DARPA Chief Touts Artificial Intelligence Efforts

The United States is no laggard on investment and advances in artificial intelligence technologies, Steven Walker, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, told reporters on Thursday, disputing assertions by top U.S. technology executives that China was racing ahead. "I think I'd put our AI, our country's efforts, up against anybody," Walker said at an event hosted by the Defense Writers Group. DARPA "helped create the field in the early 1960s" and since then has consistently invested in the three waves of artificial intelligence technologies, Walker said. DARPA is "investing pretty heavily" in so-called third-wave AI systems, where machines understand the context and the environment in which they operate and are able to explain their reasoning and decision making to human operators, Walker said. "These are very nascent efforts but they're going to be important if you want the warfighter to trust the machine and help him or her make decisions."