The Pentagon’s Chief Office of Digital and Artificial Intelligence today launched a new rapid deployment effort to launch a series of new initiatives aimed at accelerating the adoption of advanced artificial intelligence capabilities within the Department of Defense. Defense.
CDAO’s Artificial Intelligence Rapid Capabilities Cell, or AI RCC, will partner with the Defense Innovation Unit to run four initial Frontier AI pilots that will apply generative AI models to defense use cases. war and business management.
The pilot initiatives are part of the AI RCC’s broader efforts to capitalize on emerging technologies and put advanced AI capabilities in the hands of DOD warfighters and key enablers.
The department’s director of digital and artificial intelligence, Dr. Radha Plumb, who also holds a Ph.D. in economics, underscored the imperative for DOD to embrace AI by announcing the launch of new initiatives today.
“The United States and the American private sector, in particular, are at the forefront of artificial intelligence,” Plumb said. “At the same time, it is important to recognize that the adoption of AI by adversaries like China, Russia, Iran and North Korea is accelerating and poses a significant risk to national security. ”
In response, she said the Department of Defense is taking “a participatory approach” to ensure the United States continues to play a leadership role in AI adoption.
“America’s decisive and enduring advantage lies in the innovation inherent in the commercial sector and the Department’s ability to integrate it into our critical missions,” Plumb said.
Defense Innovation Unit Director Doug Beck said in a statement that the CDAO-DIU RCC AI partnership “will allow us to shape critical AI initiatives in a way that integrates standards , policies and requirements from the start.
“The result will help us scale technology faster and more reliably and will also help change the way the department thinks about software development and the pace of delivery for the future,” he said.
The AI RCC will accelerate and scale generative AI tools across 15 combat and enterprise management use cases, ranging from command and control and decision support to software development and cybersecurity .
These areas of focus are based on the findings of the Lima Task Force, which Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks established in August 2023 to develop, evaluate, recommend and monitor generative AI capabilities across the board. of the department. The working group will officially end with the creation of the AI RCC.
The Frontier AI pilots will address four of these use cases – two focused on warfare and two on business management – to demonstrate the impact of generative AI in defense applications.
As part of the pilot projects, CDAO will partner with combatant commands and DOD stakeholders to conduct progressive experiments using developing capabilities.
This is the first major effort to deploy cutting-edge AI to meet the needs of warfighters in real time.
In addition to the Frontier AI pilot projects, AI RCC will oversee key investments in the underlying infrastructure needed to accelerate the adoption of AI across the department, including the creation of digital “sandboxes” for enable testing and experimentation of AI on government networks.
AI RCC will also invest in rapid, user-centered experimentation using CDAO’s Global Information Dominance Experiment series to enable warfighters across combatant commands to test border AI models and provide real-time feedback to developers.
Additionally, Plumb announced today that CDAO will award $40 million in small business innovation research funding to non-traditional small businesses for innovative generative AI solutions.
For more information, see the press release on adopting AI capabilities. hereand the Artificial Intelligence Rapid Capabilities Cell fact sheet here.
