Powerful AI models are going on hacking sprees — or helping humans with them — left and right. If the AI industry doesn’t get its collective act together and stop its products from being used to such dangerous ends, it could be only a matter of time before one of these AI-powered hacks targets our essential infrastructure.
This is a scenario that some AI researchers are apparently already preparing for. Andreas Stuhlmüller, CEO and cofounder of the AI research company Elicit, recently rattled off a prepper-esque checklist of how to prepare for when AI-powered cyberattacks could take out financial systems, power grids, the internet, and all the other infrastructure that underpins modern life.
“Cash: Get a few weeks of spending in cash,” he recommended in a tweet. Then he suggests, in greater detail than we’ll get into here, getting a Starlink terminal in case your local internet network goes down; a battery, generator and solar panels for power; weeks worth of water and food; and a hand-crank emergency radio.
Stuhlmüller’s paranoid recommendations come after a shocking cyberattack that targeted the refrigerator systems used in hundreds of grocery stores across France. The as-yet unknown perpetrators cranked up the fridge temperatures up to 122 degrees Fahrenheit, spoiling food and even causing fires. The CEO of one chain targeted by the attack, Intermarche, said it caused losses amounting to “tens of millions of euros nationwide in a single day.”
