We all love James Bond’s gadgets supplied by Q branch, from the snorkel with the fake seagull atop in Goldfinger to the smart blood used to track 007 in Spectre.
But the future is software, and Artificial Intelligence specifically, according to the head of GCHQ, the UK spy agency. Writing in the Financial Times, its director Jeremy Fleming says AI “can learn to solve problems at a scale and speed impossible for humans”, even James Bond.
AI was allowing its analysts to “deal with ever increasing volumes and complexity of data, improving the quality and speed of decision-making. Its applications are broad: from identifying and countering ‘troll farms’ pedalling disinformation to mapping and tracking international networks that are helping to traffic people, drugs or weapons”.