Richard, Since hacking is a fairly big, organized crime supported, business in eastern Europe and Russia, since the potential rewards for it relative to most jobs in those countries can be huge, and since Russia has a tradition of excellence in math and science, I would be very surprised if there are not some extremely bright hackers, some of whom are probably as bright as any person on this list.
Add to that the fact that in countries like China the government itself has identified expertise at hacking as a vital national security asset, and that China is turning out many more programmers per year than we are, again it would be surprising if there are not hackers, some of whom are as bright as any person on this list. Yes, the vast majority of hackers my just be teenage script-kiddies, but it is almost certain there are some real geniuses plying the hacking trade. That is why it is almost certain AGI, once it starts arriving, will be used for evil purposes, and that we must fight such evil use by having more, and more powerful AGI's that are being used to combat them. Ed Porter -----Original Message----- From: Richard Loosemore [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 3:09 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Hacker intelligence level [WAS Re: [agi] Funding AGI research] Matt Mahoney wrote: > --- "John G. Rose" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >>> From: Matt Mahoney [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >>> >>> What are the best current examples of (to any extent) self-building >>> software >>>> ? >>> So far, most of the effort has been concentrated on acquiring the >>> necessary >>> computing power. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_botnet >>> >> Just think of the orchestrative ability that is going on with this botnet. >> This is an area that is underexploited especially in LEGALLY constructed >> botnets. > > It amazes me that a crime of this scale can go on for a year and we are > powerless to stop it either through law enforcement or technology. The Storm > botnet already controls enough computing power to simulate a neural network > the size of several human brains. Imagine if this computing power could be > used to rewrite itself using the same software skills needed to automatically > discover and exploit vulnerabilities in popular software. The trend is clear. > We are already losing control of our computers. > > http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/known-vulnerabilities.html > http://blogs.csoonline.com/windows_vista_90_day_vulnerability_report > http://www.cert.org/stats/fullstats.html > > Are the hackers smart enough to control an evolutionary process whose fitness > function is the acquisition of computing resources? I can answer this for you, because I was once an anti-virus developer, so I have seen the internal code of more viruses than I care to think about. The answer is NO. Malicious hackers are among the world's most stupid programmers. We used to joke that it would only take one hacker with the same programming skills that *we* had to bring down every machine on the planet. It was (and still is) a chilling thought. Richard Loosemore. ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?&; ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=69792162-923269
<<attachment: winmail.dat>>
