The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), whose tagline is “Win the Fight”, has paid more than a hundred thousand dollars to a company that is providing generative AI services to other parts of the Department of Defense. But the AFRL refused to say what exactly the point of the research was, and provided page after page of entirely blacked out, redacted documents in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from 404 Media related to the contract.
The news shows that while AI continues to proliferate across essentially every industry and increasingly government departments, some parts of the military can be tight-lipped about its intentions around generative AI, even when the models used are sometimes the same as what everyone else has access to or are open source, and when the work is unclassified. 404 Media previously reported that the Air Force tested a surveillance-focused AI chatbot.
“Ask Sage: Generative AI Acquisition Accelerator,” a December 2023 procurement record reads, with no additional information on the intended use case. The Air Force paid $109,490 to Ask Sage, the record says.