Saturday, March 13, 2004

Robot race Posted here Saturday, March 13, 2004 at 5:00:22 PM     Now Robot race ends without a winner $1 million prize goes unclaimed BARSTOW, California (AP) -- A $1 million race across the Mojave Desert by driverless robots ended Saturday after all 15 entries either broke down or withdrew, a race official said. Two of the entries covered about seven miles of the roughly 150-mile course while eight failed to make it to the one-mile mark. Others crashed seconds after starting. The race ended just before 11 a.m. after the final four competitors were disabled, said Col. Jose Negron, race program manager. Competitors suffered a variety of problems that included stuck brakes, broken axles, rollovers and malfunctioning satellite navigation equipment. One six-wheeled robot built by a Louisiana team was disqualified after it became entangled in barbed wire. "It's a tough challenge -- it's a grand challenge -- you can always bet that it's not doable. But if you don't push the limits, you can't learn," said Ensco Inc. engineer Venkatesh Vasudevan, shortly after his company's entry rolled onto its side several hundred yards from the starting gate. The Pentagon's research and development agency planned to award $1 million to the first team whose microcircuit-and-sensor-studded vehicle could cover the roughly 150-mile course in less than 10 hours. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency was sponsoring the Grand Challenge to foster development of autonomous vehicles that could be used in combat. Defense officials foresee using the driverless, remote control-free robots to ferry supplies in war zones. Find this article at: <http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/03/13/darpa.race.ap/index.html> I love the effort for its creativity, but the idea that they would be used to ferry supplies rather than say bombs? Too naive. ********

Poltics of experts Posted here Saturday, March 13, 2004 at 9:15:22 AM     On technology policy, from Balkin I've written about the Administration's tendency to fudge the facts where science is concerned before. Let me offer a more serious take on this story. Here's the basic lesson: You can't have a successful administrative state in a complex democracy unless science and intelligence are insulated from politics. This leads me to a short digression on comparative constitutional design. Parliamentary systems in robust democracies generally produce a professional civil service whose basic job is to carry out the policy demands of whichever party is in power. (Knowing that the government may change at any time, the civil service will strive to present themselves as reliable technocrats, not as ideologues). Because their job is administrative efficiency, and they have incentives to put themselves at the service of whoever controls the government, their professional ethos places high value on factual accuracy and technical expertise. Presidential systems that feature separation of powers, by contrast, cannot guarantee the same degree of loyalty from civil servants, because the latter can also appeal to Congress for political support and play one branch off against the other. Hence presidential systems tend to include a significant number of political appointees-- much larger than you will find in most parliamentary systems-- layered over the civil service in order to ensure loyalty at the top levels. Moreover, mature presidential systems-- like the United States-- may often duplicate existing functions performed by civil servants-- like intelligence gathering or environmental or foreign policy advice-- and staff them almost exclusively with political appointees. ********