Crime prevention is boring -- crime prediction, on the other hand, is tres exciting! Indeed, we've seen a few
pre-crime projects in the
past, but very little that existed outside the realm of cockamamie. That is, until we laid eyes on a new project from DARPA called SMITE (or Suspected Malicious Insider Threat Elimination). This one actually seems -- dare we say it? -- feasible. Details are sketchy (they're still in the RFI stages) but essentially the idea is to create a database of actions that correspond to "malicious" behavior; for instance, espionage. It's hoped that behaviors can be detected before they lead to an
actual crime, which leads to all sorts of ethical and philosophic questions that we quite frankly don't have the energy to ponder on a Friday afternoon. Luckily for all of us, this is DARPA we're talking about -- so chances are this won't go anywhere. But if it does? As
The Register kindly points out, the "e" in SMITE stands for "elimination." Nice. [Warning: PDF source link]
posted May 23rd 2010 2:21PM
HERE COMES........ SPYNET!
@Digi Errrr Comment Fail. Skynet.
@futurerheza
freudian slip much?
@futurerheza no, that is when she got excited, but then disappointed.
@Digi More like 'Minority Report'!
@Digi
And how do they plan to monitor this malicious behavior? Let me guess. By reading mail. Listening to phone conversations. Tracking bank movements. Evaluate shopping patterns. Recording internet histories.
Does that sound about right?
@vailmcc
No, this is Skynet. The system will determine that everyone on the earth is a criminal and constantly breaks the law. Following which the system will have no choice but to issue a new directive, exterminate all humans.
@Vdek
Actually I'm hoping more for the WOPR from "WarGames". After simulating the destruction of the superpowers in a nuclear holocaust he figured out that no one would win and prevented the war. Let's be optimistic.
@vailmcc Yep, minority report was the first thing I thought when reading the paragraph.
@Digi Just figured if this software can detect we're criminals.... Remember that torrent you downloaded thats "illegal"... The MenInGrey.com track it sent it to skynet which sends robots. Eh, You get the idea. Truth is RIAA Is behind it all and remember that copy of Avatar you watched? Yea, its worth your life. AHHH! Isn't the future great!
@Digi
Thought Police...
@Assalant777 Lol, They came. I Conquered.
@Digi Well, in case the four movies didn''t convince, this article should...
It should be SPITE, not SMITE
They blew it
Why do I get the feeling that they come up with the acronym first for all these cool sounding things, and then try to fit random words to it?
They do that a lot. It's called a backronym. I'm not kidding either - google that shiznit
Minority report ring any bells?
@Original Nosebleed
Just what I actually thought. Although minority report is a bit "further fetched" compared to what Darpa could do, we'll never look into the future.
@Original Nosebleed
When we asked for a Minority Report like future, this is not what we had in mind, DARPA
@Original Nosebleed Difference is, in real life, there is not always a hero with a conscience to come along and save the day. "Where is Superman when you need him?" And when there is, out in reality land, he or she is often taken out under the guise of suicide or a plane crash. (Dr. Kelly, Paul Wellstone)
What is key here is that whoever controls SMITE is made up of people of sound ethic. The misuse of terror law (arresting photographers, penalty charges for minor transgressions etc etc) here in the UK by over zealous Nu Labor 'jobsworths' who are little different than Hitler's foot soldiers are examples of how the servants of any overly powerful individual or entity can take the law into their own hands because they have an unjustified chip on their shoulders, unlike their (sometimes) well meaning leaders.
And that, dear fellow Engadgetons is seriously wrong.
Thankfully, this side of the Atlantic, a more trusting and honest government has just come into power (albiet, slightly constrained by coalition status), so there is hope for us warm beer drinking ugly teeth.
Yeah !
How about linking a couple of precogs to a supercomputer with some fancy display...Forget the glove, it's passé ! Just hook in gesture recog from project Natal.
LEAVE US ALONE!
wtf Friday afternoon?
@zomg0t
yea what time zone is engadget in?
@nicholasphan In order to be Friday at Engadget and Sunday at someplace, then it is required for Engadget to be in the Twilight Zone.
@nicholasphan
'the land that time for got' zone
but yeah, i noticed this too, though their point still stands, its a sunday afternoon and im sure they're tired XD
It's Sunday afternoon now. So go ponder you lazy bones!
@zomg0t See not only are comments delayed, posts are too.
@zomg0t
he meant next friday. everyone at engadget is from the future.
