Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the work of America's intelligence services, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declared on Tuesday as she revealed it was used to decide which JFK files to release.
Speaking at a tech conference, Gabbard claimed that AI programs, when handled with care, can save money and time, freeing up intelligence officers to focus on gathering and analyzing information. She admitted the often sluggish process of intelligence gathering irked her during her time in Congress and continues to be a challenge.
Gabbard said that AI can run human resource programs, for instance, or scan sensitive documents ahead of potential declassification. Under the directive of President Donald Trump, her office has released tens of thousands of pages concerning the assassinations of President John F.Kennedy and his brother, New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
Experts had estimated that this task might drag on for months or years, but AI has sped up the work by scanning the docs for any info that should stay under wraps, Gabbard explained during her remarks at the Amazon Web Services Summit in Washington.
"We have been able to do that through the use of AI tools far more quickly than what was done previously - which was to have humans go through and look at every single one of these pages," Gabbard noted.
The intelligence community already uses private-sector tech and Gabbard expressed she's keen to expand this partnership instead of shelling out government money on pricy alternatives.
"How do we look at the available tools that exist - largely in the private sector - to make it so that our intelligence professionals, both collectors and analysts, are able to focus their time and energy on the things that only they can do," she remarked.
Gabbard, overseeing the collaborative efforts of 18 intelligence agencies, has committed to revolutionizing America's spy services.
Taking charge this year, she swiftly set up a new task force to reexamine operations across agencies and push for more transparency through greater declassification.
In her campaign for radical change, Gabbard has dismissed two seasoned intelligence officers due to their apparent resistance to Trump, axed diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, and has shifted the team responsible for compiling the President’s Daily Brief to tighten her oversight.
A US government investigation concluded that JFK's 1963 assassination was carried out alone by Lee Harvey Oswald, a former US Marine who at one point defected to the soviet union. However, the historical case has long been the subject of wild conspiracy theories.
The newly declassified documents, released back in March, have done little to answer lingering questions about one of the biggest turning points in US history.
Many of the new documents had been released before but have now been mostly or fully redacted. They shed some light on the CIA's strong surveillance of Oswald as well as Kennedy's relationship with the CIA before his death.