The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is testing the use of artificial intelligence for human-machine teaming operations for various applications such as ship identification, Defense One reported Wednesday.
Terry Busch, technical director for DIA’s Machine-Assisted Analytic Rapid-Repository System segment, said at a recent viewcast that the agency launched the experimental effort earlier this year to train analysts on leveraging AI-driven quantitative workflows to support national security missions.
As part of the experiment, DIA tested AI systems’ capacity to establish ship identification methodologies. Researchers then assessed the technology’s efficiency with less data, removing feed from the navigation infrastructure’s Automatic Identification System.
The end goal is to establish a machine-intelligence complementary system to human analysts, according to Busch.
“Once we began to take away sources, everyone was left with the same source material — which was numerous reports, generally social media, open source kinds of things, or references to the ship being in the United States — so everyone had access to the same data,” he said. “The difference was that the machine, and those responsible for doing the machine learning, took far less risk — in confidence — than the humans did.”