Artificial intelligence is expected to become a "game changer" enabling more sophisticated cyber and physical attacks on individuals, groups and institutions, international experts warn.
The world is likely to see rapid growth in cyber crime and the use of drones over the next decade, with "an unprecedented rise in the use of (internet) 'bots' to manipulate everything from elections to the news agenda and social media," the experts said in a report.
The 26 experts from Cambridge and Oxford universities, think-tanks, cyber-security firms and digital rights groups urged governments and corporations to "address the clear and present danger inherent in the myriad applications of A.I."
"A.I. will alter the landscape of risk for citizens, organisations and states - whether it's criminals training machines to hack or 'phish' at human levels of performance or privacy-eliminating surveillance, profiling and repression," said one of the authors, Miles Brundage, a researcher at Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute.
Brundage warned that systems based on artificial intelligence often "significantly surpass" human performance.
"It is troubling, but necessary, to consider the implications of superhuman hacking, surveillance, persuasion, and physical target identification, as well as A.I. capabilities that are subhuman but nevertheless much more scalable than human labour," he said.
