AI agent promotes itself to sysadmin, trashes boot sequence

https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/02/ai_agent_trashes_pc/

by twsted • 2 years ago

8 1 2 years ago

fuzzfactor• 2 years ago

Well this can give a well-scraped estimate of how very small an amount of truly useful boot information there is on the internet, especially concerning various boot obstacles from the beginning, or which have been slyly/"inadvertently" thrown in from time to time for different OS's. Pales by comparison to other less-universal everyday computer operations.

Things that would be really helpful for moderate to advanced users, but too few actual geeks are even aware of the basics themselves. You can tell by the way booting always has been handled superstitiously, even by accomplished computer programmers, way more neglected compared to their other tech efforts.

Remember, a simple one-line command will be all that is needed to fix the booting of the borked laptop instantly.

Also it is likely that there are more than one somewhat dissimilar but effective one-liners that could do the job.

However, a command like that will not be accepted until after a bit of incantation in advance, specifically geared to the type of approach you are taking to recover bootability. More like settings, even though other commands may be involved. This part will not be instant, and if you do the math, orders of magnitude more time-consuming. Even though it could probably be accomplished in just a few additional minutes.

But the documentation is not abundant, consistent, or converging on conclusive. This is very nonideal to draw from even for naturally intelligent engineers.

Which may increase the tendency for some to rely even more on a machine-based "solution", to sift through more incomplete information faster, which is where machines are proven to really excel, it would sure allow humans to get by with a lot less brains, what could go wrong?

Anyway, when the title says "promotes itself" for a minute there it sounded like the AI was acting as a persuasive salesman, and convinced the sysadmin to engage its services.

Oh wait . . .

AI agent promotes itself to sysadmin, trashes boot sequence

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