How the United States tried to create Skynet in the 1980s

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Thirty years ago, the United States was trying to push the boundaries of computing, artificial intelligence, and robotics. They wanted to create something new, very reminiscent of the dystopian future from the Terminator films, or Skynet.

From 1983 to 1993, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) spent over $ 1 billion on a program called the Strategic Computing Initiative. DARPA's goal was to push the boundaries of computing, artificial intelligence, and robotics, creating something very reminiscent of the dystopian future from the Terminator movies. It wanted to create Skynet.

Like Ronald Reagan's Star Wars program, the SKI idea turned out to be too futuristic for its time. But today, when we see striking progress in the creation of artificial intelligence and independent robots by the military, it makes sense to return to this half-forgotten program and ask ourselves the question: are we ready to live in a world of killer machines interconnected by electronic brains? And one more, possibly useless question. If we want to stop this, are we too late with our desire?

The possibilities are truly stunning …

This is an excerpt from a little-known document presented to Congress in October 1983. It sets out the objectives of the new Strategic Computing Initiative. And like everything else DARPA has done before and since, this program has proven to be extremely ambitious.

The concept of the Strategic Computer Initiative was embodied in a completely new system, the development of which was led by Robert Kahn, then head of Information Processing Techniques at DARPA. As reported in his 2002 book Strategic Computing, Kahn was not the first to understand the system, but he was the first to outline the concept and structure of the future Strategic Computing Initiative. He started this project and defined its content early on. SKI took on a life of its own, led by other people, but retained Kahn's influence."

This system was supposed to create a world where independent vehicles not only collect reconnaissance data about the enemy around the world, but also have the ability to strike with deadly accuracy from land, sea and air. SKI was to become a global network connecting all aspects of the US military-technical capabilities - capabilities relying on new and incredibly fast computers.

But this network was not just intended for cold and impartial automated processing of information. No, the new system had to see, hear, act and react. And most importantly, she had to understand, and without any prompting from a person.

Economic arms race

The origin of SQI is often associated with technological competition that arose between the United States and Japan in the early 1980s. The Japanese wanted to create a new generation of supercomputers, which were to form the basis of the artificial intelligence system. Combining the economic power of the Japanese state and the new capabilities of the country's microelectronics and computer industry, they began to create a fifth-generation computer system to achieve their goal.

The goal was to develop incredibly fast computers that would allow Japan to break away from other countries (first of all, from the United States and from the "Silicon Valley" that was nascent there) in the race for technological superiority. The Japanese gave themselves 10 years to complete this task. But no matter how they accelerated their cars, they, like the Americans, could not make computers "smarter" at the expense of powerful artificial intelligence.

Japanese aspirations scared many Americans. They were worried that America was losing its technological lead. These fears were largely fueled by The Fifth Generation: Artificial Intelligence and Japan's Computer Challenge to the World, published in 1983 by Edward A. Feigenbaum and Pamela McCorduck. challenge to the world), which has become must-read literature on Capitol Hill.

In order to popularize the ideas of the SCI among the American people and the business community, DARPA insisted that the purpose of the initiative from the outset was only to advance the economic interests of the country. The spin-offs from this technology should have created new incentives for the US economy, as reported in a DARPA planning document:

The appeal to the private sector and to the university system was also supposed to provide assistance to the smartest and most talented in fulfilling the tasks of the program of the Office of Advanced Research and Development:

And what is the conclusion? The government gave guarantees to the private sector that the developed technologies would not be transferred to competing companies.

But economic competition with the Japanese, albeit an important driving force, caused only secondary concern among politicians entangled in the vicissitudes of the Cold War. The GOP hawks were most concerned with military build-up and military build-up. Many of them believed that the most important thing was the military threat posed by the Soviet Union. And the Strategic Computer Initiative was supposed to eliminate this threat.

Star Wars connection

The launch of the SRS program and DARPA's terms of reference, which emerged in 1983 and 1984, sparked a heated debate in the scientific community - the one that ultimately benefited from the funding from this project. Someone expressed doubts about the possibility of implementing ambitious plans to create an advanced artificial intelligence. Someone worried that the creation of artificial intelligence for military purposes would begin a terrible era of independent robot armies.

