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Computer Software to Predict the Unpredictable
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Oct 17, 2007 06:13 PM
from the zombo-com dept.
from the zombo-com dept.
Amigan writes "Professor Jerzy Rozenblit at the University of Arizona was awarded $2.2Million to develop software to predict the unpredictable — specifically relating to volatile political and military situations." From the article:
"The software will predict the actions of paramilitary groups, ethnic factions, terrorists and criminal groups, while aiding commanders in devising strategies for stabilizing areas before, during and after conflicts.
It also will have many civilian applications in finance, law enforcement, epidemiology and the aftermath of natural disasters, such as hurricane Katrina."
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computer? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:computer? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Even if we assume these r
Re:computer? (Score:5, Informative)
Readers of Asimov will know the qualitative reasons for why such things as broad socio-economic-historical trends and the actions of large groups of people can in principle be made predictable. For a system to be chaotic, it must have a large PHASE SPACE of possibilities (physical size is not always important but it is significant). What matters is the degrees of freedom and how parts of the system are coupled to other parts. Do small perturbations in the system dissipate or do they spread? Modern society has evolved into a 2-phase system where it reacts to new perturbations by simply breaking them into two possibilities - this helps relieve tensions and most people get stuck in one of the two states. This has the rather fascinating effect of re-stabilizing the system despite the introduced disturbance.
So, as the above example leads us to suspect, modern human societies are just not as complex as our egos would lead us to believe. There is strong coupling between its parts and few people stay undecided about issues - they simply get stuck orbiting one of two strong attractors in the space of possibilities and this serves to relieve any stress. In such a system of course, revolutions (in the sense of widely held beliefs changing within the lifetime of a single individual) simply cannot happen. At the worst, there might be a slow decay and unraveling of the social fabric. Barely noticeable.
Equivalent arguments apply to the "free will" of individual human beings. Humans tend to congregate in packs - behaviorally, philosophically or otherwise. This strong tribal leaning that is presumably built into our genes ensures that most behavior patterns will be statistical in nature. Indeed, the actions of an individual can be simply predicted to a first approximation by merely qualitative means even in the absence of complete information by assuming rational behavior. A better approximation can be achieved by modeling the level of rationality of the individual and assigning probabilities based on that.
While human beings may not be predictable in a strictly deductive sense, most people are (for better or for worse) rather mundane in terms of how eccentric they can be (in a way that actually affects other parts of society). This can hardly be a bad thing as the timescale of societal change must be greater than the lifetime of an individual for a society to be called "stable". If it is MUCH greater, we would call that society degenerate or decayed.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There's still the issue of dealing with the tail end of any distribution. I don't care about the 99.999% of people who, in the aggregate, fit a model. I care about that 0.001%
Depends on the situation (Score:3, Insightful)
It takes events like 9/11, or the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, to adjust the normal state of affairs. In a flux situation, small actions (and individual actors) can cause tremendous instability...or crystalization, depending.
Re:Can it predict the weather six months out? (Score:5, Funny)
Of course it can--did you even read the link?
It will just take about six months to calculate the result.
Parent
Well... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure the computer did.
Re: (Score:2)
If it really can predict the unpredictable, let's see it try to predict which atom in a radioactive element is going to decay next. Then I'd be impressed.
bullshit flag (Score:5, Insightful)
Predict it for 2 weeks, I will blow you.
You cannot predict something with so many variables that you don't understand. You certainly cannot do it regarding how people will react.
Re:bullshit flag (Score:5, Insightful)
I second that.
The whole article is totally bizarre and buzzword populated begging for attention. Not only will it predict the actions of nearly every bunch of lunatics it will also "display data in graphical, 3-D and other forms that can be quickly grasped".
Please! We have a highly complex situation, with a lot of different agents and a long genesis, and literally millions of different contextual factors influencing the situation and they take all this munch and crunch it a little with fancy buzzword concepts and put it in a pie chart?
This is an insultingly brazen self-adulation.
Ok, I changed my mind I'm gonna die laughing.
Parent
You don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Its the ultimate repudiation. As far as I can predict, they will spend lots and lots more money on this, get some buddies in on the gravy train somewhere to boot, and they still got themselves a bargain.
Parent
It's A TRAP! (Score:5, Funny)
They come right out and say it...
Re:It's A TRAP! (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently there are those that have forgotten the old computer law of "Garbage In, Garbage Out". Even if we had a perfect model to predict these sort of things, we don't have any way of supplying the required data to model the prediction. What's the computer going to do, go undercover in secret groups? Read the web sites? Listen to radio chatter and analyze their conversations?
