Monthly Archives: September 2019

I don’t know where this came from, but it made me laugh out loud.

[H/T JN]

On this thread, it may not quite be Laumer’s lethal Bolo machine, but we’re creeping closer. The US Army wants their cannon shells to be guided by “AI,” as noted by NewScientist (24 August 2019:

Artificial intelligence may soon be deciding who lives or dies. The US Army wants to build smart, cannon-fired missiles that will use AI to select their targets, out of reach of human oversight. The project has raised concerns that the missiles will be a form of lethal autonomous weapon – a technology many people are campaigning to ban.

The US Army’s project is called Cannon-Delivered Area Effects Munition (C-DAEM). Companies will bid for the contract to build the weapon, with the requirements stating it should be able to hit “moving and imprecisely located armoured targets” whose “exact position has high uncertainty”. Unlike laser-guided weapons, which hit a target highlighted by a human operator, C-DAEM will find targets for itself.

A parallel project will aim to develop algorithms for the weapons. These will be similar to face-recognition algorithms, but will use infrared cameras instead of traditional ones to identify targets, such as tanks. Each missile will contain a chip like those found in smartphones for running the algorithms.

The specifications include the ability to slow down and search for the targets – sort of missiles that are not self-propelled, if you will.

The Army passes this off as an improvement on cluster shells, which have a dud rate > 1%, and this may be true. However, even if the dud rate on these shells is < 1%, is it going to be 0%? Because if it isn’t, this becomes a delivery system for sending advanced technology to your enemy. We’ve already seen drones co-opted into weapon delivery systems. Now imagine an expressly designed technology co-opted by your enemies. Not that this hasn’t happened, many times, in the past, but it’s definitely one of those objectives you don’t want to achieve in new developments.

And I suspect it isn’t just duds that are at issue. What if someone fires off a shell and there’s no identifiable target to hit? How does this shell self-destruct without potential damage to civilian targets?

It leaves me wondering if the cost of using these shells to friendly forces may be greater than it is desirable.

And I’ll just lightly touch on the topic of these shells being truly artificially intelligent, i.e., having self-agency. In that case, you either have a suicide weapon in a deeply unsettling manner, or a highly dangerous weapon bent on vengeance on its creators. I doubt there’s any need for these shells to gain self-agency, but since we don’t have any technology that even approaches it, it’s hard to say if self-agency is very difficult to achieve, or is a slippery slope down which we – or the machine – slides.

Noted on The Resurgent:

And a little further down the page:

It doesn’t look good to take his money with one hand and write something against him with the other.

I admit that I was a little dispirited after hearing the investigation of former FBI Directory Comey had concluded with some findings of wrong-doing.

The report released Thursday by the Justice Department’s internal watchdog said Comey violated FBI policies in how he handled memos that detailed his early interactions with Trump. The report said Comey kept the government documents at his home, engineered the release of some of their contents to the news media and did not tell the bureau which person or people he had given them to. [WaPo]

Of course, Trump’s response is over the top:

The disastrous IG Report on James Comey shows, in the strongest of terms, how unfairly I, and tens of millions of great people who support me, were treated. Our rights and liberties were illegally stripped away by this dishonest fool. We should be given our stolen time back?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 30, 2019

While Comey took the opposite view:

DOJ IG "found no evidence that Comey or his attorneys released any of the classified information contained in any of the memos to members of the media." I don’t need a public apology from those who defamed me, but a quick message with a “sorry we lied about you” would be nice.

— James Comey (@Comey) August 29, 2019

National Review’s Jack Crowe and Jim Geraghty have some surprisingly empty posts on the matter. Meant to be condemnatory, I cannot help but note “… but prosecutors declined to file charges.” If Comey is so terrible, why isn’t he up on charges?

Not being an expert in FBI policy or that sort of thing, I wasn’t sure what to think. Fortunately, I ran across this Lawfare posting by Benjamin Wittes.

The inspector general of the Justice Department has determined that it is misconduct for a law enforcement officer to publicly disclose an effort to shut down his investigation.

Michael Horowitz would probably not describe his findings that way. But that seems to me the inescapable message of the inspector general’s report, released today, on former Director James Comey’s handling of his memos on his interactions with President Trump.

And …

For all that Horowitz spent two years on this investigation, there aren’t a lot of new facts—at least not major ones—in this document. The reason is simple: Comey has never been anything but straightforward concerning why he wrote the seven memos in question, what he did with them, whom he shared them with and what his motives were in doing so. On all significant factual questions, the 62-page report merely fleshes out a story that has been known to the public for the better part of two years.

Which is reassuring. Comey comes across as a thoughtful straight-shooter, at least in my observation and reading. And while it’s one thing to trust your informal, intuitive judgment, it’s quite another to have a seasoned national security lawyer evaluate the findings on a national security professional’s behavior and interpret them for the layman.

That’s a good reason not to pay too much attention to the National Review columns, which sensibly didn’t go into the detail which could have revealed more than they might have wished. They basically took the IG’s report at face value, looked into their prisms, and tried to splutter at Comey. A little digging by Wittes is a lot more convincing, not only because he went digging, but because, while he’s clearly not a Trumpist, he’s also accustomed to assuming a neutral stance on many issues.

That reminds me of what good engineers do, get the ego out of the way and just evaluate.

In case you were wondering who defines recession, it’s the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER):

Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals. NBER-affiliated researchers study a wide range of topics and they employ many different methods in their work. Key focus areas include developing new statistical measurements, estimating quantitative models of economic behavior, and analyzing the effects of public policies.

