Tech-curious federal workers can now test drive the geodata search engine created by AI-startup Danti already used by some defense and intelligence agencies.
The cloud-based platform, which can be retooled for various classification levels, is already used by the Space Force’s data analytics effort, called the Tactical Surveillance Reconnaissance and Tracking, or TacSRT, program, as well as the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Federal Emergence Management Agency. But now anyone with a government email can get set up to use it, the company announced Thursday.
The military has been using data analysis on the battlefield to help commanders make decisions. But moving that information between a headquarters and troops in the field can be a challenging process.
“If you’re an aviator planning a mission and you’re looking at one of the latest [surface-to-air missile] sites or alternate landing locations along my route, that might be something that you’ve got to wait a bit of time to get an analyst to run,” said Jesse Kallman, Danti’s founder and CEO. “We want to take this to, where someone deployed overseas on a [Tactical Assault Kit] device is asking questions and getting high quality analysis in seconds, and being able to automate a lot of the simple stuff that takes a lot of time from the highly skilled analysts” who could be doing more complicated work.
For example, when looking for more information on Thursday’s fatal missile strike on a Ukrainian hotel in Kryvyi Rih, a Google search brings up the latest news stories and social media posts.
But on Danti’s platform, the keywords “Ukraine hotel strike by Russia” pulls up “satellite photos that intersect where the hotel is,” a clickable map that “shows me where it took place. It shows me geolocated news. It shows me every image that was captured over that hotel, and a breakdown of what happened from news and social,” Kallman said as he walked Defense One through the platform.
The search pulled up several feeds, a map, a text summary and bullet list of what happened, common questions, and clickable tiles for news stories and media posts. Users can also save and share the searches for offline use.
“Maybe I want to see social media from the ground. I want to see the latest information. I can see Telegram posts, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook posts, all of this information,” from translated Russian, Ukrainian, and U.S. sources, he said.
Kallman said the AI tool gives government workers, who may not be highly technical, the ability to pull data from various sources with analysis and recommendations based on a simple query.
“Some people think that AI is going to solve everything for everybody, and take everyone’s job. And I think that’s grossly misunderstood. I think it’s going to help the people that just don’t have 15 to 20 years of expertise with a lot of the easy stuff,” he said.
Going forward, Danti is focused on scaling its product use to larger organizations with thousands of users and into the “hands of people that are not sitting in a [secure facility] in Washington, D.C., but someone that’s in the field [who] needs information right now,” Kallman said. Right now, “a lot of analysts are generating analysis in the system. We’re also indexing that and making it available for the next analyst that asks the question. So there’s a major compounding benefit effect here.”
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