> DARPA ANNOUNCES RESEARCH INITIATIVE IN COGNITIVE SYSTEMS
> 
> The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) today announced a new 
> research initiative in the field of cognitive systems, releasing a Broad 
> Agency Announcement (BAA) seeking innovative research proposals.
> 
> The DARPA Cognitive Information Processing Technology Initiative will 
> develop the next generation of computational systems with radically new 
> capabilities. "Cognitive systems" will demonstrate levels of autonomy and 
> reasoning far beyond those of today's systems. With the ability to reason, 
> learn and adapt, and with facilities for self-awareness, these will 
> literally be systems that know what they're doing.
> http://www.darpa.mil/body/NewsItems/pdf/iptorelease.pdf


Someone actually sent this to me a couple days ago, though I hadn't
gotten around to posting it to the list yet.  I was actually very
pleased to see that the wording of the announcement suggested that the
author has a fairly deep understanding of the real problems and issues. 
Even in the nominal AI community, I sometimes wonder if people really
understand the underlying issues, but these DARPA fellas seem to "get
it".

It looks quite interesting, and I've been mulling over some possible
proposals myself.

-James Rogers
 jamesr@best.com