The government has hired tech investor Ian Hogarth to lead its taskforce on artificial intelligence and he fears the NHS could be at risk of a ‘biological attack’
An Artificial Intelligence expert fears for the future of the NHS saying robots could cripple the sector and even carry out a “biological attack”.
Tech entrepreneur and AI specialist Ian Hogarth was hired earlier this year by the government to lead its task force on artificial intelligence. Reporting directly to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and technology secretary Chloe Smith, he also says that superhuman systems could be used to ‘design diseases’.
He believes the biggest risks facing the £100million project, which works to protect the public from dangerous artificial intelligence, is the potential the technology that could cause ‘horrific disruption on scale of Covid pandemic’. The new AI tsar has warned that it could be used to design new diseases and it is getting better by the day.
AI refers to the simulation of human intelligence in machines that are programmed to think and act like humans. It lowers the barriers to “perpetrating some kind of cyber attack or cyber crime” and he feels the UK needed to collaborate with countries around the world including China to try and prevent attacks. He said: “It’s just like pandemics. It’s the sort of thing where you can’t go it alone.
“The kind of risks we are paying most attention to are augmented national security risks. These are fundamentally global risks. And in the same way we collaborate with China in aspects of biosecurity and cyber security, I think there is a real value in international collaboration around the larger scale risks.”
He added: “A huge number of people in technology right now are trying to develop AI systems that are superhuman at writing code…That technology is getting better and better by the day. And fundamentally, what that does is it lowers the barriers to perpetrating some kind of cyber attack or cyber crime.”
The group has received £100million in Government funding to conduct independent AI safety research that it claims would enable the development of safe and reliable AI tools like ChatGPT. Ian also likened the scale of the threat to the WannaCry cyber attack on the NHS in 2017, which led to the cancellation of 19,000 patient appointments and cost the health service an eye-watering estimated £92m.
Earlier this summer, filmmaker James Cameron said he agrees with experts that “AI is the biggest danger” to humanity today and claims he warned the world about the issue way back in 1984 in his movie The Terminator. This comes as the so-called ‘three godfathers of AI’ have recently issued warnings about the need to regulate the quickly evolving technology.
In an interview with CTV News Chief Vassy Kapelos, Cameron said: “I absolutely share their concern,” he added: “I warned you guys in 1984, and you didn’t listen.” The Canadian filmmaker went on to address one of his biggest concerns, which is the weaponisation of AI. He said that he fears if technology becomes too advanced, it will reach a point where humans will no longer be able to interfere.
This was the premise of his world-renowned film The Terminator – a world in which Kyle Reese was sent back in time to protect Sarah Connor to warn her of the upcoming Skynet, which is an artificial intelligence system that will start a nuclear holocaust.
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