Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Maulden-Entergy Chair and Donaghey Distinguished Professor of Information Science at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, has received a $5 million award to research and develop strategies to evaluate and defend against coordinated cognitive threats.
The award will fund research anddevelopment of artificial intelligence (AI)-informed socio-computational models to enhance situational awareness bydetecting, examining, evaluating, measuring, and predicting the cognitive threat level or impact of adversarial information campaigns. Unchecked online information environments can evolve rapidly, so that adversaries can take advantage of them to disrupt military operations through protests and other “non-lethal” resistance.
Agarwal, founding director of the Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS) Research Center at UA Little Rock, and his team will advance their groundbreaking work in understanding and mitigating cognitive threats in the digital age.
Agarwal said, “We need to develop scientific approaches to mitigate emerging cognitive threats in a global context, equip our warfighters with these capabilities, and strengthen community resiliency.”
AI-enhanced cognitive threats have already become a key element in conflicts between the U.S. and China. Agarwal highlighted, for instance, that misleading narratives in the Indo-Pacific region frequently paint a negative picture of the U.S. Adversaries aim to manipulate local opinions against U.S. forces by spreading falsehoods.
“Such influence operation tactics can be employed clandestinely in a low-cost, low-risk context. Military leaders can expect to encounter an increased volume of adversary-generated AI-amplified social media-driven information campaigns,” Agarwal mentioned. “Socio-cognitive threats are increasingly becoming – 1) a collective phenomenon and 2) multimedia-centric. This project aims to advance the state of socio-computational science and AI to mitigate AI-enhanced cognitive threats and strengthen community resiliency. The developed approaches will be validated and demonstrated in real-world use cases.”
The award was championed through support from U.S. Sen. John Boozman, who continues to be a strong advocate for the innovative, cutting-edge research taking place at UA Little Rock and COSMOS.
“I am pleased to support UA Little Rock and its Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies. This award recognizes the significance of this program to our national security,” Boozman said. “The important research conducted here will enhance our ability to counter the use of novel social media tactics by foreign extremists and terrorist groups threatening the United States and our allies.”
“We are extremely grateful for the support from UA Little Rock leadership and U.S. Sen. John Boozman for championing this vital research,” Agarwal said. “This funding helps COSMOS Research Center continue to develop analytical tools and capabilities to strengthen our national defense and security apparatus against cognitive threats.”
These models and their research will then be transitioned and incorporated into COSMOS’ software, such as BlogTracker and V(ideo)Tracker to help bring the developed models and techniques closer to the operational community.
This award also includes funding for training exercises for the U.S. on the changing domain in security of big data analytics, data management, machine learning, and AI with applications.
“The project helps create exciting opportunities for our students and research staff through exposure to real-world problems and stimulating them to develop science-based solutions,” Agarwal said. “This funding will also enhance COSMOS’ AI and high-performance computing infrastructure to scale up multimedia data analysis and sensemaking.”
The award is expected to fund around 15 graduate assistantships, several postdoctoral research fellowships, data engineers, and network administrators.
Students who work on the project will learn valuable skills in data, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and machine learning.
“Through these projects, we are training our students to be future-ready innovators to tackle real-world challenges,” Agarwal said. “These skills are highly transferable across any technology-driven environment. Even before graduation, COSMOS students receive job offers from top tech companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and many other Forbes 100 companies. For those pursuing academic careers, many secure tenure-track faculty positions at leading universities. Our groundbreaking research is not only advancing the disciplines of social computing and AI but also establishing COSMOS and UA Little Rock as leaders in innovation.”