpful although I doubt I said much of substance.

~~~
mark_l_watson
That was useful, thanks for your response!

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_iyig
tl;dr It's an automated image classification system ("Tank division
identified"), with some ability to identify and predict movement of said
objects ("Tank division likely moving east"). Not sure how the Verge author
jumped from predictive defense analytics to "it's a brain!."

I'm also highly skeptical of this system's predictive abilities. I recall a
similar system (also described as "modeled after the human brain," whatever
that means) from my time at a major defense contractor. It tried to predict
the movements of the enemy and feelings of the non-combatant population via
scrapings of news sites, social media, and other online sources. Never mind
that the target battlefield was Afghanistan, where Internet adoption isn't
quite 100%.

~~~
randcraw
Agreed. Consider the year of Sentient's inception: 2013. That's one year after
Krizhevsky, Sutskever and Hinton first revealed the power of CNNs to classify
images -- something the NRO cares about a great deal since their primary
product is satellite imagery.

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vincent-toups
The US Government can barely develop a fighter jet or a elevator without
fucking it up. One wonders about their prospects for a brain.

~~~
corodra
Technically, the gov doesn't really build all that much. It's the private
contractors and private firms they hire to do it.

But theres a fun thing about some hundred or so Marines got greenlit to buy 3d
printers and start building a wide range of stuff for themselves. After making
new crayon flavors, they went on and built extremely cheap gear delivery
drones of some 700lbs capacity and a whole slew of other stuff without red
tape. It's actually impressive.

~~~
dymk
Link? I’m down to my last few crayons

~~~
corodra
So I read it in an army or marine magazine a few years ago. But here's a link
that lightly goes over it [https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/mcsc-trains-us-
marines-t...](https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/mcsc-trains-us-marines-to-
use-3d-printing-157813/)

Google marine 3d print, cool articles and stories.

Lookup marine plywood drone. They had to do it with a firm due to gov
contracting laws. But from what I understand it's mostly designed/built by
marines (word of mouth). There are more and more stories like this that are
popping up. Sad part, big contractors cry foul of marines making repair parts
and their own gear. From what I understand, that's why they need other firms
to "take ownership" on projects.

Theres a cool 3d print barracks project you can Google too.

------
mises
Keep in mind that America does not reveal such things until she has already
invented the next generation, typically. I would assume that since this is
out, they've got their next version up-and-running already.

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ALittleLight
If I were the editor of this publication, I'd argue that, while titles like
this:

"IT’S SENTIENT Meet the classified artificial brain being developed by US
intelligence programs"

Might get short term attention they are bad for the long term credibility of
the publication. "SENTIENT" is a clever code name for the project, but I
didn't see anything to suggest that the program in question had anything to do
with sentience. It seems like it's a program to synthesize and present data
from a wide array of sources, and that's neat, but why try to pitch it as
something that it's clearly not.

Warren Buffett once said you can have a ballet and that's fine. You can have a
rock concert and that's fine. But don't have a ballet and market it as a rock
concert. If you want to write a story about software that presents data
insights, please label it as such and I'll be interested in reading it. Don't
label it as a story about artificial brain sentience because then I'll
complain in the comments.

~~~
14
I have to agree with you on this one. I too thought they were trying to sell
us on a computer being sentient. But sentient is just code name for their
"brain" they are building. Clickbaity almost.

~~~
kbenson
The most successful clickbait is the clickbait you aren't quite comfortable to
label as such but it's really close to the line. So, mission accomplished for
the publisher I guess.

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Taniwha
What could go wrong?

~~~
jshprentz
Read the 1966 cold war novel, Colossus.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_\(novel\))

Or watch the 1970 film based on the novel, Colossus: The Forbin Project.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus%3A_The_Forbin_Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus%3A_The_Forbin_Project)

TLDR: World peace enforced by computers and resisted by their creators.

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bayesian_horse
What could go wrong?

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blaser-waffle
Do you want Ghost In the Shell?

Because this is how you end up with Ghost In the Shell.

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Causality1
>Until now, Sentient has been treated as a government secret, except for vague
allusions in a few speeches and presentations.

So we can be certain the Chinese have a complete copy of all the relevant
software and files.

