Pentagon reaches important waypoint in long journey toward adopting ‘responsible AI’

The Pentagon’s new 47-page responsible AI implementation plan will inform its work to sort through the incredibly thorny known and unknown issues that could come with fully integrating intelligent machines into military operations. FedScoop spoke with more than a half dozen experts and current and former DOD officials to discuss the nuances within this foundational policy document and their takeaways about the road ahead.

“I’ll be interested in how this pathway plays out in practice,” Megan Lamberth, associate fellow in the Center for a New American Security’s Technology and National Security Program, noted in an interview.

“Considering this implementation pathway as a next step in the Department’s RAI process — and not the end — then I think [its] lines of effort begin to provide some specificity to the department’s AI approach,” she said. “There’s more of an understanding of which offices in the Pentagon have the most skin in the game right now.”

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“I like that the department is recognizing that emerging and future applications of AI may require an updated pathway or different kinds of oversight,” Lamberth noted.

In her view, all the categories under each line of effort “cover quite a bit of ground.”

One calls for the creation of a DOD-wide central repository of “exemplary AI use cases,” for instance. Others concentrate on procurement processes and system lifecycles, as well as what Lamberth deemed “much-needed talent” initiatives, like developing a mechanism to identify and track AI expertise and completely staffing the CDAO.

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