“Human behaviour is data and AI is a data model. […] Where there are patterns we think AI can do a better job”. This statement belongs to Chris Hurst, chief officer of Stabilitas, a private company that works for several US intelligence agencies as an analysis contractor.

According to an article published on online newspaper South China Morning Post, “US spy agencies are pinning their hopes on artificial intelligence to crunch billions of digital bits and understand events around the world”.

“AI has widespread functions, from battlefield weapons to the potential to help quickly rebuild computer systems and programs brought down by hacking attacks”, the article explains. “But a major focus is finding useful patterns in valuable sources like social media”, it continues.

For this reason, according to the South China Morning Post, the CIA is currently working on 137 projects related to AI. “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”, the newspaper informs.

Joseph Gartin, a CIA officer, revealed that using social media data is not a new practice. “What is new is the volume and velocity of collecting social media data,” he asserted. In this case, the article explains that “artificial intelligence-based computing can pick out key words and names but also find patterns in data and correlations to other events – and continually improve on that pattern finding”.

This situation has raised concerns among scientists and political activists. Even renowned tycoon Elon Musk, head of SpaceX and Tesla, has warned that “AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilisation”.

“I have exposure to the most cutting edge AI, and I think people should be really concerned by it”, he expressed. “Competition for AI superiority at national level most likely will be the cause of World War III”, he added.

Draw your own conclusions…

For more information: https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/2110467/human-behaviour-data-us-spy-agencies-hope-artificial