Lt. Gen. Michael Groen, director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) and a 2021 Wash100 Award recipient, said that artificial intelligence's first cyber defense aspect begins with network security, DOD News reported Friday. The Department of Defense is shifting its mindset on networks and architecture because these play a significant role in warfighting and must be treated as weapons, Groen said at a cybersecurity summit. "We have to plan to protect them, make them resilient because everything that we're going to do in an artificial intelligence or data-driven way will depend on the security [of] those networks," he added. JAIC is working with the U.S. Cyber Command on various efforts to apply AI in network protection--a mission that Groen expects to expand rapidly in the coming years. But to adopt AI integration in the military, he said the department will field through an "incremental approach" by using AI to address small-scale issues first and later on develop other AI-backed strategies to improve processes in the service.

Jason Wang, technical director of the National Security Agency's Computer and Analytic Sciences Research Group, said he predicts the intelligence community will need artificial intelligence to protect U.S. networks in the future. Wang said at a virtual event on July 12th that intelligence community components need to pursue more partnerships to maximize capabilities against adversaries, according to an article published by NSA. "At the NSA, with most of our industry and academic counterparts, our journey started in this area of natural language processing and computer vision -- applying capabilities like machine transcription, machine translation … to our mission," he stated. Wang said NSA has been working to mature these foundational AI applications to support core missions, including the agency's cybersecurity triage mission.

The National Science Foundation has launched a program that seeks to use artificial intelligence-based technologies for early disease outbreak detection to help contain transmission and prevent pandemics like the ongoing one, FedScoop reported Wednesday. The Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention program is focused on research into algorithms that are needed for the development of AI systems for pandemic forecasting. Katharina Dittmar, program director of the Environmental Biology Division at NSF, said intelligent prediction needs new AI models that are capable of identifying the biological and sociological causes of pathogen emergence. "We all recognize from the past year, from our experience that our approach to this continued challenge must really evolve away from crisis response during discrete outbreaks toward a sustained and integrated cycle of intelligent prediction, preparation, response and recovery," said Dittmar. NSF has hosted four workshops in support of the PIPP initiative since February.

The FBI has released a guidance aimed at helping cybersecurity professionals and the general public identify cases of "deepfake" which adversaries may use to dissuade public opinion. FBI released the Private Industry Notification guidance on Wednesday in partnership with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). According to the guidance, foreign actors are likely to use synthetic content including deepfakes in the coming months as part of influence campaigns and social engineering tactics. Deepfakes or generative adversarial network techniques utilize artificial intelligence and machine learning to manipulate digital content for fraudulent activities. FBI expects malicious actors to use deepfakes to support spearphishing techniques and Business Identity Compromise attacks designed to imitate corporate personas and authority figures.

Deloitte AI Institute announced Monday a new partnership with Chatterbox Labs to develop Model Insights for Trustworthy AI, a Deloitte-branded product that will assist organizations address artificial intelligence (AI) ethics by monitoring, updating, and validating clients' AI models. Through our collaboration with Chatterbox Labs, our Model Insights technology solution can help our clients put the Trustworthy AI framework into action and mitigate the ethical risks associated with AI," commented Beena Ammanath, executive director of Deloitte AI Institute. Deloitte discovered in its "State of AI in the Enterprise" third edition study of AI adopters that 95% of respondents were concerned about ethical implications. In response to the survey, Deloitte created its Trustworthy AI framework, which will guide clients on how to use AI in their business models responsibly and effectively. Model Insights will recognize immediate insights and unaccounted for biases which will allow clients to be sure their AI models are ethical and fair. Deloitte's Model Insights solution is built on Artificial Intelligence Model Insights (AIMI) from Chatterbox Labs. This patented platform delivers data and insights into enterprise AI models, enabling organizations to validate and understand their AI initiatives and ensure they are operating fairly and ethically. "Our collaboration with the Deloitte AI Institute will provide Deloitte clients with deep insights into how their AI models are operating so that they can mitigate ethical risks and validate their systems are trustworthy and fair," said Danny Coleman, CEO of Chatterbox Labs. Deloitte and Chatterbox's collaboration can impact a wide variety of organizations that are rapidly adopting AI technology, such as financial services, government, public sector, life sciences and healthcare. Model Insights for Trustworthy AI could provide those organizations with a deep AI experience with an ethical framework. "Rapid developments in AI have unlocked incredible opportunities for organizations globally.

