Paravision Comes to New Agreement With US Department of Defense

Paravision will be looking to deepen its ties with the US government after receiving a Basic Ordering Agreement (BOA) from the Department of Defense. The agreement comes courtesy of the Department’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), which is currently working to update the government’s AI capabilities.

To that end, the JAIC has launched a Data Readiness for Artificial Intelligence Development (DRAID) program to make sure that government agencies can keep up with the pace of AI innovation. The DRAID program will ensure that the government has access to accurate and scalable AI tech, and can properly utilize all of the data it collects.

As it relates to Paravision, DRAID is also supposed to support American technology developers, and has been funded to the tune of $241 million. Paravision’s BOA makes the company eligible for some of that funding, and should move Paravision farther up the list when government agencies are searching for an AI technology partner. The company will provide the government with expertise in AI development and the proper use and training of machine learning models to help the government deal with large amounts of data.

According to Paravision, the ethical use of AI was a key consideration in the JAIC’s decision. Paravision’s facial recognition solution performed well across demographics in its most recent NIST evaluation, and the company has appointed an Ethics Advisor to make sure that its technology is developed and used in a way that aligns with its core principles.

“We have integrated ethics into our processes every step of the way, from product development to use case review,” said Paravision President and COO Benji Hutchinson. “We were delighted to see that the DoD is putting a major effort into vetting vendors based on both AI ethics and operational excellence. We look forward to supporting the JAIC and keeping the USA and our armed forces at the forefront of excellence in AI.”

Paravision brought in $23 million in funding in May of last year. The company also released the fifth iteration of its flagship facial recognition platform back in February.

–

April 6, 2022 – by Eric Weiss