Microsoft has developed an artificial intelligence for the US government that can function without an internet connection » TwistedSifter

They are watching us.

We’ve always known it, but now they can do it completely independently of the Internet.

Microsoft recently trained a new AI model that operates completely independently of an internet connection, providing a powerful new tool for anyone who uses it.

And guess who that will be?

The technology was designed to enable U.S. intelligence agencies to analyze top-secret information without the risk of it being shared with hackers or other nefarious groups with Internet access.

“This is the first time we’ve had an isolated version — where isolated means it’s not connected to the internet — and it’s on a special network that only the U.S. government can access,” William Chappell, Microsoft’s chief technology officer for strategic missions and technology, told Bloomberg News.

The CIA wants to make sure people know that their motives are not nefarious, but that they just want to win.

“There is a race to apply generative AI to intelligence data,” Sheetal Patel, deputy director of the CIA’s Transnational and Technology Mission Center, said at a security conference at Vanderbilt University in May. “The first country to use generative AI for its intelligence agencies would win that race, and I want that to be us.”

There have long been concerns about the inadvertent leakage of sensitive data by AI chatbots, with executives at some of the largest companies warning their employees against using this technology due to the risk of confidential or proprietary information becoming public.

This effect is further amplified when it comes to the collection and recording of sensitive information by organizations such as the CIA that work with classified intelligence data.

However, these organizations want to use tools like AI to collect and sort information, so there is a need for Microsoft’s “air-gapped” AI.

The technology is based on OpenAI’s GPT-4 LLM and will reportedly only be available to 10,000 users. The tool could enable agencies like the CIA to quickly analyze a wealth of classified data.

The CIA has won the race, but what that means for laypeople remains to be seen.

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