Maybe someday when we have a real science of A.I. something like this might be possible, but all it shows is that this university professor will happily take government money for delivering absolutely nothing.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless, of course, garbage is what they are after. Last time it was "Curveball" that gave them the necessary disinformation to justify a war; next time they won't even need to bother with informants, they'll just look to their computer program to tell them an invasion is necessary. Accuracy
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Read "Minority Report" By P.K. Dick. (Score:5, Informative)
Precog #1 sees the future.
Precog #2 sees the future that happens when you know what Precog #1 saw.
Precog #3 sees the future that happens when you know what Precog #2 saw which was the future that Precog #1 saw.
Parent
come on now (Score:2)
Reason (Score:5, Funny)
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.
If it is unpredictable... (Score:5, Interesting)
The article (as would be unsurprising even from the professional press, and is less surprising from what seems to be a school newspaper of the school employing the professor getting the grant) seems to be a very uncritical regurgitation of an extraordinarily puffed-up press release that seems to suggest that the professor has gotten a grant to develop something that already exist and presently has the capacities sought by the grant. Sometimes. Maybe. Really, the shifting use of verb tenses gave me a kind of mental whiplash trying to read it.
Also, I think that while this may be useful, the danger of overreliance on a system where quite literally no one using it understands how factors are really being used to generate outcome predictions are immense; if you get something that works well predictively at all, it will likely be prone to fail wildly if any of the many factors it is adapted to based on the historical data used to train it shift. Unfortunately, it is quite likely that the particular sensitivities will be opaque, and thus no one is likely to know when it is likely to fail. This is rather distinct from conventional analysis which, even though it may fail in many circumstances, where it is rigorous analysis and not just guesswork to start with, its assumptions are transparent and its weaknesses and vulnerabilities in application to particular situations can also be evaluated.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
But it's magic! It's a computer program, which is magic to most people.
Ah well. (Score:3, Insightful)
People will trust the answer a bit of software gives them when they won't trust exactly the same answer, calculated in exactly the same way but presented by the same expert who wrote the software in the first place...
Particularly if the software system cost 8+ figures.
We will finally know... (Score:5, Funny)
..when Duke Nukem Forever will be released.
And to be honest, this alone is worth the expense.
If the prediction is wrong, whose fault is it? (Score:2, Funny)
already done (Score:2)
Trantor (Score:2, Insightful)
I wrote a program to predict lottery results (Score:2)
They did this in wargames and I hope that this is. (Score:2)
The only winning move is not to play how about a good game of chess?
What happened...? (Score:2)
Well, so much for this one as well.
Didn't People Learn Anything from The Matrix? (Score:4, Interesting)
-- Agent Smith
no (Score:3, Insightful)
Giving kids everything they could possible need makes them _spoiled_
Giving kids everything they could possibly want makes them _entitled_
Eventually, a kid will need to get things they need by themselves. Delaying a kid's recognition of this fact will make them spoiled (at least a little bit in the best case). In addition, giving everything they could need will deprive the kid of the ambition and self confidence they would gain from doing the things they need to get done by themselves. Of course
The Chinese plan... (Score:5, Funny)
Rozenblit's work on coevolution/genetic algorithms (Score:5, Informative)
A coevolutionary approach to course of action generation and visualization in multi-sided conflicts [ieee.org]
The current state of military operations includes many stability and support (SASO), multi-sided conflicts. The research presented in this paper attempts to address this complex environment by creating a SASO simulation, coevolutionary generation of courses-of-actions (COAs) for each side, and visualization tools for analysis of the resulting COAs. The SASO simulation is significantly different from previous systems because it incorporates non-conventional warfare units such as terrorists and media. The coevolution algorithm is different because it allows all sides of the conflict to evolve their COAs. The visualization tools are important because SASO doctrine is not as well developed as conventional warfare doctrine. Therefore, visual analysis and understanding of a system that is not well defined provides insight for future modeling and verification.
Modeling and simulation of stability and support operations (SASO) [ieee.org]
Stability and support operations (SASO) are becoming increasingly important in modern military operations. Conflicts are no longer comprised solely of two opposing sides engaged in combat on an open battlefield. Instead, they are more likely to involve groups sharing various alliances and relationships each pursuing a range of different goals. The Sheherazade SASO wargaming engine presented here: a) incorporates subjective criteria for scoring course of action (COA) success such as the animosity between factions and attitudes of locales, b) uses nontraditional units such as refugees, media and information operators, and c) employs a coevolutionary genetic algorithm in modeling the dynamics of the complex multisided simulation for generating COAs. This paper outlines our approach towards the development of a wargaming model that handles the more complex and computationally demanding arena of SASO.
Cease and Desist Order (Score:4, Funny)
Be advised the Foundation has Patents covering the areas of study and interest.
