NT Concepts announced today that the company was selected to receive a Basic Ordering Agreement (BOA) for the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) Data Readiness for Artificial Intelligence Development (DRAID) program.
With a ceiling of $241.6 million, the five-year rapid acquisition vehicle is specifically designed to make data AI-ready by accelerating the procurement and agile delivery of the full lifecycle of data readiness services for the Department of Defense (DoD). The JAIC DRAID enables access to commercial and bespoke AI and machine learning (ML) data preparation tools, capabilities, and services, positioning the DoD and its components to effectively prepare data to support the full range of AI activities.
NT Concepts’ CTO Chris “CP” Powell (third from left) addresses the audience at the 2022 Applying AI to Data for Cyber Hygiene and National Security Forum. Photo courtesy of Executive Mosaic.
“We understand the unique and complex challenges in readying and operationalizing data for advanced AI/ML systems,” said Chris Powell, NT Concepts chief technical officer. “The DRAID program offers us a greater opportunity to help develop and deploy ethical, purpose-built systems at the speed of the DoD mission. We are excited to be a part of this transformative journey.”
As posted on their website, the JAIC DRAID is also customizable and extends beyond the core tasks of data preparation (data ingestion, feature engineering, and labeling) to areas of technically-informed future interest such as AI security, synthetic data generation, and data representativeness.
The data generated will be used in the JAIC’s Joint Common Foundation (JCF), a cloud-based platform that enables users and agencies across the defense and intelligence communities to develop AI solutions in a secure environment. NT Concepts is currently developing a project in the JCF for a key DoD client in support of defense cyber operations utilizing their portable data science environment, which enables rapid prototyping of AI/ML and advanced data analytics solutions.