Page 26 - Australian Defence Magazine Feb-Mar 2023

26 DEFENCE BUSINESS AIR 6500
FEBRUARY-MARCH 2023 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
AOS GROUP DRIVES AI INNOVATION
Melbourne-based Agent Oriented Software’s (AOS’s) innovative AI technology forms a vital part of Northrop Grumman Australia’s (NGA) submission to Air 6500, with the company’s AI providing the intelligent decision support for NGA’s JABMS (Joint Air Battle Management System).
EWEN LEVICK | MELBOURNE
DEFENCE
AOS’S origins date back to the 1990s, when it emerged from the Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute, the Melbourne arm of the Stanford Research Institute. AOS soon found its niche working on air-combat modelling for the Defence Science and Technology Group (then DSTO). In this environment, AOS continued the Insti- tute’s research into the novel concept of Beliefs, De- sires & Intentions or BDI, intelligent software agents. AOS released its first BDI agent platform, named JACK, in 1997 and continued collaborating with DSTO and the UK Ministry of Defence with the development of C-BDI, AOS’s new intelligent software agent platform written in C++.
BDI intelligent software agents are an example of sym- bolic AI, which is based on formal logic, sometimes re- ferred to as “top-down” AI. This is contrasted with pattern- matching approaches, such as deep neural networks or machine learning, described as “bottom-up” AI.
Top-down AI, being based on formal logic, offers explain- ability. The BDI agents’ reasoning comes from the execution of their plans, which are understandable to subject matter experts, not just software engineers. This allows the experts to inspect the intelligent agents’ reasoning as it is executed by tracing their intentions, beliefs and goals (or desires). With the addition of a query engine, C-BDI has a powerful ex- plainability capability, in contrast to bottom-up approaches.