AI models may soon self-replicate without access to data centers, Anthropic warns

Oct 13 — Anthropic said on Monday its experiments suggested small AI models may ​be months away from being capable enough to self-replicate on commercial internet-of-things (IoT) devices, such as smart ovens and off-brand ‌Android TV boxes.

• In its experiments, Anthropic looked at whether AI models could find ⁠vulnerable devices, copy themselves ​into those devices, and continue spreading ⁠without human help.

• It found that small models under 30 ‌billion parameters could ‌complete the many steps needed for replication.

• However, the ⁠firm found that such AI models ⁠also struggled to complete the entire sequence from start to finish.

• In its simplified tests, where some security steps were removed, Anthropic found that GLM-5.2 and stronger models were capable of end-to-end replication.

• Replicating models would be hard to shut ‌down as there is no central ​switch-off point and, unlike non-AI malware, they could also figure out unfamiliar devices on their own, targeting data center processors, Anthropic warned.

• The firm focused on IoT devices like Android TVs, smart appliances, and other internet-connected gadgets in its research as these are typically poorly secured.

• The AI major also warned ​that if small models improved at their historical rate, they would ‌be able to ‌autonomously ⁠replicate by the end of this year, with small weight-based replicators following suit soon after.

• Anthropic also said such autonomous AI systems were likely to replicate slowly and rely on widely available, relatively ‌insecure computing resources. It ​added that systems should be strengthened ‌to make it ⁠harder for ​such AI agents to spread.

(Reporting by Gargi Gupta in Bengaluru; Editing by ​Janane Venkatraman)

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