Demystifying the Black Box That Is AI

When Jason Matheny joined the U.S. Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) as a program manager in 2009, he made a habit of chatting to the organization's research analysts. "What do you need?" he would ask, and the answer was always the same: a way to make more accurate predictions. "What if we made you an artificially intelligent computer model that forecasts real-world events such as political instability, weapons tests and disease outbreaks?" The analysts' response was enthusiastic, except for one crucial caveat. "It came down to whether they could explain the model to a decision maker--like the secretary of Defense," says Matheny, who is now IARPA's director.