Intelligent Satellite Notices Volcanic Activity 116
Dik Zak points us to this NASA page about a new generation of intelligent Earth observation satellites. From the article: "The Indonesian volcano Talang on the island of Sumatra had been dormant for centuries when, in April 2005, it suddenly rumbled to life. A plume of smoke rose 1000 meters high and nearby villages were covered in ash. Fearing a major eruption, local authorities began evacuating 40,000 people. UN officials, meanwhile, issued a call for help: Volcanologists should begin monitoring Talang at once. Little did they know that, high above Earth, a small satellite was already watching the volcano. No one had told it to. EO-1 (short for "Earth Observing 1") noticed the warning signs and started monitoring Talang on its own. Indeed, by the time many volcanologists were reading their emails from the UN, 'EO-1 already had data,' says Steve Chien, leader of JPL's Artificial Intelligence Group."
It was December the 3rd (Score:5, Funny)
What an absolutely awesome piece of self identifying hotzone locating piece of hardware, the guys at Cyberdyne must have had a field day making it.
And now the intelligence is growing. "We're teaching EO-1 to use sensors on other satellites." Examples: Terra and Aqua, two NASA satellites which fly over every part of Earth twice a day. Each has a sensor onboard named MODIS. It's an infrared spectrometer able to sense heat from forest fires and volcanoes--just the sort of thing EO-1 likes to study. "We make MODIS data available to EO-1," says Chien, "so when Terra or Aqua see something interesting, EO-1 can respond."
This thing sounds like it can detect a fart from orbit!
What I want to know is if all this processing actually occurs onboard the sat, or if its a land based super computer brain?
Are these machines by chance running Linux? or are they using another VX-Works OS?
For the first time every I really think it could be possible for us to build a beowolf cluster of linux running space fem-bots, all we need to do is sabotage the main dev tree (if(GPS.Height>'200miles')
Year of the desktop? PAH! This year - the world!
Re:It was December the 3rd (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, that was me.
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Re:It was December the 3rd (Score:5, Funny)
What an absolutely awesome piece of self identifying hotzone locating piece of hardware
And to think - Skynet was supposed to wipe out the entire human race because it felt threatened - but now we know the truth. In reality it just got bored one day, and wanted something to watch.... kaboom, kaboom -....
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It was December the 3rd, 1984 (Score:2)
Let me see what I can say about this that doesn't get me on some list...
If they admit the satellite has 1m resolution, it can read license plates. If they say it sees thermal events, it knows when you're getting busy. If Intel says they're at a 65nm node, satellites are launching at 17nm.
I first met self-aware hardware in the '80s. I assume development has developed apace. The only thing surprising about this report is that some people consider it surprising. Our only saving grace at this point is th
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I also like to cosplay in tinfoil sometimes...
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Oh Oh. (Score:2)
And, EO-1 fights back.
Good Morning Dave... (Score:1)
I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that. (Score:4, Funny)
...but did it tell anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
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(posting anonymously because I modded parent up)
ENMP? (Score:2)
The space one is for the satelites looking the other way.
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EO-1: Itsa(SNMP)trap!
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"A plume of smoke rose 1000 meters high and nearby villages were covered in ash."
Re:...but did it tell anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)
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No, it really isn't. If it looks down and notices something that will tell us that LA is going to fall into the Pacific a week from Tuesday it really isn't going help anyone if it doesn't tell us about it.
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If you find such a place, please let me know and I'll begin preparations to move immediately. Just msg me in private, because I don't want everyone else moving in and spoiling the place.
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Implementation detail. Presumably, whoever put the thing where it is cares about what it's doing. These things aren't cheap. cronjob: "any interesting satellite data l
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Notice to the Slashdot grammarstapo community: there are people out there who can use both "it's" and "its" correctly--In the same sentence!
