3 ms·

US intelligence community is embracing generative AI

51 points by belter 2y ago

alwa 2y ago
Related: Lakshmi Raman’s address at the AWS keynote. Starts around 12:40. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D4IdZFmFMIs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D4IdZFmFMIs
nmitchko 2y ago
Given that Generative AI can now read brain scans [1] and this, I wonder how far away we are from "you thought negatively about something, the authorities are on their way". [1] -- https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.18.517004v3 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.18.517004v3
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  Well we’re not infinitely far away from it, which is why we need to build political and legal systems that can respect human dignity even in the presence of such technologies. Be sure to vote :)
  - hcfman 2y ago
    He is going to build these ? The same people that are build systems expressly to avoid accountability?
- belter 2y ago
  The EU will want to scan your brain...for the children....
GeoAtreides 2y ago
Brazil, where hearts were entertaining June We stood beneath an amber moon And softly murmured "Someday soon" We kissed and clung together ... Recalling thrills of our love There's one thing I'm certain of Return, I will, to old Brazil
wwweston 2y ago
I’d ask why but I can already guess at the plausible technical answer (ai probably helps process/sift through lots of signals and we love sigint in the US) and a political answer (lucrative contracts). Sure hope the longstanding conversations about our underinvestment in humint don’t take on a new dimension.
- AnotherGoodName 2y ago
  Propaganda is a key component of what intelligence agencies do and it would surely be amazing for spamming one sided views to various forums. I suspect it’d be good for upvoting/downvoting on mass too. Have the ai judge if the comment is inline with the message desired and upvote/downvote. People chasing social approval will naturally turn the way you want them.
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    Yeah, this is probably already widely in use by various intelligence agencies around the world.
- stackskipton 2y ago
  Political answer is probably much more relevant one. Someone in power had a friend who had AI company and revolving door is real. So, they hire AI company, push it through to show some results they can shout from rooftop, walk out of government into AI company as director of Government relations with good six figure salary. Also, bonus of National Security is public can't really fact check. Likely all the data it's analyzing is classified.
huitzitziltzin 2y ago
I am skeptical of nearly all gen ai applications, including this one. However, if humans can hallucinate weapons of mass destruction in Iraq I guess we are no worse off than we are with the status quo.
- AnotherGoodName 2y ago
  The us government agencies had direction from high to push the view that Iraq was importing yellowcake from Nigeria to make nuclear weapons. Imagine how good ai will be at pushing this. Any dissent online can now be drowned out with bots. Those who chase social approval online will naturally shift their view the way the bots encourage them to with upvotes/downvotes. If Iraq happened again today we’d struggle to get a word of dissent past the online message boards.
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    > If Iraq happened again today we’d struggle to get a word of dissent past the online message boards. Sobering thought. Well brought up ...
    - dartos 2y ago
      Just like cable news back then. We all just got too used to thinking there was a real person on the other end of social media.
  - MaxPock 2y ago
    Niger not Nigeria
  - Spooky23 2y ago
    Yup, you can visibly see this with the Russia “sympathizers” wrt Ukraine. Your traditional racist uncle types and old people worried about nonsense are all-in. It’s bizarre to see right wingers suddenly worried about killing Russians… talk about reversal. End of the day, social media has been weaponized and the intelligence services need to be there. Eventually, they’ll be heavy regulation, but that day is far away.
gfosco 2y ago
Not mentioned in the article, but one major provider for this is AskSage.ai, which has built up a lot of features around creating government documents, proposals, RFPs, etc.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
nickpinkston 2y ago
God help us...
nottorp 2y ago
Instead of making up most of their reports by hand, they'll have ChatGPT make up most of their reports? :)
drones 2y ago
At Opsec HQ: Lieutenant: Captain! Captain! You've got to see this! Captain: What is it? Lieutenant: We just uncovered an entirely new ICBM design being deployed right now by the Kremlin! Captain: Really, that's incredible! Lieutenant: Well, not quite. The fins are attached horizontally, the warhead is placed inside the booster, and the fuselage is an asian woman's face.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  Spot on :) PS. Also, curiosly fins have six fingers ...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
Havoc 2y ago
Unfortunately it is somewhat asymmetric in that it is better at attacking. GenAI is much better at flooding social media with misinformation than it is at: > search and discovery assistance, writing assistance, ideation, brainstorming It's the same asymmetry we see with tools to detect AI writing - they're just not very good, while bulk generation of it is. Wild times ahead.
- knowaveragejoe 2y ago
  > search and discovery assistance, writing assistance, ideation, brainstorming These are some of the things that gen AI is really good at. "Flooding social media with misinformation" is an application of these things.
- causal 2y ago
  I'm not sure I agree. Searching and summarizing are excellent uses of generative AI. It's very good at understanding meaning and intent- making it especially useful for detecting actors plotting against the state. That said, even such defensive uses do require a loss of civil liberties so that the generative AI can read our data and infer intent. Like all warfare, AI warfare will take a toll on humanity.
cpursley 2y ago
Could be useful for the psyops divisions like: https://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/specialty-careers/special-ops/psychological-operations https://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/specialty-careers/sp...
kalrtar 2y ago
Not surprising. We know from a rare moment of truth that the U.K. 77th brigade is using social media to influence people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/77th_Brigade_(United_Kingdom)#Activities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/77th_Brigade_(United_Kingdom)#... The Brigade uses social media such as Twitter and Facebook to influence populations and behaviour.[11][12] David Miller, then a professor of political sociology at the University of Bristol studying British government propaganda and public relations, said that it is "involved in manipulation of the media including using fake online profiles". Generative AI is even cheaper.
