The Pentagon has tapped artificial intelligence ethics and research expert Diane Staheli to lead the Responsible AI (RAI) Division of its new Chief Digital and AI Office (CDAO), FedScoop confirmed on Tuesday. In this role, Staheli will help steer the Defense Department's development and application of policies, practices, standards and metrics for buying and building AI that is trustworthy and accountable. She enters the position nearly nine months after DOD's first AI ethics lead exited the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), and in the midst of a broad restructuring of the Pentagon's main AI-associated components under the CDAO. "[Staheli] has significant experience in military-oriented research and development environments, and is a contributing member of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence AI Assurance working group," Sarah Flaherty, CDAO's public affairs officer, told FedScoop. Advanced computer-driven systems use AI to perform tasks that generally require some human intelligence.

Early AI began with a variety of tasks such as checkers and chess, speech recognition, language translation, and solving word problems. Over the years it has progressed to give us automated vacuum cleaners, robot dogs, Siri and Alexa, image recognizers, Chess and Go world masters, self-driving cars, and self-guided drones. These technologies have powerful impacts on Naval operations and warfighting as well. AI has the potential to revolutionize military technology, capability and operations. The possibilities have raised many speculations about what AI is capable of and whether it can be trusted.

Paravision has been awarded a Basic Ordering Agreement (BOA) to provide the artificial intelligence expertise it has acquired in developing facial recognition and computer vision algorithms to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). Under the agreement, Paravision will support the DoD Joint Artificial Intelligence Center's (JAIC's) Data Readiness for Artificial Intelligence Development (DRAID) program. The company will contribute its expertise in complex AI systems and machine learning models, and in particular those with what the company refers to as'rigorous data requirements.' JAIC's DRAID program has a total value of up to $241 million, according to the company announcement. The selection process by JAIC centered AI ethics, Paravision says, pointing to its ethics committee and low false non-match rates across demographics in NIST face biometrics testing.

The Department of Defense's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center recently launched new AI education pilots for thousands of DOD employees that range from executive education for general officers to in-depth coding bootcamps. The most recent cohort of participants started taking an "AI 101" course in early February through a partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology while another recently entered an AI coding bootcamp. The range of educational offerings from the AI-accelerator is designed to eventually be transitioned to other DOD institutions for tens or even hundreds of thousands of people to learn about AI, Greg Allen, the JAIC's head of policy and strategy, told FedScoop. "We are running training pilots to really test," Allen said. "We partner with the broader department of defense … to help them deliver education materiel at scale."

The Department of Defense is considering organizational changes designed to create a more integrated approach to data and artificial intelligence, including the creation of a Chief Data and Artificial Intelligence Officer. If the reorganization occurs, the CDAO will oversee several pre-existing offices, including the office of the Chief Data Officer, the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, and the Defense Digital Service. Consolidated oversight through creating an empowered CDAO could help ensure DoD has the tools it needs to excel and ensure U.S. defense innovation leadership moving forward. Technology leadership requires data and AI leadership, and right now DoD's data and AI efforts are splintered. For example, according to Govini, a decision science company based in Virginia, at least 15 separate institutions within DoD invest to some extent in artificial intelligence, AI adjacent technologies, foundational enabling capabilities for AI, or programs that use AI during development.

Hassan Tetteh has one of the coolest-sounding jobs in medicine. His official title is Warfighter Health Mission Chief for the Department of Defense Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. The Pentagon established the JAIC, or "Jake" as he pronounces it, in 2018 to ensure that America's combat operations don't fall behind rivals in using machine learning to enhance troop readiness, cybersecurity, joint maneuvers and "lethality." Dr. Tetteh, 49, heads the JAIC's health mission. A decorated Navy captain, he's also a cardiothoracic surgeon who has deployed in Afghanistan and on warships in the Persian Gulf as well as at Walter Reed hospital.

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.

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.

The Department of Defense Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) is continuing to operationalize Responsible Artificial Intelligence with the announcement of a pilot of a procurement review process that will ensure AI acquired by the JAIC is aligned with DoD's AI Ethics Principles. The DoD AI Ethics Principles, along with operational commitments, are outlined in the recently issued memorandum on implementing responsible AI. Responsible AI Institute will support the pilot. "The development of a tactical responsible AI procurement process is essential for creating the necessary safeguards aligned with our AI Ethics Principles and further implement against the responsible AI tenants set forth by the Deputy Secretary of Defense," says Alka Patel, Chief of Responsible AI at the JAIC. The Responsible AI Procurement pilot is part of a holistic approach that focuses not only on the technology but also on organizational operating structures and culture to advance Responsible AI within the DoD.

The Pentagon sees artificial intelligence as a way to outfox, outmaneuver, and dominate future adversaries. But the brittle nature of AI means that without due care, the technology could perhaps hand enemies a new way to attack. The Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, created by the Pentagon to help the US military make use of AI, recently formed a unit to collect, vet, and distribute open source and industry machine learning models to groups across the Department of Defense. A machine learning "red team," known as the Test and Evaluation Group, will probe pretrained models for weaknesses. Another cybersecurity team examines AI code and data for hidden vulnerabilities.