In the age of artificial intelligence, new risks, opportunities, challenges and advancements are being unlocked every day. As government and industry leaders look toward an AI-enabled future, they’re taking great care to prepare for threats while driving technological innovation forward.
Digital Science President Stephen Leicht spoke with Executive Mosaic’s video reporter Summer Myatt about the dangers and benefits of AI across a myriad of industries and applications.
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“AI can simulate really the better aspects of human intelligence,” he said in a new video interview. “And this is a major differentiator between what exists today and the traditional fixed computing infrastructure. These are systems that can learn, they can reason, they can improve, they can make decisions, they can solve problems. And perhaps one of the most obvious improvements that we saw in the gen AI revolution recently is that they can innovate and create things — so you see new solutions to complex problems, which are far beyond the traditional computing infrastructure.”
Pentagon’s AI Friction Points
While AI technology is advancing at a rapid pace, some larger organizations and agencies are finding it difficult to keep up.
“I think the balance is we want to be faster, we want to be quick. This is an area where in two or three months time, the landscape is changing so dramatically that you have to put a really high emphasis on speed,” Leicht said.
“At the same time, you’re in an area where you have to put a really large emphasis on being responsible and ethical. We’re talking about communities where moving quickly is hard. It’s hard to move quickly when you’re part of the defense infrastructure. It’s a big giant machine that turns slowly. So I think those are the friction points or the challenges,” he added.
AI Opportunities
Leicht emphasized that our innovation ecosystems in the U.S. are our advantage in the race towards AI dominance on the global stage.
“I think one of the advantages we have from a U.S. defense perspective is that there are great opportunities for collaboration between our government organizations, our commercial organizations, and our universities, where a lot of this work goes on. So to the extent we can make those partnerships work, I think those are important,” said Leicht.
For more insights from Stephen Leicht about the state of AI, watch his full video interview.