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The rise of ‘ARPA-everything’ and what it means for science (2021)

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Re: The rise of ‘ARPA-everything’ and what it means for science (2021)

#11

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #10
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think that's what they have DARPA for. Actually Norbert Wiener thought a lot about intelligent machines, he called that Cybernetics - but there was a problem, he didn't want to accept any funding from the military: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Wiener "After the war, Wiener became increasingly concerned with what he believed was political interference with scientific research, and the militarization of scie…

Sure but DARPA does all sorts of work, not just AI related stuff

certainly, TCP/IP was a DARPA project, lots of other things were also financed by DARPA. https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/timeline/tcp-ip

TCP/IP was a major change in networking, because all telephone companies were used to have reliability at the link layer - that's how you do a telephone network. But TCP/IP is much more scalable, because it has a reliability layer that is not dependent on the link layer.

Re: The rise of ‘ARPA-everything’ and what it means for science (2021)

#12

Post by nimbius »

A cynics take awaits you, however, if you consider scientific research an organism of sorts then this makes complete sense. since most legislated spending at the congressional and senate level is only ever expediently approved if it is in the interest of the national defense, then the simplest way to encourage and continue meaningful advances in the body scientific is to simply blanket them all as "defense" projects.

so, your climate analysis grant may face grim prospects until the cosmic DARPA modifier is applied, and in doing so, becomes easily funded.

Re: The rise of ‘ARPA-everything’ and what it means for science (2021)

#13

Post by JackFr »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #9
atlasunshrugged wrote: post #8

I'm a bit surprised there hasn't been much of a pitch for an ARPA-AI, maybe because AI touches on a bit of everything or too many other stakeholders in gov are doing AI stuff? But AI seems like an area where an organization just focused on that would be rather interesting and it would likely have broad ramifications for the other ARPA's being considered (e.g. advancements in medical with protein folding and drug disc…

i think that's what they have DARPA for. Actually Norbert Wiener thought a lot about intelligent machines, he called that Cybernetics - but there was a problem, he didn't want to accept any funding from the military: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Wiener "After the war, Wiener became increasingly concerned with what he believed was political interference with scientific research, and the militarization of scie…

I don't know why, but I always thought it was cool that the Lambda the Ultimate Papers were sponsored by ARPA. I suppose to some extent because they're basic research not specifically applicable to any defense project, and yet like a fair amount of CS/PL research, they're very practical as well.

Re: The rise of ‘ARPA-everything’ and what it means for science (2021)

#14

Post by JackFr »

elil17 wrote: post #3

I’ve absolutely loved working with ARPA-E in my job and I cannot imagine why we would create ARPA-C. Anyone in ARPA-E will tell you they are fundamentally working on climate. They also do some energy security stuff but I they would all be very dissatisfied if it got paired down to that. ARPA-H sounds like a great idea, I hope it’s well executed!

Well climate != clean energy.

It would be great if there were people looking at climate change in truly innovative ways. But if it's a lot of the same-old, wrapped in a new ribbon it's going to be a disappointment.

And honestly there is a huge disconnect between the dire warnings we're getting and the actions we're taking. If it truly is an existential crisis, better wind turbines and solar panels that are 2x more efficient are great, but they're not gonna move the needle, and the real work should be a bout surviving in a hotter world.

Re: The rise of ‘ARPA-everything’ and what it means for science (2021)

#15

Post by two_almonds »

bm3719 wrote: post #2

As someone with ARPA-related experience, I can say there are some trade-offs (possibly even flaws) in the execution of "the recipe" as practiced in the modern day. However, it's probably also the part of government that most closely resembles the start-up world. In fact, when I was there, we often intentionally modeled certain things after ideas borrowed from that side of the private sector. If you believe in maxims…

For those less informed about its history, is there any transparent accounting of ARPA's cost-vs-success during its initial decades that you recommend reading? I am only marginally familiar with some of the 'big-impact wins' that are frequently mentioned, so I would love to read a comprehensive analysis of its accomplishments.

