Three groups seek to automate how to assess enabling technologies, and weed-out false claims of capability

ARLINGTON, Va. – U.S. military researchers have awarded three contracts collectively worth nearly $12.6 million to automate how to determine if proposed new enabling technologies are worth pursuing, and how to weed-out false claims of capability.

Officials of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va., awarded contracts to Systems & Technology Research LLC (STR) in Woburn, Mass.; Georgia Tech Research Corp. in Atlanta; and The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore for the Scientific Feasibility (SciFy) project.

Measuring feasibility

SciFy seeks to develop computational methods that measure the feasibility of claims to assess the scientific content and value of proposed enabling technologies, and help determine the scientific feasibility of claims using automated reasoning to break claims down into verifiable parts.

STR won a $5.3 million SciFy contract last week; Georgia Tech Applied Research won a $3.9 million SciFy contract on 4 Dec. 2024; and Johns Hopkins won a $3.3 million SciFy contract on 4 Dec. 2024.

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Although attempts to automate how to assess technology is making progress, determining feasibility of advanced technologies like quantum computing often requires deep technical expertise, access to detailed information about the technology, and the ability to conduct testing or independent verification.

Overcoming these challenges requires developing new ways to review, reason, verify, and evaluate capability claims automatically -- especially in sensitive areas surrounding national security and defense, researchers say.

Manage and judge evidence

SciFy will produce methods that perform well beyond current automated fact-checkers, and develop sophisticated automated techniques to manage and judge evidence, ensuring that the synthesis and explanation of this evidence is efficient and reliable.

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SciFy has two technical areas: feasibility assessment; and test and evaluation. Feasibility assessment centers on breaking technology claims down to reasoning chains, and then evaluating those chains.

Test and evaluation seeks to produce gold-standard large sets of labelled content for use in technical evaluations. A critical component of evaluation involves using artificial intelligence (AI) for claim feasibility measurement.

For more information contact Systems & Technology Research online at https://str.us/visit-us/; Georgia Tech Research at https://gtrc.gatech.edu/gtarc/; Johns Hopkins University at https://engineering.jhu.edu; or DARPA at www.darpa.mil/program/scientific-feasibility.