Situational Understanding in the Human and the Machine

Abstract

The Air Force research programs envision developing AI technologies that will ensure battlespace dominance, by radical increases in the speed of battlespace understanding and decision-making. In the last half century, advances in AI have been concentrated in the area of machine learning. Recent experimental findings and insights in systems neuroscience, the biophysics of cognition, and other disciplines provide converging results that set the stage for technologies of machine understanding and machine-augmented Situational Understanding. This paper will review some of the key ideas and results in the literature, and outline new suggestions. We define situational understanding and the distinctions between understanding and awareness, consider examples of how understanding—or lack of it—manifest in performance, and review hypotheses concerning the underlying neuronal mechanisms. Suggestions for further R&D are motivated by these hypotheses and are centered on the notions of Active Inference and Virtual Associative Networks.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Dec 23, 2021
Source ID
10.3389/fnsys.2021.786252

Entities

People

  • Raj Malhotra
  • Yan M. Yufik

Tags

Readers

  • Systems Analysis and Design
  • Team-Based Human-Centered Cognitive Task Decision Making and Information Performance.
  • Theoretical Analysis.

Technology Areas

  • AI & ML
  • AI & ML - DoD AI Strategy
  • Biotechnology