- causal 2y ago
  Social media is increasingly a battleground for bots. Real humans ironically become a voluntary force in this, as the bots only need to propagate an idea so far before people believe it enough to make it part of their identity. One idea is a social media service built on strict identity checks, but I'm not sure people actually care that much whether they're talking to a bot or not.
- tim333 2y ago
  I'm glad we do a bit of that rather than just letting the Russians dominate there.
belter 2y ago
AWS Washington DC Summit 2024: https://youtu.be/D4IdZFmFMIs?t=763 https://youtu.be/D4IdZFmFMIs?t=763
axpy906 2y ago
Didn’t OpenAI add a NSA chief to its board?
DSingularity 2y ago
No surprises here. Their foreign policy objectives are predicated on establishing popular support for an ongoing genocide. They can’t control tik-tok so they ban it and for everything else some bots powered by gen-AI roaming the threads to muddy waters with garbage replies.
- knowaveragejoe 2y ago
  Alternative explanations exist: the subject is actually controversial among people, and your line of reasoning here supposes that all people are on the same page WRT the conflict, when in reality they aren't.
  - DSingularity 2y ago
    You don’t think a majority of the world’s population are against the very regular stream of victims of the genocide? I don’t dispute that the majority of Britain, US, and other western nations are probably indifferent to what’s happening in Gaza and therefore likely to support the government position (more bombs for Israel and no mercy for gazans). But what about Africa? What about Asia? What about the Middle East? What about South America? What portion of those populations are sympathetic to a European colonization project brutalizing the indigenous population?
    - knowaveragejoe 2y ago
      A lot of the language you're using around the subject reeks of being "in" on a specific worldview, and I would argue that most people are either unaware or have various levels of agreement & disagreement with it.
      - DSingularity 2y ago
        I’m not so sure I share your cynical view. I can see how in the west most people people might be unaware - and I don’t think I can blame them - but in the east people are very aware. As for any level of agreement with the genocide — that’s just crazy. I’ve never come across a single person that supported what’s happening to the Gazans. You do know that current estimate have that between 6-7% of gazas population are either dead or as good as dead even if a ceasefire went into effect today? Who would have any level of agreement with that?
xyst 2y ago
The US intelligence agencies have dedicated data centers of domestic and foreign surveillance [1]. Of course they are "embracing" it. Plus, people are very willing to "train" them by feeding it data. Private companies are working with social media companies to get their hands on the raw data in preparation of training on much much larger data sets. We are very very slowly inching towards the science fiction portrayed in "1984". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center
- causal 2y ago
  Supposedly much traffic is also being warehoused, including encrypted data, so that when decryption becomes easier it can all be read. Which means we might have to contend with a future where LLMs think about every email written, message sent, word spoken with an active mic nearby, etc. Unless civil protections are put in place to prevent this, each person is likely to have a profile built with an excruciating level of detail on their entire life. But it's not just intelligence agencies. This article talks about open-source data - even corporations building advertising profiles have access to immense data freely available online or available to purchase.
djaouen 2y ago
Why?
refurb 2y ago
What will be interesting to me if generative AI becomes so good it’s hard to tell it’s fake, will all photos just be fake until proven otherwise. I mean at this point in time someone could release your porn tape you can just say it’s a deep fake.
akira2501 2y ago
> “We were captured by the generative AI zeitgeist just like the entire world was a couple of years back,” Lakshmi Raman, the CIA’s director of Artificial Intelligence Innovation The intelligence agency was.. "capture" by "zeitgeist." That's an exceptionally unsettling view into their internal marketing process. > “We also acknowledge that there’s an immense amount of technical potential that we still have to kind of get our arms around, making sure that we’re looking past the hype and understanding what’s happening, and how we can bring this into our networks,” I love how when AI is applied to any other field of labor, people immediately imaging shrinking the labor pool as a result, yet, amazingly, that does not apply to the CIA. The rest of the article is a fanciful story for the tax payers to convince them that because of AI, the CIA somehow needs _more_ resources and people, and cloud computing providers are well justified in building "air gapped" AI solutions. Disappointing on several levels.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
highcountess 2y ago
Exactly what will improve conditions; the “intelligence” (we really need a more accurate term) services using A as I that lies and hallucinates to please. I guess it means we can shrink the murder clown show called intelligence services, since the computers can just do what they’ve been doing since always. “ChatGPT; show me a plan of sequential lies I can use to start a war and murder millions of people” … “Sure thing, Minister of Love goon. I see you’ve already gotten a head start instigating thermonuclear warfare. Well done! To ensure total annihilating, I recommend …”
causal 2y ago
I think a lot about the light-cone of information that spreads outward from every move I make. It seems that every action online, especially communications- results in a permanent footprint that ripples out forever, available to be studied by some future information gathering thing. I try not to let this thought chill my behavior too much, I don't like that sort of preemptive surrender. But it's part of the thought framework for while civil liberties like freedom of speech and privacy are so important.
kelseyfrog 2y ago
Ty three-letter agencies. This is why my stealth startup to patriot-wash my clients' internet presence is raking it in rn
rsynnott 2y ago
Given that the US intelligence community also embraced ESP (really: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project), I’m not sure this is a _particularly_ great endorsement, as they go.
uslic001 2y ago
Link gives an error: Error 403 Forbidden Forbidden Error 54113 Details: cache-iad-kiad7000088-IAD 1720547017 3290452697 Varnish cache server

