threat
Warning signs over threats to Australian politicians were rising before MP hit by car
As increasingly frequent acts of violence against politicians have shocked the globe in recent years, Australia has watched on with a contradictory feeling: that attacks like that could not happen here, and that it was only a matter of time until they did. Australians will tell you this is a largely peaceful society with a comparatively civil public discourse. Violence targeting politicians has been rare, the bungled assassination of Labor leader Arthur Calwell in 1966 now a distant and fleeting memory. But MPs and public figures - backed by experts - have been warning of a volcano of threats against them as social cohesion cracks, polarisation intensifies and the tone of debate grows hotter. And on Monday, their worst fears appear to have been realised.
The power of AI is worrying senior Labour figures โ as is the fear of 'falling behind the public'
It is not so much'killer robots' keeping one cabinet minister awake as the idea of concentrated, super-intelligent power ending up in the hands of bad actors. It is not so much'killer robots' keeping one cabinet minister awake as the idea of concentrated, super-intelligent power ending up in the hands of bad actors. The power of AI is worrying senior Labour figures - as is the fear of'falling behind the public' "I have this sense that, within a few months, AI is going to be all anyone is talking about," said one cabinet minister, with an ominous stare. It was Labour conference, with everyone from ministers to activists jubilant at Andy Burnham's takeover and a bounce in the polls after the change of leader. But a number of senior Labour figures were privately starting to name the power of AI as the thing worrying them most, alongside the immediate pressures on the cost of living and fragile economy.
The chatbot murder guide: AI's struggle between privacy, reporting violence
For months before carrying out Canada's deadliest school shooting in almost four decades, Jesse Van Rootselaar was consulting an unlikely adviser on how to perpetrate mass murder. "In a hallway, indoors, or a crowded classroom, the 870 [Remington shotgun] is brutal Close quarters is its playground," OpenAI's ChatGPT guided the 18-year-old, according to reports. Earlier this week, on October 14, US authorities charged a Washington State man with allegedly conspiring with Van Rootselaar to plan the attack. But the mass shooting incident has raised questions that go beyond the traditional legal understanding of culpability. The British Columbia government in September filed a civil lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, accusing them of failing to prevent the incident and claiming they were aware of the conversations that turned deadly.
The irony of OpenAI crying foul over spying
Americans can rest easy - for the moment, at least. The fine folks at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have thwarted a major national security threat . On October 9, the FBI arrested 35-year-old engineer Abdulrahman Alfozan, a Saudi citizen employed at the California-based artificial intelligence company OpenAI, the maker of the chatbot ChatGPT, and a firm that describes its mission as ensuring that "artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity". A press release from the United States Department of Justice said that Alfozan was accused of installing a "surreptitious audio recording device" in an executive conference room at the OpenAI offices in San Francisco. The statement quoted Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton's assessment that "this serious situation underscores why winning the global super intelligence race is a national security prerogative".
I do not have confidence UK is safe from Russian threats, says Swinney
To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. First Minister John Swinney says he does not have confidence the UK is safe from potential Russian threats. The SNP leader said the UK government, which is in charge of Britain's defences, did not have a sufficient presence in vulnerable areas off Scotland's coast. He said he was very worried by security fears highlighted this week by the head of MI5, Sir Ken McCallum, who named Russia as aggressor number one. Speaking to BBC Scotland News ahead of the SNP's annual conference, Swinney also denied that independence would weaken Scotland's security.
Tool and target: US law enforcement grapple with AI-enabled terrorism and anti-tech extremism
A previously unreported cache of law enforcement and intelligence agency documents show that law enforcement agencies have, since 2021, considered AI both a tool and a target of would-be terrorists. A previously unreported cache of law enforcement and intelligence agency documents show that law enforcement agencies have, since 2021, considered AI both a tool and a target of would-be terrorists. For many, it was a wake up call about the threats to reproductive care facilities. For the FBI, though, it was also a sign of what the agency had feared for years: bad actors were using generative AI to plan and execute terror plots. The suspect used an unnamed generative AI tool that failed to detect his request for bomb-making instructions, law enforcement officers wrote in a previously unreported document reviewed by the Guardian.
MI5 tackling more state threats than during Cold War, warns intelligence chief
Image caption, Sir Ken McCallum gave his annual address at MI5's headquarters in central London MI5 is devoting more resource to countering state threats than during the Cold War, the head of the intelligence service has said, as he labelled Russia aggressor number one. Sir Ken McCallum warned MI5 was now facing a situation in which our terrorism and state threats operational missions are pretty much of equal scale because threats from foreign adversaries have quadrupled. He used an annual speech at the domestic intelligence service's headquarters in London to also warn of rising threats from Iran and extreme right-wing terrorism. Sir Ken also said MI5 had caught terrorists seeking to exploit AI, including by integrating the technology with drones - and warned the UK must stay ahead of the risk of new bioweapons being developed by violent groups. The MI5 head said Russia was waging hybrid warfare while carefully avoiding triggering a joint response from Nato, a line which he said the Kremlin would be foolish to cross.
Wikipedians Believed AI Would Come and Go. They Were Wrong
Wikipedians Believed AI Would Come and Go. But the real loss may be far more existential than website traffic. Long before the storm of AI struck Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation was making preparations. Wikipedians battened down the hatches and made confident-sounding predictions that it would break and wash over them. Large language models might even improve Wikipedia, it was said, automating more of the housekeeping--formatting, sources, citations, missing links--and so freeing up humans to do creative work. It was not so simple. In 2019, then-Wikimedia Foundation head Katherine Maher wrote an op-ed in The New York Times under the headline " Without Humans, A.I. Can Wreak Havoc ." "Too often," she wrote, "artificial intelligence is presented as an all-powerful solution to our problems, a scalable replacement for people."