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A report released this week by Anthropic's offensive research team claims to have created a malicious AI program that can spread autonomously among internet-connected smart TVs, splitting itself across 15 TVs and borrowing a little computing power from each to keep running. According to The Guardian's interpretation, the researchers believe a successful AI worm needs stronger capabilities on lower-powered devices, but that current trends suggest this could be feasible by the end of the year; a worm in an earlier paper from the University of Toronto infected a full-sized computer and spread faster. Security experts are divided: some stress that IoT devices such as smart TVs are slow to receive patches and their risks are hard to fix, while others argue the experiment moves slowly and its actions are predictable and interceptable, making it stunt hacking. At present, this claim appears only in the above report, with no further developments.
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What is a self-replicating AI worm, and why is Anthropic worried?Developments
1 confirmed developments
Anthropic red team says it created a self-propagating AI worm
Source:The Guardian Technology
Reports and discussion timeline
Browse reports and discussion by time. Their evidence levels remain distinct.
Oct 18
The Guardian Technology
What is a self-replicating AI worm, and why is Anthropic worried?
The Guardian interprets a report released this week by Anthropic's offensive research team: the team says it has built a malicious AI program that can spread autonomously among internet-connected smart TVs, splitting itself across 15 TVs and borrowing a little computing power from each to keep running. The researchers believe a successful AI worm would need stronger capabilities on lower-powered devices, but that current trends make this potentially feasible by the end of the year; the worm in an earlier University of Toronto paper instead infected a full-sized computer and could spread faster. Security experts disagree: some stress that IoT devices such as smart TVs are slow to receive patch updates and their risks are hard to fix, while others argue the experiment moves slowly and its actions are predictable and interceptable, making it stunt hacking.