What does a spy agency do with all of this data and analysis? Try to predict the future, of course, and the intelligence community has a big interest in AI<\/span> that will help it succeed there as well. In-Q-Tel invested a company called Celect<\/a>, which says its predictive analytics engine can help retailers anticipate demand for certain products \u2014 and perhaps help intel analysts anticipate national-security problems. When the researchers fed<\/a> the engine a large database<\/a> of published news stories, it predicted, with high confidence, a steady increase in negative news about the security situation in Ukraine in the early spring of 2014. And indeed, that happened. (The experiment was done retroactively, after the Russian invasion, when outcomes were known to the researchers \u2014 but not to the\u00a0AI<\/span>.)<\/p>\n Unlike other technological areas, today\u2019s AI<\/span> startups don\u2019t necessarily need intelligence-community money, says Greenbacker: \u201cThere\u2019s a lot more money flowing into the AI<\/span> space than is typical\u201d in the startup\u00a0ecosystem.<\/p>\n \u201cBut putting in a little leverage in the right spot can bend all this toward the things we care about,\u201d he said. \u201cAt the end of the day, it means the government doesn\u2019t have to foot all of the bill to develop technology it cares\u00a0about.\u201d<\/p>\n Competing with\u00a0China<\/strong><\/p>\n The intelligence community\u2019s investment in the valley\u2019s AI<\/span> startups lags foreign investors and China. And that has some folks very\u00a0concerned.<\/p>\n \u201cThe entire government spent $1.1 billion on unclassified AI<\/span>programs in 2015. The estimate for 2016 was $1.2 billion,\u201d said Greenbacker. \u201cMeanwhile, Softbank [a Japanese multinational conglomerate] has a $100-billion-dollar fund for this. The Chinese government in their most recent five-year-plan<\/a> has put $150 billion in\u00a0this.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n