Namaste Yogis. Welcome to the Blockchain & AI Forum, where your technology questions are answered! Here no question is too mundane. As a bonus, a proverb is also included. Today’s question, comes from Susan in Irvine and she ask how are DARPA, Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) and Nvidia all connected?
Susan, you came to the right place. As a wealth manager I know you have a fiduciary duty to maintain current on investable technology on behalf of your clients. Around 1990 a new technology was on the horizon–the internet–and it created trillions in new wealth! Artificial intelligence (AI) is on a similar trajectory. However, AI is not well understood–yet. Let’s take a moment to acquaint ourselves with AI from the perspective of DARPA. In hindsight, DARPAs XAI program could have been used to foresee a tremendous investment opportunity—Nvidia the advanced computer chip maker essential to the AI business.
DARPA is an acronym that stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA is part of the Department of Defense (DoD) and its mission is development of emerging technologies for military use. DARPA created the internet in the late 1960s to facilitate control and command of military communications. Under DARPA leadership, the US military maintains technological superiority over all other nations.
In 2015 DARPA released an article titled, Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356781652_DARPA_’s_explainable_AI_XAI_program_A_retrospective Remember the XAI project was undertaken in 2015–years before the public had access to ChatGPT and other similar products. Let’s examine the research findings.
According to DARPA in 2015, “…dramatic success in machine learning will lead to numerous AI applications. It appears AI will eventually produce autonomous systems that will perceive, learn, decide, and act on their own”, DARPA predicted. However, DARPA was concerned the effectiveness of AI systems would be stymied unless and until machines can creditably explain their decisions and actions to human users. Holy transparency, Batman! Therefore, the XAI program was intended to create a suite of machine learning techniques that would:
- Produce more explainable models, while maintaining a high level of learning performance (prediction accuracy); and
- Enable human users to understand, appropriately trust, and effectively manage the emerging generation of artificially intelligent partners.
XAI program was focused on the development of multiple systems by addressing challenges in two areas:
- machine learning problems to classify events based on multimedia data
- machine learning problems to construct decision policies for an autonomous system to perform a variety of simulated missions
DARPA selected these two areas because both represented major operational challenges. The first relates to classification and reinforcement learning and the second is centered on intelligence analysis and autonomous systems. In other words, DARPA was working on building AI machines that understand the context and environment in which they operate, and over time allow them to characterize real world phenomena precisely and in real time. Basically, DAPRA was developing AI-Gen 2 before the public had access to AI-Gen 1! Holy Explainable AI, Batman!
DARPA released XAI seven public findings of the XAI program and kept an unknown number of classified secret findings! LOL. Holy keep it on the down-low, Batman! LOL!
- Users prefer systems that include explanations rather than just answers (no surprise)
- To improve end results the task must be sufficiently difficult that the XAI explanation helps (makes sense)
- User cognitive load to interpret explanations can hinder user performance (in other words there are times when too much explanation is a negative)
- XAI is more helpful in edge cases
- Explanation effectiveness can change over time
- XAI combined with an advisor helps (no kidding, LOL)
- XAI is effective for aligning mental models
What’s are the two takeaways? Obviously, DARPA did not leak military secrets on the internet and only disclosed the minimum. However, DARPA did leave an interesting information trail in 2015 that had we followed it, could have been a monster opportunity. The XAI 2015 article was a glimpse into the future and we might have forecasted the rise of Nvidia. Holy unicorn, Batman! Nvidia stock has since soared, and we could have, should have…
I end with a Russian proverb: trust but verify!
Until next time,
Yogi Nelson
Blockchain & AI Forum 