Strategic Computing Initiative
In plain wordsA billion-dollar US defense research program, run from 1983 to 1993, that tried to build machine intelligence for military uses such as self-driving vehicles and assistants for fighter pilots.
A program of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that spent roughly a billion dollars between 1983 and 1993 on advanced computer architectures and machine intelligence. It tied research on chips, parallel computing, computer visioncomputer vision, n.: The part of AI that lets computers make sense of images and video: recognizing faces, reading signs, spotting tumors on scans or judging how far away a car is., speech, natural-language understanding and expert systemsexpert system, n.: A program that stores a human specialist's know-how as many if–then rules and uses them to give advice or make decisions in a narrow field, such as diagnosing infections or configuring computers. to three demonstration goals: an autonomous land vehicle, a pilot's associate for fighter aircraft, and battle-management support for naval carrier groups. Partly a response to Japan's Fifth Generation Computer Systems projectFifth Generation Computer Systems project, prop. n.: Japan's government-backed effort, from 1982 to 1992, to build a new kind of computer that reasons with logic using many processors at once. It fell short, but it alarmed other countries into launching AI programs of their own., it was scaled back from 1987, when new DARPA leadership doubted that expert systems would deliver, and it ended in 1993. It funded lasting work on parallel machines and on autonomous vehiclesautonomous vehicle, n.: A vehicle, usually a car, truck or shuttle, that can drive itself, sensing the road, deciding what to do and steering, braking and accelerating with no human driving., including Carnegie Mellon's Navlab, but its broader goals went unmet, contributing to the second AI winterAI winter, n.: A slump in which disappointment over AI's unmet promises leads governments and companies to pull back money and attention. Historians count two big ones: one in the 1970s and one starting in the late 1980s..
The Strategic Computing Initiative's autonomous land vehicle crept along test roads outside Denver in the mid-1980s.
Origin
Announced by DARPA in October 1983 in the plan Strategic Computing: New-Generation Computing Technology; Robert Kahn was its principal architect. Its history is told in Alex Roland and Philip Shiman's Strategic Computing (2002).
Related
- Fifth Generation Computer Systems projectFifth Generation Computer Systems project, prop. n.: Japan's government-backed effort, from 1982 to 1992, to build a new kind of computer that reasons with logic using many processors at once. It fell short, but it alarmed other countries into launching AI programs of their own.
- AI winterAI winter, n.: A slump in which disappointment over AI's unmet promises leads governments and companies to pull back money and attention. Historians count two big ones: one in the 1970s and one starting in the late 1980s.
- expert systemexpert system, n.: A program that stores a human specialist's know-how as many if–then rules and uses them to give advice or make decisions in a narrow field, such as diagnosing infections or configuring computers.
- DARPA Grand ChallengeDARPA Grand Challenge, prop. n.: A series of US government-sponsored races for driverless vehicles held in 2004, 2005 and 2007. No robot finished the first race; within three years, cars were navigating mock city traffic.
- autonomous vehicleautonomous vehicle, n.: A vehicle, usually a car, truck or shuttle, that can drive itself, sensing the road, deciding what to do and steering, braking and accelerating with no human driving.
Sources
- Roland, A. & Shiman, P. (2002). Strategic Computing: DARPA and the Quest for Machine Intelligence, 1983–1993. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Mentioned in
AI winterAI winter, n.: A slump in which disappointment over AI's unmet promises leads governments and companies to pull back money and attention. Historians count two big ones: one in the 1970s and one starting in the late 1980s., DARPADARPA, prop. n.: The US military's research-funding agency, which paid for much of the early development of artificial intelligence and the internet and runs prize competitions such as driverless-car races., DARPA Grand ChallengeDARPA Grand Challenge, prop. n.: A series of US government-sponsored races for driverless vehicles held in 2004, 2005 and 2007. No robot finished the first race; within three years, cars were navigating mock city traffic., Fifth Generation Computer Systems projectFifth Generation Computer Systems project, prop. n.: Japan's government-backed effort, from 1982 to 1992, to build a new kind of computer that reasons with logic using many processors at once. It fell short, but it alarmed other countries into launching AI programs of their own., Lighthill reportLighthill report, prop. n.: A 1973 review written for a British government research council that judged AI research to have fallen far short of its promises. It led to deep cuts in AI funding in the United Kingdom.