(puts down pipe)
May the Internet lords SMITE us !
@Ameen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBHzt6wRjYc
@Professor Hubert J Farnsworth
WTF ? Prof, what're ya doing here? Stalking me? :P
Darn it, now I need to do that stupid assignment ya gave me !!
Where are you in the world that it's Friday afternoon? Here on the west cost its Sunday morning.
@givemeyourshoes
WEST COAST WERE YA AT?!!!!
K-I-I-S Los Angeles!
Sorry, I have to do that every time I hear "west coast".
@fowenati Portland, OR were life is good and the beer flows freely
If we learned something in our six thousand year history is that you cannot forecast human behavior we are too unpredictable and smart. They will predict earthquakes before this can be done.
@ZLiberator You mean half a million? But technically there are already a lot of ways in which earthquakes can be predicted, there's just not much certainty in anything that can predict them enough in advance to make a large difference.
@ZLiberator
I can predict that you'll eat, drink, sleep and breath in the next 72 hours. That seems like pretty predictable behavior to me. I mean you can try to break those but that would contradict the "smart" aspect of human behavior.
@ZLiberator
What has a 6000 year old history? Is that some kind of "intelligent design" philosophy? LOL
@SeeKo
human history. 5 to 6000 years
first writing records: around 3500 BC.
Prehistory (Latin, præ = before; Greek, ιστορία = history) is a term used to describe the period before recorded history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistory (but you can check in other sources.
before that in reverse order:
Iron age
bronze age
stone age with the first cities.
so no it is not intelligent design referred to here, but science.
check your sources
NOTE: my grandma used to say: turn around your tongue 7 times in your mouth before you talk
@D1Only1
Oh, easy there on the numbers tiger. ;-)
What you are saying is that only recorded history can be described as "history"? I don't think so. I'm talking about human history. You know, with all that "unpredictable behavior" that ZLiberator was talking about. ;-) Just because nobody has written it down then to preserve it for us to study, it's not said that it's not part of our history.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Humans are actually very predictable creatures of habit and self-constraint. At the very least, all humans need to eat, sleep, travel and communicate in some form and in most cases, the timing of these events are fixed within a set threshhold. If you know what determines the timing and threshhold variation, you can both predict and control what a person does. People who aren't about to do something unusually impulsive won't deviate from their average patterns by more than a fraction.
it might be easier to follow if you simply break down your actions into a massive decision tree. Under normal circumstances, the decision tree generated per day won't look all that different from the same day a week before or after it. Only minor decisions may deviate (say eating lunch at mcdonalds vs burger king before returning to work.) These minor decision deviations may only mean the difference of a couple miles in a few minutes, but will generally be roughly the same distance from the point of origin and point of destination at relatively the same respective time you'd leave or arrive at those points.
What would raise flags in predicting an impulse action would be a nested selection of decision branches that continue to deviate further and further from the "normal" on record. (Say leaving work early, going to a restaurant a but further out than mcdonalds/burger king, then going further out from work to a walmart, then further out to a known contacts location). A large deviation in events could be brought to attention to authorities, who could examine any collected info about you from the earliest deviation detected, such as how fast you traveled between locations and what purchases were made along the way)
one could predict that a person who drove fast from to and from a store where they purchased an item that might be used as a weapon, might be able to prevent someone the person in question knows from getting killed or injured, simply by processing all known info about a person fast enough to act.
Even travel speed alone could be enough to establish a potential threat. If a person that was angry with you yesterday suddenly sped off to another location after seeing you, then returning the next day, travelling at roughly the same speed might strongly suggest that person is still angry at you and may be back to threaten or harm you. (after all, wouldn't you drive more cautiously when going to visit someone you're not angry at?)
Better not link it to Washington.
So where are the precogs
I can't wait till Google, Microsoft and Apple deploy a similar system to SMITE.
That Creates a database of actions that correspond to purchasing behavior; It's hoped that behaviors can be detected before they lead to actual money being spent towards another companies product.
I can't wait to get pop-ups that say "You don't want to buy an HP (while I'm looking at their site) You'd be happier with a (insert other company)"
Department of Apple Ransacking Peoples Apartments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYN1yz5lU8A
am i the only one that thought of mgs when i saw DARPA in the title? lol
DARPA is now hiring precogs, must be comfortable with laying underwater for elongated periods of time.
I'm sure it's google that's developing the tech for DARPA.
sounds like minority report...