US intelligence community is embracing generative AI

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)#...

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Related: Lakshmi Raman’s address at the AWS keynote. Starts around 12:40.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D4IdZFmFMIs

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

> “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.

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

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 …”

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.

God help us...

Why?

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

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.

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.