A new study shows that computer malware powered by easily accessible artificial intelligence models is here—the research is a “wake-up call” to take cybersecurity risks from AI more seriously, one expert says.
In the study, researchers created an AI-powered computer “worm” designed to attack and spread between devices—revealing a threat that they say the world is woefully underprepared to fight.
“Our results demonstrate that self-sustaining AI-driven cyber-threats are no longer theoretical,” the researchers wrote. The paper, first reported by the New York Times, was posted on the preprint server arXiv.org and has yet to be peer-reviewed.
David Lie, a professor at the University of Toronto, who is familiar with the research but was not directly involved with the study, says the work is a “wake-up call” that should inspire cyber experts and researchers to develop countermeasures to AI-boosted bugs as fast as possible. “The demonstration here is that there’s a motivation to do this sooner rather than later,” he says.
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