NSCAI Issues Final Report on Expanding AI Capabilities in Federal Workforce

The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) issued a final report on the AI capabilities of the federal workforce which set a goal for the Department of Defense (DoD) and the intelligence community to be AI-ready by 2025.

With China growing as an AI superpower, the report issued more than 100 recommendations to push the United States to further develop its AI. These recommendations range from expanding AI leadership in the White House to expanding federal funding for AI research. However, the most important recommendation was that the federal government must expand its recruitment of AI talent.

The federal workforce has long struggled to recruit and retain AI talent and many potential applicants often go to the private sector instead. NSCAI Chairman and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt explained, “I was really struck in my work with the Defense Department of how many people work there for low and in difficult conditions because they were patriotic… They left because the opportunity in their career was more interesting in the private sector – that work that they wanted to do, they could not do well as federal or military employees. That’s got to get fixed.”

Schmidt and the other commissioners said a large portion of the federal workforce can be reskilled for AI focused jobs, but the challenge is figuring out which employees will be successful in AI based jobs. Furthermore, the government needs to put these employees on a clear career path so they do not leave public service for other jobs.

Lawmakers have considered the creation of a U.S. Digital Service Academy where students would agree to five years of government service upon graduation. This university would be modeled after the U.S. military service academies and be focused on AI and cybersecurity.

Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, a former commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), said the military also needs AI expertise. She said, “The inability of our military digital subject-matter experts to spend their careers working in digital fields is arguably the single most important issue impeding modernization. Without this career path. DoD will continue to struggle to recruit new talent, identify talent and retain the talent it already has.”