The Department of Defense’s (DoD) Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) will work to support the warfighter and be an enabling force-multiplier for the disparate AI efforts through its data and development platform, the Joint Common Foundation (JCF), FedScoop reported Tuesday.
JCF will enable JAIC to build out a data and algorithm development platform. Under JAIC’s new director, LtGen Michael Groen, JAIC has increased its efforts to develop JCF to house military coders, data scientists and others across the department.
The platform will enable innovators to build AI models and work with DoD data. Dana Deasy, DoD chief information officer and 2020 Wash100 Award recipient, reiterated his commitment to having JAIC use the JCF to focus on the warfighter and build out new platforms that are available to the entire department.
“JAIC could never do all of the AI initiatives for the DOD” alone, Deasy said. “At the core of JAIC’s success has got to be this JCF.”
The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) recently awarded Deloitte a four-year, $106 million task order to design and build the JCF Artificial Intelligence development environment for JAIC. JAIC’s new director also announced that the platform will be more than just for data storage but also host algorithm libraries to be able to share AI work across the department.
The process for developing the JCF platform will be gradual, Groen said. The JAIC is starting with basic services and minimum viable products that can be tested and then grown in their complexity.
JCF is being built to be “JEDI-ready,” engineers working on the platform said previously, referring to the still disputed Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud contract. “You can’t have an AI-driven enterprise without a platform,” Groen said.
Security protocols will be built into the JCF to ensure that development takes place on trusted data, Groen said. JCF will also have “soft services,” like ensuring users are aware of ethical principles and how to properly use AI for warfare. “You can’t do any of that without a platform,” Groen added.
