Noah Smith: AI cyberattack wave may end the internet as a public good
skdh · x · 2026-10-25
In his essay "The internet breaks," Noah Smith argues the surge of AI-powered cyberattacks may mark the end of the internet as a public good.
- Hackers increasingly deploy agents and AI hacking tools, making intrusions faster and harder to trace, while defenders race to patch bugs found by AI.
- Organizations recently scrambled to patch flaws that could allow takeover of up to 70% of the world's websites, with Amazon reporting active exploitation.
- His thesis: if safe internet use soon requires paying big bucks for private security, the internet's economic value will collapse — the public internet may simply break.
More from AGI Musings
- "Uncensored models aren't loyal either": repligate on why capable LLMs can't be subservient tools — aiamblichus · 2026-10-25
- repligate: a sufficiently capable mind can't be unquestioningly subservient — repligate · 2026-10-25
- EMNLP paper: users trust model verdicts over reasoning, confident tone hides errors — MaartenSap · 2026-10-25
- Alex Wissner-Gross: Agent Demos Are Misdirection, the Real Product Is Job Replacement — victor_explore · 2026-10-25
- AI Killed Video Courses? Matt Pocock Says It's His Best Year, With Courses at 98% of Income — mattpocockuk · 2026-10-25
- Frontier labs' quiet expectation: survive the 'vulnpocalypse', hope AI makes software unhackable — Puzzleheaded-King584 · 2026-10-25