US military nearly intercepted a Chinese ship this spring after an AI chatbot fabricated an intelligence report claiming it was carrying nuclear weapons components: According to four sources familiar with the episode that spoke to CNN, the false report, generated with AI help by a special operations command analyst, set off alarm bells across the military during the ongoing Iran war, with armed personnel preparing to board the vessel and military planes already in the air. Officials only discovered the report was “entirely false” just before the operation was set to launch, tracing it back to a chatbot that had inaccurately identified the ship’s cargo. One source said the incident “almost started a war,” since any US action against a Chinese vessel risked spiraling into armed conflict between the two countries. The chatbot had fused open-source intelligence with classified signals intelligence to reach its false conclusion, and the analyst then used AI again to package the findings into a standard, trusted-format intelligence report before disseminating it. US Special Operations Command Pacific and the Pentagon did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.
https://m.economictimes.com/tech/technology
Chen Yixin, head of China’s Ministry of State Security, called for tighter government oversight of AI, warning that rapidly advancing technology could be exploited for disinformation, cyberattacks, espionage and military competition. His assessment puts political security at the centre of Beijing’s AI concerns, rather than focusing solely on the broader question of whether advanced AI could eventually escape human control.
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