Developing a Series of AI Challenges for the United States Department of the Air Force

TL;DR

This paper discusses the development of AI challenges by the DAF-MIT AI Accelerator to promote AI research aligned with U.S. Air Force needs, emphasizing open datasets and open-source solutions.

Contribution

It introduces a series of public AI challenges designed to bridge research and military applications, fostering open collaboration and advancing AI capabilities for defense.

Findings

Development of publicly available AI datasets

Incentivization of open-source AI solutions

Stimulating research for dual-use AI technologies

Abstract

Through a series of federal initiatives and orders, the U.S. Government has been making a concerted effort to ensure American leadership in AI. These broad strategy documents have influenced organizations such as the United States Department of the Air Force (DAF). The DAF-MIT AI Accelerator is an initiative between the DAF and MIT to bridge the gap between AI researchers and DAF mission requirements. Several projects supported by the DAF-MIT AI Accelerator are developing public challenge problems that address numerous Federal AI research priorities. These challenges target priorities by making large, AI-ready datasets publicly available, incentivizing open-source solutions, and creating a demand signal for dual use technologies that can stimulate further research. In this article, we describe these public challenges being developed and how their application contributes to scientific advances.