The Chief Digital and AI Officer at the United States Department of Defence says he is “scared to death” of the potential for generative artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT to deceive citizens and threaten national security.
Speaking at a conference in Baltimore, Craig Martell said ChatGPT’s ability to fabricate plausible content such as academic essays meant it could mislead citizens.
“My fear is that we trust it too much without the providers of a service building into it the right safeguards and the ability for us to validate the information,” Mr Martell (pictured) said.
“I’m scared to death. That’s my opinion.”
He said campaigns generated by AI could be used to influence Americans, and highlighted that ChatGPT’s use to date showed how it might be used to facilitate disinformation on a large scale.
“ChatGPT has been trained to express itself in a fluent manner. It speaks fluently and authoritatively,” Mr Martell said.
“So, you believe it even when it’s wrong… and that means it is a perfect tool for disinformation,” he said.
“We really need tools to be able to detect when that’s happening and to be able to warn when that’s happening. We don’t have those tools. We are behind in that fight.”
Mr Martell took on his current position at the Pentagon last year after lengthy experience in the private sector heading up machine learning at firms such as ride-hailing service Lyft and file hosting service Dropbox.
Mr Martell’s fears were not echoed by all Defence personnel. Director of the Defence Information Systems Agency, and another speaker at the conference, Lieutenant General Robert Skinner used generative AI to clone his voice at the beginning of his address.
Lieutenant General Skinner said he saw the potential of generative AI models to do harm as a “challenge” to be met by Agencies who stood to gain by turning such models to their advantage.
“Those who harness generative AI and can understand how to best leverage it, but also how to best protect against it, are going to be the ones that have the high ground,” Lieutenant General Skinner said.
Baltimore, 14 May 2023
