Parallel Planet Earth Being Created

In an unnerving parody of the 3-D virtual reality world of Second Life, the US Department of Defense (DOD) is developing a parallel mirror of Planet Earth on a massive, global scale, called the Sentient World Simulation.  Billions of individual "nodes" virtually reflect every man, woman, and child.

Sentient World Simulation (SWS) will be a continuously running, continually updated mirror model of the real world that can be used to predict and evaluate future events and courses of action. It will react to actual events that occur anywhere in the world and in corporate newly sensed data from the real world. SWS will provides the ability to examine the likely progression of the status-quo as well as explore any "what if" scenarios.

SWS creates synthetic decision situations using technology developed at Purdue University in conjunction with funding from the National Science Foundation, Intel, 21st Century Fund, Office of Naval Research and other agencies.

The technology recreates situations using human and artificial agents. It populates it with real data then allows data mining, decision support, forecasting, scenario planning and strategy planning. Millions of artificial agents represent behaviors (buying behavior of consumers, movement of trucks, contamination after a bio-terror attack, etc.) and hundreds of human players can make decisions all in a real time, web-enabled, interactive virtual world.

"SWS provides an environment for testing Psychological Operations (PSYOP)," the paper reads, so that military leaders can "develop and test multiple courses of action to anticipate and shape behaviors of adversaries, neutrals, and partners". SWS also replicates financial institutions, utilities, media outlets, and street corner shops. By applying theories of economics and human psychology, its developers believe they can predict how individuals and mobs will respond to various stressors.

"The idea is to generate alternative futures with outcomes based on interactions between multiple sides," said Purdue University professor of Information Systems, Alok Chaturvedi, co-author of the SWS concept paper.

Link

Purdue Link

Comments

[Nick Balaskas]

One of man's God given attributes is free will.

Although man is blamed for everything from wars to the weather, since there are over 6 billion of us with the ability to make choices, I would be surprised if this DOD Earth model can make better predictions than a psychic using only his/her own Earth-like crystal ball.

Ronald Reagan's key decisions during his term as President were based not solely on the advice he got from government experts or
private think tanks, but by psychics and his legacy as a great and popular leader must be partially credited to them.

I dread to think what the effects would be for the U.S., the world and even this part of the galaxy should future Presidents base their decisions on these DOD psychics instead.

Nick Balaskas

[Matt]

As far as I can tell quite alot of people remember Reagan as being as much a twat as any other President or leader. Mass person simulation can tend to predict the stupid behaviour of people whether or not having more individualised information may help with simulations. Psychics also use the method of psychology, well the better ones do, with which you can convince someone that you've told them about something by being vague or by gathering information without them realising it and feeding it back to them. So the world simulation would sound like a larger more accurate version of that so called crystal ball.

[Philip Slater]

How much credit has been given for this project to the work of Hari Seldon?

[anon]

This is old news, at least a few years. The DOD have been working on a world simulator long enough now for it to be rather mature. However, I think some of you including the article misrepresent it slightly. It's not about simulating you. It's about simulating group dynamics with constructs that merely share some of the same properties as you. Wake me when they start on the 'real' simulator that mimicks everyone from real life down to the eyebrows on my face, _then_ it will be news.

[debacle]

Anonymous: This is from the story linked above regarding this technology:

"Alok Chaturvedi wants SWS to match every person on the planet, one-to-one.

Right now, the 62 simulated nations in SEAS depict humans as composites, at a 100-to-1 ratio.

One organisation has achieved a one-to-one level of granularity for its simulations, according to Chaturvedi: the US Army, which is using SEAS to identify potential recruits.

Chaturvedi insists his goal for SWS is to have a depersonalised likeness for each individual, rather than an immediately identifiable duplicate. If your town census records your birthdate, job title, and whether you own a dog, SWS will generate what Chaturvedi calls a "like someone" with the same stats, but not the same name.

Of course, government agencies and corporations can add to SWS whatever personally-identifiable information they choose from their own databases, and for their own purposes"

Newsworthy now?