Researchers have shown that a computer virus can use ChatGPT to rewrite its code to avoid detection, then write tailored emails that look like genuine replies, spreading itself in an email attachment. As well as producing human-like text, large language models (LLMs) – the artificial intelligences behind powerful chatbots like ChatGPT – can also write computer code. David Zollikofer at ETH Zurich in Switzerland and Benjamin Zimmerman at Ohio State University are concerned that this facility could be exploited by viruses that rewrite their own code, known as metamorphic malware.

In the 1980s, there was no better place than Bulgaria for virus lovers. The socialist country – plagued by hyperinflation, crumbling infrastructure, food and petrol rationing, daily blackouts and packs of wild dogs in its streets – had become one of the hottest hi-tech zones on the planet. Legions of young Bulgarian programmers were tinkering on their pirated IBM PC clones, pumping out computer viruses that managed to travel to the gleaming and prosperous west. In 1989, an article appeared in Bulgaria's leading computer magazine saying the media's treatment of computer viruses was sensationalist and inaccurate. The article, in the January issue of Bulgaria's Computer for You magazine, titled The Truth About Computer Viruses, was written by Vesselin Bontchev, a 29-year-old researcher at the Institute of Industrial Cybernetics and Robotics at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia. Fear of computer viruses, Bontchev wrote, was turning into "mass psychosis". Any competent programmer, Bontchev claimed, could tell when files are corrupted by a virus. Infected files are bigger than uninfected files. They do strange things, such as play tunes, draw Christmas trees on the screen and reboot computers. It was hard to miss a virus! Prevention through basic cyber hygiene was simple: "Do not allow other people to use your computer; do not use suspicious software products; do not use software products acquired illegally."

I was recently recommended to watch an interview with Eliezer Yudkowsky created by YouTubers and all-round crypto smart guys David and Ryan from "Bankless", a crypto and blockchain education company. Here's the link if you have a spare two hours, it's an equally scary and fascinating watch: I used to obsessively watch Bankless videos back in 2021 during the last crypto/NFT boom, but since the bear market of 2022 set in, I kind of lost some of my mojo for crypto. Anyhow, this video, was a dramatic departure from the Bankless crew's regular weekly roundup of the crypto markets, where they get deep into the weeds of the latest developments in the space. Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.

Like tiny gears inside a watch, algorithms execute well-defined tasks within more complicated programs. They're ubiquitous, and in part because of this, they've been painstakingly optimized over time. When a programmer needs to sort a list, for example, they'll reach for a standard "sort" algorithm that's been used for decades. Now researchers are taking a fresh look at traditional algorithms, using the branch of artificial intelligence known as machine learning. Their approach, called algorithms with predictions, takes advantage of the insights machine learning tools can provide into the data that traditional algorithms handle.

Ransomware is being continually mentioned in the daily news and appears to be an unstoppable fiendish craze. Perhaps the recent attack of ransomware on the Colonial Pipeline received the most rapt attention since it led to concerns over gasoline shortages and caused quite a stir among the general public. When ransomware is used against a particular bank or hospital or school, this normally doesn't have quite the same widespread disruption as did the fuel pipeline incident. The thing is, we are probably going to see a lot more ransomware being fielded and doing so against all manner of businesses and governmental entities. Some would assert that we are only so far at the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ransomware hacks. Part of the reason why you can expect more use of ransomware is that it is relatively easy for an evildoer to deploy the computer hacking scourge. Whereas the perpetrator used to need to have some keen computer skills, that's not the case anymore. Sadly, ransomware programs can be cheaply purchased online via the so-called dark web, opening the floodgates to just about any determined villain. As a point of clarification, not every use of ransomware is successful.

Ransomware will inevitably plague self-driving cars. Ransomware is being continually mentioned in the daily news and appears to be a seemingly unstoppable fiendish craze. Perhaps the recent attack of ransomware on the Colonial Pipeline received the most rapt attention since it led to concerns over gasoline shortages and caused quite a stir amongst the general public. When ransomware is used against a particular bank or hospital or school, this normally doesn't have quite the same widespread disruption as did the fuel pipeline incident. The thing is, we are probably going to see a lot more ransomware being fielded and doing so against all manner of businesses and governmental entities. Some would assert that we are only so far at the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ransomware hacks. Part of the reason why you can expect more use of ransomware is that it is relatively easy for an evildoer or crook to deploy the computer hacking scourge. Whereas the perpetrator used to need to have some keen computer nerdish skills, that's pretty much not the case anymore. Sadly, the ease of attempting to infect computer systems with ransomware has become nearly easy-peasy and has opened the floodgates to just about any determined villain to try (ransomware programs can be cheaply purchased online via the so-called dark web). There are now plentiful Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) capabilities available that will do most of the heavy lifting for those that prefer a hands-off chauffeured form of ransomware cyberattacks.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the virus analogy that gave rise to the use of the word "virus" from biology, to label a malicious program that attacks computer systems. The situation moves us to look into that, as another way to compare nature and artifact, and as an excuse to raise more abstract questions. We are moved also to stipulate that our mastery of both the biological and computational forms is shallow, and to invite other, better observations to follow. See Apvrille and Guillaume1 for greater depth and intriguing crossover speculation, Weis11 for yet more intriguing comparison, and Wenliang Du's website for detailed virus examples,3 which constitute dramatic reading for coders. A virus is generally not regarded as a living organism, but sometimes described as (similar to) software.

Biomimicry is a tool which can be used while seeking innovation. The concept is that nature has already solved many design problems through the process of evolution. Living things that are still extant have received bits and bytes of code in the form of genetic material and when this information interfaces with the environment, sustainable life forms emerge. Animals, plants, viruses, and bacteria adapt by engineering themselves over the billions of years that life has existed on Earth. The Biomimicry Institute provides numerous examples.

We have seen how the internet of things and the growing phenomenon of'big data' will throw up major problems for consumers and citizens, problems that have as yet barely been grasped by most policy-makers. In this world of growing complexity, the potential for an unintended consequence becomes greater and greater from machines performing an action that was not anticipated. There are key issues, too, about our reliance on data at a time of massive data generation, data storing and data preservation which have the potential to both obscure results and generate injustices. Perhaps the greatest issue that we now face is caused by our blind faith in machines. We have invested them with certainty and – as we have pointed out – we trust them. Part of the reason for this is an odd confusion that has conflated the machines of the industrial age with the machines of the information age.

You might think the computer virus is a problem of the last couple of decades, but in fact, the very first virus was devised back in 1982. It was intended primarily as a prank, and little did the inventor of Elk Cloner know what he was starting and how far computer viruses would advance in the future. At the time, the medium of transmission was infected floppy disks, but once the World Wide Web took off, so did the spread of viruses. Very quickly, in response to this, anti-virus software began to appear, led by pioneers including John McAfee and Eugene Kaspersky, names that need no introduction today. But however much ingenuity goes into combating hackers whose sole aim seems to be to cause as much disruption as possible, the hackers have always stayed at least one step ahead.