The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced Monday a new initiative called Agile Teams, or A-Teams, focused on creating better collaboration between humans and machines for military applications. A-Teams will be focused less on developing specific artificial intelligence technologies and more on developing ways to “ensure optimal human-machine teamwork for solving dynamic problems,” said John Paschkewitz, DARPA program manager. In a press release. The goal of the program is to develop “generalizable mathematical abstractions” that can assist human teams in working together with computer analysis and other machine functions to make better and faster decisions in a combat environment. The program also anticipates hybrid machine-human solutions in areas such as “software engineering, logistics planning, advanced hardware engineering, and intelligence forecasting.” To this end, A-Teams is looking for participants who have expertise in “mathematics, organizational theory, operations research, planning and scheduling, cognitive science, human factors, autonomy, and citizen science,” states the release.
Amid NATO’s continued push to ramp up air defenses in Eastern Europe, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall swung by seven allied countries to boost relations last week, including those on Russia’s and Ukraine’s doorstep.