Artificial intelligence security

The US military desperately wants to weaponize AI

Artificial intelligence is a transformative technology, and US generals already see it as the next big weapon in their arsenal.

War-machine learning: Michael Griffin, Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, signaled how keen the military is to make use of AI at the Future of War 2018conference held in Washington, DC, yesterday.

Saber rattling: “There might be an artificial intelligence arms race, but we’re not yet in it,” Griffin said. In reference to China and Russia, he added, “I think our adversaries—and they are our adversaries—understand very well the possible future utility of machine learning, and I think it’s time we did as well.”

Blurred battle lines: Many AI researchers are already worried about military use of the technology. Google employees recently signed an open letter of protest to their CEO after the company’s involvement in a US DoD drone program was revealed. It could prove hard for companies to resist lucrative military contracts, however.

It seems inevitable that AI will be used for everything from data gathering and analysis to developing more sophisticated autonomous systems. So far, the US government has been slow to embrace the technology, but recently proposed legislation could help change that, and it emphasizes military applications.

Artificial intelligence security

The workplace of the future

ARTIFICIAL intelligence (AI) is barging its way into business. As our special report this week explains, firms of all types are harnessing AI to forecast demand, hire workers and deal with customers. In 2017 companies spent around $22bn on AI-related mergers and acquisitions, about 26 times more than in 2015. The McKinsey Global Institute, a think-tank within a consultancy, reckons that just applying AI to marketing, sales and supply chains could create economic value, including profits and efficiencies, of $2.7trn over the next 20 years. Google’s boss has gone so far as to declare that AI will do more for humanity than fire or electricity.

Such grandiose forecasts kindle anxiety as well as hope. Many fret that AI could destroy jobs faster than it creates them. Barriers to entry from owning and generating data could lead to a handful of dominant firms in every industry.

Artificial intelligence security

Will artificially intelligent weapons kill the laws of war?

On September 1, Vladimir Putin spoke with Russian students about science in an open lesson, saying that “the future belongs to artificial intelligence” and whoever masters it first will rule the world. “Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind,” he added. “It comes with colossal opportunities, but also threats that are difficult to predict. Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.”

Putin also said he would not like to see any nation “monopolize” the field, asserting that “[i]f we become leaders in this area, we will share this know-how with the entire world, the same way we share our nuclear technologies today.”

So Putin says he will share Russian AI with the rest of the world. Whether or not one believes that claim, it’s hard to imagine that any nation will have a “monopoly” on the technology—so for the moment, let’s assume roughly equal levels of AI sophistication for Russia and the West. 

Artificial intelligence security

Data swamped US spy agencies put hopes on artificial intelligence

Swamped by too much raw intel data to sift through, US spy agencies are pinning their hopes on artificial intelligence to crunch billions of digital bits and understand events around the world.

Dawn Meyerriecks, the Central Intelligence Agency's deputy director for technology development, said this week the CIA currently has 137 different AI projects, many of them with developers in Silicon Valley.

These range from trying to predict significant future events, by finding correlations in data shifts and other evidence, to having computers tag objects or individuals in video that can draw the attention of intelligence analysts.

Officials of other key spy agencies at the Intelligence and National Security Summit in Washington this week, including military intelligence, also said they were seeking AI-based solutions for turning terabytes of digital data coming in daily into trustworthy intelligence that can be used for policy and battlefield action.

Artificial intelligence security

WHAT THE CIA’S TECH DIRECTOR WANTS FROM AI

Should the U.S. fear growing Russian progress in artificial intelligence? Last week, Vladimir Putin  told students, “Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.” That caught the interest of noted AI phobe / profiteer Elon Musk who tweeted, simply and ominously: “It begins…”

But the CIA’s head of technology development has a different take. Dawn Meyerriecks is less worried about rival nation states might use AI to outflank the United States than about getting U.S.leaders to believe what AI is telling them. “If I want to increase [ certainty in a particular AI-aided assessment] what goes into it? What do I need in order to make a really good assessment on the back-end because that tells me what sort of collection I need to raise confidence to go address national leadership?”

The CIA currently has 137 pilot projects directly related to artificial intelligence, Meyerriecks, the CIA’s deputy director for science and technology, told the Intelligence and National Security Summit in downtown DC. These “experiments” include everything from automatically tagging objects in video (so analysts can pay attention to what’s important) to better predicting future events based on big data and correlational evidence.