National Security Agency drafting new AI road map

The NSA is developing a new AI road map to better understand the maturation of the technology and the potential threats posed to the US and its allies. (National Security Agency )

Senior leaders at the National Security Agency (NSA) are working to draft a new strategic road map to help understand future development and use of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and how these AI applications can be turned against the US and its allies.

“This is a big deal, obviously … so what we have to do is figure out how to harness in the good and protect from the bad,” NSA Deputy Director George Barnes said of the ongoing road map effort. “We have to understand how to leverage [AI] … but then also understand how our adversaries are going to use it against us,” he said at a 13 July presentation during the annual Intelligence and National Security Summit at National Harbor, Maryland.

Barnes declined to go into specifics regarding the NSA's work on the new AI road map. However, he noted the pending strategic guidance would be “really focused on bringing forward … foundational AI and machine learning (ML) [technologies] and then tackling these newer themes such as generative AI” and other advanced AI methods and applications that continue to mature.

Generative AI is an evolved variant of the traditional predictive AI technologies currently employed in the military and civilian sectors.