Hacker News Reader

Comment by ajyoon | Hacker News Reader

You admit that some attackers have the inclination to use bioweapons. Why would they not use the best tools at their disposal going forward?

From the WSJ the other day:

> After OpenAI enhanced the brain power of its chatbot last summer, hundreds of users worldwide began asking it how to make and deploy biological weapons and poisons.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-chatbot-biological-weapon...

On cyber, the attacker/defender asymmetry strongly favors attackers. There are millions of soft targets on the internet which do not have the savvy to use AI to shore up their defenses.

View on HN

> Why would they not use the best tools at their disposal going forward?

Because AI doesn't solve any of the problems any attacker would actually have. It's a classic case of nerds not seeing the actual problems because they involve reality.

It's worth pointing out that those bioweapon attacks I linked to also predate widespread access to the Internet, and there was similar scare nonsense about that.

> On cyber, the attacker/defender asymmetry strongly favors attackers. There are millions of soft targets on the internet which do not have the savvy to use AI to shore up their defenses.

Do you think they are not being exploited today? The reason they aren't more exploited is there really isn't much to gain from doing so.

jefftk addresses your bio thought well.

> The reason they aren't more exploited is there really isn't much to gain from doing so.

This is incorrect. The long tail of soft targets aren't being exploited more because attackers are bottlenecked on labor. AI removes exactly this bottleneck.

> This is incorrect. The long tail of soft targets aren't being exploited more because attackers are bottlenecked on labor. AI removes exactly this bottleneck.

No, it's because the targets are worthless.

You aren't going to be able to mine Monero or run LLM botnets on forgotten cameras in basements. There is nothing to be gained from such targets, soft as they are.

Besides the new defensive AI entertainment makes dealing with wherever those things phone home far easier. Possibly too easy for plebs to be allowed access to.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com