DARPA to Develop AI for Crisis Decision-Making
The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has introduced the In the Moment (ITM) program. Its objective is to combine big language model algorithms with human cognition during critical situations where no straightforward solution exists.
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For over half a century, DARPA has led the way in innovative research and development (R&D). Today, it is a pioneer and supporter of all ground-breaking research in the AI field. The Pentagon founded the agency in response to the USSR's launch of the first artificial satellite. DARPA's annual budget is roughly $3 billion, and it generally concentrates on short-term software projects that are undertaken by a collective of contracting firms.
Military operations can involve a myriad of scenarios, from combat engagements and medical triage to rendering aid to civilians. Field commanders must be equipped with rapid and accurate responses to these situations. The challenge is that one-size-fits-all solutions often fall short. Hence, even seasoned commanders resort to a variety of tactical approaches.
The DoD needs rigorous, quantifiable, and scalable approaches to evaluating and building algorithmic systems for difficult decision-making where objective ground truth is unavailable. Difficult decisions are those where trusted decision-makers disagree, no right answer exists, and uncertainty, time-pressure, and conflicting values create significant decision-making challenges
explains DARPA
In this context, having confidence in AI's capability to make informed crisis-related decisions becomes crucial. By launching the In the Moment program, DARPA intends to capture and algorithmically model the logic and intuition guiding military leaders in various situations. DARPA recognizes the necessity to extend beyond the sole use of training data to create ‘decision-making' algorithms, as such approaches can be fragile and unreliable.
Several contractors will be brought on board to bring ITM to life.
- Raytheon BBN Technologies and Soar Technology, Inc will devise methods to collate the personal traits of individuals adept at crisis decision-making. Following this, profiles will be created to determine the main methods employed by authorized military personnel. Kitware, Inc. and Parallax Inc. will then algorithmically process the information sourced from Raytheon BBN Technologies and Soar Technology, Inc.
- CACI International Inc. has been tasked with assessing the results of the program.
- The Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security at the University of Maryland, along with the Institute for Defense Analyses, will implement the developed model and investigate the ethical, legal, and societal consequences of the invention.
The ultimate goal of the ‘In the Moment' program is to push the boundaries of the AI industry and ultimately engineer fully autonomous decision-making systems that require minimal human oversight. The key challenge lies in fostering trust within professionals and society at large towards AI algorithms capable of independent decision-making in complex and ambiguous situations.
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