Scientific Colloquium
May 20, 2011


"Scientific Challenges Faced by the Intelligence Community"

In October 2007, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) was established so that the intelligence community would have an organization whose sole mission is to invest in high-risk/high-payoff research programs that have the potential to provide the U.S. with an overwhelming intelligence advantage over future adversaries. In this talk, I will describe some of the scientific challenges faced by our community, which range from novel sensors to quantum computing to dealing with massive volumes of disparate and errorful data.

I will then focus on a challenge that is particularly important to our community but which is prevalent in other communities as well, including research communities in general – that of cognitive bias. Examples of cognitive bias include confirmation bias, which is the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions; and anchoring bias, which is the tendency to rely too heavily, or "anchor," on one trait or piece of information, not because of its accuracy but rather because of its clarity, magnitude, or effect, or because it is the first piece of information that one receives on the subject. I will discuss two different research programs at IARPA that are attempting to address the problem of cognitive bias in two different ways. One program is leveraging emerging insights from neuroscience research to build predictive computational brain models that capture human sensemaking and bias behaviors. Another program is seeking to dramatically improve the accuracy and timeliness of forecasts for a broad range of event types, through the development of advanced techniques that elicit, weight, and combine the judgments of many intelligence analysts.

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