The head of Australia’s peak intelligence agency has warned that people like the Christchurch terrorist are being radicalised on social media, and artificial intelligence is likely to make it much worse.
The director general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio), Mike Burgess, told a social media summit in Adelaide on Friday that social media is “both a goldmine and a cesspit” that creates communities and divides them, and the internet was “the world’s most potent incubator of extremism”.
He said people were embracing anti-authority ideologies, conspiracy theories and diverse grievances, and while social media was not the sole driver, he said Asio considered it a “significant driver”.
“Social media allows extremist ideologies, conspiracies, dis- and misinformation to be shared at an unprecedented scale and speed,” he said.
He said radicalisation can now take days and weeks rather than months and years as it previously did, with the most likely perpetrator of a terrorist attack being a lone actor.
“The Christchurch massacre is just one example. The perpetrator used the internet to research and refine his ideology, and social media to livestream his rampage,” he said.
He said in one case, an alleged perpetrator acknowledged the availability of online extremist content had driven them “over the edge”.
The Asio boss singled out Telegram – which has recently agreed to cooperate with law enforcement after the arrest and charge of its founder, Pavel Durov, in France over allegedly failing to act against criminals using the app.
“They share content from the internet on social media, and use social media as a gateway to dark parts of the internet – places like a Telegram chatroom known as Terrorgram,” he said.
“Nationalist and racist violent extremists – including Australians – are using Terrorgram to communicate with offshore extremists and each other, discussing how to provoke a race war in this country.”
Burgess also repeated previous arguments about end-to-end encryption making it much more difficult for law enforcement to investigate crime on social media platforms.
“I recognise privacy is important, but it is not absolute. As I said earlier, technology should not be above the rule of law.”
Burgess said algorithms in combination with social isolation and poor mental health can lead some down rabbit holes online into extremist content such as “incel” material or terrorist content.
“As a nation, we need to reflect on why some young teenagers are hanging Nazi flags and portraits of the Christchurch killer on their bedroom walls, why others are sharing beheading videos in the schoolyard and, more concerningly, why there are young Australians willing to kill in the name of their beliefs,” he said.
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“When Asio and law enforcement are dealing with this problem, it is usually too late.”
Burgess said if the internet was already proving to be “the world’s greatest incubator of extremism” and social media the “world’s biggest accelerator” then artificial intelligence would “augment the incubation and accelerate the acceleration”.
“Asio assesses that artificial intelligence will allow a step-change in the threat environment,” he said.
“AI is likely to make radicalisation easier and faster. We are already aware of extremists experimenting with AI, and it is likely they will try to use it to improve their recruitment campaigns, including through social media.”
He said AI would also increase the volume of espionage.
Despite painting a gloomy picture, Burgess said Asio “is certainly not the answer and nor do we want to be”.
“Any proposal to regulate social media must be balanced against free speech, free choice and the free market.”
The two-day social media summit, held in Sydney and Adelaide, was focused on the impact of social media on young people, ahead of the federal government’s plans to restrict access to social media from younger teens. The government announced on Friday it would be up to the platforms themselves to enforce the age limits, once decided.