ADELPHI, Md. -- An Army researcher recently briefed students and faculty at Spelman College on artificial reasoning as a part of an Office of the Secretary of Defense artificial intelligence and machine learning initiative.
Dr. Adrienne Raglin, a researcher at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, known as DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory, told the group about the laboratory’s efforts including causal uncertainty of information, AI-driven decision support technology and computational mission inferencing.
The OSD initiative will look to match interested students and faculty with DEVCOM ARL for future collaborations.
Two important motivations for this briefing for Raglin were to describe the diverse and challenging research being conducted at ARL addressing critical issues within the Army’s problem space, and to foster potential opportunities for collaboration with Spelman College and their AI/ML program.
“Discussing ongoing advances in artificial intelligence in key areas such as artificial reasoning will increase awareness of the potential for intelligent systems to form decisions and develop courses of action to assist the Soldier effectively, utilizing various approaches including deductive, inductive, abductive and causal reasoning,” Raglin said.
Raglin presented research in three focus areas of artificial reasoning: adaptive decision making, multi-agent interaction and context aware exploration.
Adaptive decision making, she said, investigates causal reasoning approaches for refining and adapting decisions, integrating information, and employing uncertainty of information connections to isolate risk and undesired outcomes.
Multi-agent interaction is focused on determining how intelligent agents’ behavior is formed, captured and identified to model the tacit reasoning that led to the behaviors.
Finally, she noted, context aware exploration involves using computer simulations and empirical studies to assess and evaluate new methods and techniques for the automated generation and validation of decisions and overall courses of action.
“I view a multidisciplinary approach as a vital way for these areas of research to continue to evolve and become much more impactful,” Raglin said. “By inviting students with different interests to potentially collaborate with us, we both open the door for innovation and create opportunities for student involvement in research they may not have considered previously.”
Raglin said it is exciting to discuss new and ongoing research with colleagues both within ARL and its collaborative partners.
“These opportunities are engaging, thought provoking and inspiring,” she said. “I particularly enjoy interacting with students and professors in discussion during these types of events.”
During a recent ARL Town Hall, the lab’s director, Dr. Patrick Baker, discussed the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force and how its engagement with a variety of universities is pivotal to achieving the diversity and talent management goals worthy of an elite laboratory for foundational research, Raglin said.
“I believe supporting initiatives such as the AI/ML program with Spelman is an excellent example of the type of engagement he was referring to,” Raglin said. “As our organization in particular continues to support these efforts, we will not miss the windows of opportunities to incorporate this wealth of raw talent and ideas that these students will bring. In addition, they will in turn find great satisfaction in applying their intellectual and academic proficiencies towards science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, careers, hopefully here at ARL.”
ARL is managing a cooperative agreement from the Department of Defense to support the school’s Center of Excellence for Minority Women in STEM. Affiliated with the University’s Office of Research, Innovation and Collaboration, the center is the first of its kind and serves as the hub for all science, technology, engineering and math undergraduate research and training activities at Spelman.
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DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory is an element of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command. As the Army’s corporate research laboratory, ARL is operationalizing science to achieve transformational overmatch. Through collaboration across the command’s core technical competencies, DEVCOM leads in the discovery, development and delivery of the technology-based capabilities required to make Soldiers more successful at winning the nation’s wars and come home safely. DEVCOM is a major subordinate command of the Army Futures Command.
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