These tiny robots could enter your home through letterboxes or cat flaps.

According to scientists, in the not-so-far future, burglars could be much smaller and smarter than your average neighborhood intruder. Besides, they would be nonhuman. Criminals are developing autonomous, robotic invaders that make a joke out of traditional safeguards such as bolted doors and shuttered windows. The preferred mode of entry: a letterbox or cat flap, according to researchers at University College London (UCL) (National Post)

AI-powered bot burglars

Once inside your home, these bot burglars could indulge in any number of nefarious activities. They could look for and grab keys, search for cash, or other valuables using their cameras and AI recognition capabilities.

Or it could be very simple – just an innocuous recce to check if anybody’s home. Finding the coast clear, the robot could send the signal to its operator to launch the heist.

Unfortunately, the capabilities of these evil-minded R2-D2 types could step up as AI technologies advance. There could be other criminal opportunities according to the UCL researchers.

Other sinister modus operandi from AI

Sophisticated AI techniques can now create “deep fake” videos and images constructed from freely available online pictures, for example in social media. Each fake video would be very real looking impersonations of the victim such as in a compromising position. Threats to post the material online could render the victim opened to blackmail and extortion.

Such videos could also be used to extort money from elderly parents who might think their offspring was in some kind of mortal danger.

Even prominent personalities could be shown in fake videos speaking on controversial issues resulting in political damage.

Criminals could also use AI techniques to disrupt financial systems or utilities with the motive of spreading chaos because of power outages, food shortages, and such like.

Driverless vehicles at autonomous attack drones could be used to launch terrorist acts.

“As the capabilities of AI-based technologies expand, so too has their potential for criminal exploitation,” said Professor Lewis Griffin, from UCL’s computer science department. “To adequately prepare for possible AI threats, we need to identify what these threats might be, and how they may impact our lives.”

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