Introduction
Editor’s note: This article was originally published in 2020. We
republish it here because in the intervening three years, as Borene anticipated, large language models powering generative artificial intelligences like ChatGPT and Google Bard have moved from promise to reality and become the subject of worldwide use—and debate. As Borene makes clear, no knowledge industry, including intelligence, is immune from its effects.
The future of intelligence analysis has been a hotly debated topic in the last few years, as thinkers inside and outside the Intelligence Community have struggled to make sense of an
analyst’s place and value at a time when artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automation are changing the relationships between people and their work. As with other industries, the question is not so much if machines will be incorporated into the work but how and when and in what capacities.