1984: Thread

[grarpamp]

CIA Building Own ChatGPT-style AI Bot In Shadow Of China's Advances

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-26/cia-builds-its-own-artificial-intelligence-tool-in-rivalry-with-china
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-05/us-spies-should-tap-private-ai-models-nsa-s-research-chief-says
https://twitter.com/CIA/status/1635287094645096455
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12563289/cia-launches-ai-chatgpt.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10346933/China-develops-AI-prosecutor-press-charges-97-accuracy.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/06/minority-report-spielberg-movie-tom-cruise/661274/

The US Central Intelligence Agency's Open-Source Enterprise division
will soon roll out with a ChatGPT-like large language model (LLM),
which is to serve as a tool for federal and intelligence agencies to
more easily and quickly access intel and information.

Director of the CIA's Open-Source Enterprise division, Randy Nixon,
explained that source information can be sifted and returned to
individual intel analysts faster than ever before. "We’ve gone from
newspapers and radio, to newspapers and television, to newspapers and
cable television, to basic internet, to big data, and it just keeps
going," Nixon told Bloomberg.

"We have to find the needles in the needle field," he added. In
addition to literally hundreds of thousands or millions of classified
files, analysts often rely on gathering open-source information for
their assessments as well. For example this could include culling
public social media apps like Facebook or X.

"Then you can take it to the next level and start chatting and asking
questions of the machines to give you answers, also sourced," Nixon
continued. "Our collection can just continue to grow and grow with no
limitations other than how much things cost."

He explained further that the AI platform will be available and used
by Washington's 18 different intelligence branches, including federal
law enforcement, such as the FBI. It's also expected that the US
military will have access, though it remains that security protocols
and preventing leaks will be a big question, given the vast amounts of
classified materials which will be at the tool's disposal.

There's also the question of privacy, especially following the Edward
Snowden revelations of a decade ago showing that the NSA had in prior
years regularly swept up the data of innocent American citizens,
violating their Fourth Amendment protections.

According to a prior Bloomberg report which questioned the NSA over
the impact on privacy:

    "The intelligence community needs to find a way to take benefit of
these large models without violating privacy," Gilbert Herrera,
director of research at the National Security Agency, said in an
interview. "If we want to realize the full power of artificial
intelligence for other applications, then we’re probably going to have
to rely on a partnership with industry.”

"It all has to be done in a manner that respects civil liberties and
privacy," Herrera claimed in that prior interview. "It’s a tough
problem," she added, further admitting that "The issue of the
intelligence community’s use of publicly trained information is an
issue we’re going to have to grapple with because otherwise there
would be capabilities of AI that we would not be able to use."

    The future of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning
(ML) is bright at #CIA. We’re always looking to build strong
partnerships with the visionaries of today … and tomorrow.#CIASXSW
#EmergingTech #FutureofIntelligence #ArtificialIntelligence
#MachineLearning
    — CIA (@CIA) March 13, 2023

But we highly doubt the US government's top intelligence officials
will be overly concerned with "limiting" AI's power due to the Bill of
Rights and concerns over individual privacy.

Another interesting aspect to the CIA working on its own version of
ChatGPT is the question of competition with China's significant
advances in AI. The new Bloomberg report highlights the mounting
pressure US intelligence faces in the wake of more advanced Chinese
capabilities. Beijing is looking to become the global leader in the AI
field by 2030, and is already considered by many to be a world leader
in the technology:

    In an ominous glimpse into the nation's use of the programs, in
2021 China developed a 'prosecutor' that could identify and press
charges with a reported 97 percent accuracy.

    In contrast, America's law enforcement sphere has also come under
fire for struggling to utilize the power of AI in investigations, but
Nixon said the new program will aid in condensing the unprecedented
levels of information floating through the web.

But it remains that in the West there is a much more robust legal
concept of individual rights, free expression, and autonomy - compared
to communist China. On this front, concerning a CIA-built AI chatbot,
what could possibly go wrong?

After all, the American public doesn't want to find itself living in a
society modeled on "Minority Report" merely for the sake of 'keeping
up' technologically with rival superpowers (however, in some ways we
are already there).