Task Force on Supercomputer Applications Defense Science Board
Attendees
Task Force Members:
Dr. Joshua Lederberg, Chairman
CD!? Ronald B. Ohlander, Executive Secretary
Lt. Gen. John H. Cushman USA (ret)
Adm. Bobby Inman, USN (ret)
Lt. Gen. Philip D. Shutler, USMC (ret)
Dr. Charles M. Herzfeld
Invited Guest Participants:
Dr. Stephen Lukasik
Business
The fifth meeting of the DSB Task Force on Supercomputer Applications was opened by the
Chairman, Prof. Joshua Lederberg. The primary objectives of this meeting were to gain additional
familiarity with military defense systems requirements and artificial intelligence (Al) technology and to
determine an outline for the content of the final report.
Prof. Lederberg recapitulated some of the objectives of the task force. The purpose of the task force
is to determine appropriate military applications for exploitation on a new class of super symbolic
processors. Since DARPA had requested the DSB study, the task force should take into
consideration DARPA's Survivability and Strategic Computing program in its deliberations, but any
recommendations for applications should stand on their own merit.
There was also some discussion on current task force assessment of the most promising military
applications. Autonomous vehicle applications were thought to have great potential impact on the
military and would require massive amounts of computing power in relatively small packages.
Command and control was also believed to offer significant opportunities for exploitation of super-
intelligent computers but it was agreed that this was a very large domain and some focusing of scope
would be necessary to bound potential applications in this area. One generic applications area that
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offered benefits for a number of more specific applications areas is Al-based simulation. Simulation
was perceived as a necessary ingredient for training, wargaming, analysis, forecasting, and
evaluation of speculative scenarios.
After the brief introductory remarks, the task force then received additional inputs in the series of
briefings on military applications and Al technology. Copies of briefing charts are appended to these
minutes.
The first presentation was provided by Prof. Tom Binford of Stanford who discussed some of the
computational requirements of various kind of automated vision systems. For example, the
processing rate for a cruise missile application was estimated to be 20,000 pixels/set. while the rate
for an airborne autonomous vehicle might be as high as 100,000,000 pixels/set. A chart was
presented that showed the shortfalls between these requirements and current computational
capacities of commercial machines. It was also pointed out that low-level vision operations were most
likely highly tractable with parallel architectures but that the means of optimally employing such
architectures for intermediate and high level vision processes were not clear at this time. A great deal
of work would have to be done to develop appropriate software that would take advantage of highly
parallel architectures at these levels. The availability of such architectures would give rise to
fundamentally new ways of thinking about vision processing.
The second presentation was provided by Dr. Stephen Lukasik of Northrop, Corp. Dr. Lukasik
pointed out that the task force should consider some short-term applications along with the more
long-term issues. One example might be smart munitions with on board processors for precision
targeting. Other applications that were highlighted as being important were training, real-time EW
analysis, planning, and intelligent number-crunching. Dr. Lukasik also thought that DARPA should be
more focused on embedded computers.
The task force next had some discussion with Prof. Ed. Feigenbaum of Stanford University. Prof. `*
Feigsnbaum stated that current resources were very limiting and that scientists worked at the edge of
the capability of their tools. In order to make the advances that were needed for future requirements
for expert systems, super-intelligent computation capacity would be required. Some examples of
problems requiring this capacity include: analysis and fusion of large amounts of sensor; situation
assessment and mission planning; sophisticated interaction with the user; training and education;
knowledge acquisition; and VLSI design. VLSI design capability could be demonstrated but not
implemented because current processors were too slow. A factor of 1,000 to 10,000 times the
processing power of a Xerox 1100 computer is required for the VLSI design problem. Prof.
Feigenbaum categorized Al problems in two classes: those that required heavy inferencing, which are
in the minority; and those that require searching for and applying knowledge, which are in the
majority. Prof. Feigenbaum felt that applications should be incremental in nature and address key
problems. Task force reaction was that 2 or 3 long term projects should be undertaken that include
incremental demonstrable outputs.
The third presentation was conducted by Dr. Rick Hayes-Roth of Teknowledge Corp. who briefed the
task force on expert system technology and current market for expert systems. It was his judgment
that awareness for such systems had increased enormously in the commercial world. He also felt that
successful developments required that the interested company invest in training knowledge
engineers of their own for participation in the construction of expert systems and for subsequent
maintenance of the system. It took about 6 months to successfully train a knowledge engineer. Dr.
Hayes-Roth felt that the transition of expert system technology to the military would take a much
longer time than for industry, about 10 years, unless some specific steps were taken to speed up the
process.
The final presentation was given by Prof. Doug Lenat of Stanford and Al Clarkson of ESL, Inc. Prof.
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Lenat discussed the current status on machine learning. It was his contention that the various forms
of learning had to be better understood and integrated, on a selective basis, to solve difficult
problems. He also talked about Eurisko, a discovery program that he had developed at Stanford.
Eurisko could discover useful heuristics about a number of task domains. Al Clarkson then discussed
Eurisko's application to the intelligence analysis domain. He described a research task that they were
performing which utilized Eurisko's capabilities to generate military crisis scenarios. The scenario
generation would also provide indicators and warnings that could be expected.
The task force next discussed possible candidate applications that could investigated in detail by task
subgroups. The candidates included: 1) autonomous vehicles; 2) adaptive Electronic Warfare
analysis; 3) ballistic missile defense - - either the AEGIS Cruise Missile Defense System or the Patriot
program; and 4) an automated pilot assistant. These candidate applications were to be discussed
further at the next meeting and, if found acceptable, task subgroups would be formed to study the
applications in some detail and report findings to the full task force.
The last order of business for the full task force in attendance involved future meetings. As previously
discussed, the next meeting would take place at Carnegie-Mellon (CMU) University on the 22nd and
23rd of September with a subsequent meeting being held at DARPA on the 28th of October. The
meeting at CMU would include a brief of their supercomputer efforts and a tour of the robotics lab.
The remaining portion of the meeting involved the Chairman and Executive Secretary and concerned
determining the content and format of the final task force report. It was tentatively decided that the
report would consist of tow major sections. The first section would be historical in nature and
address the role that computers have played in military systems. Some description of current
applications would be provided. In addition, emphasis would be placed on the larger, mainframe
applications.
The second major section would start out by addressing the state-of-the-art of supercomputer-
technology today, i.e., linear supercomputers and VHSIC technology. There would also be a
discussion of current status of Al technology. Next would come plausibility arguments for the
successful exploitation of parallelism to achieve substantially faster processing rates at lower cost.
There would also be a plausibility argument for the exploitation of Al to military problems. These
introductory subsections would be followed by three or four chapters, each one addressing a major
super-intelligent computer application.
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