How America built an AI tool to predict Taliban attacks
“Raven Sentry” was a successful experiment in open-source intelligence
In the summer of 2020 American intelligence analysts in Afghanistan got a warning from “Raven Sentry”, an artificial-intelligence (AI) tool that they had been operating for a few months. There was a high probability, the AI told them, of a violent attack in Jalalabad, the capital of the eastern Nangarhar province, at the beginning of July. It would probably cause between 20 and 40 casualties. The attack came, a little late, on August 2nd, when Islamic State struck the city’s prison, killing some 29 people.
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