PARIS — Artificial intelligence (AI) could be deployed by dictators, criminals and terrorists to manipulate elections and use drones in terrorist attacks, more than two dozen experts said Wednesday as they sounded the alarm over misuse of the technology.

In a 100-page analysis, they outlined a rapid growth in cybercrime and the use of “bots” to interfere with news gathering and penetrate social media among a host of plausible scenarios in the next five to 10 years.

“Our report focuses on ways in which people could do deliberate harm with AI,” said Sean O hEigeartaigh, executive director of the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.

“AI may pose new threats, or change the nature of existing threats, across cyber-, physical, and political security,” he told AFP.

The common practice, for example, of “phishing” — sending e-mails seeded with malware or designed to finagle valuable personal data — could become far more dangerous, the report detailed.

Currently, attempts at phishing are either generic but transparent — such as scammers asking for bank details to deposit an unexpected windfall — or personalized but labor intensive — gleaning personal data to gain someone’s confidence, known as “spear phishing.”

“Using AI, it might become possible to do spear phishing at scale by automating a lot of the process” and making it harder to spot, O hEigeartaigh noted.

In the political sphere, unscrupulous or autocratic leaders can already use advanced technology to sift through mountains of data collected from omnipresent surveillance networks to spy on their own people.

“Dictators could more quickly identify people who might be planning to subvert a regime, locate them, and put them in prison before they act,” the report said.

Likewise, targeted propaganda along with cheap, highly believable fake videos have become powerful tools for manipulating public opinion “on previously unimaginable scales.”

An indictment handed down by US special prosecutor Robert Mueller last week detailed a vast operation to sow social division in the United States and influence the 2016 presidential election in which so-called “troll farms” manipulated thousands of social network bots, especially on Facebook and Twitter.

Another danger zone on the horizon is the proliferation of drones and robots that could be repurposed to crash autonomous vehicles, deliver missiles, or threaten critical infrastructure to gain ransom.

AUTONOMOUS WEAPONS
“Personally, I am particularly worried about autonomous drones being used for terror and automated cyberattacks by both criminals and state groups,” said co-author Miles Brundage, a researcher at Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute.

The report details a plausible scenario in which an office-cleaning SweepBot fitted with a bomb infiltrates the German finance ministry by blending in with other machines of the same make.

The intruding robot behaves normally — sweeping, cleaning, clearing litter — until its hidden facial recognition software spots the minister and closes in.

“A hidden explosive device was triggered by proximity, killing the minister and wounding nearby staff,” according to the sci-fi storyline.

“This report has imagined what the world could look like in the next five to 10 years,” O hEigeartaigh said.

“We live in a world fraught with day-to-day hazards from the misuse of AI, and we need to take ownership of the problems.”

The authors called on policy makers and companies to make robot-operating software unhackable, to impose security restrictions on some research, and to consider expanding laws and regulations governing AI development.

Giant high-tech companies — leaders in AI — “have lots of incentives to make sure that AI is safe and beneficial,” the report said.

Another area of concern is the expanded use of automated lethal weapons.

Last year, more than 100 robotics and AI entrepreneurs — including Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, and British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking — petitioned the United Nations to ban autonomous killer robots, warning that the digital-age weapons could be used by terrorists against civilians.

“Lethal autonomous weapons threaten to become the third revolution in warfare,” after the invention of machine guns and the atomic bomb, they warned in a joint statement, also signed by Google DeepMind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman.

“We do not have long to act. Once this Pandora’s box is opened, it will be hard to close.”

Contributors to the new report — entitled “The Malicious Use of AI: Forecasting, Prevention, and Mitigation” — also include experts from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for a New American Security, and OpenAI, a leading nonprofit research company.

“Whether AI is, all things considered, helpful or harmful in the long run is largely a product of what humans choose to do, not the technology itself,” said Brundage. — AFP

TOKYO — Palmreading could take on a whole new meaning thanks to a new invention from Japan: an ultra-thin display and monitor that can be stuck directly to the body.

The band-aid-like device is just one millimeter thick and can monitor important health data as well as send and receive messages, including emojis.

Takao Someya, the University of Tokyo professor who developed the device, envisions it as a boon for medical professionals with bed-ridden or far-flung patients, as well as family living far from their relatives.

“With this, even in home-care settings, you can achieve seamless sharing of medical data with your home doctors, who then would be able to communicate back to their patients,” he told AFP.

Slapped onto the palm or back of a hand, it could flash reminders to patients to take their medicine, or even allow far-away grandchildren to communicate with their grandparents.

“Place displays on your skin, and you would feel as if it is part of your body. When you have messages sent to your hand, you would feel emotional closeness to the sender,” Someya said.

“I think a grandfather who receives a message saying ‘I love you’ from his grandchild, they would feel the warmth, too.”

The invention could prove particularly useful in Japan, with its rapidly aging population, replacing the need for in-person checks by offering continuous, non-invasive monitoring of the sick and frail, Someya told AFP.

The display consists of a 16-by-24 array of micro LEDs and stretchable wiring mounted on a rubber sheet.

It also incorporates a lightweight sensor composed of a breathable “nanomesh” electrode, and a wireless communication module.

“Because this device can stretch, we now can paste a display on things with complex shapes, like skin,” Someya said.

It can be placed on the human body for a week without causing skin inflammation, and is light enough that users might eventually even forget they are wearing it.

Along with medical applications, Someya hopes the device could eventually lead to wearable displays for joggers to monitor heart rates or check running routes.

He imagines laborers using the displays to consult manuals on their arms while working.

The device will be showcased at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Texas over the weekend.

Someya created the device in partnership with Japanese printing giant Dai Nippon Printing, which hopes to put it on the market within three years. — AFP

WASHINGTON — Cyberattacks cost the United States between $57 billion and $109 billion in 2016, a White House report said Friday, warning of a “spillover” effect for the broader economy if the situation worsens.

A report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers sought to quantify what it called “malicious cyber activity directed at private and public entities” including denial of service attacks, data breaches and theft of intellectual property, and sensitive financial and strategic information.

It warned of malicious activity by “nation-states” and specifically cited Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.

The report noted particular concern over attacks on so-called critical infrastructure, such as highways, power grids, communications systems, dams, and food production facilities which could lead to important spillover impacts beyond the target victims.

“If a firm owns a critical infrastructure asset, an attack against this firm could cause major disruption throughout the economy,” the report said.

The report offered little in the way of new recommendations on improving cybersecurity, but noted that the situation is hurt by “insufficient data” as well as “underinvestment” in defensive systems by the private sector.

“If they have funding needs, they may conduct ransom attacks and electronic thefts of funds,” the report said.

But threats were also seen from “hacktivists,” or politically motivated groups, as well as criminal organizations, corporate competitors, company insiders and “opportunists.”

In an oft-repeated recommendation, the White House report said more data sharing could help thwart some attacks.

“The field of cybersecurity is plagued by insufficient data, largely because firms face a strong disincentive to report negative news,” the report said.

“Cyber protection could be greatly improved if data on past data breaches and cyberattacks were more readily shared across firms.” — AFP