51 points by belter 2y ago

alwa 2y ago

Related: Lakshmi Raman’s address at the AWS keynote. Starts around 12:40. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D4IdZFmFMIs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D4IdZFmFMIs

nmitchko 2y ago

Given that Generative AI can now read brain scans [1] and this, I wonder how far away we are from "you thought negatively about something, the authorities are on their way". [1] -- https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.18.517004v3 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.18.517004v3

llamaimperative 2y ago
Well we’re not infinitely far away from it, which is why we need to build political and legal systems that can respect human dignity even in the presence of such technologies. Be sure to vote :)
- hcfman 2y ago
  He is going to build these ? The same people that are build systems expressly to avoid accountability?
belter 2y ago
The EU will want to scan your brain...for the children....

GeoAtreides 2y ago

Brazil, where hearts were entertaining June We stood beneath an amber moon And softly murmured "Someday soon" We kissed and clung together ... Recalling thrills of our love There's one thing I'm certain of Return, I will, to old Brazil

wwweston 2y ago

I’d ask why but I can already guess at the plausible technical answer (ai probably helps process/sift through lots of signals and we love sigint in the US) and a political answer (lucrative contracts). Sure hope the longstanding conversations about our underinvestment in humint don’t take on a new dimension.

AnotherGoodName 2y ago
Propaganda is a key component of what intelligence agencies do and it would surely be amazing for spamming one sided views to various forums. I suspect it’d be good for upvoting/downvoting on mass too. Have the ai judge if the comment is inline with the message desired and upvote/downvote. People chasing social approval will naturally turn the way you want them.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  Yeah, this is probably already widely in use by various intelligence agencies around the world.
stackskipton 2y ago
Political answer is probably much more relevant one. Someone in power had a friend who had AI company and revolving door is real. So, they hire AI company, push it through to show some results they can shout from rooftop, walk out of government into AI company as director of Government relations with good six figure salary. Also, bonus of National Security is public can't really fact check. Likely all the data it's analyzing is classified.

huitzitziltzin 2y ago

I am skeptical of nearly all gen ai applications, including this one. However, if humans can hallucinate weapons of mass destruction in Iraq I guess we are no worse off than we are with the status quo.

