Gemini · Claude · Intel · CIA · AI Agent · The Register
Humans won't be necessary for intelligence work, Mulligan confirmed
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He lays out a case that AI will make human intelligence officers essential as truth becomes harder to distinguish from computer-generated fiction in the coming years.
Key facts
- The bots won't be coming for 007's job anytime soon
- Agents may already be using AI to fabricate information," Mulligan explained, adding that AI only makes the disinformation game easier to engage
- It is tempting to think that, in an AI-saturated world, HUMINT [human intelligence] will be a relic," Mulligan posits in the paper
- Widely available generative AI models put this capability into every fabricator's hands," Mulligan said
Summary
Former CIA case officer (case officers recruit and handle foreign agents overseas) and RAND Corporation researcher Thomas Mulligan explained in the March edition of the CIA's Studies in Intelligence journal that, rather than render human intelligence work obsolete, AI may make human operators and analysts even more important to the intelligence community. Humans won't be necessary for intelligence work, Mulligan said. "Agents may already be using AI to fabricate information," Mulligan explained, adding that AI only makes the disinformation game easier to engage in. Sources could use an LLM to generate convincing false intelligence before meeting a gullible American handler, or an AI could even be used to dream up a convincing backstory for a counterintelligence agent seeking to plant false facts. "Widely available generative AI models put this capability into every fabricator's hands," Mulligan said.