Industry Roundtable with Chief Digital Artificial Intelligence Officer Dr. Radha Iyengar Plumb and Defense Innovation Unit Director Doug Beck, at DIU HQ, Mountain View, CA
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA -- On December 4, 2024, the Department of Defense (DoD) Chief Digital Artificial Intelligence Officer (CDAO) Dr. Radha Iyengar Plumb and Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) Director Doug Beck conducted an industry roundtable following a public fireside chat themed ‘Speed-to-Scale,’ at DIU Headquarters in Mountain View, CA..
The discussion focused on the importance of pipelines to scale acquisition in support of the Department’s broader strategy to integrate data, analytics and AI across the defense enterprise, through codified collaboration between DIU and CDAO in order to advance adoption of commercial digital capabilities. Today, that cooperative pipeline is delivering impact. In the six month period since DIU and CDAO formalized their partnership, CDAO has begun to scale solutions that have successfully completed prototypes with DIU, including:
Translation of Foreign Language Materials CDAO recently awarded a contract to California-based machine learning company LILT to scale its AI-powered translation platform. Originally part of a DIU prototype effort, LILT customized their platform to include domain-specific vocabularies relevant to the DoD when translating large volumes of foreign language technical documentation related to critical technologies. The CDAO contract scales LILT’s solution to hundreds of users across the Army, Navy, and Air Force.
Creating an Agile Talent Marketplace DIU launched a working prototype of GigEagle, a real-time talent matching platform with more than 4,000 active users, in April 2024. GigEagle is the Department’s first Joint talent marketplace platform that leverages machine learning to rapidly connect skilled personnel with mission-critical roles. This capability recently transitioned to a $5M production contract funded by CDAO to scale across the defense enterprise with additional support from DICE members like AFWERX.
Scale adoption of these types of commercially derived solutions is the key to unlocking strategic impact whether through introducing new capabilities, creating force multiplier effects, to generating cost savings, and workforce efficiencies that increase readiness across the force.
The roundtable exchange with industry included valuable perspectives on acquisition successes and barriers and the importance of feedback and collaboration from the commercial technology sector to streamline pipelines to scale. Leaders recognized the importance of early and recurring revenue to nontraditional companies, demand for more transparent and efficient processes, and the importance of early adoption of new technologies as crucial to addressing evolving operational needs.
Leadership remarks detailed how DIU and CDAO are committed to consistently applying lessons learned to ensure the Department is a strong partner and customer to industry, while achieving technological leaps in critical defense capabilities across the Services.
Organizational collaboration is set to expand into 2025, including continued efforts to increase the adoption of software in support of Replicator as well as targeted efforts to accelerate the adoption of generative AI. On December 11th, DIU and CDAO jointly announced the AI Rapid Capabilities Cell (AIRCC), which will focus on warfighting and enterprise management capabilities. The AIRCC will lead efforts to accelerate and scale the deployment of cutting-edge AI capabilities, such as Frontier models, across the DoD.
A link to the public fireside chat is available here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xscOIrPxJR0&feature=youtu.be