The NSA is reportedly working on a new AI unit to focus on the new technology.
The initial task of the AI Security Center will be to protect current AI systems, such as Chat GPT, to prevent their infiltration by hostile disinformation. Such an attack could have large second and third order effects, throwing off calculations. Axios reports:
Driving the news: The National Security Agency is standing up a new AI Security Center that will focus on protecting AI systems from hacks, intellectual property theft and other security threats, Gen. Paul Nakasone, the outgoing head of the agency, said during a National Press Club event last week.
The center will consolidate all of the NSA’s existing work on security and AI while fostering collaboration with the Defense Department, international partners, academia and the tech industry.
While this defensive AI application seems in line with the NSA’s mission, the agency is also looking for a more active use of AI for its intelligence analysis. Fox News says:
“The most obscure details can complete an intelligence estimate and that requires intelligence analysts who can comb through every piece of information, recognize a pattern and turn that data into information — and ultimately a finished analysis,” Alexander said. “AI and machine learning can take on the role of literally 1000s of lower-level analysts. It works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and the sheer amount of data collected allows for whole new methods of analysis.”
Alexander pointed to allied intelligence collection efforts during World War II: “Part of the reason the intel community realized the Germans would attack at the Battle of the Bulge was because of the size of buttons coming from German factories. AI will find and alert human analysts to small details that may otherwise be missed.”
The NSA’s intelligence collection is already huge, but it lags in the analysis department. With AI, it would be able to create a more detailed database of signals collection. This development could be particularly dangerous for Americans’s privacy and civil liberties.
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