DARPA seeks thinking computers

DARPA solicitation

Officials at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are hoping to find an individual or company that can develop a computer that thinks, a major stepping stone in the arena of artificial intelligence.

DARPA's Information Processing Technology Office is engaging in a program called Real-World Reasoning, the objective of which is to "explore and develop foundations, technology and tools to enable effective, practical automated reasoning of the scale and complexity required for computers to perform complex tasks in the real world requiring intelligence."

The solicitation says "real-world" machine reasoning requires the computer to infer information, not just accept input, on a level far more complex than what is used today.

Although the solicitation does not specify the amount that could be awarded, it does say the project is designed to last for five years.

The program intends to:

* Develop and demonstrate techniques that push the envelope of reasoning engines.

* Explore and demonstrate methods that extend the breadth of reasoning to deal with dynamic environments where information is uncertain and changing.

* Build embedded reasoning engines that can recognize the similarities among related and unrelated data.