- RG>
[OT] Re:...but did it tell anyone? (Score:1)
However, punctuation and capitilization appear still to need a bit of work. Colons denote lists; semicolons denote breaks. Emdash should not be used outside marketing circles, nor should it precede a new sentence. At least it sort of looks like a new sentence, though it's not really.
IMHO.
Thanks for the compliment, though.
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No, it just snickered. It's seen a couple of other things coming our way too, but whenever the operators try to get more information is just says "Oh you'll find out. You'll find out... soon enough."
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Obligatory Comments (Score:1, Funny)
"I wonder what would happen if we created a beowulf cluster of them?"
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Yeah, but old joke regurgitated mindlessly to whore for karma == not funny and not cool.
Seriously people. Stop up-modding 'obligatory' overlords/beowulf/hotgrits rubbish!
It was funny the first time ONLY. Nothing new has been added to make it funny again.
Seriously, quit it.
I... (Score:5, Funny)
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It was funny the first time ONLY.
But, but, in Soviet Russia, the mod jokes YOU!
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(b) AFAIK, "Funny" does not increase karma.
How intelligent is it? (Score:3, Funny)
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Next step, Skynet! (Score:1, Redundant)
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Research is an essential aspect of progress. However, all because research is essential does not mean ALL research is essential, or that any given research is an efficient use of the finite resources available with which to conduct research.
More to the point, research is not the issue here, despite the fact you're raised it as THE issue. There are a zillion ways to develop AI heuristics. There is no need whatsoever to spend
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> mission is that out of line.
There are MANY satellites which monitor the entire planet, 24/7.
My point is that the report seems to be that this satellite is being used to experiment with AI heuristics.
It's all good and well to do research, but it's not all good and well to do needlessly expensive research. Firing a satellite into orbit and running it is VERY expensive. The more you spend doing this,
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After all, it's not as if Toby's own economic potential didn't completely rely on the fact that he works in a nation whose citizenery benefited from the advances in science that such 'inefficient' research produces! No of course not! No, Toby is one of those billions of $2 a day workers who happens to have access to the Internet. An inefficient, failure of an attempt by the
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@Toby: Living in Europe, I handily pay more taxes than you, yet I don't go whining about it. If you pay taxes, that means you have a job and an income and a means to feed yourself, plus a bunch of comforts probably far beyond the necessary. This being the case, how much have you donated to the cause of feeding poor people on the other side of the planet? Nothing? OK, so now that we know your motivation is largely simple greed, let's proceed to talk about priorities.
Only a knuckle-dragging halfwit would ge
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You may also be interested in knowing that EO-1's mis
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In this case, the purpose of this satellite is specifically to look around for things that are out of the ordinary, and as such there is nothing more important for their team to do with their resources because this is exactly what they wanted to do. Many times
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> have individual opinions.
Weasel words.
If 10 million dollars is spent running a satellite when the research it's doing can be done on the ground and people are starving, then there really IS more important stuff for that money to be spent on.
> In this case, the purpose of this satellite is specifically to look around for things that are out of
> the ordinary, and as such there is nothing more
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> There will always be more important things to do than those currently being done for as long as people > have individual opinions. Weasel words.
Why thank you =) Although they were intended more like an abstract of the points I made afterwards.
I'm saying they shouldn't have been given that money in the first place, because what they're doing isn't worth the money they've been given, considering the other things that money could be spent on.
I got that but maybe I didn't address it as clearly as I thought. Allow me to try again, by joining these two statements of yours thus:
I'm saying they shouldn't have been given that money in the first place, because what they're doing isn't worth the money they've been given, considering the other things that money could be spent on. So why don't we give them 100 billion dollars and let them do research with that? Obviously, because it's disproportionate. You don't spend THAT much money on this, because you need the money for other things and also the benefits you'll get become progressively more expensive to have obtained because it cost you so much more in the first place.
What I tried to say —and hopefully will be more clear now— is that they were allocated whatever resources they currently have because someone thinks its worth it. You and I my disagree on this worthiness, but people found 'reasonable reasons' for doing this.
