Accelerating Innovation With Smarter Public-Private Partnerships

The future of economic growth is about information processing and a knowledge economy, with AI being a major player. The commercial sector has already realized the value of AI, but the public sector lags behind in operationalizing it.

• The economy has shifted towards a knowledge economy where information processing is key
• Consumer scale markets drive investment and innovation, leading to a virtuous cycle
• AI is a major player in the knowledge economy and has already been adopted by the commercial sector
• The public sector lags behind in operationalizing AI in their core processes

The government made foundational investments in AI and other technologies, but did not intentionally spin up the virtuous cycle that the commercial sector has experienced. Industrial companies that adopt AI can improve efficiency and profitability by 20-30%. However, the public sector has not yet caught up in operationalizing AI in their core processes.

Dr. Dan Patt, former @DARPAtv Deputy Director and a strategist at the artificial intelligence company STR, will talk with @Scale AI Head of Federal, Mark Valentine, about how the public and private sectors can better work together to maximize investments for national security. The scale, power, and efficiency of consumer products like mobile phones and their networks are improving defense capabilities, and the most exciting innovations are still to come. Dr. Patt will explore several ideas like reducing the number of Department of Defense regulations to allow it to adopt enterprise AI faster, leveraging the “virtuous cycle” of consumer-oriented competition and product development, and funding “dual-use” development across both the commercial and defense sectors. Dr. Patt has worked across the intersection of humanity and automation. As an aerospace engineer, he supported development of unmanned systems, including the A160 Hummingbird, and at DARPA led the development of attritable unmanned vehicles, and launched development of certifiable reduced-crew transport aircraft operations. As an entrepreneur, he was co-founder of Vecna Robotics, and is now Chief Strategy Officer at STR.