Comment by John N.T. "Jack" Shanahan

In terms of culture, in DOD, we need to match the rate of institutional change to the rate of change of commercial technology. As I said earlier, this is a multi-generation commitment. We face hard decisions ahead in the department about striking the right balance between adapting legacy systems, legacy data practices and legacy workflows to A.I.; in effect, bolting on cutting-edge technologies to old systems and accepting a certain level of sunk costs by divesting legacy systems to accelerate the development and fielding of A.I.-ready systems. Finally, we are thinking deeply about the ethical, safe and lawful use of A.I. At its core, we are in a contest for the character of the international order in the digital age. To conclude, contrary to a lot of the hype prevalent today, we don't view A.I. as a magical solution, a specific thing to be sprinkled on top of any problem to yield miraculous results. A.I. is an enabler, much more like electricity than a gadget, a widget or a weapons system. A.I.'s most valuable contributions will come from how we use it to make better and faster decisions. Unverified source (2019)