A personal 'Cortana'-like AI for every American soldier? It's possible

Artificial intelligence is permeating just about every facet of modern life, but using

it in the military is a little different. Military AI models have lots of national secrets that need protecting, something AI models

aren't great about when anyone can ask them questions. And for troops operating far from the safety of a proper military installation, what's

known as the Tactical Edge, using AI, or any piece of technology that needs to send a signal

or receive a signal, could give away the troops' location, leading to deadly consequences

So, how do you put this paradigm-shifting technology of AI into the hands of the war

fighters who need it behind enemy lines, all without compromising them or the data

It's the next frontier. I mean, these things can be more powerful than nuclear weapons

So we have to I think all of us sort of just come together like it the Manhattan Project again And you know we have the big tech folks We have the small startups like us

We all have different core competencies. I think we all need to work together to safeguard our nation

Tyler Saltzman is the president and co-founder of Edgerunner AI. It's a tech startup in the defense sector working to create AI assistance that can be used on any device and without an active network connection

which is called air-gapped in the industry. Edge Runner partnered with Meta, the parent company of Facebook

and uses the Lama AI model as the base from which to build AI agents

tailor-made for each job in the military. Imagine a better version of ChatGPT that never needs the internet that's military-specific

And what that means is it's specific to your MOS, your military occupation specialty

So me, for example, I was an Army 90 Alpha, an Army logistician

I required much of an AI than a combat medic or a fighter pilot or a tank operator

So for example when I was in Eastern Europe running logistics missions running exclusive ordinance to the forward line of troops and EOD unit There was a point where we had a truck go down and now we had to repackage

explosive ordinance from one truck to another truck. Well, the question is, will this exacerbate

the explosion and take out my convoy or is it completely fine? Can these mix together

The different explosive ordinances. Now in the military, there's lots of tables and charts on

what can be mixed together. But you don't always have that crammed in your head or available when

you're in the fight on a convoy over, you know, in mission. So right away, an AI would be able to

know, yeah, that's good. You're good to go or you're not. And for me, as the young lieutenant

you got to make the call. And because it's not connected to the internet or any other network

or anything like that, there's no worry about enemy, you know, software trying to pull the

information out of the cloud or anything like that, right? That's right. Now, it's not perfect being air-grabbed on the device, but it's significantly better than

requiring internet connectivity or satellite, which you might as well just tell the enemy

where you at So for this to be completely local it a big advantage It also more cost effective because you not paying by the token which we seeing folks gouge customers

by that. So it's unlimited inferences on your device. In addition to its partnership with Meta

Age Runner AI is also working on projects with the U.S. Army, Air Force, Space Force

and Special Operations Command. We have a lot of traction with SOCOM. We're actually deployed

overseas with them and, uh, works, you know, things are going well. We're saving them time

We're reducing cognitive load. Imagine you're running a mission and you're getting shot at

things are hitting the fan. You know, sometimes it's hard to think in those high six environments

and this can help you. So like reducing cognitive load on the warfighters so they can, you know

move forward. Tyler said multiple times during our conversation that edge runner AI or any

artificial agent, is not a magic bullet that will fix every problem, but it is a powerful tool

that's going to be right more often than a human. For more reporting like this

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