AI... sci-fi’s scariest prediction!

I utilise artificial intelligence, AI, sparingly, because I neither trust it nor respect its ability to improve one’s cognitive abilities. Check out this commentator’s ghastly AI fear, and ask yourself, “Could this really happen?
We have the remarkable and unsettling claim this week from a respected senior UK finance and economics columnist, Alex Brummer, formerly of the much respected ‘Guardian’ newspaper, and now of the ‘Daily Mail,’ declaring global financial systems' vulnerability to artificial intelligence, and that, whether “by a rogue AI model, or one instructed by bad actors,” could cause havoc by crashing the entire online financial sector virtually, surely an apt descriptor, overnight.
He points to the “unnervingly powerful Claude Mythos” as just one of many platforms with the capability to prevent bank transfers, stop ATMs paying out, freeze credit cards, suspend salary payments, stop automatic payments, leave utilities unpaid, and so much more. Savings and pensions could be accessed, altered, discontinued, and, much worse, withdrawn... leaving us penniless and with no way to pay for food, utilities, mortgages, transport, or petrol, and nobody is going to say... “It’s okay, don’t worry, fix us up when the system is up and running again.” Our lives, as we know them, would inexorably slide towards an abyss of anarchy. It is an unpleasant prospect!
Currently, fiscally, ‘NVIDIA’ is the global leader in AI. The 1993-founded brainchild of Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem has current assets and equity valuation of $350 billion, and an eye-watering market capitalisation figure of $5 trillion. They are the largest developers of graphic processing units (GPUs) in the world, though not without controversy, as they have faced allegations of overstating product capabilities, crypto-mining, data-scraping, anti-competition violations in France, and security concerns with Chinese supplier manufacturers; however, given the paucity of the penalties for these infractions, one suspects they have been of a minor nature.
The ubiquitous ‘Google,’ with Search, Scholar, Workspace, Maps, Android, Pixel, Fitbit, and YouTube just a few of the AI thoroughbreds in its stable, retains its position of dominance at the top of the global AI tree. Its position is mostly due to its consumerist priorities as compared to NVIDIA’s more institutional focus. Founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, it has a current market value of $4.3 trillion. Its issues have arisen around taxation, copyright, censorship and privacy, while internationally, its violation of EU anti-competition rules cost it 4.4 billion euros, and its AI and surveillance contracts with Israel have raised allegations of institutional bias against the Palestinian cause.
The current ‘pin-up’ for artificial intelligence is the Dario and Daniela Amodei-created ‘Anthropic,’ the entity under which ‘Fable,’ ‘Opus,’ Sonnet,’ and ‘Haku’ rest, as does the currently ubiquitous ‘Claude,’ with its coding, web design, and scientific elements reaching to all corners of the web, and its elite cybersecurity platform, ‘Mythos,’ which is only available to selected users, the implication being then that not all web users can be trusted with this product, and that’s just a bit scary!
Between them, those three, ‘Apple,’ ‘Microsoft,’ ‘Tesla,’ ‘SpaceX,’ and ‘Meta,’ the industry’s ‘magnificent seven,’ either themselves or their artificial intelligences, have the capability to do this, or at least go a long way towards creating the ultimate chaos, in a materialistic world. The unpleasant reality is that among the ‘bad actors’ have already signposted their willingness to be aggressive, knowing how chaotic the consequences are, and can be. Very scary!
Attacks on Marks and Spencer, Harrods, and the Co-op, all targeted during April and May 2025. Then an ‘intrusion’ into the Jaguar-Land Rover platform on September 31, 2025, forced a 5-week manufacturing shutdown and a 12-month platform rebuild, affecting 9,000 businesses and costing £1.9 billion. Initially thought to be a prank, this was attributed to a sophisticated Russian-based hacking group, reaffirming their determination to create chaos. They just cannot evade their ‘James Bond’ stereotypes, can they?
The Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, is another who urges vigilance in this area, finding such scenarios unimaginable. If someone with his insight and omniscience is concerned, we should all be.