DOD’s AI acceleration strategy

On Jan. 9, the Department of Defense released its Artificial Intelligence Acceleration Strategy. The Strategy promotes a familiar outcome: for the U.S. military to become “AI-first.” 

According to the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s memorandum on the Strategy, this AI-first status is to be achieved through four broad aims: 

• Incentivizing internal DOD experimentation with AI models.
• Identifying and eliminating bureaucratic obstacles in the way of model integration.
• Focusing the U.S.’s military investment to shore up the U.S.’s “asymmetric advantages” in areas including AI computing, model innovation, entrepreneurial dynamism, capital markets, and operational data.
• The initiation of Pace-Setting Projects, or PSPs, that will “serve as tangible, outcome-oriented vehicles for rapidly completing” AI-related scaffolding of infrastructure, data, models, policies, and talent.

What Are the Mission Areas of the PSPs?

The initial set of seven PSPs will coalesce around seven specific mission areas grouped into three categories ...