Yes, they’re more than a one-trick pony, obviously. But for the trick of recession, there’s this:

The NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee

The NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee maintains a chronology of the U.S. business cycle. The chronology comprises alternating dates of peaks and troughs in economic activity. A recession is a period between a peak and a trough, and an expansion is a period between a trough and a peak. During a recession, a significant decline in economic activity spreads across the economy and can last from a few months to more than a year. Similarly, during an expansion, economic activity rises substantially, spreads across the economy, and usually lasts for several years.

In both recessions and expansions, brief reversals in economic activity may occur-a recession may include a short period of expansion followed by further decline; an expansion may include a short period of contraction followed by further growth. The Committee applies its judgment based on the above definitions of recessions and expansions and has no fixed rule to determine whether a contraction is only a short interruption of an expansion, or an expansion is only a short interruption of a contraction. The most recent example of such a judgment that was less than obvious was in 1980-1982, when the Committee determined that the contraction that began in 1981 was not a continuation of the one that began in 1980, but rather a separate full recession.

The Committee does not have a fixed definition of economic activity. It examines and compares the behavior of various measures of broad activity: real GDP measured on the product and income sides, economy-wide employment, and real income. The Committee also may consider indicators that do not cover the entire economy, such as real sales and the Federal Reserve’s index of industrial production (IP). The Committee’s use of these indicators in conjunction with the broad measures recognizes the issue of double-counting of sectors included in both those indicators and the broad measures. Still, a well-defined peak or trough in real sales or IP might help to determine the overall peak or trough dates, particularly if the economy-wide indicators are in conflict or do not have well-defined peaks or troughs.

From the FAQ:

Q: The financial press often states the definition of a recession as two consecutive quarters of decline in real GDP. How does that relate to the NBER’s recession dating procedure?

A: Most of the recessions identified by our procedures do consist of two or more quarters of declining real GDP, but not all of them. In 2001, for example, the recession did not include two consecutive quarters of decline in real GDP. In the recession beginning in December 2007 and ending in June 2009, real GDP declined in the first, third, and fourth quarters of 2008 and in the first quarter of 2009. The committee places real Gross Domestic Income on an equal footing with real GDP; real GDI declined for six consecutive quarters in the recent recession.

Q: Why doesn’t the committee accept the two-quarter definition?

A: The committee’s procedure for identifying turning points differs from the two-quarter rule in a number of ways. First, we do not identify economic activity solely with real GDP and real GDI, but use a range of other indicators as well. Second, we place considerable emphasis on monthly indicators in arriving at a monthly chronology. Third, we consider the depth of the decline in economic activity. Recall that our definition includes the phrase, “a significant decline in activity.” Fourth, in examining the behavior of domestic production, we consider not only the conventional product-side GDP estimates, but also the conceptually equivalent income-side GDI estimates. The differences between these two sets of estimates were particularly evident in the recessions of 2001 and 2007-2009.

Their front page shows a lot of research going on that might prove interesting.

A sunflower and its bee:

Say, I wonder if he plays poker? Those spinners in his head are his tell, I’ll bet.

A few nights ago we saw the classic SF movie Forbidden Planet (1956) for the first time in decades. This is the story of a space mission to a planet that had been recorded as visited some 15-20 years prior by a scientific mission, and never heard from again.

As they approach, they receive a warn-off from someone, but choose to land anyways. Met by Robby the Robot, three men of the all male crew are conveyed to the residence of Dr. Morbius, where he once again urges them to leave. Why? The other members of his expedition were torn limb from limb within months of landing, excepting three, who died when trying to escape on the expedition spaceship, Morbius himself, his wife, and their daughter. The daughter, incidentally, makes an appearance, demonstrating nubility that stirs up this crews from 1950s American morality.

That evening, something slips into the ship and vandalizes it.

The next evening, the Executive Officer is murdered while on the ship. As a defensive force field had been emplaced but burned out during the night, there’s some confusion.

On another visit to Dr. Morbius, they discover his secret: he’s discovered the remains of an ancient, powerful, and extinct civilization. One of the machines has doubled Morbius’ own IQ. As a philologist, he’s qualified to deduce their language, and he’s partway into it. This excites the Commander.

But then comes the third night. A reinforced defensive field holds the creature back, and the crew attempts to kill it, but to no avail; three crew are dead. In the face of no known effective defense, the Commander chooses to leave. But he’s under obligation to save all civilians, so off he and the ship’s doctor troop to Dr. Morbius’. There, while the Commander is trying to collect the civilians, including the nubile daughter, the doctor scurries off and tries to double his own IQ, a fatal excursion. But with his dying breaths, all is revealed, much to the dismay of Dr. Morbius.

There’s a lot to like about this movie. There’s a recognition that space travel isn’t easy, as it turns out that supra-light travel requires the crew to go into stasis in order to survive it; even better, supra-light communications requires them to jury-rig equipment and use the space-drive to power the rig. It’s a nod to the realities we might really face.

Technically speaking, the special effects, for the era, were superb, and my Arts Editor was exclaiming over the cinematography and the beautifully wrought tableaus.

However, the characters are somewhat static, and the all-male crew and their 1950s-era (im)morality felt both quaint and patronizing. Worse yet, the pacing dragged between incidents, but the exciting incidents themselves are well done.

This is possibly the best specimen of the 1950s SF horror offerings, but it has its limitations. But who can argue with a movie in which the polyglot robot is rescued?