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By Maj. Mark Bateman
Air Force Institute of Technology

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has recently become an area of key strategic importance across the DoD, fueled by the advent of Generative AI and its rapid proliferation. The Air Force Institute of Technology has been providing AI-relevant education and research long before this recent interest and will continue to do so. We are actively fostering innovation in this area and have been at the forefront of many areas of AI research, such as expert systems, neural networks, reinforcement learning, robotics, unmanned systems and human-agent teams, for over 40 years—both in terms of providing education on cutting edge technologies and the application of those technologies to solve defense related problems. 

The earliest reference discovered in AFIT Scholar (the digital repository of research works from AFIT students and faculty) was AFIT’s 65th anniversary brochure (1984), which discussed AFIT research focused on AI in the form of expert systems and natural language processing. In the same brochure, there was discussion of the creation of an Artificial Intelligence Center which would consolidate research and education from both the School of Engineering and the School of Systems and Logistics. The idea of bringing together resources and expertise in AI from across AFIT to foster innovation has not faded and is the main goal of the newly founded AI Technology Research and Education Consortium (AI TREC).  

While the AI TREC works to forge the future for AI at AFIT, the past and present contributions from AFIT’s schools, departments, and centers is phenomenal. In terms of educating our students, in AFIT’s Graduate School of Engineering and Management, at least 30% of in-resident graduates receive formal training in AI through classes taught by the Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Operational Sciences; even more students get exposed to various AI concepts through class projects in other courses, research, or informal education. Through Graduate School distance learning, 269 remote-learners have earned Data Analytics Graduate Certificates, and through AFIT’s School of Systems and Logistics courses and educational opportunities, over 600 working professionals were exposed to AI concepts in FY24 alone. 

AI-related research at AFIT is vibrant. AFIT Scholar lists over 670 theses related to AI, with some of the earliest digital versions from the early 1990s, and many of them cite AFIT’s contributions to AI throughout the 1980s. In addition to the large breadth of research demonstrated through a strong lineage of thesis work, the second most-downloaded publication on AFIT Scholar is a thesis which applies machine learning to answer research questions about mission dependency of critical infrastructure -- this thesis has over 18,000 downloads, showing that our contributions to this body of knowledge are in demand.

Over the next 40 years AFIT will certainly continue to provide high-quality, defense-focused AI education and research in support of our mission and the needs of the DoD. There will always be a high demand for defense personnel who are technically proficient in leveraging advanced technologies and can think critically about how those technologies can be used to address some of the toughest challenges faced by the DoD.