Artificial Intelligence Poses Big Threat to Society, Warn Leading Scientists

Artificial Intelligence is on the cusp of transforming our world in ways many of us can barely imagine. While there's much excitement about emerging technologies, a new report by 26 of the world's leading AI researchers warns of the potential dangers that could emerge over the coming decade, as AI systems begin to surpass levels of human performance. Automated hacking is identified as one of the most imminent applications of AI, especially so-called "phishing" attacks. "That part used to take a lot of human effort – you had to study your target, make a profile of them, craft a particular message – that's known as phishing. We are now getting to the point where we can train computers to do the same thing. So you can model someone's topics of interest or preferences, their writing style, the writing style of a close friend, and have a machine automatically create a message that looks a lot like something they would click on," says report co-author Shahar Avin of the Center for the Study of Existential Risk at Britain's University of Cambridge.