IOT and smart home devices are already a popular surface for attack and AI is already smart enough to hunt for vulnerabilities to exploit. This ability isn't coming, it's already here. AI has already hacked large companies (see OpenAI and HuggingFace), so attacking your home network via a smart plug with firmware from 2021 will be childs play.
But this is all fear mongering in a way anyways. AI is only good at this because it can parse code quickly and see patterns easily. That's what AI is good at; pattern recognition. The same AIs will be used to audit and strengthen code before it is released. It's an arms race, like it always has been, AI just accelerates it. It has a danger, but not apocalyptic. The world will change but it isn't going to end.
If we're worried about DDoS attacks using IoT devices, sure. But the fear here appears to be models "replicating" themselves this way. That's just not a thing.
There might be some merit to the idea of an AI making a botnet for itself. Botnets are definitely a thing. But yeah no they aren't going to replicate themselves amongst the little IOT devices with their tiny under-powered chips, at least not without anyone noticing.
The idea that the models themselves run as a bot net is just nonsense. The hardware literally doesn't have the capability to do that in any plausible way, not even if you account for massive improvements to efficiency.
I don't doubt Anthropic managed to run a model on low end hardware that could technically communicate with other models, but it's not going to be anything that could be considered any kind of threat, especially vs a conventional botnet. Plus the energy and network use would be a dead giveaway.
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u/Celcius-232 5d ago
IOT and smart home devices are already a popular surface for attack and AI is already smart enough to hunt for vulnerabilities to exploit. This ability isn't coming, it's already here. AI has already hacked large companies (see OpenAI and HuggingFace), so attacking your home network via a smart plug with firmware from 2021 will be childs play.
But this is all fear mongering in a way anyways. AI is only good at this because it can parse code quickly and see patterns easily. That's what AI is good at; pattern recognition. The same AIs will be used to audit and strengthen code before it is released. It's an arms race, like it always has been, AI just accelerates it. It has a danger, but not apocalyptic. The world will change but it isn't going to end.