President Donald Trump's Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard admitted to using artificial intelligence software to determine what she should declassify out of the John F. Kennedy assassination files, The Associated Press reported on Tuesday evening.
At the Amazon Web Services Summit, "Gabbard said AI programs, when used responsibly, can save money and free up intelligence officers to focus on gathering and analyzing information. The sometimes slow pace of intelligence work frustrated her as a member of Congress, Gabbard said, and continues to be a challenge," said the report. "AI can run human resource programs, for instance, or scan sensitive documents ahead of potential declassification, Gabbard said."
As an example of this, she revealed that she had used such a process herself when carrying out Trump's order to declassify the JFK files, as well as the files on the assassination of his brother, Robert F. Kennedy.
"Experts had predicted the process could take many months or even years, but AI accelerated the work by scanning the documents to see if they contained any material that should remain classified, Gabbard said," according to the report. “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,” she said.
When the JFK files were released in March, the Trump administration came under criticism for including vast troves of compromising data that should not have been made publicly available. For example, the files contained personal information from hundreds of congressional staffers, including Social Security numbers.
The assassination of Kennedy, which was carried out by the gunman Lee Harvey Oswald during a presidential visit to Dallas, Texas in 1963, has been a constant source of conspiracy theories, blaming everything from Soviet forces to the CIA to political rivals within the government, as many people have refused to accept, despite the evidence, that Oswald could have effected such a world-changing event alone.
