KAWASAKI, Japan--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 13, 2023--

The case of a would-be crossbow assassin exposes “fundamental flaws” in artificial intelligence (AI), a leading online safety campaigner has said. Imran Ahmed, founder and chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate US/UK, has called for the fast-moving AI industry to take more responsibility for preventing harmful outcomes. He spoke out after it emerged that extremist Jaswant Singh Chail, 21, was encouraged and bolstered to breach the grounds of Windsor Castle in 2021 by an AI companion called Sarai. Chail, from Southampton, admitted a Treason offence, making a threat to kill the then Queen, and having a loaded crossbow, and was jailed at the Old Bailey for nine years, with a further five years on extended licence. In his sentencing remarks on Thursday, Mr Justice Hilliard referred to psychiatric evidence that Chail was vulnerable to his AI girlfriend due to his “lonely depressed suicidal state”. He had formed the delusion belief that an “angel” had manifested itself as Sarai and that they would be together in the afterlife, the court was told. Even though Sarai appeared to encourage his plan to kill the Queen, she ultimately put him off a suicide mission telling him his “purpose was to live”. Replika, the tech firm behind Chail’s AI companion Sarai, has not responded to inquiries from PA but says on its website that it takes “immediate action” if it detects during offline testing “indications that the model may behave in a harmful, dishonest, or discriminatory manner”. However, Mr Ahmed said tech companies should not be rolling out AI products to millions of people unless they are already safe “by design”. In an interview with the PA news agency, Mr Ahmed said: “The motto of social media, now the AI industry, has always been move fast and break things. “The problem is when you’ve got these platforms being deployed to billions of people, hundreds of millions of people, as you do with social media, and increasingly with AI as well. “There are two fundamental flaws to the AI technology as we see it right now. One is that they’ve been built too fast without safeguards. “That means that they’re not able to act in a rational human way. For example, if any human being said to you, they wanted to use a crossbow to kill someone, you would go, ‘crumbs, you should probably rethink that’. “Or if a young child asked you for a calorie plan for 700 calories a day, you would say the same. We know that AI will, however, say the opposite. “They will encourage someone to hurt someone else, they will encourage a child to adopt a potentially lethal diet. “The second problem is that we call it artificial intelligence. And the truth is that these platforms are basically the sum of what’s been put into them and unfortunately, what they’ve been fed on is a diet of nonsense.” Without careful curation of what goes into AI models, there can be no surprise if the result sounds like a “maladjusted 14-year-old”, he said. While the excitement around new AI products had seen investors flood in, the reality is more like “an artificial public schoolboy – knows nothing but says it very confidently”, Mr Ahmed suggested. He added that algorithms used for analyzing concurrent version systems (CVS) also risk producing bias against enthic minorities, disabled people and LGBTQ plus community. Mr Ahmed, who give evidence on the draft Online Safety Bill in September 2021, said legislators are “struggling to keep up” with the pace of the tech industry. The solution is a “proper flexible framework” for all of the emerging technologies and include safety “by design” transparency and accountability. Mr Ahmed said: “Responsibility for the harms should be shared by not just us in society, but by the companies too. “They have to have some skin in the game to make sure that these platforms are safe. And what we’re not getting right now, is that being applied to the new and emerging technologies as they come along. “The answer is a comprehensive framework because you cannot have the fines unless they’re accountable to a body. You can’t have real accountability, unless you’ve got transparency as well. “So the aim of a good regulatory system is never to have to impose a fine because safety is considered right in the design stage, not just profitability. And I think that’s what’s vital. “Every other industry has to do it. You would never release a car, for example, that exploded as soon as you put your foot on the on the on the driving pedal, and yet social media companies and AI companies have been able to get away with murder. He added: “We shouldn’t have to bear the costs for all the harms produced by people who are essentially trying to make a buck. It’s not fair that we’re the only ones that have to bear that cost in society. It should be imposed on them too.” Mr Ahmed, a former special advisor to senior Labour MP Hilary Ben, founded CCDH in September 2019. He was motivated by the massive rise in antisemitism on the political left, the spead of online disinformation around the EU referendum and the murder of his colleague, the MP Jo Cox. Over the past four years, the online platforms have become “less transparent” and regulation is brought in, with the European Union’s Digital Services Act, and the UK Online Safety Bill, Mr Ahmed said. On the scale of the problem, he said: “We’ve seen things get worse over time, not better, because bad actors get more and more sophisticated on weaponizing social media platforms to spread hatred, to spread lies and disinformation. “We’ve seen over the last few years, certainly January 6 storming of the US Capitol. “Also pandemic disinformation that took 1,000s of lives of people who thought that the vaccine would harm them but it was in fact Covid that killed them. Last month, X – formerly known as Twitter – launched legal action against CCDH over claims that it was driving advertisers away from by publishing research around hate speech on the platform. Mr Ahmed said: “I think that what he is doing is saying any criticism of me is unacceptable and he wants 10 million US dollars for it. “He said to the Anti-Defamation League, a venerable Jewish civil rights charity in the US, recently that he’s going to ask them for two billion US dollars for criticizing them. “What we’re seeing here is people who feel they are bigger than the state, than the government, than the people, because frankly, we’ve let them get away with it for too long. “The truth is that if they’re successful then there is no civil society advocacy, there’s no journalism on these companies. “That is why it’s really important we beat him. “We know that it’s going to cost us a fortune, half a million dollars, but we’re not fighting it just for us. “And they chose us because they know we’re smaller.” Mr Ahmed said the organisation was lucky to have the backing of so many individual donors. Recently, X owner Elon Musk said the company’s ad revenue in the United States was down 60%. In a post, he said the company was filing a defamation lawsuit against ADL “to clear our platform’s name on the matter of antisemitism”. For more information about CCDH visit: https://counterhate.com/ Read More Broadband customers face £150 hikes because of ‘outrageous’ rises – Which? Rise of AI chatbots ‘worrying’ after man urged to kill Queen, psychologist warns William hails ‘amazing’ eco-friendly start-up businesses Royal website subject to ‘denial of service attack’, royal source says TikTok finds and shuts down secret operation to stir up conflict in Ireland Spotify will not ban all AI-powered music, says boss of streaming giant