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This thing is designed to look for heat sources. Chances are it will suck at trying to determine crop yields, count WMDs in Iraq (or wherever they're supposedly at now), and will fail to determine wether Kim Jong Il managed to get ahold of a PS3 in violation of the latest round of sanctions -- although if sony makes the ps3 power supply l
Re:Inefficient use of funds (Score:4, Insightful)
The US has had satellites that detect missile launches for decades. Calling this thing AI is a stretch; a sensor picks up something and it starts collecting. Maybe some pattern matching, not much else.
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The US doesn't really like to tell which satellites are designed for that particular mission, but they do like to point out the capability by using them for other semi-related things. In this case, the US says "we have a satellite that can detect fires, and its even 'smart' about it" and while the idiots say "hey spiffy, they can see fires" other countries get the message "it can spot launches, and record inform
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The flip side is that it could be watching the events and its 'intelligence' is actually used to categorise unusual measurements as weapon fire or not, and then only report the hostile activity.
Your assumption (Score:2)
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Satellites are space-based machinery whose focus of attention happens to generally be the Earth. JPL's skill and experience with space-based electronics and machinery makes t
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Ah, but wait. Apparently, if the satellite is looking at something uninteresting, the cost of the time lost is a problem - so it would be good if the satellite could know to look at more interesting things.
But wait - isn't it always looking at stuff it's been told to look at?
Well, either it is - in which case
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If the AI can increase the overall worth of the data gathered by the satellite than good for them. And of course there is no other bloody way to really check (simulation onl
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> projects on a certain topic, theme or general research thrust. People then submit proposals and depending on the
> size of the pot and the number of proposals submitted, a certain percentage of them are funded. The fact that
> this project got funded is indicative that it was "better" than other, unfunded proposals that we don't get to
> read about on Slashdot.
You're making a relative co
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From the following pages:
[1] http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/logs/2000/20 00-075a_eo-1_sumpub.shtml [spaceandtech.com]
[2] http://eo1.usgs.gov/index.php [usgs.gov]
[3] http://eo1.usgs.gov/products.php [usgs.gov]
[4] http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/st6/ABOUT/About_index.html [nasa.gov]
The Earth Observation 1 satellite was launched on the 21st of November 2001, to validate technology for the Landsat Data Continuity Mission. The satellite cost $193'000'000. As the mission approached its end, interest was expressed in keep
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What are we doing with so many satellites in orbit we can spare one look at targets generated by AI heuristics? these things costs millions of dollars a year to run. I don't see that the *possibility* of managing to look at an interesting event before being actually commanded to do so is a proportional use of that money. There are MUCH more essential things to spend millions of dollars on.
Perhaps you ought to think this through before commenting. There are a few points that are relevant. First, a genuin
Re:Inefficient use of funds (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, I'll bite. I'm a scientist who does utterly useless, blue-sky type stuff that will never make anyone money, or save anyone's life. So why should anyone pay me to do things that don't have a clear payoff?
The answer I've come up with is that these things- pure research, art, music, philosophy, museums- may not make us live any longer, and they may not make us richer, but they make our lives richer. Sure, if we diverted all government funding from the arts, public TV, the Smithsonian, the National Parks Service and soforth, and used it to fund stuff that would directly benefit people, people might live longer, more comfortable lives. But a world with less art, music, museums, and pure research is a deader, duller, less interesting world. Who'd want to live in that world? I'm not saying that justifies any level of funding, you've got to figure out how many dollars you're willing to pay for each "Angels in America" (an incredible work funded by the NEA, incidentally), but it's worth something and I'm more than happy to have my tax dollars promote that kind of thing. It's a hell of a lot more productive than having my tax dollars kill my countrymen and foreigners in the Middle East. And a hundred million a year works out to what, 30 cents per American on the arts?
