Guest Speaker Discusses the Augmented IT Professional, and the Chapter Loves On Its Community

In January, Darren Petrie, AI delivery architect, General Dynamics Information Technology, Falls Church, Virginia, spent time with the chapter, sharing his thoughts on the augmented information technology (IT) professional. Petrie stated up front that artificial intelligence (AI) is not a product category-it is a capability amplifier. For decades, IT in the DOW has been measured by uptime, tickets closed and systems patched. All important work, but still invisible work. AI changes that. Not by replacing the people, but by connecting IT effort directly to mission outcomes. The question is not "Will AI replace IT professionals?" The real question is "Which organizations will augment their employees fast enough to matter?" Petrie touched on how the cloud would not have come into being without DevSecOps; similarly, he commented on how ChatGPT had a similar impact on AI by contributing to the AI explosion. Petrie talked about how AI agents run autonomously-these are software programs used to perceive their environment, reason, plan and take actions to achieve specific goals with minimal human oversight. This autonomous AI operation acts like a personnel amplifier. Overall, this functionality helps workers be more efficient but does not replace them.

Petrie also discussed the new DOW reality. There is a sustained talent deficit across DOW in IT, cyber and data disciplines. DOW systems now span cloud, edge, classified and coalition environments, legacy platforms and emerging AI pipelines-all operating simultaneously. No individual or team can manage this complexity. AI can help manage the cognitive burden. Petrie elaborated on the new AI security paradigm. He emphasized how we still need to protect the base layer of "compute and infra." AI essentially protects decisions and our trust in the data. By defending confidence in data within models, it improves the trustworthiness in decisions that leaders are asked to make. Petrie concluded by pointing out that without governance, AI creates vulnerabilities, but with it, AI creates a defense multiplier.

Event Photographs: