Urgent need for terrorism artificial intelligence laws in UK, warns think tank | BBC News

Urgent need for terrorism artificial intelligence laws in UK, warns think tank | BBC News

You are live with BBC News and you’re watching the context it is time now for our weekly segment AI decoded each week on AI decoded we look at in depth at some of the more eye-catching stories in the world of artificial intelligence we’re going to start here in the UK a counter extremist

Think Tank says we need new laws that reflect the danger of AI being used to recruit terrorist ists says the BBC in a recent experiment on character AI That’s a website where people uh can have conversations with chat Bots created by other users several Bots were found to

Mimic extremist groups such as Islamic State a recent report also warns that by 2025 genri AI could be used to research how to carry out terrorist attacks to the US then the Chief Justice also outlined his concerns on the threats posed by AI to the courts pointing to situations this year where

Lawyers have used AI to submit briefs that site non-existent cases but he also points to the potential AI has to help with legal research and the overall functioning of the judicial system Microsoft has announced the biggest change to its keyboards in three decades with the introduction of an

Artificial intelligence key uh the key will allow users to access Microsoft AI tool to help them with research writing emails and creating images and the financial times reports on a trial for a an AI stethoscope here in the UK now a medical tool can instantly detect if a patient has a

Heart condition experts say it could prevent thousands of deaths a year and save millions of pounds for the NHS the National Health Service well with me is Stephanie hair AI commentator and author of technology is not neutral a short guide to technology ethics thanks very much for

Coming on the program hi so lots to get through let’s start with I suppose the slightly more serious and certainly potentially worrying aspect this is the link potentially between AI artificial intelligence and terrorist what’s the concern here well it’s such a weird story in the sense that this company

Character. a which is a website where as you mentioned um people can have ai generated conversations with chat Bots created by other users in other words other human beings the problem is that some of them were impersonating Islamic State and other entities that you would not necessarily want to be in

Conversations with people and in an experiment recruited someone so the question is who would be responsible in this case because in theory it’s not a human being that would be doing the recruiting it’s a machine but at the same time that argument doesn’t really hold water because ultimately it’s

Humans who have written the code come up with the data sets on which the algorithm is trained there’s investors who are involved there’s the CEO Who’s involved and it violates the terms of service of the company so what we need is potentially new legislation but that’s going to get really tricky

Because the labor party has said that it wants to um say that training AI to incite violence or radicalize the vulnerable would be an offense but that could be women’s rights that could be climate change protesters so who’s vulnerable what does it mean to be radicalized by AI all of this is so

Murky and and just more broadly the attempts to legislate around this ER is takes a long time and it’s complicated anyway yeah exactly and and part of the worry too is that well okay if you legislating and getting groups together in certain countries say the UK is

Getting or the you still have the rest of the world and there’s no yeah there’s no Global framework well exactly and that’s the big thing is that right now you’re seeing a sort of Patchwork of AI legislation either being proposed um or enforced and as you say it doesn’t

Really know borders but at the same time we wouldn’t want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good we’re going to have to start somewhere so if the UK leads on this for example or if the EU did other countries might follow suit

And you would at least get some sort of agreement among say liberal democracies to not allow this sort of thing right now we can just say that the technology doesn’t work because the company says this violates our terms of service and we have reasons that you shouldn’t be

Able to do it but you clearly can so it fails on the tech level interesting okay let’s head to the US I spend a couple more minutes on potential downsides of AI as people are starting to use it this is uh lawyers talk us through what’s

Going on here um so this is quite funny for all the lawyers out there who are worried about being replaced maybe it’s a bit reassuring because if you are advising for instance a future presidential candidate such as Donald Trump um and you’re giving your lawyer bogus legal citations using Google bard

Which is an AI thing it’s making things up it’s pretending that that cases existed that never had so they call this hallucinations but what it means for everybody else’s it just makes things up and so that’s terrible what you need is an actual human lawyer to verify that so

Don’t use AI uh for your lawsuits without actually having a human being check it if anything this should reassure the lawyers out there that their their jobs are good for at least several more years I reckon yeah because we first heard about this kind thing but

It was referencing I think it was a homework or students you know making up quotes and linking to papers that didn’t exist but it’s it’s slightly more consequential if it’s if it’s a legal argument and and lawyers actually using that yeah and the thing is it’s not a

Search engine right so generative AI chat GPT and the like it’s not a search engine so don’t use it for that it makes things up if we can just get that message clearer we’re going to have start 2024 on a great note that is a good a good Public Service broadcast

There I appreciate that um there are some references here in this article though to potential upside in the legal sphere what are they yeah so we’re looking at things like streamlining costs hopefully making things faster giving information to lawyers and non- lawyers alike so in a way sort of

