Artificial Intelligence is rapidly embedding itself within militaries, economies, and societies, reshaping their very foundations. Given the depth and breadth of its consequences, it has never been more pressing to understand how to ensure that AI systems are safe, ethical, and have a positive societal impact. This book aims to provide a comprehensive approach to understanding AI risk. Our primary goals include consolidating fragmented knowledge on AI risk, increasing the precision of core ideas, and reducing barriers to entry by making content simpler and more comprehensible. The book has been designed to be accessible to readers from diverse backgrounds. You do not need to have studied AI, philosophy, or other such topics. The content is skimmable and somewhat modular, so that you can choose which chapters to read. We introduce mathematical formulas in a few places to specify claims more precisely, but readers should be able to understand the main points without these.

Autonomous vehicles in San Francisco are exempt from traffic tickets if there is nobody in the driver's seat, according to the San Francisco police department (SFPD), underscoring ongoing legal and safety concerns surrounding the expanding technology. California law has not caught up to the cars, even though they are already on the road, say public safety agencies and experts. SFPD policy states that officers can make a traffic stop of autonomous vehicles (AVs) for violations, but can only issue a citation if there is a safety driver in the vehicle overseeing its operations. Since June 2022, autonomous vehicles have been permitted to operate without safety drivers as long as they are inside the city limits. Officers can issue citations to the registered owner of an unoccupied vehicle in absentia for non-moving violations such as parking or registration offenses but not violations like speeding, running a red light, driving in the wrong lane or making an illegal turn.

Some of Britain's biggest retailers, including Tesco, John Lewis and Sainsbury's, have been urged to pull out of a new policing strategy amid warnings it risks wrongly criminalising people of colour, women and LGBTQ people. A coalition of 14 human rights groups has written to the main retailers – also including Marks & Spencer, the Co-op, Next, Boots and Primark – saying that their participation in a new government-backed scheme that relies heavily on facial recognition technology to combat shoplifting will "amplify existing inequalities in the criminal justice system". The letter, from Liberty, Amnesty International and Big Brother Watch, among others, questions the unchecked rollout of a technology that has provoked fierce criticism over its impact on privacy and human rights at a time when the European Union is seeking to ban the technology in public spaces through proposed legislation. "Facial recognition technology notoriously misidentifies people of colour, women and LGBTQ people, meaning that already marginalised groups are more likely to be subject to an invasive stop by police, or at increased risk of physical surveillance, monitoring and harassment by workers in your stores," the letter states.Its authors also express dismay that the move will "reverse steps" that big retailers introduced during the Black Lives Matter movement, including high-profile commitments to be champions of diversity, equality and inclusion. Meanwhile, concerns over the broadening use of facial recognition technology have further intensified after the emergence of details of a police watchlist used to justify the contentious decision to use biometric surveillance at July's Formula One British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

Russia attacked the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, with at least 10 drones overnight, damaging a multistory administrative tower and other buildings, Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday, as Moscow kept up the pressure on metropolitan centers far from the front lines. The officials said that Ukraine's air defenses had shot down all the drones aimed at Kyiv but that falling debris from the interceptions had caused damage. The State Emergency Service said that an administrative building had been hit, and the head of the Kyiv regional administration, Ruslan Kravchenko, said that a house, a garage and a car had caught fire. "Another mass attack of the enemy involving attack U.A.V.s," said a statement by the regional administration on the Telegram app, referring to unmanned aerial vehicles. "Groups of drones were flying toward Kyiv simultaneously from multiple directions," it added.

The EU has taken a major step towards passing one of the world's first laws governing artificial intelligence after its main legislative branch approved the text of draft legislation that includes a blanket ban on police use of live facial recognition technology in public places. The European parliament approved rules aimed at setting a global standard for the technology, which encompasses everything from automated medical diagnoses to some types of drone, AI-generated videos known as deepfakes, and bots such as ChatGPT. MEPs will now thrash out details with EU countries before the draft rules – known as the AI act – become legislation. "AI raises a lot of questions socially, ethically, economically. But now is not the time to hit any'pause button'. On the contrary, it is about acting fast and taking responsibility," said Thierry Breton, the European commissioner for the internal market.

Russia unleashed another widespread missile and drone attack overnight on cities across Ukraine, including targeting the capital, Kyiv, for the 10th time this month, Ukrainian officials said on Friday. At least three cruise missiles and six attack drones managed to evade air defenses, according to Ukraine's Air Force. There was no immediate information on casualties or what was hit. The air force said in a statement that three cruise missiles and 16 Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones had been intercepted, and local officials in Lviv said that five of those were over their region, in western Ukraine. The attack drones came in "several waves" with short intervals in between, according to the city's military administration, which said all had been shot down.

Ever since the release of ChatGPT last year, new generative AI tools and services have captured people's attention. Now, Meta is warning that bad actors have taken notice of interest in AI chatbots. The Facebook parent said scammers are creating malware that poses at ChatGPT and similar tools. In a security report released Wednesday, Meta said it discovered 10 malware families posing as ChatGPT or related tools since March. Some of the malicious software, which can steal your personal information and compromise accounts, came in the form of browser extensions and links.

ChatGPT, an AI chatbot developed by OpenAI that went viral because it can give people direct answers to just about any query possible, apparently has alarm bells ringing at Google, according to a report by the New York Times Wednesday. A Google executive the Times spoke to but didn't name said AI chatbots like ChatGPT could upend the search giant's business, which relies heavily on ads and e-commerce found in Google Search. In a memo and audio recording obtained by the Times, the publication says CEO Sundar Pichai has been in meetings to "define Google's AI strategy" and has "upended the work of numerous groups inside the company to respond to the threat that ChatGPT poses." Google didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. ChatGPT is an AI chatbot that uses available data found online to give users conversational answers to a host of questions.

Tesla's Full Self-Driving technology may be a failure, Tesla lawyers admit -- but it's not a fraud. The electric car company is facing a class-action lawsuit from Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology customers. They claim they were ripped off, duped by statements from co-founder and CEO Elon Musk and marketing materials from Tesla over the past six years suggesting full-fledged autonomous driving was imminent. No Tesla on the road today is capable of full self driving, and yet Tesla sells what it calls a Full Self-Driving Capability for $15,000. In its defense, Tesla lawyers said that "mere failure to realize a long-term, aspirational goal is not fraud."

The San Francisco police could use robots to deploy lethal force under a policy advanced by city supervisors on Tuesday that thrust the city into the forefront of a national debate about the use of weaponized robots in American cities. The possibility is not merely hypothetical. In 2016, the Dallas Police Department ended a standoff with a gunman suspected of killing five officers by blowing him up with a bomb attached to a robot in what was believed to be the first lethal use of the technology by an American law enforcement agency. Supporters of the policy, advanced by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors by an 8-to-3 vote, said it would allow the police to deploy a robot with deadly force in extraordinary circumstances, such as when a mass shooter or a terrorist is threatening the lives of officers or civilians. David Lazar, assistant chief of the San Francisco Police Department, cited as an example the gunman who opened fire from his Las Vegas high-rise hotel room in 2017, killing 60 people in the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.