About $1.95M to Smart Information Flow Technologies — how AI behaves on meeting situations unseen in training (DARPA, phase 1)

1The phrase open world

Open-world novelty means meeting a situation that was not anticipated at the time of training. Rather than performing within a fixed range, the subject is what happens on stepping outside it.

A model is strong on inputs close to what it learned and weak on inputs far from them. In actual use the outside of what was anticipated always turns up. Whether a system breaks there, or notices and changes how it behaves, is a question separate from a performance figure. This research takes that as its subject.

2The stage is written into the name

The description states plainly that this is the base, phase 1. A research plan proceeds in stages, with a contract cut per stage.

Dividing into stages allows a decision on whether to continue after seeing interim results. In the record, though, one piece of research appears as several contracts. Judging the scale of the research from the amount alone understates it.

3An outlay ratio of 15.0 percent

Obligations are about $1,953,923 and outlays about $292,627, a ratio of 15.0 percent. The period ran from 2019-11-18 to 2023-05-18, 3.5 years, and has ended.

Across the 222 federal spending records this site holds as of 2026-09-01, 130 of the 155 awarded by the Department of Defense show zero outlays. Records like this one carrying a non-zero value are a minority. Whether a value appears in the outlay field turns more on the reporting arrangement than on the state of the contract.