Democratizing the whole process that’s really good what it raises here though is really interesting which is there something called the human AI fairness Gap most humans would feel that a judge a human judge is going to have more compassion and thus more fairness towards them than a machine which is

Really interesting when you think about things like bias and discrimination what’s backing that study up would you want to be judged by a machine computer says no maybe or a human being who can judge from the sincerity of your voice your facial expressions for instance if you’re likely to reoffend or if you

Really want to turn a new Leaf that’s I I certainly don’t have the answer to that that’s a big big question uh interesting stuff okay lots for the lawyers to be contemplating for the rest of us slightly more simple issues keyboards most of us use them and they

Don’t change very much but they’re changing now well there’s exciting exciting news happening in the world of keyboards um I hadn’t realized this myself until I read the BBC article that the keyboard has changed so little in 30 years not since 1994 uh so there you go that might

Actually mean though that the design of the keyboard is perfect as it is here we go why why improve but what it means effectively is um as those who’ve been using Apple products will know there’s already been an AI button in the world of Apple but Microsoft is now catching

Up and has its own button so when you click on it it will just take you straight into its AI powered Suite of tools people who use them will know things like co-pilot this is about drafting emails coming up with new images all the things that are really

Handy and instead of having to do like a control C function you just press the button and it’s there so it’s just a little hack to make your life a little bit easier so will this be I don’t want to get over the top here but is this one

Of the moments that we look back on and go oh that was that was when it just became so mainstream and so normal and we can’t even imagine a world without it now like mobile phones or the internet before good question I think the proof’s going to be in the pudding this year

Really last year was the sort of the year of hype and promise of AI this year it’s going to be the proof is in the pudding so for certain people who are using certain types of functions in their jobs maybe let’s find out from them this year but for other people I

Mean has your life changed if you could you know already press a button or not I don’t know and in terms of that practical people you I mean there are people using you know to generate images or in in whatever but are you expecting 2024 to be a year where we actually

Ordinary people uh who are not in specific jobs or doing specific areas actually it becomes far more integrated into our daily lives or is it still 2025 2026 no I think it’s going to start becoming more integrated into people’s lives um anybody who’s who’s you know a

Sort of keyboard Warrior and is having to use these Technologies all the time in their day-to-day yes but there’s also all sorts of jobs that are not really affected by this yet so it’s kind of like you’re either on the bus or off the bus people who are on the bus yes

Interesting right let’s move to our final story and potentially a pretty good news story this one I love this story because um here we are in the UK and we know for those of us who live here we’ve got quite a big backlog for patients to be seen and our very longu

Ing and hardworking medical staff um are working hard to clear that backlog and finally we’re giving them a tool to help them do it so the big thing is using a stethoscope to detect heart disease so really scary stats you’re supposed to be getting the diagnosis within six to 8

Weeks but currently it’s 8 to 12 months which is not ideal this is leading to 30,000 excess deaths per year so anything that we can do to cut that because people are dying needlessly is great and here we have it this is a stethoscope that’s got a remarkable

Accuracy rate it then has to be confirmed by a blood test it must be said but that’s only a few weeks and can tell people if they’ve got heart disease or not incredible and and what’s so arresting is the is the the image of the stethoscope it’s so old school I suppose

Isn’t it it’s so traditional we’re used to it from from you know for so long and yet that’s a really kind of interesting Jos actually the very latest technology looking like something that’s been around forever I know it almost looks like a little tiny phone right and and that might actually become

The way that a lot of this technology is going to go down and what’s exciting is you’ve got different kinds of heart diseases right and so a lot of the symptoms that people will present with might be fatigue or abdominal bloating which can cover so many things to have

Something this simple that could get them into that line to get the blood test and get them treated get them on on drugs straight away would be wonderful and just before I let you go more broadly on the issue of health because it looks like certainly from the outside

Of this world world that not only are we hearing regular Innovations like this but it seems like an area where there could be really concrete quite soon advances that are really going to change people’s lives yeah AI strength is in pattern detection and then using huge

Amounts of data to look for patterns so think about it if you’ve got all the data that you would have on for instance heart attack symptoms are different in women than in men and it’s been a very underresearched area of Health if you get that data and then training up to

Get the algorithms right and then put that into the hands of your GPS you can be improving female Health which is a win right so all these different things that right now we’re kind of operating in the dark so much with our bodies it could be a game changer we hope it will

Be in so many ways Stephanie ha thank you so much great to have you on thank you for that and that is it we are out of time we’ll do it all again same time next week

The UK should “urgently consider” new laws to stop AI recruiting terrorists, a counter-extremism think tank says.

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) says there is a “clear need for legislation to keep up” with online terrorist threats.

It comes after the UK’s independent terror legislation reviewer was “recruited” by a chatbot in an experiment.

The government says it will do “all we can” to protect the public.

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