British MI6 spy chief warns: the race is on for mastery of AI
The chief of Britain’s foreign spy service warned on Tuesday
that the West’s adversaries such as China and Russia were racing to master
artificial intelligence in a way which could revolutionise geopolitics over the
next decade.
The world’s spies, from Langley and London to Moscow and
Beijing, are trying to grapple with seismic advances in technology that are
challenging traditional human-led spying operations which dominated for
thousands of years.
Richard Moore, chief of the Secret Intelligence Service,
known as MI6, said quantum engineering, engineered biology, vast troves of data
and advances in computer power posed a threat that needed to be addressed by
the West.
“Our adversaries are pouring money and ambition into
mastering artificial intelligence, quantum computing and synthetic biology,
because they know that mastering these technologies will give them leverage,”
Moore, who rarely surfaces for speeches, will say on Tuesday.
Moore, a former diplomat who became MI6 chief in 2020, said
technological progress over the next decade could outstrip all tech progress
over the past century.
“As a society, we have yet to internalise this stark fact
and its potential impact on global geopolitics. But it is a white-hot focus for
MI6,” he said.
Of particular concern to the West’s spies are Russian and
Chinese intelligence agencies which have rushed to harness the power of a range
of sophisticated technologies, sometimes at a faster pace than in the West.
Western intelligence agencies fear Beijing could within
decades dominate all of the key emerging technologies, particularly artificial
intelligence, synthetic biology and genetics.
China’s economic and military rise over the past 40 years is
considered to be one of the most significant geopolitical events of recent
times, alongside the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union which ended the Cold War.
MI6, depicted by novelists as the employer of some of the
most memorable fictional spies from John le Carré’s George Smiley to Ian
Fleming’s James Bond, operates overseas and is tasked with defending Britain
and its interests.
Moore said the service would have to change to harness new
technologies.
“We cannot hope to replicate the global tech industry, so we
must tap into it,” he will say. “We must become more open, to stay secret.”
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