Hacker could fool smartphones artificial intelligence with a white noise virus

Nightmare scenarios involving Artificial Intelligence typically involve computers that become too smart for their own good and turn against their creators. Well, now we have an entirely different cause to be wary of AI, and the culprit is human rather than machine. Dave Gershgorn reports in Popular Science that a risk more imminent and more worrisome than HAL comes with everyday devices using even rather basic versions of AI: Siri (the virtual assistant on Apple iPhones), Alexa (Amazon's assistant) and Google Now (for Android phones). The problem isn't that the computer programs are too smart; it's that they're too gullible. Like the prisoners chained in Plato's cave who mistake manufactured shadows on the wall with reality, Siri and her virtual posse tend to believe what they hear.