The Department of Energy's (DoE) Artificial Intelligence and Technology Office (AITO) has developed the First Five Consortium, which was formed in response to the White House Executive Forum focused on Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response, the department reported on Tuesday. "AITO is proud to lead on getting near real-time information into the hands of our First Responders," said Cheryl Ingstad, director of AITO. "This will allow them to save more lives and protect assets and our nation's resources." DoE's First Five Consortium has been co-chaired with Microsoft Corporation, to unify industry, government, non-profit and academia to develop solutions that will improve the impact mitigation of natural disasters within the nation. Microsoft recently established a critical infrastructure team to help advance systems, services, and functions essential to the operation of society and the economy.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded a $6 million contract for the Competency Aware Machine Learning (CAML) program to Raytheon, the company announced on Monday. The contract is to facilitate communication conditions where machine learning systems from CAML can communicate to human operators what they have learned about a situation, under what conditions the machines absorbed information the best, and the situations when the learned strategies are most appropriate. This could address the problem of Machine Learning systems needing human decision assistance in combat situations. "The CAML system turns tools into partners…Once the system has developed these skills, the team will apply it to a simulated search and rescue mission. Users will create the conditions surrounding the mission, while the system will make recommendations and give users information about its competence in those particular conditions," said Ilana Heintz, principal investigator for CAML at Raytheon BBN Technologies.

Will Hurd, R-Texas as well as a two-time Wash100 Award recipient, and Robin Kelly, D-Ill., have put out a white paper discussing the future relevance of artificial intelligence in the country's workforce and education. Hurd and Kelly worked with the Bipartisan Policy Center to develop the "AI and the Workforce" report, the first of four white papers in a series of AI-focused strategic documents, Hurd's office said Thursday. "AI is the future of the world's economy, and we want to ensure that every American worker has the opportunity to thrive in an AI-driven economy," said Hurd. The report tackles how the U.S. may incorporate AI curricula into the country's education system in support of workforce needs in the emerging field. The government will release the other three white papers in weeks to come.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released a new strategy to help expand the application of artificial intelligence in its missions. The NOAA AI strategy sets five goals to improve coordination, understanding, application and awareness of AI across the agency and one of the goals is establishing efficient organizational processes and structure to advance AI. There are five supporting objectives for the first goal, including the establishment of an AI center or a similar entity to facilitate coordination of AI research, data acquisition and algorithm development, among others. The second goal calls for the advancement of AI research and innovation in support of the agency's mission. One of the supporting objectives is establishing an annual research and development competition for AI applications in environmental science.

Dana Deasy, chief information officer at the Department of Defense, announced on Monday the launch of a new strategy that aims to migrate storage and computing operations to the cloud. The DoD Cloud Strategy "addresses what we're trying to do, … the problems we're trying to solve and the objectives [we want to meet]," Deasy said in a statement published Monday. Deasy, a 2019 Wash100 winner, discussed how the new initiative will help advance the adoption of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud platform, ensure cybersecurity and implement digital modernization efforts, including the development of artificial intelligence-based applications. "By having an enterprise cloud, it's what we put on top of it -- in this case, artificial intelligence -- [so] it's almost a fundamental imperative to have a cloud in place to do great things with AI," he said. Dana Deasy will be featured as a keynote speaker during Potomac Officers Club's upcoming Artificial Intelligence Summit on February 13th at the Hilton-McLean in McLean, Va.