Reduce the warfighters’ cognitive burden

Abstract

As the DoD and Military acquisitions shift the paradigm from antiquated software capabilities to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities, they need to ensure key infrastructure (big data and knowledge artifacts) is also mature enough to handle the transition. Before any organizations or domains develop or adopt a strategy based on AI, ML, or any other form of intelligent system, they need to do a self-assessment that answers three key questions. How well does your organization/domain share knowledge? What is the state of your data? Do you understand the cognitive requirements? Answering and understanding these questions is the key to knowing where you are now (point A) so you can take actionable and progressive steps towards where you want to go (point B) to make your organization or domain AI-capable. To provide the answers and/or a path to solving the questions above we execute a Mission Engineering (ME) process that analyzes the organization’s or domain’s state of readiness. The ME process is a detailed analysis that provides an assessment of how the people, systems, knowledge, data, and processes are aligned to the operational outcomes. ME adds a layer of operational viability to existing engineering processes with the goal of ensuring the program enhances knowledge sharing, reduces cognitive burdens, and increases semantic understanding.