Microsoft unwraps a new generative AI model created explicitly for US intelligence handling classified data on Thursday. The announcement was made at the 2024 SCSP AI Expo for National Competitiveness in Washington, D.C.
where Microsoft rolled out this cutting-edge AI product, based on the GPT-4 architecture, the model is fully isolated from the internet thereby enabling the protected processing of private information reports from Bloomberg.
“We are going to have GPT-4 in an isolated environment for the first time,” Bill Chappell, Microsoft’s chief technology officer for Strategic Missions and Technologies, told in an interview. “We’ve only done that for the U.S. government — and that’s a big deal. They will have their own private instance of this capability isolated from the rest of the world.”
Consultation to the model will be organized with the help of closed cloud-regulated systems, to make sure that there will be no physical contact with public internet. The Users from the CIA’s classified network will be able to use the generative AI toolkit to perform different tasks.
Nevertheless, the development team will not be able to train the model with new data or learn themselves as there will be no internet connection.
The project of the GPT-4 spy of Microsoft took one and a half years, the existing AI supercomputer in Iowa was the place of the development. Although the system has already been in use for over a week, it is still not fully certified by the intelligence community and it may require testing and reprogramming.
Chappell is anticipating that augmentation AI will produce more efficiency and model new uncharted uses.
This venture intends to fill the social chasm between classified system users and people in government offices and corporate outlooks who are on a non-classification system and endow them with similar AI-empowered tools on the same footing.
“More mundane use cases are going to be huge to have across the [Azure Government Top Secret] cloud,” Chappell said.
The announcement doesn’t imply that AI smart document drafting is the next big thing where classified users are involved. Before the technology can be integrated into the classified U. S. government systems, a certification performed by defense officials must be done and pass the system validation test.