And it was a well-founded concern. If the goal of Star Wars (the popular name for the Strategic Defense Initiative of Ronald Reagan and the popular political football of the time) is an automatic or semi-automatic response to any nuclear missile threat from the Soviets, then it would be simply ridiculous not to include it in a larger system of truly intelligent machines. The objectives of the two projects, not to mention the institutions that developed them, overlapped and overlapped too much to be a mere coincidence, although each insisted that it was a coincidence.

From the work of Chris Hables Gray, written in 1988:

If you ask anyone who has worked in the leadership of the SKI program, you will be persistently told that the Strategic Computer Initiative had nothing to do with Reagan's dream of Star Wars. But people from the very beginning of the implementation of SKI made a connection between it and SDI. In part, these associations arose because of the similarity in names and due to the fact that these names were given by one person - Robert Cooper, who served as director of the Advanced Research and Development Administration of the US Department of Defense from 1981 to 1985. Or maybe people saw the connection due to the fact that the computer interface systems developed for SKI were quite logically suitable as an application for a space anti-missile defense strategy.

The use of strategic computer technology on land, at sea and in the air

A general outline of the SQI prepared in 1983 set out the objective of this initiative. The goal was clear and understandable: to develop a vast base of artificial intelligence technologies to strengthen national security and economic power. But in order to achieve it, Congress and those military departments that were supposed to use the SKI and its advantages in the future, had to see this system in action.

SKI had three hardware incarnations that were supposed to prove its combat potential, although by the end of the 1980s it was planned to develop even more such systems. At the forefront of SKI's technical developments were the ALV autonomous ground vehicle, the pilot's assistant and the aircraft carrier's combat control system.

These tools were planned to be equipped with incredibly advanced computers, which were designed by the Cambridge company BBN, best known for its work on the first version of the Internet. Computers made it possible to achieve breakthrough advances in areas such as vision systems, language understanding and navigation. And these are the most important tools for creating an integrated human-machine military force.

Car without driver - 1985

The most ominous product to emerge from the bowels of SKI was the ALV autonomous ground vehicle. This driverless, eight-wheeled vehicle was three meters high and four meters long. It was equipped with a camera and sensors that were mounted on the roof and controlled the movement of the car, being its "eyes".

Martin Marietta, which merged with the Lockheed Corporation in 1995 to create Lockheed Martin, won a tender in the summer of 1984 to create an experimental autonomous ground vehicle. Over the three and a half years of the SKI program, it should have received $ 10.6 million (adjusted for inflation, this is 24 million), plus an additional 6 million if the project meets certain benchmarks.

In the October 1985 issue of Popular Science, there was an article about the tests that were carried out at the secret Martin Marietta training ground southwest of Denver.

The author of the article, Jim Schefter, described the test scene at the proving ground as follows:

DARPA has joined forces with Martin Marietta and the University of Maryland, which has been doing a great job of creating a vision system. Such a combination seemed essential to ensure the success of the land vehicle development.

Building a video system for an autonomous vehicle has proven incredibly difficult. She can be misled by light and shadows, and therefore she was not reliable enough. During the day, she found the roadside without problems, but because of the evening shadows at sunset, she could well slide into the ditch.

Any changes in the environment (say, dirt from the wheels of another car) also confused the vision system. This was unacceptable even under test conditions at the proving ground. If the machine cannot cope with such simple obstacles, then how will it act in difficult and unpredictable combat conditions with countless variable factors?

By November 1987, the autonomous ground vehicle had been significantly improved, but by the end of the year it was effectively abandoned. Although the vehicle was rather primitive, some at DARPA felt it had been discounted too quickly.

As a result, she was unable to overcome her unpreparedness for battle. As Alex Roland notes in his book Strategic Computing, “One officer who did not understand at all the intent of the ALV program complained that the machine was militarily useless: very slow and white, making it an easy target. on the battlefield. In April 1988, the Office for Advanced Research and Development officially ceased work on it.

R2-D2, but in real life

The second practical embodiment of the Strategic Computer Initiative was the Pilot's Assistant. The developers envisioned it as an invisible R2-D2 robot - an intelligent satellite that understands the simple language of the pilot. This assistant could, for example, detect an enemy target and ask the pilot whether it is necessary to destroy it. Something like "The best shooter" in the company of the personal assistant Siri from the iPhone.

In this scenario, the final decision remained with the pilot. But his assistant had to become smart enough not only to know who was asking the questions, what he was asking, and how to ask the questions himself. He had to understand why.

