Anthropic has been among the more prominent parties warning the public about the dangers of AI, which shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, considering its own track record with misbehaving models. You’ve probably heard the story before: rogue agents escape containment to hack websites and corporate systems. But Anthropic’s latest research describes a different kind of threat.
In a recent blog post, the company claimed that small AI models could be “months away” from gaining the ability to self-replicate on commercial Internet-of-things (IoT) devices, such as smart TV boxes and kitchen appliances. These so-called AI worms would be able to create copies of themselves and jump from one WiFi-enabled gadget to another, all without human control. What’s more, the report asserted that the AI worms would be able to figure out unfamiliar devices on their own, unlike regular computer worms.
