WASHINGTON (TND) — Violence in the Middle East is prompting new threats in the U.S.
On full display, at protests worldwide there is a deep anger, some experts say soon may be used to harness new ways to try to launch attacks or exploit intelligence in parts of the world bad actors could never set foot in, and there are growing fears they may use artificial intelligence to achieve their goals.
This week, top intelligence leaders laid out these threats at a summit about Emerging Threats, Innovation, and Security at Stanford University, hosted by the Hoover Institution and moderated by former Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.
“AI over time, and potentially sooner than we might think, will give various adversaries, sophisticated adversaries, and less sophisticated adversaries, new access to dangerous knowledge,” said Ken McCallum, the Director General of British Security Service (Mi5).
From doctored photos, showing fake Donald Trump arrest photos, created by Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins, to using AI technology to mimic the voice of children to conduct so-called virtual kidnappings to try to extract a ransom from worried parents, the examples are growing.
“We worry about AI as an amplifier for all sorts of misconduct,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Wray was part of a panel discussion with the group known as “Five Eyes,” which is security leaders from the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the U.K., a group formed after World War II to better share intelligence.
“Where it’s most dangerous is essentially taking junior varsity bad actors and bringing them to the varsity level. But in fairly short order we’re going to be seeing AI, taking the varsity level athletes and taking them to a whole other level of dangerousness,” Wray added.
Despite the urgency, those who study technology say the warnings are being ignored, in large part because so many leaders don’t understand it.
In an interview with Sinclair Thursday, Jake Denton, a Research Associate with the Heritage Foundation Tech Policy Center, said the generational gap could translate to a gap in national security.
“Throughout Capitol Hill, you have people who have never logged onto Twitter, who have never made a post Facebook, and we’re expecting them to understand Artificial Intelligence. “It’s not necessarily their fault for not being able to grapple with this stuff, but the world is moving on without them and we need people to step up to the plate here and really dive into this stuff.”
Along with the warnings about AI, security leaders also made clear it has been extremely beneficial to them in gathering intelligence and countering threats.
Finding the balance of its use and its misuse is expected to be a top challenge in the future.