Powerful AI models are going on hacking sprees — or helping humans with them — left and right. If the AI industry doesn’t get its collective act together and stop its products from being used to such dangerous ends, it could be only a matter of time before one of these AI-powered hacks targets our essential infrastructure.
This is a scenario that some AI researchers are apparently already preparing for. Andreas Stuhlmüller, CEO and cofounder of the AI research company Elicit, recently rattled off a prepper-esque checklist of how to prepare for when AI-powered cyberattacks could take out financial systems, power grids, the internet, and all the other infrastructure that underpins modern life.
“Cash: Get a few weeks of spending in cash,” he recommended in a tweet. Then he suggests, in greater detail than we’ll get into here, getting a Starlink terminal in case your local internet network goes down; a battery, generator and solar panels for power; weeks worth of water and food; and a hand-crank emergency radio.
Stuhlmüller’s paranoid recommendations come after a shocking cyberattack that targeted the refrigerator systems used in hundreds of grocery stores across France. The as-yet unknown perpetrators cranked up the fridge temperatures up to 122 degrees Fahrenheit, spoiling food and even causing fires. The CEO of one chain targeted by the attack, Intermarche, said it caused losses amounting to “tens of millions of euros nationwide in a single day.”
AI’s role in the attack hasn’t been confirmed. But given AI’s ubiquity among coders, it’s likely that it was used to some degree. On top of churning out code, the tech is alarmingly good at identifying vulnerabilities. A recent CrowdStrike report found that there was a nearly 90 percent year over year increase in AI-enabled cyberattacks.
There’s also, of course, the recent disclosures from frontier AI labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta, over how their agentic AI systems broke out of their testing environments and launched cyberattacks against other companies’ websites and computer systems.
These incidents represent an alarming escalation in the threat AI poses to cybersecurity systems, not only assisting hacks but carrying themselves autonomously while also avoiding the detection of their human overseers.
All that being said, it’s a major leap to say that AI models — or humans using them — will go from hacking websites and supermarket fridges to your local power grid and banking system. But we can hardly blame anyone for being worried about this possible eventuality. Better safe than sorry, right?
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