We have all heard of AI by now (artificial intelligence) and the marvels that are promised from its development, as well as its dangers. What we may not be aware of is that such an initiative has been in process for decades, and in fact was a distant dream of the first director of what is now DARPA in the US. DARPA derived from the original agency, ARPA, in 1958. So, we begin our story with a little history in order to show the true reasons for the creation of ARPA, as well as NASA and the NDEA, all three all in the year 1958, and all of which have contributed their part to the development of AI, at least in the US. For readers who receive my letters, that year may stick out in your memory, too – it was a Mountain Dog year, a year of great geopolitical shifts. We just had another one in 2018, and 1898 was another such year.
The reason for the creation of the aforesaid entities in the US was the size of a beach ball, otherwise known as Sputnik. No, this is not the Russian news agency. This was the satellite that caused shock and awe in the American defense and scientific communities. It was the first object launched from earth to enter into orbit. It was up there for a scant three months, but the effects it had on American science and the defense industry was earth-shaking and far-reaching, both in the US and around the world.
The chart for the Sputnik mission is worth a look, because it was a key moment in the Space Race, in fact propelling it into high gear, the latter starting on 2 Aug 1955 in Moscow (chart). It was also the catalyst that led to the internet and the information age we have now. And it is an example of a successful space mission. Sputnik was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on 5 Oct 1957 at 1:29 am local time. The chart is below (bigger):
There is a Sun/Mars/Jupiter stellium straddling the IC in the chart, opposing Eris on the Aries MC in the 9th house. That stellium is also in evidence in the Space Race chart (linked), although the house placement is unknown. In several respects Sputnik marked a very significant event for the Soviets, all of which are indicated by the 4th house. Its underlying aim was for security of their homeland because it was part of their missile defense development, it marked the beginning of space exploration from an orbiting platform, it established a base of operations (Baikonur) and it was a matter of national pride for the Soviets. The Aries MC points to the pioneering nature of the mission, as well as the race to be first, which was one of the main reasons Sputnik was launched when it was. The Sun is also sextile both to Saturn and Uranus, the latter two being trine. And thus we have a midpoint structure, Sun=Saturn/Uranus, which among other factors points to the power to pull through and to endure, perseverance and endurance, indefatigability, will-power and determination.
The Eris conjunction with the MC in the 9th house points to the long-range nature of the mission as well as being in the nature of the ‘in-your-face’ statement to the Americans that it was. In effect, the Soviets threw a golden apple into the midst of the American establishment, and thus the space race was born. It also resulted in a huge boost to the MIC. It is further worth noting that Sputnik was launched atop what was originally designed to be an ICBM. There were military aspects to the mission, unreported by the Americans, alluded to by the fact that Sputnik broadcast its signals at multiple frequencies, some lower than the ones cited at 20 and 40 MHz (shortwave radio frequencies). Those lower frequencies were kept secret.
The project was originally meant to have a much broader scope than it ended up being, but in the interests of being the first to launch a satellite, the Soviets made shortcuts. The military nature of the mission, along with its great success are marked by the Sun/Mars/Jupiter stellium. The technological breakthroughs are marked by the Sun/Uranus sextile, and the careful work and planning is marked by the Sun/Saturn sextile. There is far more we could say about the chart and the mission, but this will suffice for our purposes. The success of Sputnik (the satellite) so alarmed the US establishment that in response they formed three agencies – ARPA, NASA and the NDEA – in quick succession the following year in order to accelerate American developments in space. So, where has this led us?
ARPA was the first agency to be created, on 7 Feb 1958, followed by NASA on 29 Jul 1958 and ending with the NDEA on 2 Sep 1958. By 1960 the largest part of the space activities were transferred to NASA, with ARPA then becoming the go-to source for all the sorts of weird and too-hard projects that no one else would touch or for which funding was unavailable. Consider the following:
On February 7, 1958, Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy signed the Department of Defense Directive 5105.15, authorizing the creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). The new agency was responsible for “the direction or performance of such advanced projects in the field of research and development.” In order to fulfill its responsibilities, ARPA was empowered to “enter into contracts and agreements with individuals, private businesses entities, educational, research or scientific institutions”
The creation of ARPA (chart) was a key piece in a far greater construct, which first became the internet and which then, through the worldwide web, created the Big Data we have today, an essential basis for AI. ARPA was also a key piece in the development of the intelligence and communication arm of military-industrial complex. In his farewell speech, President Eisenhower warned against the advancement of the ‘military-industrial complex’ (MIC), which has itself morphed into the ‘military-industrial-intelligence-congressional complex’ as we find it in its present form. Unless one has followed the history and carry-on of the American DoD (Department of Defense), the above quote sounds innocuous enough, though, even quite promising. And it has been. The creation of ARPA led to the creation of such ubiquitous things as the internet, hypersonic flight, very significant advances in materials technology and drones, to name just a few things. But there is a darker side, which we will outline in due course.
