The Pentagon is looking to the industry regarding how to
better test and evaluate artificial intelligence products in the pipeline to
ensure safety and effectiveness.
In a request for information this week, the Pentagon’s
Joint Artificial Intelligence Center(JAIC), seeks input on cutting-edge testing
and evaluation capabilities to support the “full spectrum” of the Defense
Department’s emerging AI technologies including:
- Machine learning,
- Deep learning &
- Neural networks
Stated Objectives:
- The Pentagon wants to augment the JAIC’s Test and Evaluation office, which develops standards and conducts algorithm testing, system testing and operational testing on the military’s many AI initiatives.
- The Pentagon stood up the JAIC in 2018 to centralize coordination and accelerate the adoption of AI and has been building out its ranks in recent months, hiring an official to implement its new AI ethical principles for warfare.
- The JAIC is requesting testing tools and expertise in planning, data management, and analysis of inputs and outputs associated with those tools.
- The introduction of AI-enabled systems brings changes to the process, metrics, data, and skills necessary to produce the level of testing the military needs, and that is the reason for requesting information.
- Testing and Evaluation provides knowledge of system capabilities and limitations to the acquisition community and to the war-fighter.
- The JAIC's T&E team will make rigorous and objective assessments of systems under operational conditions and against realistic threats, so that our war fighters ultimately trust the systems they are operating and that the risks associated with operating these systems are well-known to military acquisition decision-makers.
The solicitation indicates it plans to use feedback from the
solicitation to guide how it further builds out its capabilities.
The Pentagon is interested in tech testing tools that focus on:
- Conversational
interface applications using voice to text.
- Speech-enabled
products and services for DOD applications and systems.
- Image
analysis, testing deep learning-based visual search and image classifier.
- Natural
Language Processing-enabled products and services.
- Humans
augmented by machines, to include human-machine interfaces and improved
methods to measure war-fighter cognitive and physical workloads, to include
augmented reality and virtual reality test services.
- Autonomous systems.
The Pentagon also wants feedback regarding evaluation
services in five mission areas:
- Dateset curation
- Test harness development
- Model output analysis
- Test reporting
- Testing services
Finally the pentagon also seeks
“other technologies” that it may not be aware of that “may be beneficial” to testing
and evaluation efforts.
~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan
~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan
