13 March 2024 , 16:51
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Russia is using AI deepfakes to "fool experts" and target politically unstable and war torn countries to spread chaos, a new intelligence report has warned.
The warning came in the yearly Annual Threat Assessment, a report put together collectively by multiple US intelligence agencies and looking into the most direct and serious threats to the US in the coming year.
The report looked into the effects of 'disruptive technology' and their implications on civil liberties, privacy and ethics. Although it acknowledges the benefits technology like AI could bring it also warns of "unintended consequences." This could include "rampant deepfakes and misinformation to the development of AI-generated computer viruses or new chemical weapons."
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Russia's President Vladimir Putin has previously emphasised the importance of AI (POOL/AFP via Getty Images)Russia is also using AI but US intelligence officials fear a more nefarious purpose behind it. The report claimed: "Russia is using AI to create deepfakes and is developing the capability to fool experts. Individuals in warzones and unstable political environments may serve as some of the highest value targets for such deepfake malign influence."
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In recent weeks, Russian state media and online accounts tied to the Kremlin have spread and amplified misleading and incendiary content about US immigration and border security. The campaign seems crafted to stoke outrage and polarisation before the 2024 election for the White House, and experts who study Russian disinformation say Americans can expect more to come as Putin looks to weaken support for Ukraine and cut off a vital supply of aid.
The US fears Russia will use AI to target politically unstable countries (Getty Images)Speaking at an AI conference in November last year in Moscow, Putin noted that “it’s imperative to use Russian solutions in the field of creating reliable and transparent artificial intelligence systems that are also safe for humans.”
“Monopolistic dominance of such foreign technology in Russia is unacceptable, dangerous and inadmissible,” Putin said.
He noted that “many modern systems, trained on Western data are intended for the Western market” and “reflect that part of Western ethics, norms of behaviour, public policy to which we object.”
During his more than two decades in power, Putin has overseen a multi-pronged crackdown on the opposition and civil society groups, and promoted “traditional values” to counter purported Western influence — policies that have become even more oppressive after he sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
Putin warned that algorithms developed by Western platforms could lead to a digital “cancellation” of Russia and its culture.
“An artificial intelligence created in line with Western standards and patterns could be xenophobic,” Putin said.
“Western search engines and generative models often work in a very selective, biased manner, do not take into account, and sometimes simply ignore and cancel Russian culture,” he said. “Simply put, the machine is given some kind of creative task, and it solves it using only English-language data, which is convenient and beneficial to the system developers. And so an algorithm, for example, can indicate to a machine that Russia, our culture, science, music, literature simply do not exist.”
He pledged to pour additional resources into the development of supercomputers and other technologies to help intensify national AI research.
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