“When you pull an organization that was a direct report to the deputy secretary or secretary and move it somewhere else…the message to the force is loud and clear: This isn’t a priority,” said retired Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, who founded the predecessor to the current Chief Digital & AI Office (CDAO).
The three new contracts come on top of last month’s equal award to OpenAI, bringing the Chief Digital & AI Officer’s investment in cutting-edge commercial “frontier AI” to a total of $800 million.
Michigan’s defense ecosystem and expertise makes it a special asset for production.
The contract expands the Army’s “Enterprise Large Language Model Workspace” — just introduced in May — to users at OSD, the Joint Staff, and combatant commands worldwide.
A new OpenAI initiative will also “consolidate” the company’s existing work with government clients like the Air Force Research Laboratory, NASA, Los Alamos and the Treasury Department.
Advana is an example – a mission-aligned data platform that integrates commercial innovation and defense-grade engineering.
Having grown to 100,000 users worldwide, the Pentagon’s favorite big-data analytics system now needs the legal authorities and budgetary stability of a formal Program Of Record, officials told Breaking Defense in an exclusive interview.
Cybersecurity skills must evolve in near-real time as Zero Day threats continue and AI provides new challenges.
The memo was signed on March 13 by Steven Morani, the acting assistant secretary of defense for sustainment.
This December, after 16 months of studies and experiments, the Department of Defense decided it had figured out enough guardrails for generative AI to start embracing the new technology wholesale.
While combat has seen a drone revolution, the US has made subtle but real advances in applying AI to military planning, intelligence, and “all domain” command and control.
DoD’s Chief Digital & AI Office bought Anduril’s Lattice Mesh to let frontline units share data without having to relay it through a central HQ. Now CDAO and Anduril are letting third parties build apps to run on Lattice Mesh, without having to go through Anduril.
The initial command and control gateway to earn a continuous Authority to Operate is changing multi-domain operations.
Taking over for Task Force Lima, the new AI Rapid Capabilities Cell (AIRCC, or “arc”) will test cutting-edge Large Language Models and other GenAI tools for everything from war planning to cybersecurity.
The Responsible Artificial Intelligence Toolkit — essentially an interactive online checklist on how to safely, ethically, and legally develop AI — will also be updated to incorporate last week’s National Security Memorandum from President Biden.
Davenport will serve as the fourth CDAO of the Department of the Air Force.
As her signature “Open DAGIR” initiative seeks to bring in smaller, innovative software firms, “we’ve got to be a lot more explicit” in contracting language to protect their intellectual property and data rights, said Chief Digital & AI Officer Radha Plumb.