Incredibly Cool Technology -- Beyond Artificial Intelligence

A recent press release by DARPA discusses a new program called, "Machine Reading Program." Despite this boring and non-descriptive title, the program's goal is to surpass what technologists call Artificial Intelligence (AI). The ideal output of the Machine Reading Program isn't just a smart computer, but one which can read War and Peace or even the Encyclopedia Britannica, and then answer intelligent questions about content. Meaning, once the book is read (in seconds), you can ask the computer to "write a Cliff's Notes summary" or "compare and contrast the primary characters' morality" and the machine would spit out the answer as well as any college professor.

The full capability is still in the future. That's why DARPA is funding companies $30 million to develop the MRP. But progress continues. It's about the language algorithms, the speech topology, and providing the computer with a capabilty to learn each time it "reads" more.

This is not a new need. Scientists identified it as a priority in the 1960s when IBM computers filled an entire room and cost millions of dollars.

Imagine the value from an intelligence perspective. Suppose you could read millions of web pages in Arabic and then answer intelligently questions which might lead to finding that one dangerous needle in the haystack.

Software firms with new ideas for making this initiative successful will have many potential funding sources, and good ideas will get well-deserved attention from the various intelligence agencies who so desperately need a solution.