Import AI 467: Self-sustaining AI viruses; pacing AI progress; confusion about AI and creativity

Welcome to Import AI, a newsletter about AI research. Import AI runs on arXiv, cappuccinos, and feedback from readers. If you’d like to support this, please subscribe. Self-sustaining and self-replicating AI viruses are here:…Open weight LLMs + a well-designed harness = a persistent, self-sufficient virus…AI researchers have built a prototype computer virus which uses AI models to compromise computers, then uses their underlying GPU resources to run inference, letting it smartly figure out how to infect more hosts. The results were achieved by researchers from the University of Toronto, the Vector Institute, the University of Cambridge, and ServiceNow, and “demonstrate that self-sustaining AI-driven cyber-threats are no longer theoretical.” “We must prepare for autonomous generative adversaries,” they write. “Artificial intelligence (AI) agents enable a fundamentally new threat: a worm that generates tailored attack strategies to each target it encounters. The worm parasitically uses compromised machines to run open-weight large language models (LLMs) to sustain its reasoning, or extend its reach for further attacks”. How it works: “The worm uses stolen computing power from compromised GPU nodes to host LLMs for generative reasoning. It then uses this reasoning to detect vulnerabilities and devise tailored attacks against additional targets, furthering its spread,” they…