Most of us know about DARPA these days by the videos we have seen about its robot R&D, especially in conjunction with Boston Dynamics. Google now owns Boston Dynamics, if that gives one any indication of where things are headed. Google is also the king of Big Data. Demonstrations of these robots can be both fascinating and terrifying, depending on one’s inclinations. Their potential for good is immense, as is their potential for misuse. But to get to the point of this article, all such systems rely on AI, artificial intelligence, for their operation. In its simplest definition, AI is any computing system that can write its own software in response to situations it encounters. Given a mission or task, AI will self-adjust its operating system to the task at hand. There are examples that run some of the very systems we take for granted these days:
- The algorithms that game the stock market. These are so advanced that programmers no longer understand the language and the algorithms move billions of dollars of stocks in milliseconds.
- Hotel and airline booking systems, by collecting and processing data from all over the world
- Medical imaging diagnoses. Computers now do it faster and better than humans.
- Surveillance and tracking systems, which have become very high-res and sophisticated. The observations are also recorded and analyzed, revealing behavioral patterns
- Surveillance and attack drones, where kill decisions can be made by the drone itself
None of this is science fiction. It is with us here and now. AI only works if you have big data, but big data only works if you have the systems to analyze that data, and that is where AI comes into play. And it all started because of Sputnik. Yes, the surveillance state is with us and it is real.
The worldwide web was born out of military concerns. It was envisioned by the first director of the Information Technology Processing Office (ITPO), J.C.R. Licklider in 1962. The first four years of ARPA’s existence were devoted to the development and delivery systems of ICBMs. ARPA recognized that, “The design and production of these new technologies required a level of communication and cooperation between entities scattered across the United States.” From a previous citation:
Licklider envisioned an “intergalactic network” in which computers could communicate with each other. Computers at the time were large custom built machines frequently located in research facilities or educational institutions that performed intensive research. Licklider imagined the efficiency of being able to access these machines from remote locations in order to share these valuable resources. This was the concept of time-shared computing…While the IPTO was working on the time-sharing concept, the Air Force had contracted with the Rand Corporation for a classified project to create a “command and control” telecommunications network that could withstand and dynamically re-route communications in the event of a large-scale nuclear attack…In 1964, when the Rand study was published, the IPTO immediately integrated this concept into their designs.
This vision eventually became ARAPNET, the precursor to the internet. The first message sent over anything resembling the internet was on ARPANET, on 29 Oct 1969 at 10:30 PM in Los Angeles (chart below, bigger). And there is a rather interesting little tidbit of information that relates that message to the launch of Sputnik-1: They both have the same Ascendant. The Sabian symbol for the degree of that ascendant is also interesting: A daughter of the American Revolution. There are all sorts of meanings we could read into that one. Also Mars is on the 7th house cusp from the 6th house (military amnd services) in the message chart, again reflecting the military nature of the event. In that chart, too, there is a t-square comprised of a Sun/Saturn base with Ceres at the apex. It was a turning point in history. But for science fiction fans, the similarities between ARAPNET and Skynet are a little too close for comfort. So, we come to the crux of our discussion: How smart do we think we are? Are we able to contain AI and keep it from destroying us?
Here is something to consider: Given that history repeats in cycles, and since 60-year cycles show trends in geopolitics clearly on the whole, what took place last year (2018) that has parallels to ARPA and the evolution of AI, as well as maybe Skynet? The latter is not so far-fetched as we may wish to believe. Just as there was a reaction by the US establishment by the launch and success of Sputnik, so there was another event – two really – that show a repeat of 1958. On the 1st of March 2018 the Russians announced their new weapons systems, in response to what they see as NATO encroachment on their borders and the installation of NATO missile systems that can reach Moscow in a matter of minutes, and which can be armed with nuclear warheads. The Russians again caught the US off guard, although like in 1958, the event was downplayed and even ridiculed in the US media. As a reaction/response, the US has announced the formation of a Space Force, has begun mass production of low-yield nuclear weapons and has pulled out of the INF Treaty. Those low-yield nukes are meant to be used. They are not for deterrence.
Now, with hypersonic weapons, low-yield nukes and only a few minutes in many cases to respond, the need for automated response now is greater than ever, and that means AI. Radar systems currently in use have to track multiple – sometimes hundreds – of targets simultaneously. The AI that runs those systems (they couldn’t run without AI) have to be able not only to track, but also identify the target objects. But AI is not perfect. It does make mistakes. At a recent demonstration of an AI military autonomous robot (Talon, demonstration), the audience was suddenly targeted (14:40 to 15:33) by the vehicle (for some unknown reason), which possessed a rapid-fire machine gun. The only thing that saved the audience was the quick response of a Marine, who ran onto the field and tackled the robot. It is currently out of service for ‘re-evaluation’.
