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fliptop writes:

Artificial intelligence use is booming, but it's not the secret weapon you might imagine:

From cyber operations to disinformation, artificial intelligence extends the reach of national security threats that can target individuals and whole societies with precision, speed, and scale. As the U.S. competes to stay ahead, the intelligence community is grappling with the fits and starts of the impending revolution brought on by AI.

The U.S. intelligence community has launched initiatives to grapple with AI's implications and ethical uses, and analysts have begun to conceptualize how AI will revolutionize their discipline, yet these approaches and other practical applications of such technologies by the IC have been largely fragmented.

As experts sound the alarm that the U.S. is not prepared to defend itself against AI by its strategic rival, China, Congress has called for the IC to produce a plan for integration of such technologies into workflows to create an "AI digital ecosystem" in the 2022 Intelligence Authorization Act.

The article at Wired goes on to describe how different government agencies are using AI to find patterns in global web traffic and satellite images, but there are problems when using AI to interpret intent:

AI's comprehension might be more analogous to the comprehension of a human toddler, says Eric Curwin, chief technology officer at Pyrra Technologies, which identifies virtual threats to clients from violence to disinformation. "For example, AI can understand the basics of human language, but foundational models don't have the latent or contextual knowledge to accomplish specific tasks," Curwin says.

[...] In order to "build models that can begin to replace human intuition or cognition," Curwin explains, "researchers must first understand how to interpret behavior and translate that behavior into something AI can learn."

Originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.

Previously:
Is Society Ready for AI Ethical Decision-Making?
The Next Cybersecurity Crisis: Poisoned AI

Original Submission