The intelligence community (IC) has a data challenge — specifically overflowing streams of data — and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies could be a solution to meeting that challenge. But to leverage that solution the IC needs to format data so that it’s receptive in AI-driven solutions, a top intelligence official said today.
During the inaugural episode of GovExec’s Scrambled web series, Stacey Dixon, principal deputy Director of National Intelligence, explained that data in the IC is everything, but today there is an overwhelming amount of data making it difficult to collect actionable insight.
AI is available and able to help, but “we know that the data needs to be conditioned, it needs to be tagged, and it needs to be in a format that makes it useful for AI,” she explained.
The IC’s Data Strategy 2023-2025 highlights that because of the overflow of data, agencies’ central challenge remains an inability to field data, analytics, and AI-enabled capabilities at the pace and scale required to preserve decision and intelligence advantage.
“In the next decade, we will be pushed even further and faster by expected and unexpected evolutions in technology, particularly of the internet and AI,” the report reads.
Dixon explained that the overflow of data requires the IC to find a way to “accelerate the delivery of relevant data to those that need it, when they need it, both now and in the future.” She added that by leveraging innovative data processes and tools – particularly those involving AI – the IC can more effectively manage, use, store, and secure data.
“Going forward we are retroactively making data more useful for the tools we have available today, such as AI,” Dixon said.
