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Raytheon developing machine learning system for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

Homeland January 16, 2020

Raytheon is developing a machine learning system capable of communicating what has been learned through a video game process.

The machine learning system is being developed as part of a $6million contract for the Competency Aware Machine Learning programme (CAML) from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Systems will be able to communicate the abilities they have learned, the conditions under which the abilities were learned, the strategies they recommend and the situations for which those strategies can be used.

The system will learn from a video game like process. The system will explain itself by recording the conditions and strategies it used to come up with successful outcomes.

Principal investigator for CAML at Raytheon BBN Technologies, Ilana Heintz, said: “The CAML system turns tools into partners. It will understand the conditions where it makes decisions and communicate the reasons for those decisions.”

“People need to understand an autonomous system’s skills and limitations to trust it with critical decisions.”

Raytheon: Official partner of DPRTE 2020.

Once the system has developed these skills, the team will apply it to a simulated search and rescue mission. Users will create the conditions surrounding the mission, while the system will make recommendations and give users information about its competence in those particular conditions.

For example, the system might say, ‘In the rain, at night, I can distinguish between a person and an inanimate object with 90 percent accuracy, and I have done this over 1,000 times’. Raytheon have explained that the goal is to create trust between AI systems and human operators through user-friendly communication.

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Post written by: Vicky Maggiani

Vicky has worked in media for over 20 years and has a wealth of experience in editing and creating copy for a variety of sectors.