I'll be moderating today's press briefing. Today it's my pleasure to introduce the director of the Department of Defense [Joint] Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), Lieutenant General Michael Groen. Lieutenant General Groan is joined today by Dr. Jane Pinelis, who is the Chief of Test and Evaluation for the JAIC, and Ms. Alka Patel, who is the Chief of Responsible AI (Artificial Intelligence). We'll begin today's press briefing with an opening statement followed by questions. We've got people out in the line. And I think we'll be able to get to everybody today. LIEUTENANT GENERAL MICHAEL S. GROEN: Thank you, Arlo. And greetings to the members of the Defense Press Corps, really glad to be here with you today. I hope many of you got the opportunity to listen in to at least some of the AI symposium and technology exchange that we had this week. This week, it was our second annual symposium. We have over 1,400 participants in three days of virtualized content. I want to say thank you, ...

The Defense Information Systems Agency awarded a $106 million contract to Deloitte Consulting to build the Pentagon's artificial intelligence hub's AI development platform, the U.S. Department of Defense announced Aug. 12. The company will "design and build" the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center's Joint Common Foundation, a capability that DoD AI leadership has stated will be integral in developing, testing and fielding AI capabilities. The contract has a one-year base period worth $31 million with three option years through August 2024. Work is scheduled to start Aug. 17, according to Lt. Cmdr. "The Joint Common Foundation will provide an AI development environment to test, validate and field AI capabilities at scale across the Department of Defense," Abrahamson said. "The impact of the JCF will come from enterprise‐wide access to AI tools and data for AI developers across the Department and its partners that will help synchronize AI projects, reduce development redundancy and enable the broad deployment of AI-enabled solutions to the tactical edge where front line operators can benefit from these capabilities."

We take a closer look into Booz Allen-Hamilton's massive artificial intelligence contract with the Pentagon and what it entails for both parties. Booz Allen-Hamilton is a global firm of approximately 26,300 diverse, passionate, and exceptional people driven to excel, do right, and realize positive change in everything that they do. They bring bold thinking and a desire to be the best in consulting, analytics, digital solutions, engineering, and cyber, and with industries ranging from defence to health to energy to international development. They celebrate and value diversity in all its forms; it's something that they truly value as a multicultural community of problem solvers. They believe in corporate and individual citizenship that make communities better places for all.

Science deals with knowledge of the material world based on objective reality. It is under constant attack by those who need magic, that is, concepts based on imagination and desire, with no basis in objective reality. A convenient target for such people is speculation on the machinery and method of operation of the human mind, questions that are still obscure in 1994. In The Emperor's New Mind, Roger Penrose attempts to look beyond objective reality for possible answers, using, in his argument, the theory that computers will never be able to duplicate the human experience. This article attempts to show where Penrose is in error by reviewing the evolution of men and computers and, based on this review, speculates about where computers might and might not imitate human perception.