The column – Cyber Security Week
In recent weeks, the cities of Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Redwood Cityin the heart of Silicon Valley, they were the scene of an unusual technological incursion: The acoustic signals of the pedestrian traffic lights have been hacked to transmit vocal messages generated by artificial intelligencewho imitated the rumors of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
Instead of the usual notices such as “Walk Sign is on”, The pedestrians have heard satiric and sometimes disturbing messages. A voice similar to that of Musk said: “You know, they say that money cannot buy happiness … but they can buy a cybertruck, and this is rather fantastic, right?” Another recording presented a voice similar to that of Zuckerberg: “Hi, I’m Mark Zuckerberg … there is absolutely nothing that you can do to stop him. Anyway, see you.”
These messages have been released in At least 12 crossings in Palo Altowith similar reports also to Menlo Park and Redwood City. Local authorities temporarily disabled audio features traffic lights for safety reasons, keeping visual ones active.
To some all this seemed fun. From my point of view, a little less.
The phenomenon of Deep fake It is increasingly disturbing and the distorted use of the IA seems to have become an international sport.
Also, those “speaking” traffic lights are fundamental for the blind. Imagine if, with red, a voice said: “Proceed as well, it’s green.” The investigations indicate that The attack took place remotelyusing obsolete software in control systems.
If in this case it was a social protest, In the future it could become the perfect tool for something infinitely worse. As I have repeated for years: What happens beyond a screen produces effects here. And the real problem is that you don’t understand how serious they can be.
