Artificial Intelligence Could Pave Way to New Cyber Warfare, Elon Musk Warns

His dire warning pertains to a mixture of machine-learning AI and rather "vulnerable" systems that lay the foundation of the internet. Musk said that the future of cyber warfare may not be waged with humans and our weapons, but with AI systems. Just recently, an unknown group of hackers launched a massive "distributed denial of service" (DDoS) attack that took down part of the internet in the West. Analysis of the incident confirmed that the hackers used a huge "botnet," or a system of computers, that comprised simple internet of things (IoT) devices to overload the systems of Dynamic Network Services (Dyn), a firm that is part of the internet address system. These systems provide DNS services to websites, both big and small, such as Spotify, Netflix, Twitter, and Reddit.