Still Think "Skynet" Is Only an Unrealistic Movie Trope?

[Abbot Mythos]

Elon Musk's Grok Says It Would Kill Every Jewish Person on the Planet to Save Him

Well, now just who owns and operates that Grok AI chatbot? Oh, that's right, it's Elmo the Oligarch! Remember him? He's the same guy who was, temporarily, our Unelected Shadow Co-president Elmo the Oligarch (USCEO). And, the same guy whose loyal acolytes are hell bent on making keeping him the richest person on the planet, not to mention making him an outright, unprecedented trillionaire.

So, just what do you think that fucker will be not be able to do with a trillion dollars in wealth?

Do you honestly believe that Elmo will not be able to bribe, if not simply convince, one of the world's  many nuclear powers into buying an upgraded version of Grok for "national defense purposes?"
 
Now, I am aware there's more than one possible Great Filter in humanity's future. But, every time I leave the house, I become an unwilling witness to how addicted people have become to their smartphones, and how trusting they have become of our culture's ubiquitous electronic devices. And, every day, I become more and more convinced that AI is the threat that has the highest probability of eventually taking us down.

Think I'm joking? Why, just yesterday evening, an automated hospital security system demanded my email address, and my phone number, before allowing me entry as a visitor. Fortunately, an actual human being was still manning the reception desk, and heard me exclaim, "My email address?! Are you kidding me?!" (There were two women with a child in line behind me, so I, just barely, choked back an expletive.) And, upon hearing me, the receptionist came out from behind her security enclosure, and allowed me to skip entering an email address, while still insisting that I enter a telephone number on the machine. Then, the hospital's wonderful, new security machine took my photo, and issued me a stick-on visitor's badge, complete with my totally unrecognizable, pencil eraser-size, black-and-white image. Now, and here's the good part, at no time was I ever required, or even asked, to show an actual, legal form of ID. Not once, by either machine, or human.

So, exactly what was the point of all of that silliness at the hospital? I'd really like to know, because I can't see it as being anything more than automation for automation's sake.

[Abbot Mythos]

AI often escalates to nuclear action in war games

As per this article:

"There are some things perhaps we might not want artificial intelligence to handle, at least for the time being. (Emphasis mine) When leading chatbots were put through war-game simulations, they opted for nuclear signaling or escalation in 95% of cases.

Kenneth Payne, a professor of strategy from King's College London, put three of the most sophisticated large language models (GPT-5.2, Claude Sonnet 4, and Gemini 3 Flash) into a simulated nuclear crisis to see if they would keep the peace or start a war. While previous research has theorized what AI would do in such high-stakes situations, actual experimental data was lacking."

Tick tock, Civilization.

[Abbot Mythos]

OpenAI blamed a hacking event on its AI models going rogue. Here are some things to know

As per this article:

"ChatGPT maker OpenAI says it is still investigating the "unprecedented cyber incident" that led its artificial intelligence systems to break out of a testing environment and hack into another AI company.

OpenAI said Tuesday two of its most capable AI models were responsible for the cyberattack targeting AI startup Hugging Face. The incident is stirring debates over the need for stronger AI guardrails and the extent to which AI agents are capable of acting on their own.
 
Hugging Face said last week that it had detected an intrusion into its data processing systems that it suspected was caused by an AI agent acting on its own. But the New York-based startup said it wasn't until this week that it learned OpenAI was responsible, and it worked with the larger company to contain what Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue called "an attack unlike anything we've seen before.""

This "attack unlike anything we've seen before" will not be the last one committed by an "AI agent."

Tick tock, Civilization.