Unsettling AI, Right Here & Now

I’m sure we are all fully seized with the potential of AI and related developments, positive & negative, and have all read what internet uses the Chinese intend for it.  Much of it seems a little way in the future.  But here’s a first-hand tale from this week.

I belong to a UK-based organisation that has a branch in the US.  I correspond by email very frequently with the UK Hon Secretary, we’ll call him Martin; and only occasionally (maybe once a quarter) with the US Hon Sec whose name, coincidentally, is also Martin.  Recently I was told, verbally only and as a piece of breaking news not generally disclosed anywhere, that Martin (US) proposed to float an idea for a new type of activity involving his US members – and (before he told anyone else) what did we think of it?  

Having slept on the idea (but not communicated it further) I emailed the person who’d relayed it to me that I thought it was a good one.  I referenced ‘US members’ but no names.  I then hit the cc button to Martin (UK), something I’d done a thousand times before, because he’d been party to the original verbal discussion.

My email system immediately flashed up: “Did you mean Martin (US)?“

FFS !  If its algo was (as one might expect) based on past behaviours by volume, and indeed context at a basic level (i.e. comms within the organisation in question), the simple probabilities were very heavily stacked in favour of my intending it to be Martin (UK), as I’d actually intended and clicked.  But presumably it had “seen” a reference to US members, and “knew” Martin (US) was associated with US members; or “seen” an email on the same subject between Martin (US) and my addressee …   This is clever and useful, but … well.

I recall the first time when I was “asked” whether I meant to append an attachment when I’d mentioned such a thing in the text, but hadn’t appended anything before hitting Send.  That seemed quite clever at the time.  Things seemed to have moved on a bit … 

And this is all real-time stuff with (obviously) no human intervention whatsoever.  Cunning bastards.  God alone knows what the real bastards (China, FB, …) are doing with this stuff.

Any stories you’d care to share-and-scare?

ND