Stakheli Dayana (Diane Staheli)

Stakheli Dayana (Diane Staheli)

Career

2022: Appointment of Pentagon's new AI Project Director

On May 24, 2022, the Pentagon appointed Diane Staheli, an expert on ethics and research in artificial intelligence, as head of the responsible AI (RAI) department of its new Main Directorate of Digital Technology and AI (CDAO).

In this role, Staheli will help the Ministry of Defense lead the development and application of policies, practices, standards and indicators to buy and create a reliable and accountable AI. She took office nearly nine months after the Defense Department's first head of AI ethics left the Joint Center for Artificial Intelligence (JAIC), and in the midst of a broad restructuring of the Pentagon's main AI-related components within the CDAO.

At that time, Pentagon officials noted that this reorganization was a necessary stage in the technological evolution of the ministry and marked a critical next step for the integration of AI into a large-scale enterprise.

Staheli has considerable experience in the military-oriented research and development environment and is a member of the AI reliability working group at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said Sarah Flaherty, who is responsible for public relations with CDAO.

Staheli came to CDAO from the Lincoln Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and has vast expertise in AI ethics and research, data analytics and technology development, Flaherty said in an interview with FedScoop.

At MIT, Staheli led research on human-centered AI.

She holds a master's degree in software engineering and human factors, and her main professional interests include human-AI interaction, explainable AI, decision science, autonomy, sociotechnical systems, and user-centric design.^[1]

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