Login
iscover
Algorithmic decision making could soon be integrated into challenging situations such as medical response prioritisation.
To continue reading the rest of this article, please log in.
Create free account to get unlimited news articles and more!
The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced it will develop algorithms for medical triage under its In The Moment (ITM) program.
The first phase of the program will look at triage for small military units in remote environments, while a second phase will look at decision making for mass casualty events.
If successful, the ITM program framework could also be adapted to other operational systems that rely on trusted decision-making algorithms where uncertainty, time pressure, and conflicting values create significant decision-making challenges.
Dr Matt Turek, DARPA In The Moment program manager and Information Innovation Office deputy director, said the program is separated into four technical areas with different teams.
“Key attributes might include how an algorithm evaluates a situation, how it relies on domain knowledge, how it responds to time pressures, and what principles or values it uses to prioritise care,” Dr Turek said.
“From a technical standpoint, difficult decisions made in medical triage will likely require approaches that do not rely primarily on training data for their implementation, as those approaches can be notoriously brittle.
“The triage domain allows us to get at core issues around trust and delegating decision making to go beyond the state of the art in AI.
“The focus on triage will encourage research teams to work directly on some of the hardest decision-making challenges possible.”
ITM advances will ultimately support fully automated and semi-automated decision making where humans can choose to override the algorithm, Dr Turek said.
DARPA has selected Raytheon BBN Technologies and Soar Technology to develop decision-maker characterisation techniques that identify and measure key human decision-maker attributes in difficult domains.
Kitware and Parallax staff will develop algorithmic decision-makers that demonstrate alignment with key attributes of trusted human decision-makers, while CACI International will design and execute the program evaluation by focusing on human attributes that lead to trusted decision making.
The University of Maryland Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security and the Institute for Defense Analyses will be responsible for policy/practice integration, outreach as well as ethical, legal, and societal implications experts.
