Summary
The Autonomy Standards and Ideals with Military Operational Values (ASIMOV) program aims to develop benchmarks to objectively and quantitatively measure the ethical difficulty of future autonomy use cases and readiness of autonomous systems to perform in those use cases within the context of military operational values.
The rapid development and impending ubiquity of autonomy and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies across both civilian and military applications require a robust and quantitative framework to measure and evaluate not only the technical, but, perhaps more importantly, the ethical ability of autonomous systems as they emerge beyond research and development. To that end, ASIMOV will tackle this challenge through the development and virtual demonstration of quantitative autonomy benchmarks.
ASIMOV is not developing autonomous systems or algorithms for autonomous systems.
The ASIMOV program will include an ethical, legal, and societal implications group to advise performers and provide guidance throughout the program.
The ASIMOV program intends to create the ethical autonomy common language to enable the Developmental Testing/Operational Testing (DT/OT) community to meaningfully evaluate the ethical difficulty of specific military scenarios and the ability of autonomous systems to perform ethically within those scenarios. ASIMOV performers will need to develop prototype generative modeling environments to rapidly explore scenario iterations and variability across a spectrum of increasing ethical difficulties. If successful, ASIMOV will build the foundation for defining the benchmark with which future autonomous systems may be gauged.
ASIMOV defines the term "military operational values" as the principles, standards, or qualities that are considered important and guide the actions and decisions of military personnel during operational activities.
Adherence to the commander's intent is a key facet of ASIMOV's development. Nonetheless, DARPA envisions that the quantitative approach ASIMOV strives to achieve will have a broader impact throughout the autonomy community.