“We are still excited to see how the AI algorithms perform against each other as well as a Weapons School-trained human and hope that fighter pilots from across the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps, as well as military leaders and members of the AI tech community will register and watch online,” said Col. Dan Javorsek, program manager in DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office.

“It’s been amazing to see how far the teams have advanced AI for autonomous dogfighting in less than a year.”

DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is using the AlphaDogfight Trial event to recruit more AI developers for its Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program.

The upcoming event is the final in a series of three and will finish with a bang as the AI-powered F-16 fighter planes virtually take on a human pilot.

“Regardless of whether the human or machine wins the final dogfight, the AlphaDogfight Trials is all about increasing trust in AI,” Javorsek added.

“If the champion AI earns the respect of an F-16 pilot, we’ll have come one step closer to achieving effective human-machine teaming in air combat, which is the goal of the ACE program.”

The first event was held in November last year with early algorithms:

A second event was held in January this year demonstrating the vast improvements made with the algorithms over a relatively short period of time. The algorithms took on adversaries created by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab:

The third and final event will be streamed live from the Applied Physics Lab (APL) from August 18th-20th.

Eight teams will fly against five APL-developed adversary AI algorithms on day one. On day two, teams will fly against each other in a round-robin tournament.

Day three is when things get most exciting, with the top four teams competing in a single-elimination tournament for the AlphaDogfight Trials Championship. The winning team’s AI will then fly against a real F-16 pilot to test the AI’s abilities against a human.

ACE envisions future air combat eventually being conducted without putting human pilots at risk. In the meantime, DARPA hopes the initiative will help improve human pilots’ trust in fighting alongside AI.

Prior registration is required to view the event. Non-US citizens must register prior to August 11th while Americans have until August 17th.

You can register for the event here.

(Image Credit: DARPA)

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The so-called ‘Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’ researches a range of innovative new technologies. Many of these advancements will have an impact beyond defence.

As such, DARPA’s funding initiative will be open to applications beyond the defence community. That means any AI project you’re involved with could be in the running to receive a nice cash boost.

DARPA is calling its campaign ‘AI Next’ and applications are now open. Previous similar initiatives from the agency have been wildly successful.

Back in 2004, DARPA held ‘Grand Challenges’ with a $2 million first-place prize. Challengers had to race autonomous vehicles.

In the first year’s race, there were no winners. Just a year later, five vehicles crossed the finishing line. The initiative was lauded for creating a huge leap for driverless cars.

Fast-forward three years and those vehicles were successfully navigating traffic as part of the ‘Urban Challenge’ by DARPA.

In fact, even Siri (yes, the one which may be on your iPhone right now) was first created in part from DARPA funding. We’re talking before it was acquired by Apple, back when it was developed by SRI in Menlo Park.

DARPA is looking to make a similar leap in artificial intelligence with its AI Next initiative. The agency is focusing on the ‘third wave’ of AI which adds “contextual reasoning” (otherwise known as common sense to most of us).

That means future AIs will be able to analyse scenarios they’ve not been specifically trained for, much like humans.

Beyond simply being able to recognise there’s a person stood on the beach with a bottle of water, for example, it could notice things such as sand on the knees and equipment lying around which suggests the individual is hydrating after a game of volleyball.

This category in DARPA’s initiative is aptly called ‘Machine Common Sense’. Others include ‘Learning with Less Labels’ which aims to reduce the cost of labelling data, and ‘Lifelong Learning Machines’ which focuses on machines’ ability to transfer what’s been learnt from one environment into another.

You can apply for the funding here if your project is suitable.

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As part of the multi-year initiative, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is set to invest more than $2bn in the programme.

In promo material for the programme, DARPA says AI Next will accelerate “the Third Wave” which enables machines to adapt to changing situations.

For instance, adaptive reasoning will enable computer algorithms to discern the difference between the use of ‘principal’ and ‘principle’ based on the analysis of surrounding words to help determine context.

Dr Steven Walker, Director of DARPA, said:

“Today, machines lack contextual reasoning capabilities and their training must cover every eventuality – which is not only costly – but ultimately impossible.

We want to explore how machines can acquire human-like communication and reasoning capabilities, with the ability to recognise new situations and environments and adapt to them.”

DARPA defines the first wave of AI as enabling “reasoning over narrowly defined problems,” but with a poor level of certainty. The second wave, it claims, enables “creating statistical models and training them on big data,” albeit with minimal reasoning.

Moving away from scripted responses is the next aim for AI. A survey conducted at the Joint Multi-Conference on Human-Level Artificial Intelligence found that 37 percent of respondents believe human-like artificial intelligence will be achieved within five to 10 years.

AI Next will also involve DARPA’s Artificial Intelligence Exploration (AIE) programme announced back in July.

AIE is DARPA’s initiative for the development of AI concepts that it considers high-risk, but high-payoff. The aim is to establish the feasibility of such projects within a one-and-a-half year timescale.

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