Could Employee Swaps with Commercial Companies Help Grow DOD’s Emerging Tech Initiatives?

(FCW.com) Talent and training are some of the biggest challenges when it comes to employing artificial intelligence, especially in the Defense Department. But could doing more employee swaps with commercial companies change that?
Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, the Defense Department’s AI chief said the joint effort under the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center is weighing multiple options for better identifying talent, including paying coders the equivalent of language proficiency pay, to organically grow DOD’s emerging tech initiatives.
“We want to think hard about doing this right in emerging tech, disruptive tech,” he said, naming that getting people who are adept in quantum and blockchain the next five years. As part of this early work…[we’re] looking at archetypes, what should those archetypes be, and what can we do early in the process to start making some proposals about the training aspect of it and the education piece.”
For example, the JAIC is figuring out when and how to best identify talent, such as during recruiting — and making sure they stay in a technology field rather than getting reassigned to an unrelated field — which often happens to enlisted service members.
Shanahan said future career fields for military service members in AI or machine learning were possible but cautioned about them being too narrow.