nanog mailing list archives

Re: The Real AI Threat?


From: Miles Fidelman <mfidelman () meetinghouse net>
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2020 11:47:10 -0500

Ahh.... invasive spambots, running on OpenStack ... "the telephone bell is tolling... "

Miles

adamv0025 () netconsultings com wrote:

> Automated resource discovery + automated resource allocation = recipe for disaster

That is literally how OpenStack works.

For now, don’t worry about AI taking away your freedom on its own, rather worry about how people using it might…

adam

*From:*NANOG <nanog-bounces+adamv0025=netconsultings.com () nanog org> *On Behalf Of *Miles Fidelman
*Sent:* Thursday, December 10, 2020 2:44 PM
*To:* 'NANOG' <nanog () nanog org>
*Subject:* Re: The Real AI Threat?

adamv0025 () netconsultings com <mailto:adamv0025 () netconsultings com> wrote:

    > Put them together, and the nightmare scenario is:

    > - machine learning algorithm detects need for more resources

    All good so far

> - machine learning algorithm makes use of vulnerability analysis library
    > to find other systems with resources to spare, and starts attaching

    > those resources

    Right so a company would built, trained and fine-tuned an AI, or
    would have bought such a product and implemented it as part of its
    NMS/DDoS mitigation suite, to do the above?

    What is the probability of anyone thinking that to be a good idea?

    To me that does sound like an AI based virus rather than a tool
    one would want to develop or buy from a third party and then
    integrate into the day to day operations.

    You can’t take for instance alpha-0 or GPT-3 and make it do the
    above. You’d have to train it to do so over millions of examples
    and trials.

    Oh and also these won’t “wake up” one day and “think” to
    themselves oh I’m fed up with Atari games I’m going to learn
    myself some chess and then do some reading on wiki about the chess
    rules.


Jeez... some guys seem to take a joke literally - while ignoring a real and present danger - which was the point.

Meanwhile, yes, I think that a poorly ENGINEERED DDoS mitigation suite might well have failure modes that just keep eating up resources until systems start crashing all over the place.  Heck, spinning off processes until all available resources have been exhausted has been a failure mode of systems for years.  Automated resource discovery + automated resource allocation = recipe for disaster.  (No need for AIs eating the world.)

Miles





--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra
Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown


--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra

Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown


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