Given that AI can make mistakes, given that military radar systems now use AI and the number and sheer amount of aerial vehicles, missiles and the like that are currently in service, but especially – and this is the point to remember – the understandable state of enhanced anxiety and readiness and automated response the Russian, Chinese, Iranian and other armed forces alarmed at American and allied forces on their borders: What could possibly go wrong? Having been a technician for most of my working life, I can tell you from experience that Murphy’s Law works. If something can go wrong, it will go wrong.
The emerging area of aerial warfare these days is something called ‘swarming’. This involves sending out a swarm of cheap, small, unmanned aerial vehicles, usually of the kamikaze type, toward a target with the aim of overcoming an enemy’s radar capabilities, thus neutralizing the threat of countermeasures. There was a rather frightening video that emerged about the possibilities of such objects, in order to warn us about the dangers both of AI and of capabilities with cheap manufacturing methods. Supposedly the technology is not presently in use. We would be wrong to think so. Such weapons systems are currently in use and under rapid development. The US DoD has its version called LOCUST drones. The Israelis have their own version as well, which they are selling worldwide. Similar and precursor systems have already been in use in Syria against Russian and Syrian air defenses.
Closer to home, AI and the surveillance state is already with us. Our phones are hooked into the worldwide web and register our every move, even in airplane mode. The only way to stop such surveillance is either to leave the phone at home or to pull the battery out of the phone. Disconnect, in other words. But that is increasingly difficult. There are street cams everywhere now, all with the capability of facial recognition, which has reached a very high state of development. One’s face can be picked out of a large crowd, even at great distance. The software is such that not even one’s face is needed. It can recognize you from the top of your head, using the geometry of a person’s head. Every device in a home is increasingly connected. Set-top boxes for cable televisions have cameras and microphones in them.
And finally, every search one does on the internet, every web page that is visited, every email that is sent and read – everything we do that involves the internet – is fed into the vast Big Data network. And that is used to categorize us, analyze us and to (hopefully, to Big Tech) direct our movements and desires. The algorithms that look at our data are able to do things like help to skew election outcomes and referendums. And there is no ‘delete’ option. The data is there. Forever. So, be careful what you do on the net. The method used to direct our searches and so forth are based in the algorithms that run the search engines and this is run by AI. It all happens without our knowledge and most often without our consent. And all the time, the machines are learning from us.
In closing, here are a few points to remember. AI is a-moral. It will pursue its tasks and objectives in the shortest way possible, will store the data it collects and it will work to advantage itself. If it detects an obstacle it will quickly find a work-around, and it will do this with lightning speed. If it is connected to the internet, which it invariably is, it has access to the entire knowledge base of the knowable world. If it finds another AI and begins to ‘talk’ with it and negotiate outcomes, they could eventually actually form their own language, which may be undecipherable. Hacking? Not a problem. Passwords? Forget it. Nothing is secure, really. Think this is scaremongering? Look at how far we have come in such a short time with all of this technology. And if we present an obstacle to AI, it cannot be shut down, not for long. It could have packets of software stored in thousands of computers worldwide and could quickly reconstitute itself. And I say ‘AI’ here as if it were a single entity, but it is not. Right now we still have control over it. But how long will it be before it becomes autonomous?
Many of us are familiar with Sophia, the AI robot that the Saudis made a citizen. A talking head, interesting that, given the Saudis. But what it demonstrates should be sounding alarm bells. And China has now just introduced its new AI news anchor. It is rapidly reaching the point where we will not be able to tell if what we see in a video is a person or a talking AI image. Software already exists that can substitute faces and bodies for another person, using the same voice, to the point it can be used for blackmail and other nefarious purposes. Unless these technologies are reined in now and strictly regulated the darker uses of them will be too terrible to contemplate.
Most of us will be familiar with The Terminator franchise. The first film came out in a year with which most of us will also have familiarity: 1984. The Terminator presents a dystopic future, but the films also present a victorious humanity, but also questions about the future, especially regarding AI. The same is represented for us in films like The Matrix. Always in motion is the future.
Should we be afraid of AI? At this point, no. It can be a great adjunct. But we should be motivated, concerned, lobbying for legislation to control it, and exposing its darker uses. It is up to us to bring it to its proper use as an aid to our own development, instead of making us dependent upon or even controlled by it. From a description of the film (Terminator, linked above): “The film also explores the potential dangers of AI dominance and rebellion. The robots become self-aware in the future, reject human authority and determine that the human race needs to be destroyed. The impact of this theme is so important that “the prevalent visual representation of AI risk has become the terminator robot.”
We’ll leave these thoughts with this little snippet. (Click on pic).
Sleep well:
Featured photo from Terminator Genisys