A project launched by the Pentagon's chief artificial intelligence office in response to the coronavirus pandemic has provided several lessons to help in a pivot toward developing AI tools for war. The Joint Artificial Intelligence Center's COVID-19 project, called Project Salus, delivered AI tools to leaders at U.S. Northern Command, with which they predicted shortfalls in food and medical supplies. With Project Salus, the JAIC focused on quick development and delivery of the tools -- an effort that has taught several lessons as the center moves forward with its joint war-fighting effort and as its acting director pushes the organization to become "the world's best software company." "With Project Salus, one of the key things that we pivoted on was the ability for us very quickly -- in a couple weeks -- to get a base product that really didn't have a great looking [user interface] or other pieces there, but had the core functionality in the hands of NORTHCOM leaders," JAIC acting Director Nand Mulchandani said at a Sept. 10 news conference. The leaders provides "feedback on what was working and not working," Mulchandani added.

A report released today by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) shows the Trump administration is proposing to increase non-defense R&D spending on artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum information science by 30% next year, taking the total to $2.2 billion. The news comes against a backdrop of heightened tensions between the United States and China over a range of technology issues, including a U.S. move to force popular Chinese-owned social media app TikTok to sell its American operations and another to frustrate the international expansion efforts of Chinese telecoms giants such as Huawei. Both countries see AI and quantum information science, which includes quantum computing and quantum-encrypted communications, as central to their future military and economic success. Military investment in AI and quantum science has been rising for some time. Speaking at a recent Forbes CIO event, Dana Deasy, the CIO of the U.S. Department of Defense, noted that battlefield commanders will need help with processing the mountains of data flowing into them in any future conflicts.

The Defense Department has officially adopted a set of principles to ensure ethical artificial intelligence adoption, but much work is needed on the implementation front, senior DOD tech officials told reporters Feb. 24. The five principles [see sidebar], which are based on the recommendations of the Defense Innovation Board's 15-month study on the matter, represent a first step and generalized intentions around AI use and adoption including being responsible, equitable, traceable, reliable, and governable. DOD released the principles during a news briefing Feb. 24. Those AI ethical guidelines will likely be woven into a little bit of everything, like cyber, from data collection to testing, DOD CIO Dana Deasy told reporters. "We need to be very thoughtful about where that data is coming from, what was the genesis of that data, how was that data previously being used and you can end up in a state of [unintentional] bias and therefore create an algorithmic outcome that is different than what you're actually intending," Deasy said.

The Department of Defense issued an unclassified summary Tuesday of its strategy for the accelerated adoption of artificial intelligence for military applications. Then-Deputy Secretary Patrick Shanahan approved the classified strategy in June 2018. The summary further details many things DOD has revealed since last June, like the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), which is the focal point of the strategy. The unclassified document emphasizes the "urgency, scale, and unity of effort" needed to make AI transformational both for the DOD and the nation. In that respect, CIO Dana Deasy told reporters Tuesday, it works in step nicely with the AI executive order President Donald Trump issued Monday, introducing the administration's plan for American leadership in the development of artificial intelligence.

In the 1960s, the Department of Defense began shoveling money towards a small group of researchers with a then-fringe idea: making machines intelligent. Military money played a central role in establishing a new science--artificial intelligence. Sixty years later, the Pentagon believes AI has matured enough to become a central plank of America's national security. On Tuesday, the department released an unclassified version of its AI strategy, which calls for rapid adoption of AI in all aspects of the US military. The plan depends on the Pentagon working closely with the tech industry to source the algorithms and cloud computing power needed to run AI projects.

Defense Department CIO Dana Deasy said today that DoD is currently sorting through the FY 2019 budget allocation for the new Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), and likely will be creating outposts for JAIC to spur outreach to members of academia. "We're currently sorting through the FY19 budget for this key priority, and we recognize that this is a major importance to the Department, and there are several significant challenges we need to overcome to ensure we move this with speed and agility," Deasy said today at an event organized by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association. JAIC, which was stood up by DoD in late June, promises to speed the delivery of AI capabilities to the warfighter. Not much has been said of the structure of JAIC since that time, but today Deasy provided more detail on the location for JAIC, which will include separate remote "capabilities" to fuel outreach to academic institutions. "Right now, it's going to be stood up in the Pentagon, and will also be a hub and spoke model that will connect with some of the best and brightest universities across the U.S.," Deasy said.

The move to adopt commercial, enterprise cloud capabilities has dominated discussion in 2018 around the Department of Defense's modernization efforts. But according to new CIO Dana Deasy, cloud services are just a piece of the foundation for DOD's plans to make artificial intelligence "the agent of transformation." Deasy said the Pentagon is embarking on the third wave of AI, when "computers will no longer be seen as tools but instead as a partner." "As artificial intelligence matures, we must redefine the role of computers in warfighting. So how exactly will computers be seen as our partner? Casual reasoning, performance robustness, and ever brain control or prosthetic limbs, just to name a few examples," he said, speaking extensively about DOD's AI initiatives at the DoDIIS Worldwide conference in Omaha, Nebraska earlier this month.

The U.S. Army may establish an artificial intelligence task force over the next 90 days in an effort to help develop needed expertise and better prepare for the service for the future of warfare, says Lt. Gen. Bruce Crawford, USA, Army chief information officer. The service also is creating a cloud computing advisory board. Gen. Crawford mentioned the potential task force during the AFCEA TechNet Augusta conference in Augusta, Georgia. He tied the task force to the Defense Department's creation of an Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), an effort being led by the department's CIO, Dana Deasy. "Our leadership across the department, in response to the National Defense Strategy, is in the process of standing up a joint AI center," told the conference audience.

Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan last Wednesday issued a memorandum that officially establishes the Defense Department's (DoD) new Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), confirming statements made by Secretary James Mattis and other DoD officials in April that a center to house DoD's roughly 600 AI projects was forthcoming. The JAIC will be established and guided by DoD CIO Dana Deasy "with the overarching goal of accelerating the delivery of AI-enabled capabilities, scaling the Department-wide impact of AI, and synchronizing DoD AI activities to expand Joint Force advantages," Shanahan said. The director of the JAIC will report directly to Deasy. The goal for the JAIC is to enable DoD's various components "to swiftly introduce new capabilities and effectively experiment with new operational concepts in support of DoD's warfighting missions and business functions," Shannon said. The first step in the establishment of the JAIC tasks Deasy with reporting back within 30 days with an initial list of national mission initiatives – "large-scale efforts to apply AI to a cluster of closely related, urgent, joint challenges" – to be launched within the next 90 days, proposed resource allocations for fiscal years 2018 and 2019, and personnel requirements.

At JPMorgan, a learning machine is parsing financial deals that once kept legal teams busy for thousands of hours. The program, called COIN, for Contract Intelligence, does the mind-numbing job of interpreting commercial-loan agreements that, until the project went online in June, consumed 360,000 hours of lawyers' time annually. The software reviews documents in seconds, is less error-prone and never asks for vacation. While the financial industry has long touted its technological innovations, a new era of automation is now in overdrive as cheap computing power converges with fears of losing customers to startups. Made possible by investments in machine learning and a new private cloud network, COIN is just the start for the biggest U.S. bank.