BRITAIN faces a far worse threat than Microsoft’s huge IT outage with the growing use of AI, an expert has warned.
Tom Cheesewright, an applied futurist and tech consultant, says the scale of such IT issues will worsen as reliance on artificial intelligence grows.
Passengers in the South Terminal at Gatwick Airport in the chaos on Friday[/caption] Tom Cheesewright has warned of further IT outages[/caption] Travelers wait in Terminal 1 for check-in at Hamburg Airport[/caption] The Microsoft outage affected travel across the world[/caption]His warning comes as major airports, airlines, railways and supermarkets have today been hit by a global IT outage.
The suspected CrowdStrike issue has seen Microsoft services crash worldwide, affecting millions across the UK and further afield.
Speaking to The Sun, Mr Cheesewright said AI “increases the likelihood of bad code being created”.
He said: “inevitably we’re going to be reliant on more AI biased based systems that are in the cloud that do rely us to be connected, and it is going to create increase if you like, the scale of problem that that we experience when something like this happens.
“So we’re going to have to be very, very cautious about spreading our systems around.”
The IT expert added: “As with any technology, it’s gonna have positives and negatives, and which one wins out depends on how we deploy it.
“Take AI in this case, for example. If AI puts the powers of coding in the hands of many more people, it put the powers of creating good code in the hands of more people, but also bad code in the hands of many more people.
“The likelihood of more bad code being created and creating situations like this with AI is there, yes.
“But if the AI is used well, it picks up on human mistakes and reduces the chance of it.”
Today’s outage has been described as the “largest in history” by one security consultant.
How the IT outage is affecting the world…
Troy Hunt posted on social media: “I don’t think it’s too early to call it: this will be the largest IT outage in history.
“This is basically what we were all worried about with Y2K, except it’s actually happened this time.”
It comes as cybersecurity experts say it could be days before the disruption caused by the outage comes to an end.
Researcher Kevin Beaumont said: “As systems no longer start, impacted systems will need to be started in ‘Safe Mode’, to remove the faulty update.
“This is incredibly time-consuming and will take organisations days to do at scale.
“Essentially we have one of the world’s highest impact IT incidents caused by a cyber-security vendor.”
Around the world, banks, supermarkets and other major institutions reported computer issues disrupting services, while many businesses were unable to take digital payments or access key databases.
Across England, GP surgeries have also reported being unable to book appointments or access patient records as their EMIS Web system went down.
Trains
Airports and airlines
Television Networks
Britain’s GPs
Global hospitals
Supermarkets and restaurants
Events
Banks and supermarkets in Australia including Beyond Bank Australia have also been experiencing issues this morning.
Various Microsoft services in Japan and New Zealand are also battling tech issues.
At airports, flights were cancelled and staff forced to check in passengers manually on specific flights to help ease long queues.
The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) said “services in community pharmacies, including the accessing of prescriptions from GPs and medicine deliveries, are disrupted today”.
And earlier in the day, Govia Thameslink Railway – parent company of Southern, Thameslink, Gatwick Express and Great Northern – warned passengers to expect delays.
Meanwhile, the chief executive of CrowdStrike, the firm at the centre of the global outage, has said he is “deeply sorry” for the incident.
However, he also warned it would take “some time” for systems to be fully restored.
George Kurtz said a fix had been deployed for a bug in an update rolled out by the cybersecurity firm.
An emergency Cobra meeting was held at official level – rather than ministers – on Friday morning to discuss the chaos, with a further gathering expected later.
Ministers are being kept updated and are in touch with their sectors to tackle the fallout from the IT failures.
Transport Secretary Louise Haigh saying she was working “at pace with industry” after trains and flights ground to a halt.
A whiteboard being used at Manchester Airport[/caption] Passengers queuing at Gatwick Airport[/caption]