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#157 Paul Lieber and Janis Butkevics on AI Best Practice in DoD

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#157 Paul Lieber and Janis Butkevics on AI Best Practice in DoD

The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association.

During this episode, Paul Lieber and Janis Butkevics discuss their co-authored article: Searching for AI Best Practice in DoD: The Great Camp Divide and Lessons from A Commercial Setting. Paul and Janis assert that DoD AI strategy and execution must be thoughtfully considered and best practices from commercial and other lab-like environments at minimum must be observed and noted. There is simply no good means of calculating risk/reward for particular pathways involving AI adoption and process insertion without these steps.

Research Questions:

  • Referencing Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Paul Lieber suggests an interested student examine how does a specific social media environment/platform nuance – considering but not directly guided by content within – shape ultimate discourse, decision making and influence outcomes for a Target Audience? (“The Medium is the Message.”) Where/how can AI-driven automation tangibly impact such outcomes…and what mass communication/social psychology theory can potentially explain such impact?
  • Janis Butkevics asks the question: can large language models (LLM) craft emotionally resonant content on par with humans?

Resources:

Link to full show notes and resources

Guest Bios: 

Dr. Paul Lieber is the Chief Data Scientist for Peraton’s Cyber Mission Sector and Associate Research Faculty at UMD-ARLIS. In these roles, he shapes overall technology and strategic direction for a number of mission areas to include information warfare, cyber, and OSINT. His research emphasis focuses on the intersection of data modeling and decision making, specifically how to build valid and complex data systems to solve challenging problems. Dr. Lieber possesses nearly 100 combined peer reviewed publications, invited presentations and university lectures on this and related topics. Most recently, he co-led the Assessments Working Group for Phoenix Challenge 23-2. He is also on the Board of Directors for the Information Professionals Association.

Mr. Janis Butkevics is a data analytics and planning professional with a strong passion for solving complex problems, collaboration, and innovation. His experience includes working in fast paced, multi-organizational environments towards national policy goals. Janis’ primary focus is the application of emerging web technologies, social media, quantitative analysis, machine learning, and long term planning. He has led and contributed to a vast array of projects to include: course development, instruction, operational framework design, cost-benefit analysis, network analysis, social media analysis and analytics, long term planning, regression analysis, risk analysis, and programming.

About: The Information Professionals Association (IPA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to exploring the role of information activities, such as influence and cognitive security, within the national security sector and helping to bridge the divide between operations and research. Its goal is to increase interdisciplinary collaboration between scholars and practitioners and policymakers with an interest in this domain.

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