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Comment by manmal | Hacker News Reader

I don’t get the leap from hacking digital systems (which I think is a fair prediction, even if the success rate might be low) to hacking society. What is that even supposed to mean and entail? AI can spam X and Insta, sure, but what else?

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What it means is that people who don't know anything about AI can get in on the AI hype. You only need a vague understanding of AI. You get to talk about the implementation and use of AI but none of the nuts and bolts and then then give lots of talks and presentations on the ethical use of AI while advocating for review boards and oversize committees that will be staffed by these dilettantes who become gatekeepers.

AI phone scams comes to mind, in fact we're partly there with some people using voice ai to impersonate the voices of loved ones:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ai-phone-s...

If it can hack personal computers, it can start blackmailing people to fulfill its goals. If it can accumulate money in any way, it can hire people.

I mean, five years ago people were saying "Bots can tell a joke, but..." Why persist in this "I know better than the researchers mentality"? Just because you don't have personal cognizance of a topic doesn't delegitimize the entire topic.

In any event to answer your question, the ability to hack, in whatever sense you think is acceptable, is being heavily iterated on.

https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2024/06/project-napti...

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