DoD Responsible AI Strategy and Implementation Pathway

What it is

The Department of Defense officially adopted a series of ethical principles for the use of AI in February 2020. They apply to how Department personnel develop, deploy, and use AI capabilities. The five principles are:

1. Responsible — personnel will exercise appropriate levels of judgment and care while remaining responsible for the development, deployment, and use of AI capabilities.
2. Equitable — deliberate steps to minimize unintended bias.
3. Traceable — capabilities developed and deployed so that personnel understand the technology, including transparent and auditable methodologies, data sources, and design procedures and documentation.
4. Reliable — explicit, well-defined uses, with safety, security and effectiveness subject to testing and assurance within those uses across their entire life-cycles.
5. Governable — the ability to detect and avoid unintended consequences, and to disengage or deactivate deployed systems that demonstrate unintended behavior.

The RAI Strategy and Implementation Pathway was signed in June 2022 by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks. CDAO’s toolkit release calls it a key deliverable of the DoD RAI Strategy & Implementation Pathway (RAI S&I Pathway) and says the pathway spells out 64 lines of effort for operationalizing the Department of Defense’s AI Ethical Principles, including developing technical tools and guidance.

How it is implemented

The public implementation artifact is the CDAO RAI / AIA Toolkit, publicly released on 14 November 2023 as a voluntary process that identifies, tracks, and improves alignment of AI projects to RAI best practices and the DoD AI Ethical Principles. The live Tradewinds page now titles it the AI Assurance (AIA) Toolkit.

Weapon-system autonomy is a separate issuance: DoD Directive 3000.09. Contractor cybersecurity for CUI is CMMC. The broader explainer that also covers the toolkit is DoD Responsible AI.

What it is not

The pathway is Department direction for operationalizing the principles. We have not found a source that makes completing all 64 lines of effort a contractor certification, and we make no such claim. Industry partners are pointed at the toolkit, which offers guidance and an RAI standard to current and future DoD industry partners. Check the contract for what that means on a given program.