The Power and Pitfalls of AI for US Intelligence

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 US competes to stay ahead, the intelligence community is grappling with the fits and starts of the impending revolution brought on by AI.

The US 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 US 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 term AI is used for a group of technologies that solve problems or perform tasks that mimic humanlike perception, cognition, learning, planning, communication, or actions. AI includes technologies that can theoretically survive autonomously in novel situations, but its more common application is machine learning or algorithms that predict, classify, or approximate empiric-like results using big data, statistical models, and correlation.

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