Re: The rise of ‘ARPA-everything’ and what it means for science (2021)

#16

Post by packetlost »

nimbius wrote: post #12

A cynics take awaits you, however, if you consider scientific research an organism of sorts then this makes complete sense. since most legislated spending at the congressional and senate level is only ever expediently approved if it is in the interest of the national defense, then the simplest way to encourage and continue meaningful advances in the body scientific is to simply blanket them all as "defense" projects.…

> if you consider scientific research an organism of sorts

Somewhat off-topic, but at a macro level, society itself and the systems it produces are fundamentally the same thing as the individual cells that make up our bodies (the specifics of what those systems act on and the context in which they act in are obviously different). Basically every societal structure can be reduced to the behaviors of an organic system at some level of complexity.

Re: The rise of ‘ARPA-everything’ and what it means for science (2021)

#17

Post by elzbardico »

walleeee wrote: post #4
bm3719 wrote: post #2

As someone with ARPA-related experience, I can say there are some trade-offs (possibly even flaws) in the execution of "the recipe" as practiced in the modern day. However, it's probably also the part of government that most closely resembles the start-up world. In fact, when I was there, we often intentionally modeled certain things after ideas borrowed from that side of the private sector. If you believe in maxims…

Agreed. Worked on an ARPA-E funded project and it was reported as a success even though the primary deliverable was never completed and was probably not viable anyway. Everyone involved meant well, but I sensed the PIs viewed it more as a vehicle for their ICs' careers than as a mission-driven enterprise. This is a wicked incentive problem and I don't know how to solve it.

But, did the project significantly advance the knowledge in the field, even if the deliverable couldn't be completed?

In that case, I would call it a success anyway.

Re: The rise of ‘ARPA-everything’ and what it means for science (2021)

#18

Post by comex »

nimbius wrote: post #12

A cynics take awaits you, however, if you consider scientific research an organism of sorts then this makes complete sense. since most legislated spending at the congressional and senate level is only ever expediently approved if it is in the interest of the national defense, then the simplest way to encourage and continue meaningful advances in the body scientific is to simply blanket them all as "defense" projects.…

This article is about the creation of new ARPAs without the D, which are explicitly not about defense. They are rather are meant to take DARPA’s model and apply it to other areas (climate, energy, health). Organizationally speaking, they’re unrelated, being under different federal agencies depending on the area. They may borrow some of DARPA’s glamor but they aren’t considered defense projects. So your comment doesn’t seem applicable.

Re: The rise of ‘ARPA-everything’ and what it means for science (2021)

#19

Post by elefanten »

walleeee wrote: post #4
bm3719 wrote: post #2

As someone with ARPA-related experience, I can say there are some trade-offs (possibly even flaws) in the execution of "the recipe" as practiced in the modern day. However, it's probably also the part of government that most closely resembles the start-up world. In fact, when I was there, we often intentionally modeled certain things after ideas borrowed from that side of the private sector. If you believe in maxims…

Agreed. Worked on an ARPA-E funded project and it was reported as a success even though the primary deliverable was never completed and was probably not viable anyway. Everyone involved meant well, but I sensed the PIs viewed it more as a vehicle for their ICs' careers than as a mission-driven enterprise. This is a wicked incentive problem and I don't know how to solve it.

Curious to what degree the "low-hanging fruit" dynamic comes into play when comparing the current era to the past.

It keeps coming up in many other fields.

Re: The rise of ‘ARPA-everything’ and what it means for science (2021)

#20

Post by walleeee »

elzbardico wrote: post #17
walleeee wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Worked on an ARPA-E funded project and it was reported as a success even though the primary deliverable was never completed and was probably not viable anyway. Everyone involved meant well, but I sensed the PIs viewed it more as a vehicle for their ICs' careers than as a mission-driven enterprise. This is a wicked incentive problem and I don't know how to solve it.

But, did the project significantly advance the knowledge in the field, even if the deliverable couldn't be completed? In that case, I would call it a success anyway.

It produced some modest results which slightly advanced the field. Not groundbreaking. The applied work did demonstrate the viability of a few robotics applications and the infeasibility/insufficient ROI of a few others. I would say that was the most valuable output.

It did not begin to approach the goals in the project description, which I've since come to believe are detached from reality. A moonshot may have seemed collossally ambitious in 1961 but we already had most of the basic capabilities necessary to succeed. In this case, however, I don't think we're anywhere close, and even if we were, it would be a suboptimal solution to the problem it's meant to solve. (It would however be politically and economically convenient).

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