Marine Corps to host genAI workshop at Quantico
The Marine Corps is planning to bring together service members, civilians and industry at Quantico this fall to develop courses of action for integrating generative artificial intelligence capabilities into the force.
The five-day gathering, slated for Nov. 17-21, will be held as the Corps moves to execute its AI implementation plan. That document was approved in April by Lt. Gen. Melvin “Jerry” Carter, deputy commandant for information. It was developed following last year’s release of the service’s AI strategy.
“GenAI is advancing rapidly and has broad applicability to augment Marines across the spectrum of functional areas and activities,” according to a new calling message issued last week and approved by Carter for convening a generative artificial intelligence workshop.
“The character of war is increasingly defined by the speed and accuracy of decision-making,” it added, noting that Marines’ “ability to achieve cognitive overmatch — to out-think, out-decide, and out-pace our adversaries — is critical to the success of Force Design and our ability to prevail in strategic competition.”
The Corps’ service data officer is tasked with convening the genAI workshop this fall to help officials better understand “high impact” use cases for the technology, provide an overview and demonstrations of joint force and industry solutions, and develop courses of action to “maximize value for USMC integration.”
“This is part of our deliberate weaponization of data and AI to drive cognitive overmatch, accelerate decision advantage, and amplify warfighter impact,” Colin Crosby, Marine Corps SDO and deputy chief data officer for the Department of the Navy, wrote in a post on LinkedIn last week.
According to the calling message, attendees will conduct “hands-on, warfighter-focused evaluation” of large language models and other genAI tools “against real-world Marine Corps challenges.”
Participating commands have been solicited to sign up Marines and civilians with expertise in AI and related fields to attend the in-person event.
The service’s artificial intelligence implementation plan that was released earlier this year laid out timelines for achieving key objectives and milestones for digital transformation
According to the guidance, no later than March 2026, the deputy commandant for information, in coordination with the deputy commandant for combat development and integration, must “develop a use case process that captures, assesses, and prioritizes concepts for the application of AI from across the warfighting functions, and at all echelons, to implement targeted actions” as well as “identify major roadblocks in policy, workforce, and infrastructure that have a large impact on innovation and acceleration of AI implementation to mitigate through change.”
The upcoming workshop at Quantico appears to be geared toward aiding those efforts.
