Imagine, someday, we’ll lose the control over our computers to some sentient being, unable to stop it or to unplug the millions of home pcs, office workstations or lab mainframes affected.

Well, there is no need to imagine, this very thing has been happening for a long time now, in the form of Zombie Computers. These machines have been compromised by hackers, viruses or trojans, and are remote controllable. Often they are grouped in a network of zombie computers, called a botnet.

The RSA 2008 conference in San Francisco earlier this month had a panel discussion on this topic, and the tone was “a mix of resignation, indignation and post-9/11 rhetoric”, according to Threat Level. According to the panelists, botnets are the biggest threat in the internet today and a danger to national security.

However, little is done to combat the use of zombie computers. Although some botnet operators are caught once in a while, the spam and attacks they create does not seem to decrease. I agree with Ira Winkler, a security consultant who said at the conference:

“The problem is no one is doing anything. Guess what? If your system has a bot on it, you don’t get on the internet. [...] We need to hold people responsible when they present an imminent threat to other people.”

However, ISPs are reluctant to cut off offenders, as they often have no clue what’s going on and respond with confusion and angry phone calls, which drive up the customer support costs.

The inability to quickly and efficiently stop these bot nets could prove very helpful for a malevolent AI. Once released on the internet (or on its successor, maybe The Grid), there is virtually no way to stop it again. The infrastructure to spread uncontrollably is already given by the botnets. Unless there is some fundamental change on the network level and software level (hello Microsoft!), the only way to stop such an outbreak would be the complete shut-down of the net. Of course, this would cause quite a disturbance to the world economy, as most financial transactions and international trading are entirely done online. Most nations will be hesitant to risk that, just because some strange program has been set free from a university lab somewhere.

Therefore I think the current infrastructure of the web eases the spread of an AI (Panic Level: +3%), once it discovers the weaknesses of connected hosts and “understands” how botnets work. But that’s not yet an immediate threat; after all we have to develop the artificial general intelligence first, which, mind you, is a little tricky.

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