The Artificial Intelligence Problem (or not)

[BloodStripe]

Yes, I understand that DARPA isn’t the only one doing R&D. As a percentage of the budget though, we are spending less every year on R&D. That’s not missing creep, it’s choosing to spend money on other things.

US Federal Research Spending Is at a 60-year Low. Should We Be Concerned?

 

[RackMaster]

Yes, I understand that DARPA isn’t the only one doing R&D. As a percentage of the budget though, we are spending less every year on R&D. That’s not missing creep, it’s choosing to spend money on other things.

US Federal Research Spending Is at a 60-year Low. Should We Be Concerned?

And many politicians that pushed to reduce military R&D over those decades were bought by our enemies or ideologically captured?

 

[Florida173]

Yes, I understand that DARPA isn’t the only one doing R&D. As a percentage of the budget though, we are spending less every year on R&D. That’s not missing creep, it’s choosing to spend money on other things.

US Federal Research Spending Is at a 60-year Low. Should We Be Concerned?

Sorry, I might not have been clear. My point is that putting money in DARPA for R&D isn't needed anymore because I think the ROI is probably bad. Democratizing the R&D capability down to lower levels is more effective, and then creating expediated contracting vehicles like what you can do with DIU is the better way to go. Just let industry do it for us and limit DARPA and IARPA to color in the corner for things that maybe my grandchildren can benefit from.

 

[BloodStripe]

Sorry, I might not have been clear. My point is that putting money in DARPA for R&D isn't needed anymore because I think the ROI is probably bad. Democratizing the R&D capability down to lower levels is more effective, and then creating expediated contracting vehicles like what you can do with DIU is the better way to go. Just let industry do it for us and limit DARPA and IARPA to color in the corner for things that maybe my grandchildren can benefit from.

I’m not a financial person or a comptroller, but we (the DOD) pay for things via different colors of money (MILCON, Operations and Maintenance, R&D, Procurement, etc). So even asking industry to do it still requires funding, which in this case would be R&D funds; which we are spending less and less on. Industry isn’t going to do it for free. Sure they might do this in some cases, but industry isn’t in the business of doing stuff for free, otherwise they won’t be around very long.

 

[TLDR20]

I love DARPA. I wish we could have a bigger R&D budget. Even if shit fails there’s always a takeaway that can be applied elsewhere. Our D&D budget has shrunk by like 80% compared to what we spent in the 1950s.

Sorry, I might not have been clear. My point is that putting money in DARPA for R&D isn't needed anymore because I think the ROI is probably bad. Democratizing the R&D capability down to lower levels is more effective, and then creating expediated contracting vehicles like what you can do with DIU is the better way to go. Just let industry do it for us and limit DARPA and IARPA to color in the corner for things that maybe my grandchildren can benefit from.

That is what DARPA already does. They fund a ton of research in universities. My wife’s doctoral thesis was funded by DARPA, and she made implantable 3-D printed skin scaffolds for burn patients. Industry has no desire to fund an obscure thing like that with a low ROI. The government does because guys were getting burned like crazy for a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

[compforce]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1944776899420377134

 

[AWP]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1944776899420377134

Will this replace or augment existing .mil AI applications already in use?

 

[Cookie_]

I wonder if Grok for Government will keep the "woke filters" on, so it doesn't go on Antisemitic rants or Rape fantasies like it did over the weekend. Or do like it did a few weeks ago and bring up things like White genocide unpromted.

 

[Florida173]

I wonder if Grok for Government will keep the "woke filters" on, so it doesn't go on Antisemitic rants or Rape fantasies like it did over the weekend. Or do like it did a few weeks ago and bring up things like White genocide unpromted.

Only if someone uses the same context injection as they did before. Although I think they patched it so no more Mechahitler.

 

[Florida173]

Will this replace or augment existing .mil AI applications already in use?

probably just be another inference endpoint for us to use along with all the ones we already have.

 

[compforce]

Food for Thought...

 

[BloodStripe]

Tried to use the SECDEFs hard pushed AI tool that even has a shortcut on my task bar I can’t delete. This was my first attempt at using it. Seems worthless to me.

 

[AWP]

Tried to use the SECDEFs hard pushed AI tool that even has a shortcut on my task bar I can’t delete. This was my first attempt at using it. Seems worthless to me.

View attachment 48875

A co-worker told me it didn't know the president in 2024. I just tried it and he's correct. I followed up with when was joe biden president and it listed until Jan. 20, 2025.

Approximately zero of us in the office are using this tool, especially when the other .mil tools out there actually work.

 

[BloodStripe]

A co-worker told me it didn't know the president in 2024. I just tried it and he's correct. I followed up with when was joe biden president and it listed until Jan. 20, 2025.

Approximately zero of us in the office are using this tool, especially when the other .mil tools out there actually work.

At least I’m confident this is one AI tool that cannot kill us. We got that going for us at least.

 

[Marauder06]

A co-worker told me it didn't know the president in 2024. I just tried it and he's correct. I followed up with when was joe biden president and it listed until Jan. 20, 2025.

Approximately zero of us in the office are using this tool, especially when the other .mil tools out there actually work.

I'm pretty sure I had a similar experience with ChatGPT and President Trump. Lots of limitations, to be sure.

 

[AWP]

I'm pretty sure I had a similar experience with ChatGPT and President Trump. Lots of limitations, to be sure.

I would have ignored it except it pops up when you first log in with no way to close it out unless you kill the command line window running the prompt. After a week or whatever of this nonsense some of us used the tool with the results above.

This is our third official AI tool. At this point all of these stupid assed LLMs are just creating work for contractors, they aren't adding any value to our work.

 

[AWP]

@Ooh-Rah probably push this into the AI thread?

The new .mil tool above uses Google's Gemini, but the data is way off. I used GenAI.mil, Gemini, and ChatGPT for some basic queries and document creation. Same prompts, vastly different results and the GenAI.mil tool is hands down the worst of the 3.

I'm 100% behind the Pentagon's desire to implement tech and to make some of the processes faster, but this tool ain't it.

 

[Cookie_]

I'm pretty sure I had a similar experience with ChatGPT and President Trump. Lots of limitations, to be sure.

IIRC, you had asked it about women in the administration and it was only giving you names of Biden appointees.

I remember getting the same issue with camoGPT and then learning that it couldn't connect to the internet, so its data set was only updated to something like October 2024.

I imagine army Gemini has a similar limitation.

 

[Florida173]

so its data set was only updated to something like October 2024.

This is a good thing to keep in mind. Most models are only as knowledgeable of events up to their training date. The ability to reach out to the broader net to add additional context to the prompt is a bit newer feature for the commercial models.

 

[Box]

It did my trip report for me and it took my PD and turned it into a vision statement and three goals - so - I'm indifferent for now