As the fear of AI machines grips most technologists, Tesla’s chief’s latest words are playing the role of a catalyst to intensify the buzz. Speaking during a conference at SpaceX’s Starbase Facility, Elon Musk expressed fears that robots might launch cyberattacks on themselves in the near future, potentially causing deep trouble for humans if we do not stop their advances now.
Bill Gates, stunned by the amount of technological advancement being induced into robots, says the development of ChatGPT and related technology is not a moment for jubilation as they can be used to spread disinformation on social media and play havoc.
In other news related to this story, Britain’s security minister has made it official that artificial intelligence will be used to gather intelligence from online resources, such as social media platforms.
Tom Tugendhat, the minister, stated that Britain’s security departments, in coordination with other law enforcement cells, will comb through large amounts of data that are generally overlooked by humans. This will help open a window to identify threats and enemies in no time and offer a timeframe to launch counterattacks before any disaster strikes.
Called the Open-Source Intelligence Hub (OSINT) and operating in coordination with NCSC, it will be analyzing public information in addition to what MI5 and MI6 are working on. It will act as a barrier to block online threats by spying on what is being generated, circulated, and analyzed by the public online.
Citing an instance where a group of students from the United States working on a project were the first to discover a TikTok video of Russian tanks lining up for invasion outside the Russian city of Belgorod.
These students were the first to alert the world after they issued traffic jam alerts on Google Maps about a possible traffic blockage to occur between the city and Ukraine borders.
As the data was being projected on an open-source hub, it only took a few minutes for search engines to analyze the development and issue an alert to the White House as well as Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. After that, the world began to learn about the war from the early hours of February 24th, 2022.
So, if AI can be used to block the spread of fake news, then it can also be used to launch cyberattacks, posing a serious threat to national security as well as to the existence of mankind.
