Pentagon hires Lyft machine learning expert Craig Martell as its first chief digital and AI officer - SiliconANGLE

The Department of Defense today announced that the Pentagon has hired Lyft Inc. head of machine learning Craig Martell as its first-ever chief digital and artificial intelligence officer. Martell will head up the DOD's Chief Digital and AI Office, which was created in December in order to centralize oversight of its data and AI initiatives under a single office in the Pentagon. As the person in charge of the CDAO, Martell will report directly to Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks. The CDAO launched with limited operational capability in February and is expected to achieve full operational capability by the end of June, FedScoop reported. He also has prior U.S. military experience thanks to his service as a tenured computer science professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, where he specialized in natural language processing.