The new director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), Nand Mulchandani, gave his first press conference at the Pentagon on July 8, where he outlined what the Joint AI Center's priorities are and how current projects are progressing.
The press conference comes two years after Google withdrew from Project Maven, also known as the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team. According to the Pentagon, the project, which began in April 2017, aimed to develop “computer vision algorithms needed to assist military and civilian analysts burdened by the vast volume of full-motion video data that DOD collects daily in support of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations.”
One of the main goals for the Pentagon was to implement algorithms in “combat systems” by the end of 2017.
The proposal was criticized by many, including 3,000 Google who signed a petition protesting the company's participation in the project.
According to Mulchandani, this situation has changed for the Pentagon, and JAIC now receives support from technology companies, including Google.
“We have tremendous support and interest from the tech industry for JAIC to partner with DoD,” Mulchandani said. “[We have] commercial contracts and work with all the major tech and AI companies – including Google.”
Mulchandani is in a much better position than his predecessor, Acting Director Jack Shanahan, to manage the relationship between the Joint AI Center (JAIC) and Silicon Valley. Shanahan founded JAIC in 2018 and has had a strained relationship with the tech, while Mulchandani has spent much of his life as part of it, having run several startups.
JAIC 2.0
The Joint AI Center (JAIC) was created in 2018 with a focus on low-tech risk areas such as disaster relief and predictive maintenance. Now, with these projects progressing, work is underway to transition them to production.
Termed JAIC 2.0, the new plan includes six ongoing mission initiatives, including joint combat operations, business process transformation, threat reduction and protection, joint logistics, and joint information warfare. The latest addition includes cyber operations.
The Joint AI Center (JAIC) hasn't revealed many details about the new project, but Mulchandani referred to it as being fully human-controlled.
Mulchandani was responding to a question from a reporter about General Shanahan's statements as director that he had talked about a lethal AI application being developed by 2021, which "could be the first lethal AI in the industry.".
Here is his answer:
“I don’t want to start getting sidetracked by the word lethal. However, it is true that many of the products we are working on will go into weapons systems.”
“None of these are going to be autonomous weapons systems. We now have projects that are under the so-called “Joint Warfighting” that are going to be tested. A very important AI project for us is expected to be released. Of course the project will be tested and it is a really promising project – we are very excited about it. It is probably the flagship product that we have been working on for a long time. But it will involve operators and of course it will go through human control.”
Other projects
In his statement, Mulchandani also spoke about the “huge potential of using artificial intelligence in attack capabilities,” such as cybersecurity.
“You can read the news about what our competitors are doing out there and you can imagine that there is a lot of room for growth in this area,” he said.
Mulchandani revealed what JAIC is doing in response to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, through a recent $800 million contract with Booz Allen Hamilton and Project Salus. JAIC developed a series of algorithms for NORTHCOM and National Guard units to predict supply chain resource challenges.
