Australia’s spy chief warns AI will accelerate online radicalisation

Asio boss Mike Burgess says social media impact is a ‘step-change’ in the threat posed by extremism

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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”.

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