The U.S. Navy is using additive manufacturing aboard aircraft carriers and amphibious landing ships as part of broader efforts to deliver or maintain platforms “more quickly, cheaply, and effectively,” according to the sea service’s top officer.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti shared this news on Feb. 13 at the WEST 2024 conference, where she underscored the “outsized and dominant role” the Navy plays in ensuring that U.S. national security objectives are achieved.

Franchetti said that, to be able to carry out its mission, the Navy is looking into “disruptive and emerging technologies” to be able “to adapt to the changing character of war.”

Apart from 3D printing, these new technologies also include artificial intelligence and machine learning, which is being used to support conditions-based maintenance, Franchetti explained. She also cited the use of robotics in order to determine the condition of seagoing platforms “quickly, accurately, and more cost-effectively.”

However, this “really only scratches the surface on how we’re using technology, artificial intelligence and machine learning to better support the fleet in lifecycle maintenance,” the Navy official noted, also emphasizing that such technologies must be understood and put to use with urgency.

Charles River Analytics has secured a Small Business Innovation Research sequential Phase II contract to build cross-domain collaboration software and an artificial intelligence coach for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The Artificial Social Intelligence for Group Learning and Optimization of Collaborative Workflows, or AGLOW, aims to enhance group collaboration across DARPA teams by automatically tracking problem-solving activities and generating coaching suggestions, the company said Tuesday.

“The tool could let you know what the other people on your team are trying to accomplish without the need for continuous, disruptive status meetings,” said Leonard Eusebi, senior scientist at Charles River Analytics and principal investigator on the AGLOW effort.

AGLOW will use a Microsoft Word Add-in for highlighting key questions, answers and insights about a task; a web interface for collecting tasks and summarizing behavior; a cognitive architecture for interpreting behaviors’ relation to goals; and an AI coach for suggesting actions to improve collaboration.

The SBIR Phase II contract is valued at approximately $1.5 million.

Join the Potomac Officers Club’s 5th Annual Artificial Intelligence Summit on March 21 to hear more about cutting-edge AI innovations from government and industry experts. Register here.

The Department of Defense’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, or CDAO, intends to advance the use of data patterns and develop common practices for structuring and organizing data as it works to leverage AI, Federal News Network reported Tuesday.

“I hesitate saying standards because those sound a little bit draconian or a little bit top-down. But we want to use good patterns so people know what it means to share data,” Bill Streilein, chief technology officer at CDAO, said Monday at a conference.

Streilein stated that CDAO had introduced executive-level courses at MIT, Johns Hopkins University and the Naval Postgraduate School to help professionals improve their understanding of AI and data analytics as well as their implications for daily operations.

He also highlighted the importance of experimentation with AI technologies and the adoption of a product-oriented approach to data.

CDAO CTO William Streilein will deliver the opening keynote at the Potomac Officers Club’s 5th Annual Artificial Intelligence Summit on March 21. Register here to hear Streilein and other federal leaders and industry experts discuss the latest developments in the field.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office within the Department of Commerce has released guidance on determining the patentability of an invention created with the assistance of artificial intelligence systems.

Kathi Vidal, undersecretary of commerce for intellectual property and director of the USPTO, said in a blog post published Monday that an AI-assisted invention is not categorically unpatentable but noted that a human must have a significant contribution to the invention for it to qualify for patent protection.

“Instead of considering whether or not the contributions of the AI system to an invention would rise to the same level of inventorship if those contributions were made by a human, the key question this guidance helps address is whether the human named on a patent made a significant enough contribution to be a named as an inventor,” Vidal explained.

“To secure patent protection, there must be at least one named human inventor who meets that requirement” she added.

The Inventorship Guidance for AI-Assisted Inventions took effect Tuesday and will serve as a guide for USPTO stakeholders and personnel on how the agency will analyze inventorship issues related to AI.

The guidance is the first in the USPTO directives outlined in President Biden’s executive order on the safe, secure, and trustworthy development and use of AI.

Under the EO, the USPTO will provide additional guidance to patent examiners and applicants on AI innovation’s patent eligibility and issue recommendations on potential executive actions relating to copyright and AI.