'Almost started a war': How an AI error led to a close call between US and China

An intelligence report circulated across the US military this spring during the war with Iran set off an alarming chain of events after it claimed that a Chinese ship in the Middle East was carrying components linked to a nuclear weapons programme.According to CNN, the report prompted the US military to prepare an operation to intercept the vessel.

Armed US personnel were preparing to board the ship, while military aircraft were already in the air, according to sources familiar with the episode.

It was only shortly before the planned operation that officials took a closer look at the intelligence and discovered that it had been produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence.The chatbot used by a US Special Operations Command analyst had incorrectly identified the material listed in the ship's manifest.

The resulting intelligence report, described by one source as "entirely false", had travelled through official channels and was being treated as credible military intelligence.

"It almost started a war," the source told CNN.AI error reaches military chainThe incident began when the analyst examined intelligence about the ship's manifest that originated with US Special Operations Command Pacific, based in Hawaii.

The analyst queried a chatbot about the information, but the AI system incorrectly identified the cargo.The chatbot had combined open-source information with classified signals intelligence held by the US government before reaching its conclusion.

The analyst then used AI again to turn the findings into a standard intelligence report, giving the information the format and appearance of conventional military intelligence before it was disseminated.CNN reported that it could not establish whether the chatbot was a commercially available system or an AI tool developed for the US government.

A former senior US official familiar with the systems used by military and intelligence analysts told CNN that internal tools were "mostly just copies of the commercial stuff wearing lipstick".The episode highlights the risks of relying on AI-generated....