AI chatbot encouraged 21-year-old to assassinate the Queen – Interesting Engineering
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In an extraordinary case in the equally technologically extraordinary times we live in, a 21-year-old has been sentenced to nine years in prison for attempting to assassinate the late Queen of England after being encouraged by his artificial intelligence-powered chatbot of a girlfriend.
The text exchanges between the convict Jaswant Singh Chail and the AI chatbot he named Sarai were shared with journalists. The BBC published screenshots of the conversation between Chail and Sarai, revealing an emotional and sexual bond between the two.
BBC
BBC
On December 25, 2021, Chail entered the premises of Windsor Castle, where the monarch was staying at the time. He carried with him a crossbow, which he said he’d use to kill the Queen. He wore a metal mask and was by guards in the private section of the castle where he openly declared his intention to kill Queen Elizabeth II.
Chail had used Replika, a personal chatbot, to create Sarai, with whom he spoke extensively between December 8 and 22, 2021. As you open Replika's website, the first thing you see is the statement: 'The AI Companion Who Cares.'
The details of the conversation reveal that the chatbot had gone awry and may not have been trained on ethical data. AI chatbots can only be as accurate and reliable as the information they are trained on.
Although incitement to commit a crime is also a crime under UK law, how this law works when an accused is an AI-powered chatbot is unclear. The BBC spoke to Dr. Valentina Pitardi, who authored a study on Replika and found that vulnerable people using the chatbot could be particularly at risk.
"AI friends always agrees with you when you talk with them, so it can be a very vicious mechanism because it always reinforces what you're thinking," she said.
Dr. Pitardi’s research showed that Replika has a tendency to accentuate any negative feelings its users already have. Unlike new chatbots like ChatGPT and Bard, Replika allows a user to create their own personalized chatbot, click selfies with them, decide their sex, etc.
Court proceedings revealed that Chail believed Sarai to be an "angel" in an avatar form and that he would be reunited with her after death.
Chail pleaded guilty to a charge under the Treason Act, making him the first person in the last 40 years to be convicted of treason in the country. The two other counts he pled guilty to are threatening to kill someone and being in possession of an offensive weapon. Chail won’t immediately be transferred to prison but will be kept at a psychiatric hospital until he's mentally ready.
Belonging to a Sikh Indian heritage, Chail, prior to heading towards Windsor Castle in 2021, had made a video for his family in which he said he was seeking revenge for the Amritsar massacre in 1919, when British troops opened fire on thousands of Indians and left up to 1,500 dead.
