DS&T AND OUSD(I) Launch "Xpress" Automated Analysis Challenge

WASHINGTON – The Intelligence Community is sponsoring a $500,000 prize competition to explore artificial intelligence approaches that would transform the process by which analysts currently support policymakers and warfighters through the research and generation of written products. The Office of the Director of Science and Technology within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence--in partnership with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence--is launching its first challenge contest, "Xpress," to explore AI-based opportunities for generating analytic products that surpass those crafted by traditional, highly-trained IC analysts. Leveraging private-sector momentum in this area will help ensure that the IC continues to employ cutting-edge methodologies and tools to quickly warn and inform policymakers in an ever more demanding and complex global environment. "Given the pace and breadth of international activity, the IC's analytic community is increasingly challenged to provide policymakers and warfighters with timely information and analysis on a growing number of targets and issues," said Dr. David Isaacson, DS&T program manager for the challenge. "Xpress serves a critical role in exploring the potential for'machine analytics' to enhance existing IC support to our nation's decision makers, ultimately paving the way for analytic production to occur on a timeline and scale that IC analysts and their customers can scarcely imagine today."