Deep neural networks are being mustered by U.S. military researchers to marshal new technology forces on the Internet of Battlefield Things. U.S. Army and industry researchers said this week they have developed a "confidence metric" for assessing the reliability of AI and machine learning algorithms used in deep neural networks. The metric seeks to boost reliability by limiting predictions based strictly on the system's training. The goal is to develop AI-based systems that are less prone to deception when presented with information beyond their training. SRI International has been working since 2018 with the Army Research Laboratory as part of the service's Internet of Battlefield of Things Collaborative Research Alliance.

Internet of Things (IoT) technologies have made considerable recent advances in commercial applications, prompting new research on their use in military applications. Towards the development of an Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT), capable of leveraging mixed commercial and military technologies, several unique challenges of the tactical environment present themselves. These challenges include development of methods for: (I) quickly gathering training data reflecting unforeseen learning/classification tasks; (II) incrementally learning over real-time data streams; (III) management of limited network bandwidth and connectivity between IoBT assets in data gathering and classification tasks. This paper provides a survey over classical and modern statistical learning theory, and how numerical optimization can be used to solve corresponding mathematical problems. The objective of this paper is to encourage the IoT and machine learning research communities to revisit the underlying mathematical underpinnings of stream-based learning, as applicable to IoBT-based systems.