Name: Anonymous 2016-12-23 22:57
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Computing_Initiative
The United States government's Strategic Computing Initiative funded research into advanced computer hardware and artificial intelligence from 1983 to 1993. The initiative was designed to support various projects that were required to develop machine intelligence in a prescribed ten-year time frame, from chip design and manufacture, computer architecture to artificial intelligence software. The Department of Defense spent a total of $1 billion on the project.
The inspiration for the program was Japan's fifth generation computer project, an enormous initiative that set aside billions for research into computing and artificial intelligence. As with Sputnik in 1959, the American government saw the Japanese project as a challenge to its technological dominance.
The goal of SCI, and other contemporary projects, was nothing less than full machine intelligence. "The machine envisioned by SC", according to Alex Roland and Philip Shiman, "would run ten billion instructions per second to see, hear, speak, and think like a human. The degree of integration required would rival that achieved by the human brain, the most complex instrument known to man."