Pentagon lays out Department’s vision for Artificial Intelligence

News, US February 25, 2024 , by IRIA No Comments

U.S. Department of Defense artificial intelligence official laid out the Pentagon’s vision for AI that aims to scale digital analytics and artificial intelligence to ensure decision advantage for the warfighter.

Department of Defense Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer Dr. Craig Martell unveiled the Pentagon vision for AI during the three-day Advantage DOD 2024, a Defense Data and AI Symposium hosted by the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office in Washington.

Dr. Martell said during the symposium, “Imagine a world where combatant commanders can see everything they need to see to make strategic decisions… where those combatant commanders aren’t getting that information via PowerPoint or via emails from across the [organization] — the turnaround time for situational awareness shrinks from a day or two to 10 minutes.”

He highlighted that the Pentagon’s vision aims to build the foundation “to enable industry stakeholders and warfighters close to the tactical edge to leverage data and artificial intelligence to solve problems in an evolving landscape.”

U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks posted on her social media account on February 23, “Increasingly over the last dozen years, advances in machine learning have brought new generations of AI innovation. Much of it, happening outside government.”

Hicks added, “Our task in the Department of Defense is to adopt those innovations wherever they can add the most military value. These technologies give us even better decision advantage than we already have today.” She emphasized that it is “imperative given the pacing challenge” from China.

*^{Advantage DOD 2024: Defense Data and AI Symposium hosted by the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office in Washington, Feb. 20, 2024. (Image Credit: Twitter/@scale_AI)}*

Last year in November, the U.S. Department of Defense released a strategy to pace the adoption of advanced artificial intelligence capabilities to ensure that the American warfighters maintain decision superiority on the battlefield for years to come.

The Pentagon strategy defines an agile approach to AI development and application, highlighting speed of delivery and adoption at scale leading to five specific decision advantage outcomes:

Superior battlespace awareness and understanding 
Adaptive force planning and application 
Fast, precise, and resilient kill chains 
Resilient sustainment support 
Efficient enterprise business operations

The blueprint of the strategy also focuses on several data, analytics, and AI-related goals, including, investment in interoperable and federated infrastructure, advancing the data, analytics, and AI ecosystem, expanding digital talent management, improving foundational data management, delivering capabilities for the enterprise business and joint warfighting impact, and strengthening governance and eliminating policy barriers.

According to the Pentagon statement, these goals aim to support the “DOD AI Hierarchy of Needs” and improve quality data, governance, and responsible use of AI.

*^{An aerial view of the Pentagon. (Image Credit: U.S. Department of Defense/via Twitter)}*

The Pentagon’s chief digital and artificial intelligence officer said, “Winning for us is when everyone else thinks ‘I launched AI; I solved this data problem. I quickly leveraged data to build an analytical solution that solved my commander’s problem right away, and I have the tools, I have the infrastructure, I have the policies and I have the contract vehicles to deliver it.”