The Real AI Threat?

Fri Dec 11 17:26:12 UTC 2020

Valdis,

Thank you for a prime example of the REAL threat of software eating the 
world.  (Well that, and "rm -f *" typed by the wrong users at the wrong 
place in an increasingly global file heirarchy).  Meanwhile, folks are 
busy watching AI scenarios on tv.

Miles

Valdis Klētnieks wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Dec 2020 18:56:04 -0500, Max Harmony via NANOG said:
>> Programs have never done what you *want* them to do, only what you =
>> *tell* them to do.
> Amen to that - there was the time many moons ago when we launched a copy of a
> vendor's network monitoring system, and told it to auto-discover the network.
> It found all the on-campus subnets and most of the machines, and didnt seem to
> be doing anything else, so we all headed home.
>
> Come in the next morning, and discover that our 56k leased line to Nysernet
> (yes, *that* many moons ago) was clogged with the monitoring system trying to
> do SNMP probes against a significant fraction of the Internet in the Northeast.
>
> Things apparently went particularly pear-shaped when it discovered the MIT/Boston
> routing swamp...
>
> And of course, we *told* it "discover the network", when we *meant* "discover
> the network in this one /16.".  Fortunately, it didn't support "discover the
> network and perform security scans on machines" - but I'm sure there's at least
> one security-scanning package out there that makes this same whoopsie all too
> easy to do, 3+ decades later...
>

-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra

Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown

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