NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and computing giant IBM plan to use artificial intelligence (AI) tech to improve climate change research, according to an announcement IBM posted on Feb. 1. Under the new partnership, NASA and IBM will create AI foundation models to analyze petabytes of text and remote-sensing data to make it easier to build AI applications tailored to specific climate change questions and tasks. "We hope these models will make information and knowledge more accessible to everyone and encourage people to build applications that make it easier to use our datasets to make discoveries and decisions based on the latest science," said Rahul Ramachandran, a senior research scientist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Foundational AI models can ingest massive amounts of raw data and find their underlying structure without explicit instruction. NASA is currently sitting on 70 petabytes of earth science data – a number expected to quadruple this year and into 2024 with future mission launches.

Federal agencies and their Federal Systems Integrator (FSI) partners are considering how to tap into artificial intelligence (AI) to advance their missions. The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence is calling on Federal leaders to double research and development spending on AI, to $32 billion by Fiscal Year 2026. As with any new technology, there is uncertainty on the best way to move from pilot projects in the lab to fully implemented production solutions. MeriTalk recently sat down with Bob Venero, CEO of Future Tech Enterprise, Inc., to talk about how agencies and FSI's can overcome barriers to get AI programs up and running quickly, and contribute to mission success. MeriTalk: We know Federal agencies are dipping their toes into using emerging technology including AI and machine learning (ML) to support a wide range of projects.

For today's warfighters, it's imperative to have access to the latest technology at the blink of an eye to ensure mission success and warfighter safety. To meet the challenge of equipping today's warfighters with mission-critical information, milCloud 2.0 is stepping up to provide the technology that is vital to that effort. On Wednesday July 22, General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT), Intel, Oracle, and MeriTalk will be hosting a webinar, "milCloud 2.0: Leveraging the Latest Tech for the Mission" to educate mission partners about the latest milCloud 2.0 capabilities and technologies, as well as how the platform helps support rapid innovation in mission-critical areas including artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), cyber sensing, and other emerging technology solutions. The July 22 webinar – the second in a series of four – will help organizations maximize milCloud 2.0 capabilities, and will dive into: The digital conversation will be led by three preeminent subject matter experts: Senior Director for Oracle Public Sector Lauren Farese; Cloud Services Portfolio Lead for milCloud 2.0 at GDIT Jeffrey Phelan; and Chief Enterprise Solution Architect at Intel Darren Pulsipher. Managed by the Defense Information Systems Agency and operated by GDIT, milCloud 2.0 connects commercial cloud service offerings to Defense Department (DoD) networks.

As the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) continues exploring emerging technologies for the Department of Defense, it's considering the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) to tackle electric grid cybersecurity and get ahead of 5G deployment. "In the area of cyber operations, we have a program RADICS [Rapid Attack Detection, Isolation and Characterization Systems], which is designed to help recover critical portions of the power grid in the event of a full blackout caused by malware," Scherlis explained. The program partners with power companies, the National Guard, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Energy to enable a "black start" recovery, a restart to the electric grid without external power, in the event of a cyberattack. Scherlis mentioned the program in context of AI, but the program is generally building new tech to accelerate recovery through improved situational awareness, network isolation, and the ability to adapt to changing cyber situations. "The idea of this program is how can we understand what is the state of affairs in the grid and incrementally restore service, purge the malware, and bring service back to the most critical assets and then stage that out beyond. They've done a number of field trials," Scherlis added.

The U.S. Army is seeing success in implementing machine learning (ML)-- evidenced by improved classification of previously unknown data by 20 percent-- and is developing a workforce culture where artificial intelligence (AI) adoption is possible. Speaking during the AI Experience 2020 Webcast, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Financial Information Management John Bergin spoke about how embracing shifting attitudes from top-level leadership, bringing the right team and tools together, and adopting a fail-fast mentality are vital to ML adoption. "We have to ground ourselves in some common starting point," Bergin said. Bergin said that ML and reskilling the workforce to use AI work together to improve the Army's classification of data, adding that it's up to leadership to guide the workforce through the changes. You have to train the algorithm," Bergin said, emphasizing the role humans play in adopting AI.

