The director of the Department of Defense's artificial intelligence clearinghouse hopes a new initiative will help combatant commands better make use of the department's data. The new Artificial Intelligence and Data Accelerator, or AIDA, is housed within the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. "We're just now discovering what is the state of our data. Everybody loves to say that the Department of Defense has all kinds of data. Most of it's crap," Lt. Gen. Michael Groen, director of the JAIC, said during a pre-recorded interview shared at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit.

Congress signaled its confidence in the Pentagon's young artificial intelligence office through a series of measures to increases its standing in the agency, including giving its director acquisition authority. The annual defense policy bill, called the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, would alter the reporting structure of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, raising the office to report directly to the deputy secretary of defense, instead of the department's chief information officer. The bill, which still needs President Donald Trump's approval, establishes a board of advisers to give the center strategic advice and technical expertise on AI matters. The measures to bolster the importance of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center come as the organization pivots from focusing on artificial intelligence projects to identifying and solving problems within the services using AI. The JAIC was established in 2018 to increase the adoption of AI across the Pentagon.