Secretary Blinken Says US Is Working On New AI Tools To ‘Combat Disinformation’

During a speaking session along with the State Department’s Matthew Graviss, the chief data and AI officer, Blinken discussed the “extraordinary potential” and “extraordinary benefit” AI has on our society, and “how AI could be used to accelerate the Sustainable Development Goals which are, for the most part, stalled.”

“We have to make generational investments and generational decisions here at home, including in our technological competitiveness. That’s essential to making sure that we remain the standard-setters, the rule-makers around the world,” the Secretary said.

He went on to say that “we can automate simple, routine tasks; we can summarize and translate research. Something that would take normally days, even weeks can be done in a manner of seconds. We’ll talk about this a little bit later, too – media monitoring. Truly, already some extraordinary things the technology we’re deploying is helping us to do.”

Blinken then followed-up by stating another benefit of AI is it allows the government better tools to corral “disinformation.”

I think we can use this technology to actually improve our analysis, to unearth new insights.  We’ve seen already, as we’ve been testing things out, using AI as a tool for helping negotiations in multilateral organizations – we’ll talk about that.  Using it as a way to combat disinformation, one of the poisons in the international system today…