The other answer is that there is a payoff, but it's a long-term, indirect one. Look at a city like New York. It's a vibrant, changing, economic powerhouse. Part of that, I think, is that the city is so filled with the arts- writers, photographers, musicians, scholars and soforth- that it's just a damn interesting place to live. Many of the best and the brightest from across the nation are drawn to the city because they want to experience a place that's alive intellectually and artistically, and in the long term that helps the city to reap huge economic benefits. I think a vibrant culture will help foster a vibrant economy. If nothing else, millions of people visit cities like New York and San Francisco to take in that culture, spending a lot of money in the process. So I think that long term, a few dollars wisely invested in the arts and academia are a good move.
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Unfortunately in the long term blue-sky, pure research always pays dividends much greater than money invested in other ways by making people more productive or resources more plentiful and thus increases the burden of surplus productivity to be depleted. You should
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Actually they come here
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Hum...$100 million sounds like a lot on an individual basis, but, in terms of the entire budget it is closer to what falls on the floor from the change pocket. In 1998, the budget spent on "secret" programs was $28 BILLION. That is, unless I am confused $28,000 million, and that is not even the BIGGEST money sink in the federal goverment.
Why should we spend money on the arts? well, I believe it is because the LOSS o
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I wrote specifically about THIS ONE SATELLITE.
You have IGNORED THAT, and FABRICATED the assertion that I am against spending money on ALL satellites.
I wish you well in your career in politics.
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I could have used this (Score:1)
Disturbing (Score:4, Funny)
Does anyone else find this disturbing. Reminds me of that episode of Star Trek season 2 Episode 12, 16 minutes in, 45 seconds where.......errr never mind.
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In the original series, Captain Kirk is talking to some overlord guy about his wife that has been placed under suspended animation in a display case of some sort. Not as appropriate.
Clearly the parent was referencing TNG.
Mod +1 scary (Score:2)
That's Great, but... (Score:1)
Self aware satellite != alert bird (Score:2)
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Maybe the satellite is tracking thousands of things at a time. I would bet it does send notification emails for everything, but anybody who gets them all has them marked as spam.
DoD Funded (Score:4, Informative)
I saw it in Janes a while back, no time to find sources right now, working on papers for Grad School.
Skynet (Score:1)
To Intelligent? (Score:1)
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EO1 set off the volcano, (Score:1)
This is news? (Score:1)
According to the article, it was essentially programmed to notice abnormal changes and begin collecting data if something occurs... How is this in any way intelligent? Just because it wasn't hardcoded to monitor it or manually told to doesn't mean it's "thinking." It did as it was programmed. Somewhere in there is an "if" statement saying that if certain values are out of a certain range, begin collecting data. So... it did exactly what it was programmed
automatisation is not intelligence (Score:2, Insightful)
All the system does is basically to compute the score (interest) of the different points of the earth's surface using predetermined criteria (plume of smokes +5 points, flash-floods +2 points) set by humans, and then allocate observation time in priority to the po
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It's need to observe things and what it deems to be "interesting" are entirely instinctual (programmed). But guess what? This thing DID decide by itself that the volcano was interesting and decided to observe it, without being told.
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PR mistake ! (Score:1)
Well, made me laugh
ATTENTION INTELLIGENT SATELLITE (Score:2)
Silly me, but... (Score:1)
"Talang is a stratovolcano with 8 confirmed eruptions between 1833 and 1968. The volcano may have had a phreatic eruption in 1986 but the activity has not been confirmed. Most of the eruptions are moderate in size (VEI=2) and explosive. Eruptions in 1833, 1843, 1845, and 1876 were from fla
Sattelitte intelligence (Score:1)
Like when they first came out with those lam-o- CDrom atlasas I had 'google earth' in my braim as how it should be and was so dissapointed when I saw them. Watch this sattelite (sp?) is late I am going to bed, and I gave my spell check the night off.
With the data this thing can generate in the time it can generate it. it can be way faster than our earth based vulcanoligist in predicting a magor eruption. saving millions o
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