AnotherGoodName 2y ago
The us government agencies had direction from high to push the view that Iraq was importing yellowcake from Nigeria to make nuclear weapons. Imagine how good ai will be at pushing this. Any dissent online can now be drowned out with bots. Those who chase social approval online will naturally shift their view the way the bots encourage them to with upvotes/downvotes. If Iraq happened again today we’d struggle to get a word of dissent past the online message boards.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  > If Iraq happened again today we’d struggle to get a word of dissent past the online message boards. Sobering thought. Well brought up ...
  - dartos 2y ago
    Just like cable news back then. We all just got too used to thinking there was a real person on the other end of social media.
- MaxPock 2y ago
  Niger not Nigeria
- Spooky23 2y ago
  Yup, you can visibly see this with the Russia “sympathizers” wrt Ukraine. Your traditional racist uncle types and old people worried about nonsense are all-in. It’s bizarre to see right wingers suddenly worried about killing Russians… talk about reversal. End of the day, social media has been weaponized and the intelligence services need to be there. Eventually, they’ll be heavy regulation, but that day is far away.

gfosco 2y ago

Not mentioned in the article, but one major provider for this is AskSage.ai, which has built up a lot of features around creating government documents, proposals, RFPs, etc.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

nickpinkston 2y ago

God help us...

nottorp 2y ago

Instead of making up most of their reports by hand, they'll have ChatGPT make up most of their reports? :)

drones 2y ago

At Opsec HQ: Lieutenant: Captain! Captain! You've got to see this! Captain: What is it? Lieutenant: We just uncovered an entirely new ICBM design being deployed right now by the Kremlin! Captain: Really, that's incredible! Lieutenant: Well, not quite. The fins are attached horizontally, the warhead is placed inside the booster, and the fuselage is an asian woman's face.

Bluestein 2y ago
Spot on :) PS. Also, curiosly fins have six fingers ...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

Havoc 2y ago

Unfortunately it is somewhat asymmetric in that it is better at attacking. GenAI is much better at flooding social media with misinformation than it is at: > search and discovery assistance, writing assistance, ideation, brainstorming It's the same asymmetry we see with tools to detect AI writing - they're just not very good, while bulk generation of it is. Wild times ahead.

knowaveragejoe 2y ago
> search and discovery assistance, writing assistance, ideation, brainstorming These are some of the things that gen AI is really good at. "Flooding social media with misinformation" is an application of these things.
causal 2y ago
I'm not sure I agree. Searching and summarizing are excellent uses of generative AI. It's very good at understanding meaning and intent- making it especially useful for detecting actors plotting against the state. That said, even such defensive uses do require a loss of civil liberties so that the generative AI can read our data and infer intent. Like all warfare, AI warfare will take a toll on humanity.

cpursley 2y ago

Could be useful for the psyops divisions like: https://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/specialty-careers/special-ops/psychological-operations https://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/specialty-careers/sp...

kalrtar 2y ago

Not surprising. We know from a rare moment of truth that the U.K. 77th brigade is using social media to influence people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/77th_Brigade_(United_Kingdom)#Activities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/77th_Brigade_(United_Kingdom)#... The Brigade uses social media such as Twitter and Facebook to influence populations and behaviour.[11][12] David Miller, then a professor of political sociology at the University of Bristol studying British government propaganda and public relations, said that it is "involved in manipulation of the media including using fake online profiles". Generative AI is even cheaper.

causal 2y ago
Social media is increasingly a battleground for bots. Real humans ironically become a voluntary force in this, as the bots only need to propagate an idea so far before people believe it enough to make it part of their identity. One idea is a social media service built on strict identity checks, but I'm not sure people actually care that much whether they're talking to a bot or not.
tim333 2y ago
I'm glad we do a bit of that rather than just letting the Russians dominate there.

belter 2y ago

AWS Washington DC Summit 2024: https://youtu.be/D4IdZFmFMIs?t=763 https://youtu.be/D4IdZFmFMIs?t=763

axpy906 2y ago

Didn’t OpenAI add a NSA chief to its board?

