This document discusses the Community of Interest (CoI) for Cognitive Assistants. The CoI aims to advance Cognitive Assistants in government and public sectors by sharing knowledge about challenges, research efforts, opportunities, and policies. Potential topics for the CoI include where Cognitive Assistants provide most value, goals for projects, assessment strategies, and specific domains. The CoI has established a website and held meetings with guest speakers. An upcoming symposium will include papers on use cases, human-assistant interaction, task allocation, adoption issues, training assistants, and technology developments.

1. Cognitive Assistants (Cog)
Community of Interest (CoI)
- A coalition of the willing to advance Cognitive
Assistants in government and public sector
Frank Stein
fstein@us.ibm.com
Version .2 July 21 2015
1

2. Purpose of the Cog-CoI
• To advance the scientific understanding and technical
creation of Cognitive Assistance computers as they pertain
to usage in the public sector. We hope to promote the
advancement in the field through the sharing of knowledge
about the challenges and needed research; current efforts
in the field; opportunities ; and policy and related topics.
2

3. Potential COG-COI Topics
• Where Cognitive Assistants will be of most value?
• What should be the goals of a Cognitive Assistant project?
• How to assess success?
• Assessing the dependability of Cog systems
• Implementation strategies: crawl, walk, run
• Specific Domains (professions we should cover)
• User adoption/trust
• How to train cognitive assistants?
• Verification and Validation rigor
• Special Topics, e.g, how Cogs can help with the demographic cliff?
• Policy issues of using Cogs9/10/2014 3Unclassified

4. Activities To Date:
• IBM, Mitre, and Naval Postgraduate School came together to create the
Cog-CoI
• Held Organizing Meeting in February, 2015
• Established a Community Website (send me a note to join)
• Held June Meeting with 2 Guest Speakers (Professors Tecuci/GMU and
Tremoulet/Drexel)
• Proposed a Track for AAAI Fall Symposium Series on Cognitive Assistance
– which was accepted
• Call for Papers is Open

5. Call For Papers for FSS – Nov 12-13,
Arlington, VA
• This symposium of the FSS-15 solicits innovative contributions to
the research, development and application of Cognitive
Assistance technology for use in Government (executive
agencies, legislative and judicial branches), military, police,
education, healthcare, and social services.
• The symposium will include presentations of accepted papers in
both oral and panel discussion formats. Short submissions can be
up to four (4) pages in length and describe speculative work, work
in progress, system demonstrations, or panel discussions
7/22/2015 5

6. Sample Topics
• Use case and usage scenarios
• Human/cognitive assistants (Cogs) interfaces, interaction, and human factors
• Best tasks to automate/employ Cogs, how to automate, how much to automate
• Techniques for allocating tasks between human and Cog team members
• User adoption issues, how to build trust in Cogs results/decisions, overcoming fears
• How to train/instruct Cogs
• Technology developments
• Results from early Cog R & D
• Metrics for cogs, test data, benchmarking performance, methodology for iterative improvement
• Mitigation of detrimental impacts of cogs (loss of situational awareness, human skill atrophy)
• Economics of Cognitive assistance systems
• Policy issues with using Cogs
7/22/2015 6

7. An Example:
Using Cognitive Technology to Mitigate Cognitive Disabilities
• The number of people dealing with cognitive decline has been increasing and is
expected to increase rapidly as baby boomers enter their later years. In addition, we
have a commitment to aid warfighters returning from combat assignments with post-
traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), and other conditions that
interfere with cognitive function. All of these individuals are having an unprecedented
impact on health care systems as well as on the lives and productivity of an estimated
27 million caregivers, mostly family caregivers.
• It is widely recognized that technology holds the key to mitigating the dementia care
crisis. These systems need to gather information about an individual’s normal behavioral
patterns, predict adverse events and identify potential interventions to prevent, minimize
or warn of unhealthy behaviors........
9/10/2014 Unclassified 7

8. For Further Information
• Call for Papers – On the Cognitive Systems Institute Linkedin site
• Or Contact fstein@us.ibm.com
7/22/2015 8