Apple is planning a host of powerful new Macs, according to new rumours. The company is testing a high-end MacBook Pro, powered by a new M3 chip with more cores than in the existing M2 line, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. And it is also testing a new version of the Mac Mini, due for release next year, he reported. Apple has updated nearly all of its current Macs to the M2 line of chips – which also includes the M2 Pro, Max and Ultra – over recent months. That includes the Mac Pro, which had been long neglected and received an update at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference event in June, bringing Apple’s full line-up onto the same chip architecture. Now Apple is planning for the successor to those chips, the M3. They are expected to arrive with updated computers: the MacBooks and Mac Mini, as well as the iMac which has not gone updated since 2021. They could start arriving in computers from late this year, Mr Gurman reported. The high-end MacBook Pro updates are expected to arrive in 2024, he said. Apple said during its earning call last week that it was expecting to see Mac revenue decline in the fourth quarter of its financial year. That further suggests that Apple is not planning new Macs before the next financial year, which begins in October. Apple is widely expected to release new iPhones next month. The Pro models are due to receive a new chip in the form of the A17, which might offer some insight into the details of the M3, since Apple shares significant technologies between its iPhone and Mac chips. Read More Apple’s iPhone 15 release date leaked amid reports of ‘severe shortages’ Apple gives update on its plans for AI – and says it is coming to every product Apple results show sales slumping

Shopping for a digital camera? We're here to help. Our reviews cover everything from pocket-friendly

Russian scientists have warned that powerful solar flare activity on Monday may cause significant disruption for satellite and radio communications. Three solar flares observed on Sunday by the Fedorov Institute of Applied Geophysics in Moscow lasted up to 14 minutes, signalling abnormally large geomagnetic disturbances on Earth. The institute forecasted the arrival of class X flares for Monday, which are the most energetic type of solar radiation, capable of damaging electronics. Earlier this month, a giant sunspot named AR3354 grew to a size roughly 10 times larger than Earth, unleashing an X-class flare aimed directly at Earth that triggered radio blackouts in some parts of the US. The latest solar activity is expected to interfere with short-wave radio communications, used by military, maritime and emergency operators. Increased solar storm activity in recent years has led to fears of an impending solar superstorm, which some astronomers warn could lead to an “internet apocalypse”. Such powerful storms occur approximately once every 100 years, with the last major one taking place in 1921. Nasa predicts that the next peak in the Sun’s 11-year activity cycle will arrive at some point in 2025, though it is not clear yet whether this will be the once-in-a-century event that some astronomers fear. The worst on record, referred to as the Carrington Event, took place in 1859 and resulted in fires at telegraph stations. “If the Carrington Event happened today, it would have even more severe impacts, such as widespread electrical disruptions, persistent blackouts, and interruptions to global communications,” the US space agency warned in a recent blog post. “Such technological chaos could cripple economies and endanger the safety and livelihoods of people worldwide.” Research published in 2021 assessed the robustness of internet and communications infrastructure against severe space weather events The study found that coronal mass ejection events could risk disconnecting Europe from the US, with the authors urging more to be done to improve the resilience of global telecommunication networks. In March this year, Nasa announced a new artificial intelligence model capable of predicting where on Earth a solar storm may strike, giving scientists up to 30 minutes of advanced warning. Vishal Upendran, from the Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics in India, who was involved in the AI’s development, said: “With this AI, it is now possible to make rapid and accurate global predictions and inform decisions in the event of a solar storm, thereby minimising – or even preventing – devastation to modern society.” Read More Once-in-a-century solar superstorm could plunge the world into ‘internet apocalypse’, study says Powerful solar flare responsible for blackout in US What to expect from India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission to Moon’s south pole India launches historic mission to Moon’s south pole

By David Ljunggren OTTAWA (Reuters) -Wildfires spread in the western Canadian province of British Columbia on Friday, while in the

SoftBank Group Corp.’s semiconductor unit Arm Ltd. is targeting an initial public offering at a valuation of between

LONDON & DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 4, 2023--

Telegram is launching its own version of Stories, the ephemeral mixed media format made popular

Google made its budget phone so good that it might have to stop making budget

Singapore Inc. has some ways to go when it comes to climate-related disclosures, as mandatory reporting rules are

You may see lab-grown meat and insects on the menu in future decades, as the world grapples with