DSingularity 2y ago

No surprises here. Their foreign policy objectives are predicated on establishing popular support for an ongoing genocide. They can’t control tik-tok so they ban it and for everything else some bots powered by gen-AI roaming the threads to muddy waters with garbage replies.

knowaveragejoe 2y ago
Alternative explanations exist: the subject is actually controversial among people, and your line of reasoning here supposes that all people are on the same page WRT the conflict, when in reality they aren't.
- DSingularity 2y ago
  You don’t think a majority of the world’s population are against the very regular stream of victims of the genocide? I don’t dispute that the majority of Britain, US, and other western nations are probably indifferent to what’s happening in Gaza and therefore likely to support the government position (more bombs for Israel and no mercy for gazans). But what about Africa? What about Asia? What about the Middle East? What about South America? What portion of those populations are sympathetic to a European colonization project brutalizing the indigenous population?
  - knowaveragejoe 2y ago
    A lot of the language you're using around the subject reeks of being "in" on a specific worldview, and I would argue that most people are either unaware or have various levels of agreement & disagreement with it.
    - DSingularity 2y ago
      I’m not so sure I share your cynical view. I can see how in the west most people people might be unaware - and I don’t think I can blame them - but in the east people are very aware. As for any level of agreement with the genocide — that’s just crazy. I’ve never come across a single person that supported what’s happening to the Gazans. You do know that current estimate have that between 6-7% of gazas population are either dead or as good as dead even if a ceasefire went into effect today? Who would have any level of agreement with that?

xyst 2y ago

The US intelligence agencies have dedicated data centers of domestic and foreign surveillance [1]. Of course they are "embracing" it. Plus, people are very willing to "train" them by feeding it data. Private companies are working with social media companies to get their hands on the raw data in preparation of training on much much larger data sets. We are very very slowly inching towards the science fiction portrayed in "1984". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center

causal 2y ago
Supposedly much traffic is also being warehoused, including encrypted data, so that when decryption becomes easier it can all be read. Which means we might have to contend with a future where LLMs think about every email written, message sent, word spoken with an active mic nearby, etc. Unless civil protections are put in place to prevent this, each person is likely to have a profile built with an excruciating level of detail on their entire life. But it's not just intelligence agencies. This article talks about open-source data - even corporations building advertising profiles have access to immense data freely available online or available to purchase.

djaouen 2y ago

Why?

refurb 2y ago

What will be interesting to me if generative AI becomes so good it’s hard to tell it’s fake, will all photos just be fake until proven otherwise. I mean at this point in time someone could release your porn tape you can just say it’s a deep fake.

akira2501 2y ago

> “We were captured by the generative AI zeitgeist just like the entire world was a couple of years back,” Lakshmi Raman, the CIA’s director of Artificial Intelligence Innovation The intelligence agency was.. "capture" by "zeitgeist." That's an exceptionally unsettling view into their internal marketing process. > “We also acknowledge that there’s an immense amount of technical potential that we still have to kind of get our arms around, making sure that we’re looking past the hype and understanding what’s happening, and how we can bring this into our networks,” I love how when AI is applied to any other field of labor, people immediately imaging shrinking the labor pool as a result, yet, amazingly, that does not apply to the CIA. The rest of the article is a fanciful story for the tax payers to convince them that because of AI, the CIA somehow needs _more_ resources and people, and cloud computing providers are well justified in building "air gapped" AI solutions. Disappointing on several levels.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

highcountess 2y ago

Exactly what will improve conditions; the “intelligence” (we really need a more accurate term) services using A as I that lies and hallucinates to please. I guess it means we can shrink the murder clown show called intelligence services, since the computers can just do what they’ve been doing since always. “ChatGPT; show me a plan of sequential lies I can use to start a war and murder millions of people” … “Sure thing, Minister of Love goon. I see you’ve already gotten a head start instigating thermonuclear warfare. Well done! To ensure total annihilating, I recommend …”

causal 2y ago

I think a lot about the light-cone of information that spreads outward from every move I make. It seems that every action online, especially communications- results in a permanent footprint that ripples out forever, available to be studied by some future information gathering thing. I try not to let this thought chill my behavior too much, I don't like that sort of preemptive surrender. But it's part of the thought framework for while civil liberties like freedom of speech and privacy are so important.

kelseyfrog 2y ago

Ty three-letter agencies. This is why my stealth startup to patriot-wash my clients' internet presence is raking it in rn

rsynnott 2y ago

Given that the US intelligence community also embraced ESP (really: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project), I’m not sure this is a _particularly_ great endorsement, as they go.

uslic001 2y ago

Link gives an error: Error 403 Forbidden Forbidden Error 54113 Details: cache-iad-kiad7000088-IAD 1720547017 3290452697 Varnish cache server