Craig Martel, the Pentagon's chief digital and artificial intelligence officer, spoke with the department and others at the opening of the three-day Advantage DoD 2024: Defense Data and AI Symposium, hosted by the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office in Washington. Addressed stakeholders from across the industry.
“Imagine a world where combatant commanders can see everything they need to see to make strategic decisions,” Martel said, painting the audience a picture of an AI-enabled future. “Imagine a world where combatant commanders couldn’t get that information through PowerPoint or emails from all over the world. [organization] — Reduce situational awareness time from 1-2 minutes to 10 minutes. ”
Martell, who has a doctorate in computer and information science, was appointed to the department position in 2022. Before he joined the Department of Defense, he served as head of machine learning for ride-hailing platform Lyft.
Realizing this vision means building a foundation that will enable industry players and warfighters near the tactical edge to leverage data and artificial intelligence to solve problems in an evolving landscape. He said that it should be done.
In November, the Department of Defense announced a strategy to accelerate the deployment of advanced artificial intelligence capabilities to help U.S. warfighters maintain a superior battlefield decision edge for years to come.
This strategy defines an agile approach to AI development and application, with a focus on large-scale adoption and speed of adoption, delivering five specific decision-making benefits:
- Superior battlefield awareness and understanding
- Planning and applying adaptability
- Fast, accurate, resilient kill chain
- Resilient and sustained support
- Efficient corporate business operations
This blueprint also trains the department to focus on several data, analytics, and AI-related goals.
- Invest in interoperable federation infrastructure
- Evolving your data, analytics, and AI ecosystem
- Expanding digital talent management
- Improve basic data management
- Provide capabilities for enterprise business and joint warfighting impact
- Strengthen governance and remove policy barriers
Taken together, these goals support the “DoD AI Needs Hierarchy” defined in the strategy. This is high-quality data, governance, insightful analytics and metrics, assurance and responsible AI.
In his speech today, Martell said CDAO's focused baseline needs are key to enabling warfighters to harness the power of AI.
“Our victory is that everyone else thinks, ‘I launched AI, I launched AI.’ We solved this data problem. “I leveraged it to build an analytical solution that immediately solved the commander's problem. I have the tools, I have the infrastructure, I have the policy, and I have the contracting means to make it happen,” he said. Ta. “That's a win.”