“AI – Artificial Intelligence”

We risk losing control of our AI creations

In the summer of 2020, the Afghan military received an unusual report. Transmitted by their US allies, it warned of a possible Taliban attack in Jalalabad, a city in the fertile country’s southeastern plain. Suggesting the assault would come between 1-12 July, it identified particular locations at risk of attack. More than that, the report predicted the Taliban onslaught would come at the cost of 41 lives, with a “confidence interval” of 95%.

During its bitter fight against the militants, the Afghan government must have received thousands of such reports. What made this one so special was its provenance: not the drones and informants of its friends in the world’s greatest superpower, but rather Raven Sentry, an AI-enabled warning model designed to predict insurgent activity.

Are you sure about that, Alexa? Amazon’s voice assistant has been spreading fake news, it has emerged.

Full Fact, a fact checking group, discovered that Alexa was spouting misinformation and even citing the organisation as a source. There are more than 100 million devices worldwide that are Alexa-enabled.

A robot artist is set to make history as the first to have a work put up for sale by a major auction house, with the portrait of Alan Turing expected to fetch up to £150,000 (€180,000, $196,000), organizers announced on Wednesday.

The power of the Silicon Valley oligarchs is set to expand exponentially.

The emergence of artificial intelligence marks the latest acceleration of the digital age. Like any revolution, this one has winners and losers and will likely transform the relationship between people and machines. It could also lend yet more power to Big Tech and their technocratic elites in government.

Just as the Industrial Revolution elevated manufacturers and their financiers over the old aristocratic classes, the current shift erodes the power of the large industrial, often unionised, corporations and hosts of smaller businesses, in favour of a small coterie of elite firms, which are aggressively anti-union and have an unprecedented hold on both the capital markets and increasingly the human consciousness.

A musician in the US has been accused of using artificial intelligence (AI) tools and thousands of bots to fraudulently stream songs billions of times in order to claim millions of dollars of royalties.

Michael Smith, of North Carolina, has been charged with three counts of wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy charges.

Prosecutors say it is the first criminal case of its kind they have handled.

YouTube streaming fraud…

Many cultures view robots as quasi-humans

In parts of Thailand, thanks to a confluence of modern technology and traditional beliefs, a peculiar transport service has emerged. The anthropologist Scott Stonington calls them “spirit ambulances”. Some Thai Buddhists feel morally obliged to preserve the life of an ailing mother or father by any means possible — even if there is no realistic hope of recovery, and even if it goes against the parent’s own wishes. Yet these same Buddhists believe that death should occur in the home, in the presence of family. So the dying parent is kept at the hospital until the last moment, receiving the best treatment medicine can provide, before being whisked home in a specially designed vehicle, the spirit ambulance.

Pilots risking their lives could be a thing of the movies as aircraft carrier is fitted with the first hi-tech command centre for controlling unmanned drones

Conflicts such as the Battle of Midway and fictional depictions including the Top Gun films lionised the image of US Navy pilots risking their lives flying dangerous missions from aircraft carriers.

But in future such operations may be flown without a pilot on board, after the American military installed its first high-tech command centre for controlling all types of unmanned drones.

USS George HW Bush is the first of the US Navy’s 11 carriers to be fitted with an unmanned air warfare centre, a dedicated command system which will be capable of masterminding what will become an increasingly important role in naval operations.

In a field on the outskirts of Kyiv, the founders of Vyriy, a Ukrainian drone company, were recently at work on a weapon of the future.

To demonstrate it, Oleksii Babenko, 25, Vyriy’s chief executive, hopped on his motorcycle and rode down a dirt path. Behind him, a drone followed, as a colleague tracked the movements from a briefcase-size computer.