Agent Based Surveillance.

This article in National Geographic should be of interest to anyone who thinks about artificial intelligence, national intelligence or cognitive intelligence.

When people use the term "Artificial Intelligence", they are generally referring to Terminator or Matrix style machine minds, more intelligent than any human, self-aware and cognizant. These concepts are only a part of the picture. When you shoot at an enemy in a video game, you're competing against a limited artificial intelligence. Aibo, Sony's recently discontinued robot dog for the terminally wealthy, is an artificial intelligence as well.

While machines are not yet intelligent enough to reason for themselves, they are growing smart enough to simulate experts in very specific fields, such as law or medicine. These agent based technologies are rapidly becoming an extension of how we interact with the world, leading us inexorably in the direction of Singularity.

See also my earlier articles on the subject of Data Mining, and this definition of the term "software agent".