It isn’t the end of the world.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/01/threats-of-machine-generated-text.html

Threats of Machine-Generated Text

With the release of ChatGPT, I’ve read many random articles about this or that threat from the technology. This paper is a good survey of the field: what the threats are, how we might detect machine-generated text, directions for future research. It’s a solid grounding amongst all of the hype.

Machine Generated Text: A Comprehensive Survey of Threat Models and Detection Methods

Abstract: Advances in natural language generation (NLG) have resulted in machine generated text that is increasingly difficult to distinguish from human authored text. Powerful open-source models are freely available, and user-friendly tools democratizing access to generative models are proliferating. The great potential of state-of-the-art NLG systems is tempered by the multitude of avenues for abuse. Detection of machine generated text is a key countermeasure for reducing abuse of NLG models, with significant technical challenges and numerous open problems. We provide a survey that includes both 1) an extensive analysis of threat models posed by contemporary NLG systems, and 2) the most complete review of machine generated text detection methods to date. This survey places machine generated text within its cybersecurity and social context, and provides strong guidance for future work addressing the most critical threat models, and ensuring detection systems themselves demonstrate trustworthiness through fairness, robustness, and accountability.

(Related) Imagine the volume of AI generated text growing exponentially. AI will then “learn” by reading that text.

https://www.bespacific.com/abstracts-written-by-chatgpt-fool-scientists/

Abstracts written by ChatGPT fool scientists

Nature: “An artificial-intelligence (AI) chatbot can write such convincing fake research-paper abstracts that scientists are often unable to spot them, according to a preprint posted on the bioRxiv server in late December1. Researchers are divided over the implications for science. “I am very worried,” says Sandra Wachter, who studies technology and regulation at the University of Oxford, UK, and was not involved in the research. “If we’re now in a situation where the experts are not able to determine what’s true or not, we lose the middleman that we desperately need to guide us through complicated topics,” she adds. The chatbot, ChatGPT, creates realistic and intelligent-sounding text in response to user prompts. It is a ‘large language model’, a system based on neural networks that learn to perform a task by digesting huge amounts of existing human-generated text. Software company OpenAI, based in San Francisco, California, released the tool on 30 November, and it is free to use. Since its release, researchers have been grappling with the ethical issues surrounding its use, because much of its output can be difficult to distinguish from human-written text. Scientists have published a preprint and an editorial written by ChatGPT. Now, a group led by Catherine Gao at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, has used ChatGPT to generate artificial research-paper abstracts to test whether scientists can spot them…”

Mad at Comcast? It does suggest what the impact of a more general attack would be.

https://www.fox21news.com/top-stories/comcast-widespread-power-outage-deliberately-caused/

Comcast: Widespread internet outage deliberately caused

A widespread power outage affecting hundreds of thousands of people, from Chipita Park to Fountain, was due to an overnight act of vandalism, according to Comcast workers.

Security footage, from a local business, Status Symbol Auto Body, shows a person severing fiber network cables around 3:00 a.m. Wednesday morning, behind the shop.

The person, who was driving a burgundy Dodge truck, drove past the shop a couples times before getting out of the car. It took them about ten seconds to cut the cables, using a tool that is believed to be a Sawzall.

… Crews on-site started working on fixing the cables around 5:00 a.m. Wednesday morning. Bendele had said they were hoping to get service back up and running by 3:00 p.m. but even with 12 people on hand, the meticulous work took them four hours more than he estimated.

… Students in the Manitou Springs School District had the day off due to the outage.

“It shows how reliant we are on internet,” said Jensen.

The Colorado Springs Police Department said they are investigating the incident but called it a “low priority call.”