A report written by academics from institutions including the Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge Center for a New American Security, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and OpenAI warns that AI systems could be misused:
AI ripe for exploitation, experts warn
Drones turned into missiles, fake videos manipulating public opinion and automated hacking are just three of the threats from artificial intelligence in the wrong hands, experts have said.
The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence report warns that AI is ripe for exploitation by rogue states, criminals and terrorists. Those designing AI systems need to do more to mitigate possible misuses of their technology, the authors said. And governments must consider new laws.
The report calls for:
- Policy-makers and technical researchers to work together to understand and prepare for the malicious use of AI
- A realisation that, while AI has many positive applications, it is a dual-use technology and AI researchers and engineers should be mindful of and proactive about the potential for its misuse
- Best practices that can and should be learned from disciplines with a longer history of handling dual use risks, such as computer security
- An active expansion of the range of stakeholders engaging with, preventing and mitigating the risks of malicious use of AI
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday February 22 2018, @03:18PM (6 children)
If students are allowed to conceal-carry on campus "to protect us all", then we just made the jobs of mass shooters way easier.
People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 23 2018, @12:17AM
You can believe whatever you'd like. I'll note that a large number of mass shooters stop killing people once they are confronted by another person with a firearm. The Stoneman Douglas High School shooting is unusual in that the gunman stopped firing on his own and never was confronted during the shooting.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 23 2018, @03:17PM (4 children)
Second, we don't need to arm the entire student body in order to provide a level of deterrence. Even if you don't want anyone to carry, including trusted school personnel, you can store firearms on location, accessible to the faculty. But make it so that there is at most one armed person other than the shooter, and you'll end up with situations like this.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday February 23 2018, @05:34PM (3 children)
If we assume that we MUST keep conditions such that it is easy for crazy people to obtain firearms, then I might agree with your argument.
I would rather head this entire problem off by preventing it in the first place, rather than trying to respond to it. Or trying to turn all school entrance points into new TSA checkpoints. Or arming teachers. Etc.
People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 23 2018, @08:37PM (2 children)
How do you know who is a crazy person? Finding out after they kill a dozen people isn't very helpful (and we do have a pretty good track record of making sure people who shoot up schools don't get an opportunity to repeat that).
And such obstacles also become obstacles for non-crazy people. Making life more difficult for tens of millions of people just so you can make obtaining firearms slightly harder for an extremely small number of bad actors is a terrible trade off.
You can't in a democracy. The freedom to make choices is the freedom to make bad choices. The right to privacy means that there are hard limits to what law enforcement will know about people and their state of mind. Due process and other legal protections means that law enforcement will be similarly restricted as to what they can do to someone even when they become aware that they are a problem.
And as I already noted, one of the drivers of mass shootings is the creation of gun-free zones. I think it would be educational to you to walk through a few timelines of mass shooting incidents to see what happens when the shooter runs into people who shoot back. It's pretty much a one-sided video game up to that point.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday February 23 2018, @09:37PM (1 child)
I don't have a problem letting people make bad choices --- within certain limits. Excluding being able to rapidly kill large numbers of people.
Even if detecting crazy people is not perfect, it could be improved. Right now, there seems to be very little of it. People who are sometimes an obvious danger can get firearms capable of killing lots of people quickly. And they can get them easier than they can obtain alcohol.
I'm not saying it can be perfect. But we could do a whole lot better on controlling who can get firearms.
People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 24 2018, @01:51AM
Reality doesn't seem to care about what you have a problem with.
I disagree. Parkland wasn't in one of the few dry counties in Florida. It would have been trivial to buy alcohol.
And I don't buy that or that such control is desirable. A key problem here is simply that there isn't enough of a problem to justify the resulting onerous burden on US citizens or the firearm industry.