John Sullins awarded funding from the Department of Defense

January 18, 2024
John Sullins

John Sullins, Philosophy Professor, has received a new 2 year award, for The S.T.O.R.M. (SocioTechnical Operational Risk Management) Prototype Project, for a total of $499,527 from the Department of Defense. 

The S.T.O.R.M. (SocioTechnical Operational Risk Management) project was awarded to PI- Dr. John P. Sullins (SSU), Co-PI Dr. Ryan Jenkins (Cal Poly), and Dr. Patrick Lin (Cal Poly).  A prototype resource is being developed to prudence a tool that can be used by the DOD in analyzing the ethical impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) assets that are used in the US military or that the US military is considering deploying.  

The resources will detail what successfully mitigating ethical risk to an acceptable level would look like across use cases such as defense, predictive health, recruitment, and retention algorithms.  All dimensions of ethical risk will be assessed including sociotechnical risks. The solutions will build upon Executive Orders, federal guidance, societal norms and expectations, the DoD AI Ethical Principles, Responsible AI practices, policies, and norms from the US DoD, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)’s recently released AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF) and Playbook, and norms and expectations of allies and partners. The solutions will build upon standard risk management framework (RMF) dimensions (such as probability vs. consequences) and standard categories of assessment.