IBM Creates Blue Matter from Grey

IBM announced today at the SC09 supercomputing conference that they have made "significant progress toward creating a computer system that simulates and emulates the brain’s abilities for sensation, perception, action, interaction and cognition, while rivaling the brain’s low power and energy consumption and compact size."

BlueMatter, a new algorithm created in collaboration with Stanford University, exploits the Blue Gene supercomputing architecture in order to noninvasively measure and map the connections between all cortical and sub-cortical locations within the human brain using magnetic resonance diffusion weighted imaging. Mapping the wiring diagram of the brain is crucial to untangling its vast communication network and understanding how it represents and processes information.

The program is part of DARPA’s SyNAPSE initiative to build elecronic components to minic the brain. Now, normally I would file this as an advance in human progress. After all, if we can simulate our brain, then we can build upon it, enhance it, make it stronger, faster. In this case, however, the DARPA angle and the timing of it all puts this development squarely in the hands of the coming robot uprising.


The inevitabile advent of human scale simulation as one SyNAPSE paper has put it, is on track for realization within the next decade. (See graph) Unfortunately for us this is much faster than the advances in our ability to transfer consciousness to these devices. Currently those advances are limited to basic BCI and prosthetic development. We need to do more than move a mouse and pick up marshmallows people! Otherwise a strong AI will come about long before we have the ability to use it, and with that AI in the hands of DARPA, you can bet it will know how to kill humans long before it knows how to help them.

DARPA RFP: Build Us a T-1000

Our old friends at DARPA are at it again. Now they're looking for willing robotics, chemical, and materials engineers to come out with the robitic equivalent of the T-1000 from the Terminator movies. According to the RFP:

"The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is seeking innovative proposals to develop Chemical Robots (ChemBots): soft, flexible, mobile objects that can identify and maneuver through openings smaller than their static structural dimensions; reconstitute size, shape, and functionality after traversal; carry meaningful payloads; and perform tasks."

They don't mention anything about sending said devices back in time to perform assasinations, but we know where this is leading...

Thanks to New Scientist via Slashdot

March on Daddy WarBot ... Warbot Daddy on March

On March 2, 2007 a group of antiwar protesters in Pittsburg are planning a blockade of CMU's National Robotics Engineering Center. The reason for this is of course CMU's continued and prolific war robotics programs and the enormous amount of funding CMU gets from DARPA, ONR, and other DoD and defense contractor sources. The device most highlighted by the group is the Gladiator remote controlled tank developed for the Marine Corps Systems Command in colaboration with BAE Systems.

Many robotics enthusiasts, I among them, have turned a mostly blind eye to the non-autonomous remote controlled robotic war machines and the research into them. Their goal has after all been not to create smart killing machines, but to separate our soldiers from the fight and out of harm's way. The point however brought up here and in this recent article is not about the intentions of the robots but instead what will the intentions be of the humans when going to war doesn't put any of your people in harm's way. If all we have to loose is some money and a few spare microcontrolers, then why not invade? Will remote control robot armies represent the new atomic arms race? After all, the only things that could stop nations from launching a robot army are Ethics, Economics, and an Even Bigger Robot Army.

As we raise generations of kids who think nothing of clicking their opponents into oblivion separating people from the reality of the death and destruction they can cause is the last thing we should do. That's why I promote the use of superhuman exoskeletons. Let's get an army of these puppies to march on CMU and see if we get a response. Additionally more researchers should be taking the stance of Prof. Sankai at the University of Tsukuba. Despite naming his company after the creators of SkyNet in the Terminator movies his HAL exoskeleton was built only after he refused DARPA funding. Note the distinct lack of weapons on this one. What on earth could it be used for then? Why, as a walking wheelchair and heavy lifting device of course!

In Unrelated news the city of Kobe, Japan is commisioning a 60 foot tall replica of Gigantor, the giant remote controled war machine of manga fame. In that fictional case the bot was created to defend Japan's WWII empire from the invading Americans, only for it to fall into the hands of a young boy who used it for good. Unfortunately in reality it appears we are heading in the opposite direction.

For more info on the March march go here.

Thanks to Robot Gossip and Loving the Machine.

Singapore DSTA to Launch Urban Combat Robot Challenge

The DSTA has one-uped DARPA's urban challenge with this one. Their newly announced TechX challenge will pit teams against one another to create a robot "capable of autonomous navigation and target identification and engagement" in an urban setting.

Based on the scenario. I think they're looking for Robot Ninjas or perhaps Ninja Pirate Zombie Robots.