DESCRIPTION

The U.S. Army would like to invite interested entities to participate in the xTechScalable AI competition, a forum for eligible small businesses across the U.S. to engage with the Department of Defense (DOD), earn prize money, and potentially participate in the 2024 SXSW conference in March and submit for a Direct to Phase II Army Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award.

The Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology recognizes that the Army must enhance engagements with small businesses by (1) understanding the spectrum of “world-class” technologies being developed commercially that may benefit the DOD in the artificial intelligence space; (2) integrating the sector of nontraditional innovators into the DOD Science and Technology (S&T) ecosystem; and (3) providing expertise and feedback to accelerate, mature and transition technologies of interest to the DOD.

The xTechScalable AI competition will consist of three rounds:

(1) Call for concept white papers;

(2) Final pitch event; and

(3) Invitation to submit a Direct to Phase II Army SBIR proposal.

The competition will award up to $370,000 in cash prizes to selected participants. Up to eight (8) finalists will receive a cash prize of $10,000 each and an invitation to pitch their innovative technology solutions to a panel of Army and DOD subject matter experts at the 2024 SXSW conference in Austin, TX in March 2024. The competition will select up to four (4) participants as the final winners, with the first-place winner receiving a cash prize of $100,000. All final winners of the competition will be eligible to submit for a Direct to Phase II SBIR award of up to $2 million each. Details on the prize and SBIR structures are listed in the announcement below.

The efforts described in this notice are being pursued under the authorities of 10 U.S.C. § 4025, 15 U.S.C. § 638, and 10 U.S.C. § 4022 (Prototype Projects) to award cash prizes and SBIR contracts as described in this announcement. While the authority of this program is 10 U.S.C. § 4025, the xTechScalable AI competition may generate interest by another U.S. Army, DOD or United States Government (USG) organization for a funding opportunity outside of this program (e.g., submission of a proposal under a Broad Agency Announcement). The interested organization may contact the participant to provide additional information or ask for a request for proposal in a separate solicitation. Finalists of the prize competition may be invited to submit a separate proposal for further development of their proposed technology solution based on the needs of the Army. The Army may use a contract mechanism of their choice and will notify the participants accordingly.

All xTechScalable AI competition submissions are treated as privileged information, and contents are disclosed to government employees or designated support contractors only for the purpose of evaluation and program support.

The xTech Program will provide detailed feedback from evaluators to participants during each part of the competition. The purpose of providing this feedback is to accelerate transition of the technology to an Army end-user by providing insight on best applications for the technology, suggestions for product improvement for Army use and recommended next steps.

Topic: Scalable Techniques for Adversarial Artificial Intelligence (AI)

xTechScalable AI is seeking novel, disruptive concepts and technology solutions that can assist in tackling the Army’s current needs and apply to current Army concepts.

Current Machine Learning (ML) pipelines are vulnerable to manipulation of code, data, labels and labeling processes that may compromise downstream ML models. While there is increased interest in AI models for the DOD, these models are vulnerable to the same supply chain attacks as any other software component. In addition, AI models are often pretrained, trained and then retrained on data of unknown provenance. This makes them vulnerable to Adversarial AI techniques like Data Poisoning, AI Trojans, and Label Contamination without breaching DOD-controlled secure environments for data. Attacking models may also cause spillage through revealing critical intelligence. As AI/ML pipeline solutions are advanced and scaled for Army needs, these potential vulnerabilities for AI pipelines and models need to be addressed.

The Army is aware of existing defense mechanisms for specific attack modalities. However, comprehensive models capable of defending against universal AI threat vectors are needed. Security models must also be scalable to meet the rapidly evolving nature of these threat vectors.

While the Army will accept proposals on any Adversarial AI technical challenge requiring the application of scalable AI techniques like ML Ops, the Army will prioritize submissions addressing the following core need areas for award:

• Systematic testing and evaluation methods that assess defense capabilities of security systems for AI models;
• Trusted and secure validation and verification strategies to ensure that training data is not poisoned or inaccurate;
• Continuous monitoring capabilities to secure development of models throughout the ML lifecycle;
• Improved methods of transparency and assurance of code, data, labels and labeling processes;
• Improved telemetry capabilities that can better observe and track data and information within individual modules of an ML pipeline; and
• Comprehensive solutions to address adversarial AI attacks and cyber defense threats, including attacks on training data, attacks on model inference, stolen models attacks, vulnerable tools, wasting compute resources and exposing sensitive data.

SCHEDULE AND PRIZES

ELIGIBILITY

Small, independent U.S. businesses. Restrictions exist about (1) the type of firm, (2) its ownership structure, (3) the firm’s size in terms of the number of employees; and (4) prior, current, or pending support of similar proposals or awards, as follows:

(1) Type of Firm: An eligible firm must be organized as a for‐profit concern and meet all the other small business requirements in 13 C.F.R. § 121.702. Non‐profit entities are not eligible.

(2) Ownership and Control: A majority (more than 50%) of an eligible firm’s equity (e.g., stock) must be directly owned and controlled by one of the following:

1. One or more individuals who are citizens or permanent resident aliens of theU.S.;
2. Other for‐profit small business concerns (each of which is directly owned and controlled by individuals who are citizens or permanent resident aliens of the U.S.); or
3. A combination of (a) and (b) above.

Note: If an employee stock ownership plan owns all or part of the concern, each stock trustee and plan member is considered an owner. If a trust owns all or part of the concern, each trustee and trust beneficiary is considered an owner.

(3) Size: An eligible firm, together with the affiliates, must not have more than 500 employees.

(4) Prior, Current or Pending Support with Similar Technology: Proposals submitted in response to this prize competition must not be substantially the same as another proposal that was funded, is now being funded, or is pending contract award with another Federal Agency. If there is any question concerning prior, current, or pending support of similar proposals or awards, it must be disclosed to the xTech Program Office as early as possible.