“ARPA and SCI: Surfing AI”, 2018-07-04 (; backlinks; similar):
Review of 2002 history of a decade of ARPA/DARPA involvement in AI and supercomputing, and the ARPA philosophy of technological acceleration; it yielded mixed results, perhaps due to ultimately insurmountable bottlenecks—the time was not yet ripe for many goals.
Review of DARPA history book, Strategic Computing: DARPA and the Quest for Machine Intelligence, 1983–10199331ya, Roland & Shiman 200222ya, which reviews a large-scale DARPA effort to jumpstart real-world uses of AI in the 1980s by a multi-pronged research effort into more efficient computer chip R&D, supercomputing, robotics/self-driving cars, & expert system software.
Roland & Shiman 200222ya particularly focus on the various ‘philosophies’ of technological forecasting & development, which guided DARPA’s strategy in different periods.
They ultimately endorse a weak technological determinism where the bottlenecks are too large for a small (in comparison to the global economy & global R&D) organization to meaningfully affect on average. The best a DARPA-like organization can hope for is a largely agnostic & reactive strategy, focused on patching up gaps and missed opportunities.
In this approach, the organization ‘surfs’ waves of technological changes, rapidly exploiting the potential of newly maturing technology while investing their limited funds into targeted research. Because of their freedom of action and their global view of the entire technology pipeline, they can function as ‘troubleshooters’, and enjoy good bang for their buck. But it is generally not possible for them to make a technology work if the time is not ripe, or develop entire new technologies or fields from scratch, and they must be humble about what their net long-term impact is.
(For broader discussion of progress, see “Lessons from the Media Lab” & Bakewell.)