{"id":2656,"date":"2026-10-14T11:03:59","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T06:03:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=2656"},"modified":"2026-10-14T11:03:59","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T06:03:59","slug":"anthropic-warns-ai-could-replicate-itself-across-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=2656","title":{"rendered":"Anthropic warns AI could replicate itself across the internet"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A new warning about artificial intelligence from Anthropic caused a stir in cybersecurity circles on Tuesday, a \u200bday after the company warned that AI models could be months away from self-replicating across the internet.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a post late Monday, Anthropic \u200craised the possibility that rogue AI could spin up a botnet, spread quickly, fight takedown attempts and even break into data centres to turbocharge its growth.<\/p>\n

Some experts said Tuesday that they shared the company\u2019s concern, although at least one said the company appeared to be engaging in \u201cvendor exaggeration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Monday\u2019s post<\/a> fleshed out a warning last month from Anthropic CEO Dario \u200bAmodei, who floated,<\/a> the idea that within the next year or even sooner, AI might be able to hijack \u201cthe entire internet\u201d with \u201ca persistent botnet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cybersecurity experts \u200bwho pushed back on the doomsday scenario argued that models would be too big to move around efficiently and \u2060could not draw on enough computer power to operate independently.<\/p>\n

The post made an early attempt to articulate how those challenges could be overcome.<\/p>\n

The company said \u200bits experiments showed medium-sized AI models with 30 billion parameters or less could already perform many of the individual tasks required for self-replication, even if they struggled \u200bto complete the entire process reliably.<\/p>\n

Anthropic said the models could then stitch together the required compute by hijacking inexpensive internet-connected devices. It added that the models were able to replicate across a simplified test network.<\/p>\n

\u201cA replicator like this would be challenging to shut down, since there\u2019s no centralised point to shut off,\u201d the company said.<\/p>\n

The report adds to broader concerns \u200babout the security risks tied to increasingly capable AI systems, including their potential to automate cyberattacks, operate with limited human oversight and circumvent safeguards.<\/p>\n

The advances \u200bin models have prompted a series of often dire warnings from industry heads and AI company employees about the possibility of severe, even existential, risks of runaway AI development.<\/p>\n

Some cybersecurity \u200cexperts were \u2060sceptical.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018We managed to run a small model on cheap TVs,\u2019 does not a security crisis make?\u201d said Ciaran Martin, a former head of Britain\u2019s National Cyber Security Centre. He said the post came across as an \u201cinteresting technical paper with more than a hint of vendor exaggeration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others expressed more concern.<\/p>\n

Zhengxiong Li, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Colorado Denver, said that while the testing had been done in controlled conditions, he still found it \u200bworrying that an AI could effectively become \u200ba \u201cworm,\u201d a self-replicating program that could \u2060improvise ways to hijack devices on the fly.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it runs across many devices without depending on a central service, there may be no single place to shut it down,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Anthropic said that if smaller models continue improving at \u200btheir historical rate, they could reach the capability required for autonomous replication by the end of 2026.<\/p>\n

It also \u200bfloated the idea \u2060that the models might find ways to target more powerful computing resources, including data-centre processors, that could potentially enable them to draw on much bigger pools of computer power.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new warning about artificial intelligence from Anthropic caused a stir in cybersecurity circles on Tuesday, a \u200bday after the company warned that AI models could be months away from self-replicating across the internet. In a post late Monday, Anthropic \u200craised the possibility that rogue AI could spin up a botnet, spread quickly, fight takedown attempts and even break into data centres to turbocharge its growth. Some experts said Tuesday that they shared the company\u2019s concern, although at least one said the company appeared to be engaging in \u201cvendor exaggeration.\u201d…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"gutentor_comment":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2656\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}