Self-sustaining AI viruses are here; compute will get pricier; 1,337 employees ask to pace AI

Import AI 467: Self-sustaining AI viruses; pacing AI progress; confusion about AI and creativity

Researchers from UToronto, Vector Institute, Cambridge, and ServiceNow built a self-replicating AI worm that runs an open-weight LLM on compromised GPUs without any vendor API. It scores ~80% on vulnerability detection, ~53% on exploitation, and 88% on self-replication, yielding a ~37% end-to-end success rate. Dwarkesh Patel argues that as AI gets smarter, compute prices will rise—an H100 running a human-level software engineer could rent for over $250k/year. Separately, 1,337 employees from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and others signed a statement asking the US government to support international efforts to deliberately pace automated AI R&D.

Why it matters: Researchers built a self-replicating AI worm that runs open-weight LLMs locally on compromised GPUs, with 37% end-to-end success. It's a milestone moving AI security from theory to engineering validation, but still far from real-world outbreaks — hence not 85+.