{"id":33368,"date":"2024-02-23T16:49:22","date_gmt":"2024-02-23T16:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/c4isrnet\/uncategorized\/2024\/02\/23\/pentagon-ai-office-must-cannibalize-to-keep-operating-martell-says\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T18:51:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T18:51:10","slug":"pentagon-ai-office-must-cannibalize-to-keep-operating-martell-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/c4isrnet\/artificial-intelligence\/2024\/02\/23\/pentagon-ai-office-must-cannibalize-to-keep-operating-martell-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Pentagon AI office must \u2018cannibalize\u2019 to keep operating, Martell says"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The U.S. Department of Defense\u2019s artificial intelligence office is enfeebled by a lack of appropriations from Congress and is having to scuttle some efforts to sustain others, its leader said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have to cannibalize some things in order to be able to keep other things alive,\u201d Craig Martell<\/a>, the Defense Department\u2019s chief digital and AI officer, or CDAO, told reporters Feb. 22.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Congress has yet to pass a full defense budget for fiscal year 2024, which began Oct. 1, even as the Biden administration readies its fiscal 2025 spending blueprint. At least 40 continuing resolutions, or stopgap funding bills, have been enacted since 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That record of funding uncertainty hurts talent and training initiatives as well as what\u2019s known as the AI scaffolding<\/a>, or the virtual infrastructure that makes models usable, accurate and relevant to the military, Martell said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat kind of behavior, of being agile, sitting next to the operator, building and growing and building and changing and building and iterating, is very difficult, if not impossible, to do under the conditions of a continuing resolution,\u201d he said on the sidelines of the Defense Data and AI Symposium in Washington.<\/p>\n\n\n\t