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PaperclipPerfector  20d ago (text post)   2708 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 7, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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DARPA has had AI since at least 1969. I heard a presentation by a very senior (in both age and rank) DARPA scientist and he mentioned that his research program in machine learning started that year. He also mentioned that he was awarded his PhD in 1964 and I believe his doctoral work was also in ML, though I'm not 100% on that. In any case, his work was in ML speech detection. Incidentally, he was very bearish on AGI and called out nearly everything we hear about the topic as lies and marketing. This was a couple of years ago.

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