DARPA Uses Preteen Gamers to Beta Test Tomorrow’s Military Software
August 15th, 2014Via: Vice:
Sieg Hall doesn’t look like much from the outside. Located at the University of Washington, the building was constructed in the 1960s, when it was a focal point for Vietnam-era antiwar protests. Before renovations were carried out it had become so dilapidated that students had a tradition of taking home chunks of rock off its façade. If I didn’t know better, Sieg is just another nondescript computer science building, not a front line in military research and development.
But it’s here, tucked away on the third floor, that you’ll find precisely that: the Center for Game Science, a research lab that makes educational video games for children, and that received the bulk of its funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the wing of the US Department of Defense that supports research into experimental military technology.
Why is DARPA the original primary funder of the CGS? According to written and recorded statements from current and former DARPA program managers, as well as other government documents, the DARPA-funded educational video games developed at the CGS have a purpose beyond the pretense of teaching elementary school children STEM skills.
Instead, the games developed at CGS have had the primary purpose of using grade-school children as test subjects to develop and improve “adaptive learning” training technology for the military.
Sieg Hall?
Seriously?
Sieg Heil
some of the people working in Sieg Hall act like they’re put upon by being in a building with 1970s architecture. I don’t think it really changes the essence of the classrooms. Brutalist architecture actually has more character than alternatives. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/University_of_Washington_-_Sieg_Hall_01.jpg