Revealed: CIA Created ‘Foreign Power’ Chatbot, Interrogated Own Agents

If you
ever get hauled off by CIA for an interrogation, just count your
lucky stars Agent Analiza isn’t on the force anymore. That guy was
cold, heartless (literally!), and … a bit glitchy.

Analiza was an artificially intelligent (A.I.) chatbot used in
the 1980s. Vice‘s Jordan Pearson this week
spotlights this ambitious, forward-thinking piece of
technology, thanks to a document the
agency just released through a freedom of information request.

Titled “Interrogations With an Alleged CIA Agent” and dated
1983, the document details the bot’s features:

Through sophisticated algorithms the program breaks down Joe’s
responses and looks for key words and phrases in order to formulate
a reply. In addition, it draws from its own internal question bank
to direct the questioning to new topics. Because it retains its
memory of the topics covered, it will have more surprises in store
for Joe as the sessions continue; with time it becomes increasingly
more knowledgeable about Joe.

Other aspects of the program are probing Joe’s vulnerabilities.
A.I. records “focus variables,” Joe’s tendency to concentrate on
various subjects, and “profile variables” to serve as indicators of
Joe’s hostility, inquisitiveness, talkativeness, and
understandability, and to pose questions about these.

Also, it could “detect hostility and to exert certain defensive
measures against it,” but by the agency’s own admission, Analiza
was “primitive,” “crude,” and “has a long way to go before it even
approaches the merest capabilities of humankind.”

Still, it is pretty impressive – and eerie – for a piece of
technology that predated Tetris.

Here’s part of the interrogation between Analiza, acting as an
agent for a “foreign power,” and a real agent under the pseudonym
“Joe Hardesty”:

A.I.: You had better straighten out your
attitude, Joe, or it will be a long time before you ever leave this
country.

Hardesty: What do you mean by that
crack?

A.I.: You know what I mean.

Hardesty: No, I do not.

A.I.: Think about it.

Hardesty: Why?

A.I.: Why do you want to know why?

Hardesty: You made a threat and I want an
explanation.

A.I.: I think the message is clear.

Hardesty: What message?

A.I.: Do you work for the American Central
Intelligence Agency?

Hardesty: Hell, no.

A.I.: Why do you persist in lying to
me?

Hardesty: I am not lying. You have no
right to treat me like this.

Throughout the interview, the bot presses Hardesty to “go on”
and give more details so it can build its knowledge for the next
round of questions.

So how far have we come in the last 30 years? As Pearson points
out, the federal government is currently testing bots to interview
people for
national security purposes. But, there’s still some way to go,
since even this year’s “most intelligent” chatbot
isn’t as smart as its developers hyped it to be.