Sent to you by Sean McBride via Google Reader: Software 'can identify' Rumsfeld's unknown unknowns via Short Sharp Science by Tom Simonite on 11/26/08 The Bush administration will soon be history. But we may be left with a computerised version of former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld to remember them by.
US defence giant and stealth-bomber manufacturer Northrop Grumman is patenting a system (see the patent here) to detect the "unknown unknowns" Rumsfeld famously warned against in 2002, when asked where the evidence was that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. "There are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know." Grumman's patent is every bit as baffling. Software fed a long chunk of text on a certain subject will somehow use mysteriously powerful "inferencing algorithms" to work on the facts and extract the unknown unknowns. Paul Marks, technology correspondent Things you can do from here: - Subscribe to Short Sharp Science using Google Reader - Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites
