Elodie Collins
United Launch Alliance has commenced testing of a government-compliant artificial intelligence chatbot for defense contractors.
Made by OpenAI, the chatbot is now being used by about 150 employees at the rocket manufacturer’s facility, SpaceNews reported.
The pilot includes employees across multiple departments, such as engineering and legal teams.
The chatbot runs on Microsoft’s Azure secure cloud platform. In April, the Azure OpenAI service secured authorization from the Defense Information Systems Agency to handle Department of Defense workloads at Impact Level 6.
Chatbot for the US Defense Industrial Base
Tory Bruno, president and CEO of ULA and a Wash100 Award winner, described the chatbot, which the company dubbed RocketGPT, as a tool to aid in “tedious, time-consuming things” associated with writing reports and government proposals and analyzing flight telemetry.
According to the executive, RocketGPT functions like a research assistant rather than replacing human workers.
“AI is really, really good at handling massive volumes of data,” Bruno explained. “So if that isn’t what you’re doing, that’s probably not the right tool.”
The aerospace industry leader warned that AI systems still make mistakes. He said human workers are required to review AI-generated content and employees will be held accountable for final work products.
OpenAI for Government
The pilot comes weeks after the launch of OpenAI for Government. The initiative consolidates all of OpenAI’s efforts to deliver AI capabilities to support U.S. government missions.
OpenAI for Government recently secured $200 million from the DOD to explore the use of frontier AI to transform administrative functions, including how service members and their families access healthcare.