The Joint Artificial Intelligence Center is looking for AI test and evaluation services to support the Defense Department and "the entire U.S. government," according to a new request for proposal posted Feb. 11. The JAIC, through Army Contracting Command-Rock Island, intends to award multiple blanket purchase agreements for AI testing and evaluation services. The contract has a ceiling of more than $249 million, according to a question and answer document posted along with the RFP. Offers on the solicitation are due March 5. Jane Pinelis, the JAIC's testing and evaluation chief, said the contract and another forthcoming multi-award contract for data readiness assessments will help connect DOD components to industry partners with readily available services facilitating AI adoption. Data readiness has been one of the biggest impediments thwarting fielding of AI in DOD, she said.

Artificial intelligence is the new oil, and the governments or the countries that get the best datasets will unquestionably develop the best AI, the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center's chief technology officer said Oct. 15. Speaking on a panel about AI superpowers at the Politico AI Summit, Nand Mulchandani said AI is a very large technology and industry. "It's not a single, monolithic technology," he said. "It's a collection of algorithms, technologies, etc., all cobbled together to call AI." The United States has access to global datasets, and that's why global partnerships are so incredibly important, he said, noting the Defense Department launched the AI partnership for defense at the JAIC recently to have access to global datasets with partners, which gives DOD a natural advantage in building these systems at scale.

While the U.S. has lacked central organizing of its AI, it has an advantage in its flexible tech industry, said Nand Mulchandani, the acting director of the U.S. Department of Defense Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. Mulchandani is skeptical of China's efforts at "civil-military fusion," saying that governments are rarely able to direct early stage technology development. Tensions over how to accelerate AI are driven by the prospect of a tech cold war between the U.S. and China, amid improving Chinese innovation and access to both capital and top foreign researchers. "They've learned by studying our playbook," said Elsa B. Kania of the Center for a New American Security. "Many commentators in Washington and Beijing have accepted the fact that we are in a new type of Cold War," said Ulrik Vestergaard Knudsen, deputy secretary general of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which is leading efforts to develop global AI cooperation.

The Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) is the Department of Defense's lead organization for accelerating the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) across the services. And it's a critical role, as top leaders believe AI will eventually impact every warfighting domain, even every mission, the DOD undertakes. With NPS faculty and students currently teaching and researching varied AI concepts and applications, and translating them into future naval capabilities, the university is deeply embedded in advancing the technology and the DOD's AI workforce. With this role in mind, NPS hosted two of the JAIC's most senior leaders, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. John N.T. "Jack" Shanahan, the inaugural and former Director, and Nand Mulchandani, the current Chief Technology Officer, to speak to students, faculty and staff about their experiences organizing efforts to develop artificial intelligence (AI) projects on a DOD scale during NPS' latest virtual Secretary of the Navy Guest Lecture (SGL), held Oct. 13. Shanahan and Mulchandani are the latest high-profile leaders to participate in the virtual SGL series, following the likes of retired Adm. Mike Mullen, Army Gen. Keith B. Alexander and retired Navy Vice Adm. Jan E. Tighe, and retired Adm. William McRaven.

WASHINGTON: China may lead the world in some aspects of artificial intelligence, such as surveillance and censorship. But in the ways that matter most for future warfare, "the US is still ahead compared to China [in terms of] sophistication and breadth," says the acting director of the Pentagon's Joint AI Center. "The question becomes, how can we quickly adopt this and bring this into the DoD?" Nand Mulchandani asked. It's not the US Department of Defense that's leading the world on AI – although there are definitely some clever coders in the DoD – but American companies, which have invested massively in cutting-edge techniques driven by such mundane missions as targeting online advertising. "[We're] absorbing and wielding it, as opposed to building it from scratch," he said, and that's a big advantage.

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.

WASHINGTON – The leader of the Pentagon's artificial intelligence hub said Tuesday that he wants the office to become the "world's best software company." Nand Mulchandani, acting director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, said he wants the DoD to be in a place where service members can write lines of code quickly to do a specific task, receive an authorization to operate quickly and perform the function and throw the code away. If that's the case "we will have won the next war," he said, "because that level of agility and insight and reconfigurability is where we want to be. "We'll be the world's best software company; we happen to be in the military business," Mulchandani said, said on a webinar hosted by the Institute for Security and Technology. The cornerstone of the JAIC's work is the Joint Common Foundation, a recently awarded platform that's designed to provide common artificial intelligence tools and datasets across the Defense Department in an effort to knock down silos.

NSWC is committed to its Sailors and the deliberate development of their tactical excellence, ethics, and leadership as the nation's premiere maritime special operations force supporting the National Defense Strategy. It is the maritime component of U.S. Special Operations Command, and its mission is to provide maritime special operations forces to conduct full-spectrum operations, unilaterally or with partners, to support national objectives. NAVAL AMPHIBIOUS BASE CORONADO (NNS) – Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) Acting Director Nand Mulchandani met with leadership at Naval Special Warfare Command (NSWC) to discuss its strategy on applying AI for asymmetric advantage both on the Corporate side as well as AI for Warfare. Mulchandani and a small team from the JAIC visited the command as part of its mission to transform the DoD by applying AI to achieve mission impact at scale. The group was briefed on the basics of Naval Special Warfare's mission, Mulchandani met with command leadership and members of NSWC's Future Concepts and Innovation Directorate (N9) to discuss how AI is shaping the battlefield of today and how it can provide an asymmetric advantage to future operations.

The Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center is focused on overlaying artificial intelligence tools on the military's mega information-sharing platform effort, called Joint All Domain Command and Control. Nand Mulchandani, JAIC's acting director, told reporters during a July 8 news briefing the center is "spending a lot of time and resources focused on building the AI components on top of JADC2," which is a patchwork quilt of platforms to improve coordination and information sharing. This involves figuring out how to build AI components, such as data, AI modeling, training and deployment, across all domains including cyber, he said. Mulchandani said JAIC is also investing in cognitive assistance technologies, helping human operators make better decisions, using "predictive analytics or picking out particular things of interest, and those types of information overload cleanup." Working through objections to the Defense Department's use of AI in weapons systems is still a chief concern, however.

Joint AI Center (JAIC) acting director Nand Mulchandani said one of JAIC's first lethal AI projects is proceeding into a testing phase now. The JAIC was founded in 2018 to act as the Pentagon's leader in all things AI, and initially focused on non-lethal forms. Mulchandani shared few specifics, but called the project "tactical edge AI" that will involve full human control and likened it to JAIC's "flagship product" for joint warfighting operations. "It is true that many of the products we work on will go into weapons systems. None of them right now are going to be autonomous weapon systems, we're still governed by 3000.09," he said.