It's an interesting subject- and of course the technology is vulnerable to abuse and misuse. But really, as soon as we entered the robotic/computerized world we knew that this is where we're going. That won't change- except to become more so...

"Led by the visionary J.C.R. Licklider and his innovative successors in the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO), DARPA initiated work that ultimately put personal computers on millions of desktops and made the global Internet a reality. In fact, the original IPTO, which lasted from 1962 to 1985, was in large part responsible for establishing Computer Science as a field.

DARPA has recently re-energized IPTO (now the Information Processing Technology Office), and has rededicated its attention to modern Computer Science by looking both to its roots and to a dramatic vision of the future. Licklider imagined computers and humans working closely together in a form of symbiosis. The new, 21st century IPTO wants to realize this vision by giving computing systems unprecedented abilities to reason, to learn, to explain, and to reflect, in order to finally create systems able to cope robustly with unforeseen circumstances. IPTO's goal is to create a new generation of cognitive systems."


IPTO