Hackers Used to Be Humans. Soon, AIs Will Hack Humanity

IF YOU DON'T have enough to worry about already, consider a world where AIs are hackers.

Hacking is as old as humanity. We are creative problem solvers. We exploit loopholes, manipulate systems, and strive for more influence, power, and wealth. To date, hacking has exclusively been a human activity. Not for long.

As I lay out in a report I just published, artificial intelligence will eventually find vulnerabilities in all sorts of social, economic, and political systems, and then exploit them at unprecedented speed, scale, and scope. After hacking humanity, AI systems will then hack other AI systems, and humans will be little more than collateral damage.

Okay, maybe this is a bit of hyperbole, but it requires no far-future science fiction technology. I'm not postulating an AI "singularity," where the AI-learning feedback loop becomes so fast that it outstrips human understanding. I'm not assuming intelligent androids. I'm not assuming evil intent. Most of these hacks don't even require major research breakthroughs in AI. They're already happening. As AI gets more sophisticated, though, we often won't even know it's happening.

AIs don't solve problems like humans do. They look at more types of solutions than us. They’ll go down complex paths that we haven’t considered. This can be an issue because of something called the explainability problem. Modern AI systems are essentially black boxes. Data goes in one end, and an answer comes out the other. It can be impossible to understand how the system reached its conclusion, even if you're a programmer looking at the code....