New Report on Emerging AI Risks Paints a Grim Future

A new report authored by over two-dozen experts on the implications of emerging technologies is sounding the alarm bells on the ways artificial intelligence could enable new forms of cybercrime, physical attacks, and political disruption over the next five to ten years. The 100-page report, titled "The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence: Forecasting, Prevention, and Mitigation," boasts 26 experts from 14 different institutions and organizations, including Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute, Cambridge University's Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, Elon Musk's OpenAI, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The report builds upon a two-day workshop held at Oxford University back in February of last year. In the report, the authors detail some of the ways AI could make things generally unpleasant in the next few years, focusing on three security domains of note--the digital, physical, and political arenas--and how the malicious use of AI could upset each of these. "It is often the case that AI systems don't merely reach human levels of performance but significantly surpass it," said Miles Brundage, a Research Fellow at Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute and a co-author of the report, in a statement. "It is troubling, but necessary, to consider the implications of superhuman hacking, surveillance, persuasion, and physical target identification, as well as AI capabilities that are subhuman but nevertheless much more scalable than human labour."