NASA has named David Salvagnini as its agency’s new chief artificial intelligence officer.
This appointment is in accordance with President Biden’s Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. Salvagnini is now responsible for aligning the strategic vision and planning for AI usage across NASA and expanding his current role as chief data officer.
In his expanded capacity, Salvagnini will continue NASA’s collaboration with other government agencies, academic institutions, industry partners, and other experts to ensure the agency is on the cutting edge of AI technology.
“David will lead NASA’s efforts to guide our agency’s responsible use of AI in the cosmos and on Earth to benefit all humanity,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
Salvagnini joined NASA in June 2023 after more than 20 years working in technology leadership in the intelligence community. Before his role at NASA, he served the Office of the Director of National Intelligence as director of the architecture and integration group and chief architect.
NASA continues developing recommendations on leveraging emerging AI technology to best serve our goals and missions, from sifting through Earth science imagery to identifying areas of interest, to searching for data on planets outside our solar system from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and scheduling communications from the Perseverance Mars rover through the Deep Space Network.
