More than 800 participants attended the congress themed Getting started with AI. Among them were experts and professionals from the business sector.
Last week, the Secretary of State was still in the United States. He checked in with tech companies like Anduril and Palantir. They make the software behind a relatively classic weapon like the cruise missile smarter and cheaper using AI. Tuinman was impressed.
Gamechanger
AI is a gamechanger, states the Secretary of State. It has implications for our entire way of working. “From planning maintenance for everything that drives, flies, or sails - to collecting, processing, and analyzing intelligence. And making operational decisions.”
Tuinman calls on the entire AI sector for help. Three things play a role: money, intelligence, and courage.
More than a billion
Money is not the problem, according to the crystal clear message from the Cabinet. More than a billion is ready to scale up the defense industry.
“And this year I want to invest 310 million euros in unmanned systems and scaling up other innovations. AI is a growing part of that. Moreover, I believe that AI will become the backbone of our innovations.”
Then theres the intelligence. Defence is already working with a number of excellent Dutch players. “With Lobster Robotics, we are working on an underwater robot with an optical sensor. It inspects critical infrastructure underwater. With Avalor AI (and others), we are already closely collaborating in the development of software for drones. And we now have our own DefGPT, a secure internal alternative to ChatGPT: developed internally and completely cut off from the internet.” Still, more parties are needed.
Development Teams
Defence and the business sector need to collaborate much more intensively. That requires courage. “I envision a cooperation between your and our development teams. So that we can quickly integrate work processes.” Defence, for example, needs its own synthetic data factory. “Good data is scarce and takes a lot of time, resources, and manpower. It can be easier by generating them synthetically.”
Tuinman also calls on the AI sector to come up with other concrete proposals. “Tell me what you can build in six months.”