Experts sound alarm on use of AI for attacks

RAPID advances in artificial intelligence are raising risks malicious users will exploit the technology to mount automated hacking attacks, cause driverless car crashes or turn commercial drones into targeted weapons, a new report warns.

The study, published on Wednesday by 25 technical and public policy researchers from Cambridge, Oxford and

Yale universities, along with privacy and military experts, sounded the alarm for the potential misuse of AI by rogue states, criminals and lone-wolf attackers.

They said the malicious use of AI posed imminent threats to digital, physical and political security by allowing large-scale, finely targeted, highly efficient attacks. The study focused on plausible developments within five years.

Artificial intelligence, or AI, involves using computers to perform tasks which normally require human intelligence, such as taking decisions or recognising text, speech or visual images.

The paper cautions the cost of attacks might be lowered by the use of AI to complete tasks that would otherwise require human labour and expertise.

New attacks might arise that would be impractical for humans alone to develop or which exploit the vulnerabilities of AI systems themselves.

It reviews a growing body of academic research about the security risks posed by AI and calls on governments and policy and technical experts to collaborate and defuse these dangers.

The researchers detail the power of AI to generate synthetic images, text and audio to impersonate others online, in order to sway public opinion, noting authoritarian regimes could deploy such technology.

The report makes recommendations including regulating AI as a dualuse military/commercial technology. It also questions whether developers should rein in what they publish about new developments in AI until other experts have studied potential dangers they might pose. – Reuters/ African News Agency (ANA)