"While the Executive Branch pushes agencies to leverage private AI expertise, our concern is that more and more information on how those AI models work will be cloaked in the nigh-impenetrable veil of government secrecy. Because AI operates by collecting and processing a tremendous amount of data, understanding what information it retains and how it arrives at conclusions will all become incredibly central to how the national security state thinks about issues. This means not only will the state likely make the argument that the AI’s training data may need to be classified, but they may also argue that companies need to, under penalty of law, keep the governing algorithms secret as well.

As the memo says, “AI has emerged as an era-defining technology and has demonstrated significant and growing relevance to national security. The United States must lead the world in the responsible application of AI to appropriate national security functions.” As the US national security state attempts to leverage powerful commercial AI to give it an edge, there are a number of questions that remain unanswered about how much that ever-tightening relationship will impact much needed transparency and accountability for private AI and for-profit automated decision making systems."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/11/us-national-security-state-here-make-ai-even-less-transparent-and-accountable

#USA #CyberSecurity #Surveillance #AI #AlgorithmicTransparency