Posted on 09/14/2026 9:14:04 PM PDT by fireman15
Hacking a weak computer system does not equal global doomsday.
The news has been full of articles recently about how we’re all going to die by 2030, 2027, or insert your year number.
(The piece then quotes from an article from another source... and then continues.)
For starters, we can discount the AI supervirus threat. AI doesn’t have to develop a doomsday virus, that world killing doomsday virus was already developed by the Aussie CSIRO in 2001 – who then promptly went on to tell everyone how to replicate their work. Aussie researchers stumbled across a simple genetic hack which sabotages the mammalian immune system, then witnessed its devastating effect when they inserted the genetic hack into a viral relative of smallpox. Then they tried the virus on some other rats to see if it killed all of them as well. Top marks for safety guys – it’s a wonder none of the scientists got infected.
My point is you don’t need AI to devastate the world with a supervirus – the research on how to do that has already been done.
As for AI copying and replicating itself, don’t make me laugh. Anyone who has ever done 3D printing or CNC machining, as I have, knows how crazy difficult it is to get the simplest processes right. The AI revolution would be over when the 3mm end mill snapped, and the US Postal Service refused to deliver a replacement. Who lost the batteries?
(Excerpt) Read more at wattsupwiththat.com ...
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I have been having a great time using AI. I subscribe to Amres ai that gives access to the big ones and is easily worth the $20 a month. I even have a system set up to help my elderly mum have groceries ordered and delivered and it acts as a dietician when I feed the AI agent the latest blood test. I have AI code arduino and PLC in minutes for things that took me days. Even travel planning is great. Tell it where I am driving, how long I want to drive, what I am interested in, and it will spit out entire logistics for a trip.
I remember Y2K was going to kill is and the web would be destroyed by “spider” web crawlers.
It’s all paid mainland chinese ccp propganda.............
Yo Anthony Watts!!! I've been saying for weeks amid all the noise that the desktop is where AI needs to go. I'm just waiting for it to be affordable as I do have work to do with it. To this point, AI has been the only means to evaluate the total corpus of my work because it's so huge and so multidisciplinary.
My concern about "AI" is that the data-centers represent an investor bubble and a terrible threat for control trips. I don't want MY data on the cloud. I'll do my own air-gapped backups thank you.
I read this interesting article and was far from persuaded.
He does not in fact deny the theoretical possibility that AI could become what it is feared it could become, and do what it is feared it could do.
His easy-breezy dismissive style does a lot of work, and IMO undermines his credibility.
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