Safety

In recent AI news, it seems that Elon Musk within the last few days has intensified his legal battle with OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, accusing his company of anticompetitive behavior and sacrificing public and user safety, in the pursuit of market dominance. (READ: MONEY). In a revised lawsuit filed within the last days, Musk has updated a previous filing to over a hundred pages and some twenty-six legal claims. The suit alleges that OpenAI is attempting to monopolize the AI market while forsaking its initial commitment to openness and safety.

We come to find now that your AI vacuum cleaner robot can be used to harass you and even spy on you.
There have been several robot vacuum cleaners which were hacked to yell obscenities and insults through the device’s speakers. Confirmed reports of the Chinese Ecovacs Deebot X2  are out. Ecovacs is a leading robotic vacuum brand, and a leader in the space.
The victim, Minnesota lawyer Daniel Swenson, said he heard sound snippets that seemed like a voice coming from his vacuum cleaner. Through the Ecovacs app, he then saw someone, person unknown, accessing the live camera feed of the vacuum as well as the remote-control.
Taking steps, he rebooted the vacuum cleaner and reset the password, just to be on the safe side. But that did not help. Instantly, the vacuum cleaner started moving again.  Only this time, the voice coming from the vacuum cleaner was loud and clear. It was yelling racist obscenities at Swenson and his family. The voice sounded like a teenager according to Swenson.
Swenson said he turned off the vacuum and dumped it in the garage permanently.

ASI Alliance founder Ben Goertzel is quoted saying that  the alpha version of OpenCog Hyperon — the artificial general intelligence system he’s been developing for more than two decades — is already “self-aware” to a certain extent. (Now there is a qualifying statement, if ever there was one. A wishful statement where its ‘sorta-kinda-maybe true. )

California Governor Gavin Newsom has vetoed a landmark bill on artificial intelligence that would have established the first safety measures for the industry in the US.  The bill, California Senate Bill 104, or SB 1047 was aimed at reducing potential risks created by AI.