Artificial intelligence is a technology also used by the American Department of Defense. But not just for offensive weapons!
AI is capable of producing an almost infinite amount of new documents and information. It is therefore not surprising to see that the public authorities also wish to take up this issue, particularly among our American neighbors. And if we could fear that artificial intelligence would be of interest mainly for its potentially lethal use, even though a company like OpenAI has changed its statutes to open up to the military sector, it turns out that other uses are also on the program. This is what a new project led by the Pentagon shows us.
Know the prices of critical minerals
Last October, the United States Department of Defense embarked on a new project to develop an AI intended… to predict fluctuations in the market for critical minerals, such as rare metals. Indeed, American production in the sector is very far behind that of China due to several factors, including the difficulties in predicting sudden changes in supplies and in evaluating prices, unstable factors which make it difficult to implement new mining projects.
A problem which does not affect the Middle Kingdom, since its industry is heavily subsidized by Beijing, and can thus endure periods of collapse in profitability, or even negative profitability. The new tool in question will have the mission of providing more predictability in the minerals sector, and therefore reassuring American investors.
DARPA at work
It is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a division of the Pentagon responsible for developing innovations, which will take charge of the project, itself called OPEN, for Open Price Exploration for National security. As its name suggests, the objective will be to be able, thanks to AI, to develop price transparency in the field. Because the Pentagon estimates that many transactions are carried out today from “ opaque and erroneous pricing data. »
The Department of Defense wishes to work for this project with one or more external economic actors. Big names like S&P Global or Lockheed Martin would, according to Reuters already submitted their application. And the winners of this market could soon be named. AI, for its part, will be developed over the next two years, in three distinct phases.
Source : Reuters
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