Work and Winnefeld discuss the Pentagon's "Third Offset" Strategy, and delve into the military applications and ethical dimensions of technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum science. They also review the Defense Department's transition from focusing on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency to great power competition. Work, now the Distinguished Senior Fellow for Defense and National Security at the Center for a New American Security, explains how Russia and China are developing a range of technologies in an effort to leapfrog the U.S. in the military realm. Military applications of new technologies: "We don't know how AI and 5G and quantum and synthetic biology, we don't know how they are all going to go to work. But they all have the capabilities to provide a step function in the way we fight wars. And the competitor who gets there first is going to have an enormous advantage. This is a time of enormous foment inside the department. The stakes associated with AI: "[T]he competition in AI is a central one in great power competition between China and Russia. AI will reflect the values of the competitors. Whereas we want to protect human privacy, we want to protect human dignity, we want to make sure that our use of AI is ethical and moral and consistent with our laws, an authoritarian regime might not do it that way." On competition with Russia and China: "This is not a time where we can really afford to waste the time we have. We believe that the Chinese and the Russians are really pressing us in the military sphere. They've had 18 years of kind of coming after us while we've been focused on counterterrorism. And so they've closed the gap to an uncomfortable degree.

Having metrics for IT also means you can look at how your partners and systems are performing, as well as improving internal work geared around bots and Robotic Process Automation (RPA). RPA and bots are techniques that must have guidance from data to ensure they work correctly. Advanced automation is reliant on a quality data feedback loop. Systems of intelligence can provide this. "Especially with RPA, you need to have that type of information and insight to make sure you're focusing on the right internal behaviors, metrics and capabilities," Polit said.

Editor's note: this post was co-authored by Ben Lorica and Roger Magoulas IM offers a thoughtful take on recent developments, including a critical, and sometimes skeptical, view when necessary. True AI has been "just around the corner" for 60 years, so why should O'Reilly start covering AI in a big way now? As computing power catches up to scientific and engineering ambitions, and as our ability to learn directly from sensory signals -- i.e., big data -- increases, intelligent systems are having a real and widespread impact. Every Internet user benefits from these systems today -- they sort our email, plan our journeys, answer our questions, and protect us from fraudsters. And, with the Internet of Things, these system have already started to keep our houses and offices comfortable and well-lit, our data centers running more efficiently, our industrial processes humming, and even are driving our cars.