H. Seldon
When something's unique enough... (Score:3, Insightful)
I for one... (Score:5, Funny)
What a waste of 2 million bucks.
We need real leaders, not computers (Score:5, Insightful)
Dealing with the aftermath of Katrina wasn't a matter of applying rocket science. It was simply a matter of simple logistics and a government that gives a shit about people. Unfortunately, the U.S. government has shown time and again under this administration that it could care less for the lives of its citizens, let alone the citizens of other countries. These problems can't be fixed by software. They can only be fixed by real leadership, something the people of the U.S. haven't shown much interest in electing...
It doesn't take software to predict that going into Iraq was a huge mistake. Just ask Chaney circa 1994 [noctaluca.com]. He knew it would be a major mistake, and he wasn't the only one. A lot of us were yelling and screaming to stop it before it started...
Software can't predict the future nor can they predict what stupid leaders will do. On Sept 10th, could anyone (or more importantly, any software) predict what things would be like in this country today? Even remotely? The war in Iraq, a country completely disconnected from 9/11. Guantanamo, spying on our citizens and other erosions of liberty... I doubt it. A single event and the responses by inept leadership led to a variety of disasters that nothing and nobody could have predicted.
It'll have great military applications (Score:5, Funny)
General: OK Major, lets see what this pile of junk has to say for itself
Major: It says that we can overcome all undesirable outcomes by sending in CL22 using a classic scissor movement.
General: Let me see that! How did the computer even know about CL22, our crack regiment of killer circus clowns! That's amazing!
Major: There's more sir. It also talks about project CC.
General: Project CC! The stealth car capable of carrying thousands of CL22 troops in a vehicle the same size as Robin Reliant? How did the computer even know about that project, it's only been discussed between myself and my 2 year old daughter!
Major: This program is amazing sir. Have another star.
The Movie "Paycheck"..... (Score:3, Interesting)
Tell the future and then make it happen...
But then there is the quantum physics problem of changing the outcome by observing it.
At what point do you prove the software actually works in a manner that doesn't lend to the creation or alteration of what would have been had it not been predicted in the first place?
Oh I know, 2.2 million to produce software to predict the future but nobody is allowed to see the results.
Or this is where computer become smarter than humans by making humans not need to think for themselves...Hmmm, some already don't and they apparently have loads of money...
That's hardly "unpredicatable" predictions (Score:3, Interesting)
If it could predict what the weather will be on this day in four years or which atoms of uranium will decay then i'll call it "unpredictable" The headline is missleading.
I'm guessing... (Score:3, Interesting)
Deep Blue, the first computer program to beat a world chess champion, is an example of how ATRAP can respond to changing factors, Ten Eyck explained. "Every time its opponent made a move, Deep Blue recalculated all the possibilities and likely courses of action, eventually settling on the fittest move that would achieve its goal of winning the game."
However, chess is not an exact analogy because only two players are involved and the end goal is for one player to win.
In unstable areas, winning often means establishing an environment in which the factions co-exist in a win-win situation or at least in an equilibrium in which there are no rewards, and some penalties, for disturbing the status quo, Rozenblit said.
"Deep Blue is a good analogy because it illustrates the complexity of the problems, but in chess you have a finite court and a well-defined set of operations," Rozenblit added. "Therefore, a move constitutes a valid move.
But what we're dealing with now is a world with no rules, with infinite possibilities and moves that defy logic, such as total disregard for the basic instinct of self preservation."
Or maybe they have but are ignoring the fact it cannot be predicted. I like the last graf. It kind of says it all.
Oh well, good luck on that one.
qz
Music (Score:5, Insightful)
A nice analogy when people think computers can make decisions or have "Artificial Intelligence" of any merit.
Pupil (Excited about AI):- I have just written a programme that writes music in the style of JS Bach.
Tutor (Seen it all before):- Really? How does that work then?
Pupil:- I programmed all of the known manuscripts by Bach and the computer uses that to write new compositions.
Tutor:- Great, can it write in the style of Mozart?
Pupil:- Sure, give me all the compositions by Mozart and I'll show you.
Tutor:- You mis-understand, can it decide, of it's own volition, to write in the style of Mozart.
Pupil:- Well, no it needs to base it's composition on something.
Tutor:- It has the entire works of Bach, is that not enough?
Pupil:- No, it needs the entire works of Mozart to write in the style of Mozart. Hell, even music students need to have heard Mozart in order to write in the style of Mozart.
Tutor:- Oh, so how did Mozart do it then?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That would give you an infinite recursion, no?
i.e. then you'd have to factor in the fact that people were aware that you had factored in the results, and then factor in the fact that they were aware you had factored in the fact that people were aware you had factored in the results.... and so on until your head explodes.
Stability (Score:3, Funny)