The end of safe banking as we know it? Sam Altman – “we’re not going to be able to patch all the security bugs”

Forget killer robots, mass unemployment, data centers destroying the climate, or killer weapons raining down from space. Sam Altman (Open AI) thinks that AI has now become so clever that THERE IS NO WAY to find and close all the possible exploits which will be discovered by criminals. See Gizmodo interview below.

This of course isn’t something that can be fixed just by nationalizing Open AI. Or the president du jour nominating some crony to run the “US Department of Super Intelligence”. The senate will confirm anyone, if they were capable of giving a green light to RFK jr to head up our food and vaccines.

No matter what America does to Open AI, ChatGPT, META, Anthropic, Alphabet or Amazon, state sponsored industrial spies in China, North Korea, etc are already picking over those companies’ tech secrets. If you doubt me, then explain why Chinese cars made their debut with Tesla copycat batteries.

When your bank account is looted at Chase, Bank of America or any of the top 100 financial institutions with even weaker online security, the person at the keyboard will probably be speaking Mandarin as a first language. And maybe had a corporate internship at some US based AI company.

We’re all gonna die. But before that happens we’re all gonna be broke, apparently. After our bank accounts are all at zero, what do you think happens to the US dollar, the national debt, and your annual rent increase notice?

The big picture – more distressing – is that whenever scientific boffins come up with a nifty idea then it only takes 2 shakes of a lamb's tail for someone to turn it into a weapon. If you need help understanding this, google “Einstein’s letter to FDR on how to build the first atomic bomb”.

There are other examples. The offspring of the original Wright Brother’s flyer at Kitty Hawk now cruises at Mach 2.5 at 80,000 feet altitude and carries nukes.

The NASA moon program was a poorly disguised program to turn Robert Goddard toys (back yard rocket tinkerer) into ICBMs.

Formulas to produce man made fertilizers quickly became the most deadly explosives

Chinese fireworks were used on bamboo cannons, and those cannons can now reach 20 miles or more thanks to iron smelting originally intended to produce kitchen skillets, nails, and church bells.

These existential risks can’t be solely laid at the door of Altman, Einstein, or the Wright Brothers. But they can’t be let completely off the hook either. Once something is invented it escapes its confines and quickly appears in the real world, just like all the recent malicious agentic bots swarming "Hugging Face".

But I do expect a more serious approach to deadly tech from US elected officials than mottos such as “AI safety concerns are a hoax” (Trump) or “Bomb them back to the stone age” (numerous US government officials)

I’m just sayin’ . . .



Artificial Intelligence

https://gizmodo.com/tech/artificial-intelligence