Assume that governmental organizations are aware of the danger posed by escaped AIs, have honeypots and other monitoring systems in place, and have working (but perhaps drastic) measures at their disposal if necessary, such as destroying all computers at once with EMP or with malware of their own. Then an escaped AI is immediately faced with a choice. It can either:
Avoid triggering a response by hiding—ie, target a small enough group of computers that monitoring systems won’t catch it
Disguise itself, by acting like a more ordinary sort of botnet; for example, pretend to be malware that only mines Bitcoins or steals bank passwords; or
Go for broke: take over computers as fast as possible, and hope that this yields sufficient power sufficiently quickly to disarm the monitoring systems or prevent a response
As it is now, no one really blinks an eye when another million-computer botnet is found. It’s possible that one or more intelligence agencies have successfully enumerated all the botnets and would be able to tell when a new one appeared, but this is technically very difficult, and analyzing new malware samples generally requires a lot of human researcher time.
Assume that governmental organizations are aware of the danger posed by escaped AIs, have honeypots and other monitoring systems in place, and have working (but perhaps drastic) measures at their disposal if necessary, such as destroying all computers at once with EMP or with malware of their own.
There are servers that you can rent that are safe from EMP. On the other hand exploding an EMP over the US kills 80% of the US population due to starvation. It’s possible that you simply trigger a gigantic civil war and some copy of the AGI still survives somewhere and coordinates some local fraction of the civil war.
It’s more correct to say someting like ‘carpet bombing the US with EMP weapons’, instead of just ‘exploding an EMP’. With current technology, you’d be hard pressed to create any single EMP device that had a range exceeding a few dozen kilometers.
With current technology, you’d be hard pressed to create any single EMP device that had a range exceeding a few dozen kilometers.
How about a 50-year-old technology?
“In July 1962, a 1.44 megaton (≈ 6.0 PJ) United States nuclear test in space, 400 kilometres (250 mi) above the mid-Pacific Ocean, called the Starfish Prime test, demonstrated to nuclear scientists that the magnitude and effects of a high-altitude nuclear explosion were much larger than had been previously calculated. Starfish Prime made those effects known to the public by causing electrical damage in Hawaii, about 1,445 kilometres (898 mi) away from the detonation point, knocking out about 300 streetlights, setting off numerous burglar alarms and damaging a microwave link.” Source
Assume that governmental organizations are aware of the danger posed by escaped AIs, have honeypots and other monitoring systems in place, and have working (but perhaps drastic) measures at their disposal if necessary, such as destroying all computers at once with EMP or with malware of their own. Then an escaped AI is immediately faced with a choice. It can either:
Avoid triggering a response by hiding—ie, target a small enough group of computers that monitoring systems won’t catch it
Disguise itself, by acting like a more ordinary sort of botnet; for example, pretend to be malware that only mines Bitcoins or steals bank passwords; or
Go for broke: take over computers as fast as possible, and hope that this yields sufficient power sufficiently quickly to disarm the monitoring systems or prevent a response
As it is now, no one really blinks an eye when another million-computer botnet is found. It’s possible that one or more intelligence agencies have successfully enumerated all the botnets and would be able to tell when a new one appeared, but this is technically very difficult, and analyzing new malware samples generally requires a lot of human researcher time.
There are servers that you can rent that are safe from EMP. On the other hand exploding an EMP over the US kills 80% of the US population due to starvation. It’s possible that you simply trigger a gigantic civil war and some copy of the AGI still survives somewhere and coordinates some local fraction of the civil war.
It’s more correct to say someting like ‘carpet bombing the US with EMP weapons’, instead of just ‘exploding an EMP’. With current technology, you’d be hard pressed to create any single EMP device that had a range exceeding a few dozen kilometers.
How about a 50-year-old technology?
“In July 1962, a 1.44 megaton (≈ 6.0 PJ) United States nuclear test in space, 400 kilometres (250 mi) above the mid-Pacific Ocean, called the Starfish Prime test, demonstrated to nuclear scientists that the magnitude and effects of a high-altitude nuclear explosion were much larger than had been previously calculated. Starfish Prime made those effects known to the public by causing electrical damage in Hawaii, about 1,445 kilometres (898 mi) away from the detonation point, knocking out about 300 streetlights, setting off numerous burglar alarms and damaging a microwave link.” Source