The US federal government is investing heavily in research on quantum computing, and AI is helping to boost the development. The White House is pushing to add an additional billion dollars to fund AI research that would increase AI R&D funding research to nearly $2 billion and quantum computing research to about $860 million over the next two years, according to an account in TechCrunch on Feb. 7. This is in addition to the $625 million investment in National Quantum Information Science Research Centers announced by the Department of Energy's (DoE) Office of Science in January, following from the National quantum Initiative Act, according to an account in MeriTalk. "The purpose of these centers will be to push the current state-of-the-art science and technology toward realizing the full potential of quantum-based applications, from computing, to communication, to sensing," the announcement stated. The centers are expected to work across multiple technical areas of interest, including quantum communication, computing, devices, applications, and foundries.

The new year promises abundant potential for advancement across the broad swath of Federal government IT. Industry leaders shared their predictions for 2020 and beyond with MeriTalk, indicating the path to progress will often track uphill, and around plenty of curves. The big Federal IT issues for 2020 proper? How about multi-cloud architecture, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) adoption, 5G mobile and related security implications, and workforce upskilling, just to name a few. Asked to jump two years into the future and identify the biggest Federal IT areas we should have been looking at more closely in 2020, many of the broader security and infrastructure themes run in a similar vein.

Federal artificial intelligence (AI) technology leaders agreed today that a human-centered approach to data management and automation generates stakeholder buy-in and improves agencywide perceptions of AI projects. At CXO Tech Forum: AI and Robotics Process Automation (RPA) in Government on Dec. 5, government officials speaking on several panels emphasized the importance of human-centered design in the development of AI capabilities. Anil Tilbe, Director of Enterprise Measurement and Design at the Veterans Experience Office (VEO), said that human-centered design is "extremely important" in AI development. "Using human-centered design, you're prioritizing human intelligence," he said. At VEO, Tilbe and his team are using information gathered from veterans and Veterans Affairs employees to build the AI environment.

While many – if not most – Federal agencies are taking at least preliminary steps towards embracing advanced technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), they are moving with a degree of justifiable caution when it comes to relying on those technologies as part of their cybersecurity defenses, government tech officials said today at an event presented by Fortinet. The measured pace of AI and ML for security purposes is tied to the crucial nature of the cybersecurity mission, panelists said. Frank Konieczny, Chief Technology Officer at the U.S. Air Force, said that ML tech in particular requires establishing baselines for access and security to be sure that adversaries are not already impacting relevant data. And, he said, resulting data outputs from ML applications can still be somewhat opaque, and need to be examined more closely by human operators. "You ask, 'how did it figure that one out,'" he said, adding that process results in "a lot of time … by a human looking at [the result] again, which we don't want to do."

The latest research from MeriTalk finds what while artificial technology (AI) development is viewed by many in government and industry as still in the blush of youth, the technology is poised to rapidly outgrow its present suit of clothes. The research project – conducted by MeriTalk and underwritten by Pure Storage – polled government and industry executives and IT decision makers at this summer's AI World Government event, who said among other top-line findings that hybrid cloud infrastructure is a key enabler for AI adoption, and that the military and intelligence agencies are expected to lead Federal government's push into AI tech adoption. We sat down last week with Nick Psaki, Federal CTO at Pure Storage, to get his thoughts on the research results, and his longer-term outlook on how AI adoption is likely to gain momentum in the coming years before becoming an ultimately ubiquitous technology layer that will leave an indelible mark on society. MeriTalk: In examining the AI study results, what are the most important findings for Federal government officials that are currently undertaking AI or robotic process automation (RPA), or are considering doing so? Psaki: Two things jump out – the current feelings about AI maturity, and then the time to breakthrough to mission-critical tasks. On the first one, if you add respondents who said AI development is between "a little" (42 percent) and "moderately" (48 percent) mature, combined that's a big number (90 percent).