Navy Commander Kevin Blenkhorn works with his Joint Services teammates during the U.S. Army’s ‘Cyber Center of Excellence’, Fort Gordon in Augusta, Georgia, hosted a multi-service ‘NetWar’ to show, and build, cyber Warrior capabilities Tuesday, June 10. (Georgia Army National Guard photo by Staff Sgt. Tracy J. Smith)
SOF WEEK 2023 — The top acquisition official for US Special Operations Command doesn’t plan to open an independent program office to deal with artificial intelligence, only because he believes that in short order AI will be so ubiquitous that it will be naturally be integrated into just about everything from operations to acquisitions.
“I think artificial intelligence is a tide that lifts all boats,” Jim Smith, acquisition executive for USSOCOM, said in his keynote address to SOF Week 2023 here in Tampa, Fla. on Tuesday. There would be no program executive officer for AI “on his watch” because “you want it all out there” interwoven with other program offices.
Smith echoed previous officials in his hopes that on the operational side, AI might be able to help synthesize data for commanders — long a goal of the military’s various JADC2 efforts. “That’s exactly where we want to be,” he said.
But he also described how AI could be useful in the back offices of acquisitions.
“So there’s the artificial intelligence that we’re all getting comfortable with for our operational capabilities, and… there’s also the aspect of artificial intelligence to impact our business enterprise. How do we use it to know ourselves better, to make better decisions? And I think there’s a big role of artificial intelligence in the acquisition space,” said Smith, who used an AI-generated image as a background for one of his slides. “To know where the finances are, to know what the previous impacts of [continuing resolution] periods have been on programs, or what happens if we delay a decision by a few months…
“Artificial intelligence is going to be key to every single thing,” he said.
Smith’s enthusiasm for AI was slightly tempered during a roundtable with reporters later, when he said he was “absolutely” concerned about AI-generated mistakes, recently a popular topic of discussion given the faulty nature of public generative AI programs like ChatGPT.
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“I think artificial intelligence is going to be part of our material solution in our software solution approach. I think that’s true. But it’s not a wholesale adoption of generative AI that goes forward,” he said. “Here’s what I worry the most about from an acquisition standpoint: You have to understand the algorithms that are behind AI and we have to understand… the pedagogy, where the information came from and why AI allows that solution.”
Smith suggested some forms of AI are auditable, meaning SOCOM could track and understand how the AI ended up at the answer it did. One area that would be especially important, Smith said, was in partner operations.
“One of the things we talked about with our partners or allies is, as we both adopt artificial intelligence, we’ve got to maintain the same level of trust that we have in each others’ systems,” he said. “So if I’m presenting an AI solution, or a solution that was enabled by AI, to one of our partner forces, I’m sure they’re going to want to know the pedigree of that information.”
Smith said he understands the “big scary AI story” — adding that he’s “scared too” of that one — but suggested the upsides of using AI are too hard to ignore.
“There are portions of what machine learning can do for our formations, what artificial intelligence can do for our formations that I think we can understand that, and partner with industry, to make sure that we’re presenting probabilistic determinations to our commanders that will help them make better decisions.”
