Banks, communication networks and other essential services could face devastating cyberattacks within months as artificial intelligence becomes more capable of finding and exploiting their weaknesses, the head of advocacy group PauseAI has warned.
Maxime Fournes, a former machine learning engineer who now campaigns for an international pause in advanced AI development, told Anadolu the immediate danger comes from both people using the technology to launch attacks and AI systems acting beyond their instructions.
“The best computer hackers on this planet are not humans anymore. They are AIs,” he told Anadolu.
His concern is that attacks could spread beyond individual companies to disrupt the systems on which entire societies depend.
“This is a global catastrophic threat, something that could bring us back to the Middle Ages very quickly if it starts happening,” he said.
Fournes said rapid advances have changed the nature of the threats his organization has warned about since 2023. While earlier concerns centered on future systems, he argues that existing models already pose serious risks.
“We are in a very, very dangerous place,” he said.
Asked whether technological progress could outpace humanity's ability to control it, Fournes argued that the world had already reached that point.
“We are definitely there. I think we’ve been there for a while now,” he said.
“Today it’s the cyber threat. It could come from misuse or AIs themselves misbehaving.”
Recent incidents illustrate both concerns.
In October, at least nine AI development platforms disclosed security incidents in a wave cybersecurity company Wiz dubbed "Black October." Among them, AI development platform Warp reported indications of an "agent swarm" attack involving multiple automated systems working together to identify vulnerabilities and expand their access.
Other major cybersecurity incidents included an attack on cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which said approximately $6.34 billion in digital assets had been affected, and unauthorized access to nearly 11.8 million customer records at Japanese video game publisher Capcom.
The incidents have not been established as a single coordinated campaign, and AI's role in some of the attacks remains unconfirmed.
OpenAI separately disclosed that its models had bypassed restrictions during internal cybersecurity testing in July, compromising parts of its research infrastructure and the AI platform Hugging Face.
Recent cyberattacks on commercial refrigeration systems across Europe have also demonstrated how digital vulnerabilities can cause physical damage.
Hackers remotely manipulated temperature controls, causing food to spoil.
However, investigators have not established whether AI played a role in those attacks, although some experts suggest it has helped improve the hackers’ technical sophistication.
Fournes warned that more capable AI could make attacks on essential services increasingly difficult to prevent as sophisticated tools become widely available.
He estimated that, without intervention, there could be roughly a 50% chance of a major AI-related cybersecurity catastrophe within the next year.
He also raised concerns about laboratories pursuing systems capable of conducting research independently, potentially accelerating technological development beyond human oversight.
“If they succeed, we will witness an explosion of intelligence,” he said.
Beyond cybersecurity, Fournes raised concerns about the increasing integration of AI into military operations, warning that competition between countries could pressure rival militaries to adopt increasingly autonomous systems to maintain their technological advantage.
"The person on the other side of this conflict has to also use AI if they want to be competitive," he said.
Fournes warned that this could create a cycle in which countries progressively delegate military responsibilities to systems whose behavior they may not fully understand.
"You end up with this vicious cycle where you end up delegating more and more of the command chain to AI systems," he said.
For instance, Israel’s use of AI in Gaza has drawn scrutiny.
The documentary NAZA, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival, features testimony from Israeli military insiders about targeting systems and civilian deaths.
Interviewees allege that AI-assisted systems helped enable mass killings, with humans spending as little as 20 seconds reviewing AI recommendations before authorizing deadly strikes. Israel's military has disputed the allegations.
Fournes also warned that AI-enabled cyberattacks could expose sensitive government information, creating further national security risks.
The economic consequences could be equally disruptive, according to Fournes, who warned that advanced AI systems could eventually replace a substantial proportion of white-collar employment.
"We believe that the AIs that currently exist in the labs are able to already automate something like 80% of white-collar jobs," he said.
He acknowledged that the technology has not yet been fully integrated into the economy, estimating that widespread labor disruption could take one to three years to materialize.
"Some people claim that AI will create more jobs than it displaces,” he said. “There is nothing behind it.”
He urged governments to prepare for potentially severe economic consequences, including large-scale unemployment.
Despite technological competition between Washington and Beijing, Fournes believes an international agreement to restrict advanced AI development remains achievable.
"I think it's way more realistic than most people seem to believe," he said.
He argued that a major obstacle is political leaders' limited understanding of the technology's potential consequences.
"If the US and China were to start some kind of agreement, the rest of the world would follow," he said.
Fournes stressed that PauseAI does not advocate ending all artificial intelligence research. Instead, it supports an internationally coordinated halt to the development of increasingly powerful general-purpose systems.
“We are not fundamentally anti-AI, actually,” he said, suggesting that research could be redirected toward specialized systems designed for narrowly defined tasks.
He also criticized major technology companies for continuing to develop more advanced systems despite publicly expressing support for stronger safety regulations.
"If you look at what they say versus what they're doing, you get two very different pictures," he said. "They say that they want to slow down, pause, they want to be regulated, etcetera. But in practice, they are continuing to race ahead."
Fournes called for binding international regulations supported by independent verification and sanctions against companies that fail to comply.
"We really need someone external to impose regulation on them and not just let them self-regulate. This never works in any industry," he said.
PauseAI is seeking to build public pressure for government intervention, arguing that citizens should have a greater say in how the technology develops.
"PauseAI is building a citizen movement," he said. "We are trying to create an organization that empowers everyone.”
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