‘ADAPT’ AI to borrow from human cognition for challenges of modern battlespace
ARLINGTON, Va., Aug. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aptima has announced a multi-year contract award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for ADAPT, Adaptive Distributed Allocation of Probabilistic Tasks. ADAPT is an innovative program to develop a new generation of AI and (software) agents designed to work alongside, learn from, and interact with human teams, helping automate, plan, and execute missions for the dynamic speed and uncertainty of modern military operations missions.
As adversaries become more adept, the future success of military teams operating in fast-changing battlespaces will depend on accelerating the observation-to-action loop. AI will be critical in assisting commanders with decision-making, however, current AI and agents are limited in their reasoning and integration with human teams, reducing their effectiveness in planning and action cycles.
Under ADAPT, Aptima and partner Arizona State University (ASU) will design, build, and validate collaborative, adaptive, and realistic AI agents. These innovations will not only improve communications and cooperation between human and artificial agents, but also help commanders process streams data to structure teams, and to create and adapt action plans as mission change.
Borrowing from Humans
ADAPT’s agents and AI systems are inspired by a type of human reasoning based on ‘active inference.’ This will enable synthetic agents to perceive, learn, and adapt to observations of the environment and their interactions with human team members. ADAPT will also advance the bi-directional communications that are required between humans and agents for collaboration, using advanced interfaces, visualizations, and models.
“ADAPT will take a significant step forward in human-AI collaboration so Warfighters and intelligent technology can reason and work together to make better, faster decisions than either could do on their own,” said Dr. Adam Fouse, Aptima’s ADAPT Program Manager. “By learning from its human counterparts, taking into account their goals, preferences, and constraints, these more informed agents can guide AI in forecasting, creating, and adapting action plans as missions evolve.”
In a search and rescue scenario, for example, these advanced AI models and agents would reason over millions of possible scenarios to help commanders to enact the best plan for deploying first-responders, robotic, and autonomous assets, while minimizing casualties and risks from a possible building collapse.
“Humans excel at learning from one another but can only process so much incoming information. AI on the other hand has incredible computational abilities but needs to learn from and communicate with humans in order to be used effectively in dynamic team situations,” Fouse added. “These combined attributes will elevate a commander’s expertise and decision making in fast-changing, information-intensive environments so they can respond, and adapt quickly, while considering future possibilities.”
The Mission Challenge
Where the notion of static battle plans is obsolete, influxes of huge data can inundate humans, making it too complex to dynamically optimize strategy and reallocate assets on the fly. “As an advanced decision support system, ADAPT will learn from the environment and other team members, using AI models to formulate actions plans to assist its human counterparts,” Fouse added.
ADAPT is closely tied to two ongoing DARPA AI programs: Agile Teams (A-Teams), for which Aptima is the prime contractor, and Artificial Social Intelligence for Successful Teams (ASIST), where Aptima is priming the evaluation effort.
About Aptima, Inc.
For 25 years, Aptima’s mission has been to improve and optimize performance in mission-critical, technology-intensive settings. Visit www.Aptima.com.
Media Contact:
Joel Greenberg
DCPR
Joel@dcpr.com
202-363-1065 | 202-669-3639 cell
DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT A. Approved for public release: distribution unlimited.