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A magical computer that can hack any other computer is the very definition of handwaving. How is an AI supposed to research infrastructure, build itself a robot body to travel in? Have someone cart it around? And if such an entity exists, couldn’t you employ another one to patch all these mythical zero-days against the first? Culminating in an AGI arms race?

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Who said anything about robots? Critical infrastructure is made of computers, controllers, pumps, power lines, network switches, antennas etc, that are all controlled by software of some kind.

Even completely air-gapped hardware is controlled by humans, and social engineering is where Hal can reaally shine. Blackmail, manipulation, corruption, misdirection require no physical existence at all..

To add to this: can't this happen and be triggered by old fashioned humans using old fasioned hacking? Why would we need a magical computer?

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