Today’s machine learning systems are restricted by their inability to continuously learn or adapt as they encounter new situations; their programs are fixed after training, leaving them unable to react to new, unforeseen circumstances once they are fielded. Adding new information to cover programming deficits overwrites the existing training set. With current technology, this requires taking the system offline and retraining it on a dataset that incorporates the new information. It is a long and arduous process that DARPA’s Lifelong Learning Machines (L2M) program is working to overcome.
“The L2M program’s prime objective is to develop systems that can learn continuously during execution and become increasingly expert while performing tasks, are subject to safety limits, and capable of applying previous skills and knowledge to new situations, without forgetting previous learning,” said Dr. Hava Siegelmann, program manager in DARPA’s Information Innovation Office (I2O). “Though complex, it is an area where we are making significant progress.”
First announced in 2017, L2M is over a year into research and development of next generation AI systems and their components, as well as learning mechanisms in biological organisms capable of translation into computational processes. L2M supports a large base of 30 performer groups via grants and contracts of different duration and size.