Sun 13 August 2023:
The Industrial Revolution may not have had the same impact on Britain as artificial intelligence, but there is a risk that hackers could exploit it to obtain private data held by the government, the deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden has said,
Dowden said that AI may increase productivity and handle boring aspects of jobs.
Speaking in an interview with The Times, Mr Dowden said: “This is a total revolution that is coming. It’s going to totally transform almost all elements of life over the coming years, and indeed, even months, in some cases.
Asylum claim applications processed by the Home Office are already using AI, and it could even be used in reducing paperwork that goes into ministerial red boxes.
“The thing that AI right now does really well, it takes massive amounts of information from datasets in different places and enables you to get to a point where you can make decisions,” he said. “Ministers are never going to outsource to AI the making of decisions.”
But he warned AI could be harnessed by terrorists to expand knowledge on dangerous material or conduct widespread hacking operations in the wake of such attacks against the Electoral Commission and the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
The details of more than 10,000 officers and staff at the Police Service of Northern Ireland were published online for a number of hours on Tuesday, after an “industrial-scale breach of data”.
Dowden said: “You can shortcut hacking by AI. The ability to do destructive things – you can use AI to help you do those.
“Disaffected people exist already. Tie them in with AI, and that enhances, that proliferates, the kind of things that they can do.
“We need to be careful not to overstate these things and do it on an evidential basis, but there is the risk there that has to be addressed.”
Dowden acknowledged the growth of AI would lead to a significant restructuring of the economy, and said the government would ensure it did not penalise humans. He compared the spread of AI to the invention of the automobile.
“We have a very tight labour market and the job of government is to make sure that people can transition,” he said. “Ultimately, AI should have the capability to do the boring bits of jobs, so that humans can concentrate on the more interesting bits.”
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
______________________________________________________________
FOLLOW INDEPENDENT PRESS:
TWITTER (CLICK HERE)
https://twitter.com/IpIndependent
FACEBOOK (CLICK HERE)
https://web.facebook.com/ipindependent
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
