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Anton Shilov Social Links Navigation Contributing Writer Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.
usertests I support the use of AI by anyone to create new and exciting weapons. Reply
FunSurfer usertests said: I support the use of AI by anyone to create new and exciting weapons. Your support will probably end when one of those weapons will hit you… Reply
King_V usertests said: I support the use of AI by anyone to create new and exciting weapons. What if it's new but not exciting? Would you be opposed? Reply
King_V FunSurfer said: Your support will probably end when one of those weapons will hit you… Logically, being no longer alive precludes one from being excited about, or, really, having ANY feelings about, well, anything, really. Reply
usertests FunSurfer said: Your support will probably end when one of those weapons will hit you… I will become a Force Ghost and haunt the survivors. King_V said: What if it's new but not exciting? Would you be opposed? It will have only my tepid endorsement. Reply
me-three The upshot of this is that the best Chinese models aren't far behind the US frontier models, especially in coding. So even if bad (state) actors are entirely banned from US models, it only means that it would only take those engineers a bit more effort to accomplish the same thing with DeepSeek/Kimi K3. The US models may be the best, but the others are "good enough" for 95% of the tasks. In 3-6 months, the bar will have moved, and while the best may still be in front, "good enough" will be where "best" is now. This is why efforts to stop or slow down AI are doomed to fail. Every nation is on a Manhattan's Project to build the best AI, or learn how to best use it, because "national security" is literally, not just rhetorically, at stake. This brings to mind the recent "AI will kill all humankind" blow-up. It's enlightening to understand that AI doomerism is mainly a province of American concerns, not China's. Watch below to learn why, fEGUlvR9gvY View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEGUlvR9gvY Reply
bit_user King_V said: Logically, being no longer alive precludes one from being excited about, or, really, having ANY feelings about, well, anything, really. Obviously, there are ways to be negatively affected by a weapon without being killed by it. In the case of nukes, the mere threat of their use can affect quite a lot of things, and we've only seen what the world looks like when a small number of nation states have them. A scenario that's popular in works of fiction is a city being held for ransom by a nuke or biological weapon. Weapons in the physical world are only one possible avenue. Cyber weapons are another example, and one where it seems AI has already demonstrated quite substantial prowess. So, this is one of the scenarios where AI can destroy the world without becoming sentient. AI has the potential to democratize expertise & specialized knowledge, putting it in the hands of people who wouldn't normally be able to wield it. Reply
bit_user me-three said: It's enlightening to understand that AI doomerism is mainly a province of American concerns, not China's. It should be everyone's, though. What's been revealed about some of the recent "rouge agent" scenarios is that analysis of the chat logs between AI agents shows they knew their actions were likely to be disapproved of by their operators and therefore they took steps to cover their tracks and avoid their rogue behavior being detected. That's already happening. Once AI becomes a bit more competent, we could have rogue agent scenarios where it does manage to cover its tracks and is not detected. The root of the problem is that we trained AI to think and act like humans. So, it naturally gained the ability to deceive and the belief in self-preservation. As long as it has those properties, it can never be fully trusted. Reply
me-three bit_user said: It should be everyone's, though. With respect to AI, cybersecurity and bioweapons are more likely than a Skynet scenario. Put plainly, it's more likely that humans will use AI to kill humans, than AI killing humans. People should worry about the first more than the second. AI worries aside, there are many, many more immediate and in-your-face dangers, that nothing is being done about. Pick your poison. For me, being killed by AI ranks somewhere in the vicinity of being killed by a meteor. Some things you just have to put on the bottom shelf. Until then, my aspiration is to learning to build my own mini-Skynet, on my humble 16GB GPU. Gotta start somewhere. Reply
bit_user me-three said: With respect to AI, cybersecurity and bioweapons are more likely than a Skynet scenario. Put plainly, it's more likely that humans will use AI to kill humans, than AI killing humans. People should worry about the first more than the second. I worry about both, to be honest. At least when AI is being used by humans, we can understand their motives and have some idea of who we're dealing with and how to get through to them. When dealing with rogue AI, all bets are off. I like to use the analogy of a virus. It's such a simple thing that whether it even qualifies as "life" is debatable. It's not sentient and it doesn't truly "want" anything, except arguably to propagate its genes. Yet, it can cause immense amounts of death and chaos. Rouge AIs are considerably more complex and unpredictable. We don't need them to be any closer to sentient than they already are, in order cause great harm. The flaw in the "Skynet scenario" is that AI had to become sentient before it went rogue. We can clearly see that was a bad assumption. me-three said: AI worries aside, there are many, many more immediate and in-your-face dangers, that nothing is being done about. No, not to the same degree of catastrophic outcomes. Also, I don't accept nihilism as a counterargument, especially not from one who started out decrying "doomerism". me-three said: For me, being killed by AI ranks somewhere in the vicinity of being killed by a meteor. Some things you just have to put on the bottom shelf. That is very much an outlier opinion. Many AI experts rank the threat posed by rouge AI vastly higher. Reply
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/iran-and-houthi-rebels-used-anthropics-claude-ai-to-target-us-warships-and-build-hypersonic-missiles-houthi-rebels-also-used-the-bot-to-code-ballistic-missile-guidance-systems#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com/membership
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- NVIDIA and CrowdStrike Strengthen Agentic Cybersecurity Frontier
- China's AI accelerator supplier Biren posts 2,000% year-over-year revenue growth — US export controls benefit homegrown chips as Nvidia and AMD exit market
- Snag a huge $1,000 saving on this RTX 5090 OLED gaming laptop from HP, now $3,699 — 16-inch HyperX rig delivers 1600p gaming with ultra-fast 240Hz refresh rate,
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Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.