Cold War, AI summer: Automation is heating up cyber defence - Verdict

The relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) and defence is a longstanding one. The first "AI winter" of the 1970s, when interest in the subject evaporated and research work all but ceased, was due to Anglosphere government and defence bodies pulling the plug on funding. It's still widely believed that telephone conversations intercepted by Five Eyes intelligance agencies under the secret Echelon initiative are scanned in bulk for keywords of interest, allowing conversations of significance to be picked out from among millions of innocuous ones: but in fact, the problem of speech recognition, one of the main applications foreseen for AI, has yet to be completely solved even today. Back in the '70s a lack of tangible results led to an exhaustion of goodwill towards AI. It's common knowledge that military and intelligence interest can propel new technologies forward, and for a long while AI was without that safety net. But the story couldn't be more different today.