The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) released a new program Guaranteeing AI Robustness against Deception (GARD) to aid Artificial Intelligence (AI) developers in testing their models’ defenses against attacks. A team of large technology players from academia and industry, including IBM, MITRE, University of Chicago and Google Research collaborated to make a set of open source testing tools. The tools, ranging from a virtual evaluation testbed, a benchmark dataset, and “test dummies” help identify vulnerabilities in AI systems and make systems more robust against an increasingly complex range of attacks. The growing field of Machine Learning (ML) enables a large range of opportunities for societal and technological growth, but […]

The following is a guest blog post from Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council member Kathleen Fisher (Tufts University). Going to DARPA as a Program Manager (PM) is a great opportunity to make a difference by creating and managing a program much bigger in scope than what an individual faculty member can do at a university. Other PMs are talented and innovative thinkers who come from a broad range of backgrounds. Exposure to them and to the range of problems DARPA is reckoning with can be eye-opening. In the following paragraphs, I describe my experiences serving as a PM to convey a sense of what the job is like and why […]

The Biden administration today appointed Stefanie Tompkins to run the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as its 23rd Director. DARPA is a $3.5 billion a year research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense, whose mission is to make pivotal investments in breakthrough technologies for national security. From the press release:  “With nearly eleven years of DARPA service under her belt, Tompkins, a former military intelligence officer in the U.S. Army, has an exceptional understanding of the agency’s culture. From 2007 through 2017, she held multiple positions, including program manager and deputy director of the Strategic Technology Office, a systems-oriented technical office; DARPA chief of staff; […]

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is broadening its commitment to young scientists through a new Information Innovation Office (I2O) PostDoc Fellowship Program focused on postdoctoral researchers in the field of computer science with grants sized to support each fellow for up to two years.  Participation is open to individuals who are U.S. Citizens or U.S. Permanent Residents (1) who received a PhD degree no earlier than June 2019; or (2) will receive a PhD prior to the start date of this award; and (3) will be appointed to a postdoctoral position at a U.S. institution of higher education during the 2021-22 academic year. This I2O RA is specifically […]

The following is a guest blog from Sarita V. Adve from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Ratislav Bodik and Luis Ceze from the University of Washington, co-organizers of the DARPA ISAT I-USHER study. We are pleased to share the results of a DARPA ISAT study, I-USHER: Interfaces to Unlock the Specialized HardwarE Revolution, arguing for new hardware/software interfaces to enable the revolution promised by hardware specialization. Advances in hardware specialization are expected to deliver several orders of magnitude improvements in performance, cost, and energy efficiency over the next decade, bringing the promise of revolutionizing applications in datacenters to invisible computing.  To harness the power of this new class […]

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) just released a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) on Machine Common Sense (MCS) with a December 18, 2018, response date. DARPA is soliciting innovative research proposals in the area of machine common sense to enable Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications to understand new situations, monitor the reasonableness of their actions, communicate more effectively with people, and transfer learning to new domains. Proposed research should investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances in science, devices, or systems. Machine common sense has long been a critical—but missing—component of AI. Recent advances in machine learning have resulted in exciting new capabilities, but machine reasoning remains narrow and highly specialized. Developers must carefully train or […]