US Air Force Looking to Recruit Siri (Apple)

US Air Force Looking to Recruit Siri (Apple)

US air force

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The US Air Force is looking for a personal voice assistant for its Air Operations and Combined Air Operations Centers. Would the Air Force operations centers soon hear the voice of Siri, Apple’s voice-activated data assistant, or Google Home? “Exemplars include Apple’s Siri, Google Home, and Amazon Alexa,” notes the Small Business Innovation Research solicitation.

The solicitation offers several examples of how a talking computer assistant can help operations center operators, according to c4isrnet.com. “The conversational interface would allow simplified data input and output for queries, commands, and information access,” the solicitation said. “The assistant could prompt and guide the user through a series of steps in task checklists, and provide timers and alarms for various time critical activities. The assistant could advise and assist the user in evaluating data and information to interpret results and make assessments and recommendations on courses of action. Many of these functions can be automated, but the ability of a personal assistant to adapt to a user or situation, and better understand the desired outcomes or intentions is expected to greatly enhance the effectiveness of the operator.”

In fact, Siri started its way in the US Army. Some 15 years ago, DARPA funded a project known as PAL, for Personalized Assistant that Learns. It was an adaptive AI program for both data retrieval and data synthesis.

If you told PAL what information you needed, and it observed what you did with that information, it would figure out a more efficient path to acquiring and sorting relevant information the next time around, according to wired.com.

IBM built a new voice assistant using artificial intelligence, focused on cybersecurity. It was designed to help manage cyber threats, according to cnet.com, and is being used to help cybersecurity professionals comb through the hundreds of alerts they receive each day.