Enabling Understanding of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Agent Wargaming Decisions Through Visualizations

Abstract

The process to develop options for military planning course of action (COA) development and analysis relies on human subject matter expertise. Analyzing COAs requires examining several factors and understanding complex interactions and dependencies associated with actions, reactions, proposed counteractions, and multiple reasonable outcomes. In Fiscal Year 2021, the Institute for Systems Engineering Research team completed efforts resulting in a wargaming maritime framework capable of training an artificial intelligence (AI) agent with deep reinforcement learning (DRL) techniques within a maritime scenario where the AI agent credibly competes against blue agents in gameplay. However, a limitation of using DRL for agent training relates to the transparency of how the AI agent makes decisions. If leaders were to rely on AI agents for COA development or analysis, they would want to understand those decisions. In or-der to support increased understanding, researchers engaged with stakeholders to determine visualization requirements and developed initial prototypes for stakeholder feedback in order to support increased understanding of AI-generated decisions and recommendations. This report describes the prototype visualizations developed to support the use case of a mission planner and an AI agent trainer. The prototypes include training results charts, heat map visualizations of agent paths, weight matrix visualizations, and ablation testing graphs.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 01, 2024
Accession Number
AD1226301

Entities

People

  • Christina H. Rinaudo
  • Christopher Morey
  • Jaylen E. Hopson
  • Robert Hilborn
  • Theresa R. Coumbe
  • William B. Leonard

Organizations

  • Engineer Research and Development Center

Tags

Readers

  • Geospatial Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence Analytics
  • Systems Analysis and Design
  • Team-Based Human-Centered Cognitive Task Decision Making and Information Performance.

Technology Areas

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