Asking a chatbot for help on any number of issues has become part of daily life for many. But today’s query-based AI tools built on large language models (LLMs) are limited to responding to questions users ask.
These tools can pull queried info from a database, but they can’t automatically push insightful and contextualized knowledge to help a user complete a task without being asked.
DARPA’s Knowledge Management at Scale and Speed (KMASS) program, which kicked off in 2022 and recently held its final principal investigator meeting, has developed a variety of new tools that can automatically ingest knowledge sources and disseminate specific “nuggets” of info relevant to a workflow — whether the user requests the knowledge or not — exactly when needed, while avoiding irrelevant or already known information. This personalized knowledge sharing concept is a core tenet of KMASS referred to as “JustINs” — i.e., just in time, just enough, and just for me.
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“Using LLMs is like casting a magical spell; you need to find the right words to get the model to do what you want. Popular LLMs give you a haystack of info to search through when you ask a question, whereas KMASS will push the needle in the haystack to you as you’re working on a task, even if you don’t know the right question to ask,” said Matthew Marge, a leading AI expert at DARPA and KMASS program manager. “KMASS overcomes the input/output knowledge bottleneck, which occurs when knowledge producers don’t have easy ways to document knowledge and knowledge consumers don’t have easy ways to get at that knowledge.”
Source: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