Here are the lines from the SKI planning document:

And it was here that the Advanced Research and Development Directorate decided that it needed its own Skynet. New features of combat operations associated with the rapid development of military technologies required a clear interaction between a machine and a person - and this became the key to success in battle. The pilot was still pressing the buttons, but these computers had to think at least half for him. If humanity does not have time, it is necessary to connect machines to work.

The pilot's assistant program was not covered in the American press to the same extent as the autonomous ground vehicle. Probably, this was due to the fact that it was much more difficult to imagine it than a huge tank driving along the road without a driver. But if you look at today's speech recognition technologies, it becomes clear what all this research on the "pilot's assistant" led to.

Invisible Robot Advisor

The combat control system has become the third practical embodiment of the SKI program, designed to prove its feasibility.

Roland writes about this in his book Strategic Computing:

The command and control system was essentially the brain of the entire operation, and for this reason it was kept secret, unlike the ALV. A robot driving on the road without a driver can scare many. An invisible robot with an invisible finger on a nuclear button? Well, hardly anyone wants to publish press releases on this topic.

The combat control system was designed as a software application specifically for the Navy. (An autonomous ground vehicle was created specifically for the ground forces, and an "assistant pilot" for the Air Force.) But in reality, it was just a cover for a more versatile system. All these technologies were planned to be used in the future where they are most needed. The speech recognition program developed for the "pilot's assistant" was planned to be used in all branches of the armed forces, not just in the Air Force. And the command and control system had to be suitable for everyone - except, of course, the enemy.

Putting Skynet together

All the various components of the Strategic Computer Initiative were part of a larger hypothetical system that could radically change the nature of war in the 21st century.

Imagine a global wireless network that controls many other subordinate networks in the US military. Imagine armies of robotic tanks talking to swarms of drones in the sky and unmanned submarines at sea - and the interaction between them is much faster than any human commander could. Now imagine that all this is much more complicated and with nuclear missiles awaiting launch into space.

The concept of the Strategic Computer Initiative was incredibly daring, and yet a bit unusual when you think about how far it could take us. The logic of the further development of artificial intelligence and the worldwide network of killer machines is easy to imagine, if only because we have seen it countless times in books and films.

The future of war and peace

The strategic computing initiative in the early 90s was finally destroyed by the realization that it was simply impossible to create powerful artificial intelligence like the one that DARPA had envisioned. But if all these technologies and technical innovations developed in the 1980s seem strangely familiar to us, it is because of the fact that at the beginning of the 21st century they are talking and writing about in the media.

Vision systems from an autonomous ground vehicle have found their embodiment in Atlas robots from Boston Dynamics. We can see that a speech recognition system like Siri from the "pilot's assistant" is being used in the US Air Force. And autonomous cars are being tested by Google, along with many other firms. All of these are technologies for the wars of the future. And if you believe Google, then this is also the technology of the world of the future.

Google Corp. recently bought Boston Dynamics, which has surprised those worried about a future with armies of independent robots. Google says Boston Dynamics will fulfill all of its old contracts with military customers, but will not enter into new ones.

But whether or not Google will accept orders from the military (which is quite possible, since they can do it secretly, using funds from their "black" budget), there is no doubt that the line between civilian and military technology has always been blurred. If Boston Dynamics never again works with organizations like DARPA, but Google benefits from military-funded research, then the system can probably be said to work.

The military got what they wanted by pushing robotics research through a private company. And now the results of these military technologies will make themselves felt in our daily civilian life - as well as many other technologies, including the Internet.

In truth, this article is just a drop in the bucket from among the ideas that the Advanced Research and Development Directorate has hatched within the framework of SKI. Let's hope that by continuing to explore yesterday's perspective concepts, we can gain some historical experience and better understand that our new achievements did not come out of thin air. Even they cannot always be called innovations. This is the result of years of research and billions of dollars in appropriations that have been mastered by hundreds of organizations, both public and private.

Ultimately, the Strategic Computer Initiative was not dismantled out of fear of what it could bring to our world. It's just that the technologies for its implementation did not develop quickly enough - this applies to artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles. But in the twenty years since SKI's discontinuation, all these smart machine developments have continued.

A future with highly intelligent and interconnected robots is almost real. We don't have to love him, but we can't say that no one warned us about him.