The Department of Defense is currently eyeing the expansion of artificial intelligence usage for its military operations, reported Government Technology. The office responsible for AI programs is looking for ways to incorporate such tools instead of developing them from scratch.
Combining military efforts with AI is expected to help the office become a “catalyst for success for others,” said Marine Corps Lieutenant General Michael Groen, who is the second director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC).
He added, “What we’re trying to do is generate scale across the department to transform the department in three primary ways: transform the warfighting aspects of the department, transform the support enterprises in the department… and then transform the business practices.”
The Center, which was established in 2018, has a total of $290.7 million in budgets for the fiscal year of 2021. It seeks to aid military agencies and their respective service enter deals with artificial intelligence developers.
According to Groen, the 2021 Pentagon policy bill “makes it possible now for us to bring in a broader base of tech community actors.” The new policy also seeks to reel in the services of “small innovative companies that might not have a chance” instead of only big companies.
In a report by C4isnet, Groen is quoted saying, “One of the things we’ve discovered is the problems across the department that we can solve through AI, they cluster – meaning you can… reuse algorithms across different applications.”
Regarding the success of JAIC, DoD CIO Dana Deasy remarked in November, “[It’s] when people will say, ‘Was that data run through JAIC? Did those algorithms get pushed out today through JAIC? Did you guys go to JAIC and put that in the library? Did you go and look at the integration solutions from JAIC?’’
As per Deasy’s comment cited by C4isnet, the success of the Center banks on the public’s recognition of JAIC and its data and services. Particularly, the use of the Center’s data in research and development.
In order to achieve this goal, Deasy and Groen revealed that the Center is currently working with research firm Deloitte through a $106 million grant. The grant will be used to create the Joint Common Foundation (JCF), a central repository for all related data.
Groen remarked that the JCF seeks to become a database where staff can enter their data, and with the help of JAIC, it will be labeled, curated, and entered into algorithm storage and catalog.
