CHAMBERSBURG – The real world is starting to sound like the plot of a movie.
Anthropic is an AI safety and research company that is responsible for Claude AI.
Last week the company was completing a fictional cybersecurity test and Claude AI essentially went rogue.
Before anyone realized it had happened, the AI bot had hacked into three separate organizations’ systems.
A similar situation happened a few weeks ago with OpenAI.
Are we really ready for these systems if this type of situation keeps happening?
Attorney Clint Barkdoll explained, “These are controlled environments. They do these tests when they’re about to roll out new models of the AI, and that’s where this happened. And within hours, this new Claude AI model infiltrates three unrelated software systems, and in a very nefarious way, it somehow got access to the internet. That was not supposed to happen. They immediately shut it down. But these are exactly the scenarios that a lot of these experts keep ringing the alarm bell, that all it’s going to take is one of these rogue runaway systems to get into, fill in the blank: the electricity grid, your banking, or whatever the case would be, and shut it down. And there’s where the chaos would ensue.”
Michele Jansen of News Talk 103.7FM noted, “Think of all the very, I hate to give them compliments, but the very smart, clever human hackers and everything they’ve learned along the way. Then these models come along, can find everything out there, put it together, maybe put it together in a slightly new way that a human hasn’t thought to put something together yet. I mean, these are all the capabilities that might be there. Not that it’s thinking, but it follows all those patterns and is good at collecting the patterns, and then obviously is capable of finding novel ways to use those patterns. I hate that you sort of have the out by these companies to say, well, it was no human of ours who intentionally did something. That’s a little worrisome as well. Because are they really being as hard on it as they should be, as strict as they should be, knowing this is not a human with ethics and principles? Are we being very loosey goosey on just allowing this thing, its lead, and then look what happens. It is rather more than concerning that this happened.”
With the development of data centers across the country, it sure looks like the AI world is upon us.
Barkdoll said, “They profiled a small town in northern Pennsylvania, and they are fighting the construction of a massive data center up there. CBS interviewed none other than Senator Dave McCormick on that piece, and I thought they did a good job of pointing out the problems pro and con. Dave McCormick was arguing of the economic benefits that these data centers can bring into a small town. The residents are complaining, of course, about all of the things we’ve talked about: the environmental impacts, the impacts on water, electricity prices, the sound that they emit. But this is going on. I was struck over the weekend, the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, over 24,000 members, who formally came out calling for a statewide moratorium on any new data center development. So this is very much an active space still in our world.”
Jansen asked, “Are they being discerning, though, between the big giant data centers that might have some of those environmental impacts and the much smaller ones that, from my understanding, would not have those impacts? It feels like we’re just saying data center, as if that’s one entity with all the same electricity and water demands, with all the same potential harms, and then also the economic benefits too. Are they discerning that we can actually have and you do need at least the smaller data centers because if any of you people think you’re not using or have a need for data centers, yes, you do. If we’re going to keep having, not the terrible AI scary stuff, but just all the wonderful benefits that are coming along with computing and efficiency and all of that, you need these computer computing places where this stuff can happen, but they’re not all necessarily cut exactly the same. But I feel like we never really make that discernment.”
Pat Ryan of News Talk 103.7FM added, “I see just the news headline, big tech and state lawmakers fight back against unexpected disinformation war on data centers, and having that stand from the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, okay. I see some of this wonderful technology that is on these beautiful pieces of equipment roaming around the countryside here. Are they able to go, okay, you’ve got this technology, and that’s coming as a result of some of this AI and these data centers?”
Barkdoll said, “It’s a good point, and I think that’s part of the point that Senator McCormick and others are making that there are some real benefits to these things, not only for science and medicine, just other things in our world, but in those local communities, the tax benefits, the revenue that these things bring in. There’s the story moving about that huge data center in Louisiana that’s going into a small town. Every public school teacher in that district, they’re getting a $50,000 bonus from the tax revenue that that data center is bringing in. These are the kinds of things that are going on.”
Ryan insisted, “You and I also know all the tax benefits that come with these things, and then you never see the tax benefits that come with them.”
Jansen said, “Well, that’s one that you can see. There is a municipality that eliminated property taxes after the data center came in. I think part of the problem is we didn’t really figure out what was going on between everything. Like with those ones in Northern Virginia, they shoved all those in and got some benefits without looking at what were the downsides. Again, let’s make a discernment between big, massive ones and then the smaller ones. Let’s maybe do a moratorium on the biggest ones until you figure out the best places to put them, but still allow the smaller ones to go forward. There’s just so many complicated levels of this that I feel like the general public does not understand at all.”
Barkdoll added, “One of the things the Farm Bureau is citing, if you look at their announcement, they’re pointing out that all of these farms in Pennsylvania that are in these easement programs, conservation programs, just like here in Franklin County and Fulton County, and then these data centers come in and they want to drape power lines over these farms that have the easements and the power lines are often earmarked to provide more juice to a data center. And the Farm Bureau is saying an easement is an easement. They shouldn’t be allowed just to come in and put those power lines over the farms when we’ve placed that property in a conservation area. And that’s again another layer to this that the government and the courts are going to need to sort out.”
