Transforming Defense: The US Pentagon's ChatGPT Integration Plan

0:00Since its launch, ChatGPT has been integrated and used by a lot of big companies. Coca-Cola recently inked a deal specifically with OpenAI to integrate it. Bain Consulting is doing essentially partnerships with OpenAI to get it integrated into a bunch of different corporations. But one of the biggest I've heard so far is that the Pentagon is currently very interested in using ChatGPT. So today on the podcast, we're going to talk about what they're saying and why this is important. So first off, a lot of this comes from the fact that the Air Force CIO recently said that ChatGPT can make short work of Pentagon tasks.

0:38So pretty much what's happening right now is essentially the Department of Defense where a lot of consuming tasks and red tape can just clog up the pathway to getting anything done. We know how government is. It's horrible in that regard. According to Lauren Knoslenberger, the Air Force's chief information officer, she believes that chat GPT can help. So a smart assistant or AI-powered chatbot could effectively find files, answer questions, ask questions, or dig up contact information, among other millions of menial assignments. And that's what she was saying back in February 28 at an event in Virginia, which was hosted by the Billington Cybersecurity.

1:22So automating a lot of those different processes would save them a lot of time and resources. We've all seen how ChatGPT can save us, you know, time on our different careers, a lot of businesses and industries. And now it looks like the government is getting into it. So she said that there's no reason why ChatGPT can't respond to taskers and take away some of the very heavy knowledge management work of finding. So it's like, you know, it's like she said, OK, who are the three action officers across the department that have these different pieces? and, you know, it can kind of like ChatGPT could pull it together.

1:56And she says that there's a lot of power there that they can harness in the near future. So it looks like they're actually, you know, actively looking at how they would implement this. As you know, ChatGPT's capability of carrying a very convincing conversation and pumping out, you know, content like computer code or children's stories is, you know, really exploding right now. And apparently it actually recently pretty quickly caught the attention of the Pentagon. Generative AI, which is what fuels ChatGPT, was recently added to a Defense Information Systems Agency tech watch list, which previously had things like 5G, zero trust cybersecurity, edge computing, and a lot of others.

2:37So they're like very actively looking at this space. The DISA chief technology officer, Stephen Wallace, like just in late January, described it as a very, as he said, a pretty interesting capability and said that we're starting to look at how does generative AI actually change DISA's mission to in the department and what we provide for the department going forward. So it's very actively being looked at. I think militaries worldwide are kind of investing in AI and adjacent tech to improve battlefield analysis, prediction, maintenance needs, and just kind of like streamline logistics. So Knozenberger, who is leaving her CIO post in June, has said that the US needs to automate more to maintain its advantages, right?

3:25Like we know the red tape and government is killing us. And so if we have all of this red tape and we're able to automate a lot of the more mundane tasks, yeah, I don't see any reason why we shouldn't be able to integrate AI to get that done, make our government more efficient, especially our defense, which, you know, is a very important part of our economy. So it's interesting, though, because she is on her way out in June. And so she's kind of talking about the importance now, but she's on her way out and her successor hasn't yet been named. So we don't really know if the next person coming in is going to be as plugged in or interested in this.

4:01But it's interesting to note that public spending on AI, including automation at the Defense Department, jumped to$2.5 billion in 2021, which is from a little bit more than it was at about$600 million back in 2016. So more than 685 AI projects, including several tied to major weapon systems, were underway as of early 2021. I'm sure that's exploded in 2022 and with ChatGPT this year that is going to only get bigger. So it'll be interesting watching the space, seeing where that goes, looking at the ethical implications of a lot of that and seeing how this evolves.