The big impact of NIPRGPT on the DoD is in risk tolerance not capability…

The NIPRGPT launch provides the first widespread CUI approved GenAI capability for the average military member, but the big landmark is in accepted risk tolerance by the service. I’ll be the first to say it’ll be a challenge to get any significant military use case accomplished by small parameter sized low performance LLM (which is what powers NIPRGPT). As much as this might seem negative, I would argue it is the biggest positive for the technology overall for the DoD. Not all GenAI systems or applications are high threat, and as such a graduated scale should be applied to their evaluation and approval. Starting small and proving that fact is VERY important, because what establishing a graduated risk scale relative to model/system capability does is ultimately raise the floor of mass capability deployment.

No longer is it a question of if, but simply what to deploy to the masses relative to capability and cost. What is the services risk tolerance and what can they afford? The answer to those questions establishes the floor of mass capability, but also as compute cost reduce and model performance improve, risk tolerance and cost can remain relatively static while capability continually improve.

This is the new DoD GenAI reality, fixed risk/cost with constantly improving capability.