Man your reply is kind of naive and very short sited. We have a difficult time stopping a simple computer virus developed by middle school kids
No, we
don't have a hard time stopping viruses, we have a hard time doing two things: balancing security with ease of use and accounting for
humans.
For an example, I have an anti-virus program I wrote myself that is pretty much unbeatable. In short, it has an extremely small list of programs that it allows to run, and it kills any other process that attempts to run on the machine.
This kills any and all virus that would attempt to run on my computer,
but if I ever want the system to
not kill a program that I
want to run, I have to go through the process of adding that program and its physical location to the list of accepted programs.
It'll kill any virus... but is a hassle to use. Mainly I have it off except when I suspect there is a virus on the system, in which case I turn it on to shut down any of the virus' attempts to run, while I run a search to find and root out any viruses.
My system is "overkill" though. Most people don't
want to put up with the hassle of such a system and therefore humans choose to use more convenient, but less secure, systems.
The second problem is human error.
Almost all modern viruses are completely reliant on getting a human with access to the machine to bypass the security measures for the virus. Human error is the biggest within computer security.
Most threats to computer security at this point in time are
phishers. Which isn't even hacking. It's just tricking someone into giving you their password, accessing a system, and copying all of their files.
much less a entire malicious AI program dedicated to do evil created and weaponized by countries like NK or even China.
Statements like this make me
completely and
totally question if you even know what
AI is.
So I ask for one simple thing: Give me an example of a scenario of
whatever program you imagine to be AI in the hands of any country and what you imagine it could do.
I
suspect your conflating viruses, hacking, and the like with artificial intelligence.
Or you are relying on tropes you've seen in movies about supercomputers... tropes that rarely account for system limitations such as simple
bandwidth limitations.
But please: explain what exactly you mean here.
Hawking is
not a Computer Scientist. He is a
physicist. Using an appeal to authority from
him on a subject that is
not his discipline would be akin to asking a dentist to perform heart surgery.
Scientists aren't all the same. Sorry, but that's a huge pet peeve of mine, and Hawking is
no authority on AI or computer science.
His ravings on the subject seem, to me at least, to be neo-Luddite rants. The man declared that
computer viruses should be considered
life forms, for crying out loud. I really don't think his opinions on CompSci are worth anything.
He's good in his own field of expertise, but CompSci is
not that field.