As some of you know, AML stands for Anti-Money Laundering. It ensures that money given to Johnny Angel doesn’t end up in the hands of Vladimir Putin. This impacts financial institutions:
“Banks had to follow government regulations (know your customer, anti-money laundering, know your business), even in the midst of a worldwide pandemic.”
But AML goes far beyond banks because of its national security implications. Which means the military has to get involved.
Therefore DARPA has entered the picture, with its Program Announcement (posted on SAM as DARPA-SN-25-23) for something DARPA calls “Anticipatory and Adaptive Anti-Money Laundering,” or A3ML.
Uh, what? GovTribe explains:
“The program seeks to develop sophisticated algorithmic methods that can analyze financial transaction graphs and detect suspicious patterns more effectively than existing manual processes. This initiative represents a significant shift towards proactive and predictive financial crime detection methodologies.”
Of course, the introduction of the word “predictive” raises alarm bells, based upon activities outside of banking. At best, police potentially waste a lot of time investigating every single broken tail light. At worst, Muslim lawyer Brandon Mayfield becomes a suspect for a crime he didn’t commit.
Hopefully the people pursuing A3ML can minimize bias.
Bredemarket 