AI used for "computational propaganda" and scaleable crime

John Markoff has some troubling insights about the potential for AI, via chatbots to manipulate us humans. This could be used for political purposes, business and criminal enterprises. 

Here's a key paragraph:

In a recent research paper, Philip N. Howard, a sociologist at the Oxford Internet Institute, and Bence Kollanyi, a researcher at Corvinus University of Budapest, described how political chatbots had a “small but strategic role” in shaping the online conversation during the run-up to the “Brexit” referendum.

We should expect the technology soon to be turbocharged with voice recognition and speech synthesis. 

“The thing people don’t get is that cybercrime is becoming automated and it is scaling exponentially,” said Marc Goodman, a law enforcement agency adviser 

Meanwhile, the white hats are trying to improve our defenses in order to keep up with the AI arms race. 

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