Page 128 - Fortune-November 01, 2018

+ defense and crime fi ghting

MAKING tales, killer robots capable of choosing and AVERTING EMBEZZLERS,
ONCE THE STUFF OF APOCALYPTIC SCI-FI
BEWARE!
THREATS
WEAPONS taking out our nation’s enemies are now
within reach—if companies and the Penta-
gon decide to go that far. Defense officials
HOW DO YOU
THE FAILURE TO
THATPICK have so far stopped short of developing prevent attacks in catch a financial
Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (the
cyberspace and
criminal? Instead
government’s official term), which could
THEIR theoretically strike without a human order IRL (in real life) of bulking up com-
pliance staff to sift
is an expensive
as easily as Facebook can tag friends in your
through thousands
line item—the
TARGETS photos without your say-so. average cost of transactions
But the A.I.-driven technology that could
form the basis for such attacks is well of an individual in search of
underway. Project Maven, the Pentagon’s data breach was suspicious activity,
nearly $4 million banks across the
most high-profile A.I. initiative, aims to use machine-learning algorithms to identify
terrorist targets from drone footage, assisting military efforts to combat ISIS (more in 2017. But the globe like HSBC
surge in attacks and Danske Bank
than 20 tech and defense contractors are reportedly involved, though they have not all
been publicly named). Although supporting war efforts is nothing new for the defense of late has an are increasingly
upside: It means turning to A.I. to
industry, the Pentagon has increasingly looked to Silicon Valley for expertise in A.I.
and facial recognition. That growing relationship has recently sparked controversy, there’s also more flag financial
data to mine. scams, money
with Google announcing this summer that it would withdraw from Project Maven after
several employees quit in protest. Going forward, companies’ only barrier to winning Machine-learning laundering, and
techniques have fraud. (This push
lucrative new A.I. defense contracts may be their own unwillingness. —J.W.
been used to has gained even
detect patterns more momentum
and filter emails recently as several
for decades, but banks were hit with
newer systems huge fines for
from vendors failing to detect
like Barracuda illegal funds flow-
Networks can ing through their
use A.I. to actually accounts.) HSBC
learn the unique partnered with A.I.
communication startup Ayasdi to
patterns of par- automate some of
ticular companies its compliance. In
and their execs its 12-week pilot
in an effort to with HSBC, Ayasdi’s
pinpoint potential A.I. technology
phishing scams achieved a 20%
and other hacking reduction in
attempts. In the false positives
world of physical (transactions that
security, A.I. is looked suspicious
even being used in but were legit),
security cameras while retaining the
to “see” and try to same number of
stop threats. New suspicious-activity
cameras from reports as human
startup Athena review. —C.K.
Security can iden-
tify when a gun is
pulled and even
automatically
alert the police. In 2022
short: The more
data we have, the
more we can use YEAR IN WHICH A.I.
WILL BE BETTER THAN
A.I. to fight crime. HUMANS AT FOLDING
—M.L. LAUNDRY, ACCORDING
TO RESEARCHERS AT
OXFORD AND YALE
103
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