{"text":[[{"start":6.7,"text":"The reason AI is such a disruptive invention is that it sharply reduces the cost of intelligence. It could unlock great increases in productivity, or induce mass unemployment or violent revolution — because if a skilled professional working with AI agents can now produce as much as 500 of their peers, social and economic models are in for quite a shock. "}],[{"start":28.95,"text":"For example, Anthropic says its latest AI model, Claude Mythos, can find vulnerabilities in cyber defences at a speed beyond most human intelligence. But does Mythos live up to the hype? Maybe, maybe not, but even if it is overhyped, something like it is around the corner. AI is already really good at coding, and will only get better. It will also, therefore, get better at finding and exploiting vulnerabilities in cyber security. "}],[{"start":56.099999999999994,"text":"The good news for anyone worried about AI taking their job is that Mythos also provides a demonstration of how the technology may create employment opportunities. As AI improves cyber security, and as deepfakes and generative AI do an ever better job of impersonating human beings online, in-person verification is going to have to bear more, not less, weight. "}],[{"start":77.25,"text":"It’s a reminder that the development of AI is not necessarily good news for everyone else in tech — it may lead to a permanent reduction in the number of jobs in coding, and increasingly smart technology may render the internet less and less useful for everyday use, if it becomes the location of ever more sophisticated crime. "}],[{"start":96.3,"text":"AI is like the atomic bomb: once you invent the technology to build one, you live in a different, and more dangerous, world than before. But it is potentially more dangerous because fission weapons didn’t possess the ability to improve the ability of a random passer-by to develop a thermonuclear weapon, but AI does reduce the gap between the professionally qualified and the “unskilled”. Even before the launch of Mythos, AI tools not only make it easier for cutting-edge companies or states to launch cyber attacks, they make it easier for otherwise unimpressive minor criminals and lone wolf terrorists to do so. Technology with the capacity to do severe damage to critical digital infrastructure will, sooner or later, become at least as easy to buy online as it is to use the dark web to purchase cannabis or cocaine. "}],[{"start":148.75,"text":"Given that we can’t uninvent the transformer or any of the intellectual building blocks to the development of AI, we can’t opt out from innovations that disrupt and endanger the security of vital digital infrastructure so easily — and in the modern world, most infrastructure, from the power grid to water supplies to other basic essentials, has a digital component. "}],[{"start":169.7,"text":"With ever-multiplying risks to digital infrastructure and ever more intelligent ways to commit crime online, vulnerabilities are going to grow. Yes, one company or one state might get better at building a stronger wall, but then someone else will get better at building something to find vulnerabilities in it. This constant arms race costs money and time."}],[{"start":191.89999999999998,"text":"The only opt-outs involve bearing heavy costs: either in much slower and more inconvenient interactions with both businesses and states, or, more likely, through paying more both for improved digital security and also for analogue systems that are not vulnerable to cyber attack. The problem here is that everyone is grateful when a vital system still works after a hack, a disruption to its power supply or a similar failure — but nobody really wants to bear the greater costs that go with that, whether as a private consumer or as a taxpayer. But unfortunately, it inevitably means that taxpayers have another rising liability along with higher defence spending and ageing populations to contend with. "}],[{"start":236.74999999999997,"text":"The future envisaged by the creators of so-called cyberpunk science fiction may come to fruition — a world in which computers that are smarter than humans go hand in hand with technological and physical infrastructure that has more in common with the 1980s than the 2020s. "}],[{"start":253.79999999999998,"text":"For AI companies themselves, there is a new risk. AI is already unpopular enough due to fears about what it means for people’s jobs. On top of that, there are new worries about what the technology means for cyber security. The benefits are very real, but they are less tangible and obvious to most people than their job being at risk or having to shell out for cyber security. The political backlash when either a politician has to explain that the technology means more public spending, or when an AI-boosted cyber attack takes down critical infrastructure, may be greater still. "}],[{"start":293.05,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1776606200_1854.mp3"}