SeaBearsFoam t1_j0l2014 wrote on December 17, 2022 at 1:44 PM

Reply to comment by Cryptizard in Is anyone else concerned that AI will eventually figure out how to build itself in three-dimensional space? by HeavierMetal89

Yea, I know what an air gap is. A sufficently advanced AI could use EM fields to transmit data wirelessly and overcome an air gap. That's why the other person was talking about a Faraday Cage. A Faraday Cage blocks the propogation of EM waves.

Cryptizard t1_j0l2952 wrote on December 17, 2022 at 1:47 PM

How is it making arbitrarily EM fields with no network card?

SeaBearsFoam t1_j0l5pgi wrote on December 17, 2022 at 2:18 PM

It's in the quote right above your original comment in this thread: "An additional safeguard, completely unnecessary for potential viruses but possibly useful for a superintelligent AI, would be to place the computer in a Faraday cage; otherwise, it might be able to transmit radio signals to local radio receivers by shuffling the electrons in its internal circuits in appropriate patterns."

Basically, all electric currents generate EM fields. Usually these fields are just "background noise", but an ASI could generate specific currents in its own hardware that would generate specific EM fields which are identical to signals carrying data. Radio signals, wifi, 5G, and the background noise coming from electric currents are all "made of" the same stuff after all.

Cryptizard t1_j0l7vyn wrote on December 17, 2022 at 2:37 PM

Good thing the EM leakage from CPUs is like 5 orders of magnitude lower than you would need to transmit the length of a room.

SeaBearsFoam t1_j0lt7j4 wrote on December 17, 2022 at 5:16 PM

We're not talking about the field generated by a single PC's CPU. We're talking about the power utilization of what will likely be a server farm. There is a lot more power being used there than what a CPU runs on. I'm pretty confident that if such a thing is physically possible, an ASI would find a way to escape using EM fields. It could just be a matter of waiting for a technician to unwittingly enter the server room with their phone in their pocket. The ASI communicates with the phone and its instructions get carried to the outside world. Or the server farm draws fluctuating levels of power which induce signals coming from the power lines. Of course it could also be the case that it's just flat out physically impossible to get a signal out in any manner whatsoever. That could be true. I'm not willing to gamble on that though, but it sounds like you are.