We’re worrying about the wrong AI apocalypse
TL;DR
AI doesn’t need to go rogue to threaten the power grid — it just needs to hack into the control rooms like this one. | Kristen Norman/Bloomberg via Getty Images Nearly two decades ago, a group of researchers at the Idaho National Laboratory ran a secret experiment, known as the Aurora Generator Test, on a massive emerald green diesel generator.
Nauti's Take
For AI teams, the key test is the interface: which models, agents, or automations can reach industrial systems, and where does the architecture require human approval? Before any production experiment, verify permissions, offline fallbacks, logging, and strict separation between the model layer and the control layer.
The report leaves the direct applicability of this historical experiment to today’s grids unverified.
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