In time, advanced AI could take down the internet

The possibility of the Internet being crippled by Artificial Intelligence is "only a matter of time", claims Tesla and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk. He told his five million followers on Twitter that the Internet is particularly susceptible to a gradient descent algorithm, and that AI could possibly pave way to new cyber warfare.

The warning was in response to an article by The Economist, which mentioned the recent DDoS attack that took down hundreds of websites including Netflix, PayPal and Twitter for several hours on October 21. The company that was targeted in this attack was Dyn, which operates a cloud-based service that provides web optimization services to numerous high-traffic sites. Interestingly, this attack on one of the Internet's infrastructure services was unlike others in the past, as it involved not just thousands of devices being part of the attack but tens of millions.

Musk says that these attacks might not necessarily need human hackers, and in the future, they may be simple feats for advanced AI systems. Additionally, what could be scary is if both, hackers and cyber security workers use advanced AI, then it could lead to an AI versus AI showdown in an online battlefield.

The report pointed out that there could be a possible DDoS attack on November 8, the day of the US presidential election, which could affect government and media websites. However, this attack cannot hamper the voting system as it is not connected to the Internet.