DIA looks to launch ‘AI DIE’ — a new enterprise-level artificial intelligence hub

The deadline is approaching for contractors to respond to an RFI related to the Defense Intelligence Agency’s plan to stand up a new enterprise-level organization to steer its implementation of artificial intelligence.

Launching that envisioned hub — known as Artificial Intelligence for Defense Intelligence Enterprise, or AI DIE — “will require a dedicated team, with government management and a mix of supporting government and contractors, that will drive AI technology adaptation and insertion throughout DIA and its customers and partners,” according to a recent request for information posted on Sam.gov.

“It is the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) intent to identify sources, obtain new ideas and information pertaining to the state of the industry for providing: Technical Assistance and Information Technology support to stand up an Artificial Intelligence (AI) capability in the following areas: (1) AI Career Development (Training & Recruitment), (2) AI Infrastructure and Tools. As the effort to develop AI expands at DIA, follow on efforts will focus on Mission Support, Standards and Governance, Experimentation and Partnerships,” per the RFI.

Responses are due April 24.

Artificial intelligence “is defined as the ability of a computer system to solve problems and perform tasks that would otherwise require human intelligence,” DIA officials wrote in the document.

A rapidly evolving branch of computer science, this technology is widely used commercially — underpinning maps and navigation apps, biometric security products, chatbots and more. And Pentagon components like DIA are increasingly taking steps to buy, develop and deploy it. 

“Mandates by the Intelligence Community (IC) and the Department of Defense (DoD), require DIA [to] have the personnel, processes, and tools in place to enable AI driven mission and business products and outcomes by … 2025,” the RFI notes. 

In their 2021 final report to government leaders, experts from the congressionally mandated National Security Commission on AI urgently recommended that the U.S. achieve a state of “military AI readiness” by 2025.

The agency’s vision for AI DIE is also associated with its “need for accelerating the rapid transition of AI enhanced products and capabilities to the analyst, warfighter, and decision-makers,” officials wrote in the RFI — and the new hub would fundamentally “support DIA as a bi-directional producer and consumer of AI-ready data sets and analytic models to accelerate operational speed and decision making.”

Further, DIA’s team also recognizes how personnel can further develop certain organizational and interpersonal skills likely necessary to integrate AI-driven improvements with mission partners, including the combatant commands, service intelligence centers and elsewhere.

Among a number of tasks outlined in explanatory documents attached to this RFI, DIA officials envision generating a common, centralized platform that delivers functions “to build, test, experiment and deliver AI,” and constructing and maintaining data and model repositories via which they could share the tools they create.