Mishall RehmanIt seems everywhere you turn these days, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is there to greet you. From Instagram to Google searches, AI is here to stay, and the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) are not one to stay behind.
Built Around Enhancing CAF’s Work
The Department of National Defence (DND) recently announced its first-ever Artificial Intelligence Strategy.
“The Strategy articulates Defence’s digital ambitions to modernize and mature our organization for the complex future challenges and opportunities. The successful adopting of AI will only come through the transformation and optimization of our data and information management as well as our operational and business practices,” said Gen. Wayne Eyre, the Chief of the Defence Staff, and Bill Matthews, Deputy Minister of National Defence in a joint statement announcing the new strategy.
The AI strategy is built around enhancing the CAF’s work towards achieving some of its top goals, such as reconstitution, development of new operational and corporate capabilities and maintaining interoperability with allies.
Released on March 7, 2024, the 32-page document aims to commit the Defence Team to become “AI-enabled” by 2030.
Five key areas of focus
The strategy focuses on five key areas. These are:
- Identifying and fielding capabilities required by DND and the CAF;
- Creating a culture supportive of AI innovation;
- Establishing principles, processes and practices to ensure that the use of AI is ethical, legal, inclusive, safe and trusted;
- Managing talent and training to meet workforce needs;
- And deepening strategic partnerships internally and externally with Allies, industries and academia.
“Our allies are moving ahead rapidly in their commitments to AI and its adoption. We must move now to ensure that we can continue to share a common operating picture with them, sensing, deciding, and acting at a pace enabled by AI, so that we do not lose our credibility and relevance as a fighting force,” stated the AI strategy forward by both Eyre and Matthews.
Focusing on these five key areas will enable DND to use AI to meet the needs of the current age and not “risk the loss of our operational advantage.”
Making better use of resources
Top DND leaders stress that the hope is that becoming AI-enabled will allow the CAF to “become better stewards of the resources with which Canadians have entrusted.”
The strategy will allow the military to modernize and reconstitute while emphasizing the need to be inclusive and ethical.
At its heart, the hope is that the strategy will improve operational capabilities.
“The operational capabilities and requirements of the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces (DND/CAF) in the modern security environment are at the heart of this approach, guiding the prioritization and need for this Strategy,” stated the strategy.
Read the CAF’s AI strategy here.
