  The recently introduced GALI method is used for rapidly detecting chaos,
determining the dimensionality of regular motion and predicting slow diffusion
in multi--dimensional Hamiltonian systems. We propose an efficient computation
of the GALI$_k$ indices, which represent volume elements of $k$ randomly chosen
deviation vectors from a given orbit, based on the Singular Value Decomposition
(SVD) algorithm. We obtain theoretically and verify numerically asymptotic
estimates of GALIs long--time behavior in the case of regular orbits lying on
low--dimensional tori. The GALI$_k$ indices are applied to rapidly detect
chaotic oscillations, identify low--dimensional tori of Fermi--Pasta--Ulam
(FPU) lattices at low energies and predict weak diffusion away from
quasiperiodic motion, long before it is actually observed in the oscillations.
