Artificial intelligence (AI) tools could be used to manipulate online audiences into making decisions – ranging from what to buy to who to vote for – according to researchers at the University of Cambridge. The paper highlights an emerging new marketplace for "digital signals of intent" – known as the "intention economy" – where AI assistants understand, forecast and manipulate human intentions and sell that information on to companies who can profit from it. The intention economy is touted by researchers at Cambridge's Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI) as a successor to the attention economy, where social networks keep users hooked on their platforms and serve them adverts. The intention economy involves AI-savvy tech companies selling what they know about your motivations, from plans for a stay in a hotel to opinions on a political candidate, to the highest bidder. "For decades, attention has been the currency of the internet," said Dr Jonnie Penn, an historian of technology at LCFI. "Sharing your attention with social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram drove the online economy."

Americans in Silicon Valley fear advanced artificial intelligence in campaign ads will influence and manipulate voters' decisions in the 2024 election. Americans in Silicon Valley are predicting advanced artificial intelligence could significantly influence and manipulate voters in the 2024 elections, with a potential for "disturbingly false" political advertising to push agendas. "I've seen some hilarious videos and some concerning ones where it's getting too realistic," Travis, of San Jose, said. As advanced artificial intelligence applications proliferate across industries, the rapidly evolving technology has raised concerns about its ability to manipulate elections, with some 2024 presidential campaigns already utilizing the tool. Former President Trump's presidential campaign, for example, triggered an uproar on X after using artificial intelligence to recreate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' 2024 presidential announcement with fictional guests, including billionaire Democratic donor George Soros, World Economic Forum Chair Klaus Schwab, former Vice President Dick Cheney, Adolf Hitler, the devil and the FBI.

Last week, Amazon announced it was integrating AI into a number of products--including smart glasses, smart home systems, and its voice assistant, Alexa--that help users navigate the world. This week, Meta will unveil its latest AI and extended reality (XR) features, and next week Google will reveal its next line of Pixel phones equipped with Google AI. If you thought AI was already "revolutionary," just wait until it's part of the increasingly immersive responsive, personal devices that power our lives. AI is already hastening technology's trend toward greater immersion, blurring the boundaries between the physical and digital worlds and allowing users to easily create their own content. When combined with technologies like augmented or virtual reality, it will open up a world of creative possibilities, but also raise new issues related to privacy, manipulation, and safety.

One of the world's foremost architects of artificial intelligence warned Wednesday that unexpectedly rapid advances in AI – including its ability to learn simple reasoning – suggest it could someday take over the world and push humanity toward extinction. Geoffrey Hinton, the renowned researcher and "Godfather of AI," quit his high-profile job at Google recently so he could speak freely about the serious risks that he now believes may accompany the artificial intelligence technology he helped ushered in, including user-friendly applications like ChatGPT. Hinton, 75, gave his first public remarks about his concerns at the MIT Technology Review's AI conference. His comments appeared to rattle the audience of some of the nation's top tech creators and AI developers. Asked by the panel's moderator what was the "worst case scenario that you think is conceivable," Hinton replied without hesitation.

AI algorithms on our computers and smartphones have quickly become a pervasive part of everyday life, with relatively little attention to their scope, integrity, and how they shape our attitudes and behaviours. Spanish researchers have now shown experimentally that people's voting and dating preferences can be manipulated depending on the type of persuasion used. "Every day, new headlines appear in which Artificial Intelligence (AI) has overtaken human capacity in new and different domains," write Ujue Agudo and Helena Matute, from the Universidad de Deusto, in the journal PLOS ONE. "This results in recommendation and persuasion algorithms being widely used nowadays, offering people advice on what to read, what to buy, where to eat, or whom to date," they add. "[P]eople often assume that these AI judgements are objective, efficient and reliable; a phenomenon known as machine bias."

There are already fake videos on the internet, manipulated to make it look like people said things (or appeared in porn) that they never did. And now they're about to get way better, thanks to some new tools powered by artificial intelligence. Instead of just moving a source video's lips and face, an artificial intelligence-powered system can create photorealistic videos in which people can sway, turn their heads, blink their eyes, and emote. Basically, everything that an actor does and says in an input video will be translated into the video being altered. According to the research, which will be presented at the VR filmmaking conference SIGGRAPH in August, the team ran a number of tests comparing its new algorithm to existing means of manipulating lifelike videos and images, many of which have been at least partially developed by Facebook and Google.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin has warned that technology companies must take greater responsibility for the impact of their work on society, particularly AI. Addressing investors, the entrepreneur welcomed the'technology renaissance' we are experiencing but said he recognises the many potential threats it brings. Brin promised he would work to protect humanity from the potentially negative impacts of AI, including manipulation and'sci-fi style sentience'. Google has become a top target in Silicon Valley for regulators, authorities and critics in advertising and media concerned about its growing influence. His comments follow a period of heightened global awareness about the misuse of digital services and dark predictions over the future of intelligent machines.

For some die-hard tech evangelists, using neural interfaces to merge with AI is the inevitable next step in humankind's evolution. But a group of 27 neuroscientists, ethicists, and machine learning experts have highlighted the myriad ethical pitfalls that could be waiting. To be clear, it's not just futurologists banking on the convergence of these emerging technologies. The Morningside Group estimates that private spending on neurotechnology is in the region of $100 million a year and growing fast, while in the US alone public funding since 2013 has passed the $500 million mark. The group is made up of representatives from international brain research projects, tech companies like Google and neural interface startup Kernel, and academics from the US, Canada, Europe, Israel, China, Japan, and Australia.