Global Tech Outage Sparks Concerns Over AI and Big Tech Reliability

When Tech Fails, It Is Usually With a Whimper Instead of a Bang

For a couple of years now, the artificial intelligence community has been warning that there is a chance their work will go south and humanity will end in a conflagration worthy of a superhero movie. Friday brought a pointed reminder that disaster is at least as likely to creep in quietly, perhaps from a piece of technology so mundane that hardly anyone knows it exists. Our lives are built on systems piled on systems. As we board airplanes, cross bridges, pay bills, download updates, track our children at camp and generally try to make it through the day, we take them for granted. Until they fail. This week's global software outage, immediately proclaimed as the biggest in history, was not caused by terrorists or A.I. or rogue hackers demanding billions in ransom. It wasn't even done as a lark by some off-the-charts smart teenager. Those are the Hollywood versions. Instead, it was a routine upgrade that somehow went off the rails. CrowdStrike, a Texas company, specializes in protecting corporate clients from cyberthreats. It has been very successful at this. This time, though, the threat came from CrowdStrike itself, a problem for which it seemed unprepared. The trouble began with a small Windows software update CrowdStrike sent to its customers on Thursday night. For some reason, this crashed every computer it touched. "Your PC ran into a problem," users were cheerily informed. "It looks like Windows didn't load correctly," messages announced. The backdrop was the color of a perfect sky, also known as the Blue Screen of Death.

The existential angst of the global tech outage | Analysis

Imagine a day when everything goes haywire. That was Friday. It was not quite a global catastrophe, since it was mostly just a lot of devices, gadgets, computers and machines failing to work right. But it was revelatory -- and ominous. In today's world, a single bad piece of software can wreak havoc on a global scale. And there's more of this to come, according to experts who study and fret about our increasingly complex technological systems. "We have, as this shows, lots of infrastructure relying on single points of failure," said Gary Marcus, a professor emeritus at New York University and author of the forthcoming book "Taming Silicon Valley," on Friday. "Absolutely nothing guarantees that we won't have another similar incident either accidentally or maliciously." As more information emerged about the cause of the outage, it seemed clear it was nothing more than an accident, one caused by faulty software in an automated update from an Austin, Texas-based company called CrowdStrike. The big headline was the vulnerability of major industries, such as aviation and banking. But it was a rough time for anyone with a computer that on Friday morning announced blandly and without further explanation that it was not working. Consumers of technology expect software to perform, and it usually does. But that invites complacency and digital illiteracy: We don't remember anyone's phone number because on a smartphone you just tap the name and the call goes through. We don't carry cash because everyone takes plastic. Life in the 21st century is pretty magical -- until it's not. Marcus fears that society will become even more vulnerable as we rely increasingly on artificial intelligence. On the social platform X, he wrote: "The world needs to up its software game massively. We need to invest in improving software reliability and methodology, not rushing out half-baked chatbots. An unregulated AI industry is a recipe for disaster." The AI revolution -- which did not come up a single time during the June presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump -- is poised to make these systems even more interdependent and opaque, making human society more vulnerable in ways no one can fully predict. Political leaders have been slow to react to these changes in part because few of them understand the technology. Even technologists can't fully understand the complexities of our globally networked systems. "It's becoming clear that the nerve center of the world's IT systems is a giant black box of interconnected software fully intelligible to no one," Edward Tenner, a scholar of technology and author of the book "Why Things Bite Back," said in an email Friday. "You could even say that it's a black box full of undocumented booby traps." What happened Friday brought to mind a threat that never fully materialized: Y2K. Twenty-five years ago, as we approached the turn of the century, some computer experts feared that a software bug would cause airplanes to fall out of the sky -- along with all sorts of other calamities -- the moment 1999 turned into 2000. Governments and private industry spent billions of dollars trying to patch up the computer problems in advance, and the big moment arrived with minimal disruption. But the question of how vulnerable -- or resilient -- the global information networks of 2024 are cannot be easily answered. The systems are too numerous, too interconnected, for anyone to have full battlefield awareness. Friday's tech outage served as a fleeting reminder of the fragility of that invisible world, especially for those trying to catch planes, book surgeries or power up personal computers that had gone into a mysterious failure mode. Trending online all day was "Blue Screen of Death," the nickname for the error message that appears when Microsoft Windows ceases operating safely. The Blue Screen of Death, people discovered, has in recent times taken on a gentler, less alarming shade of blue, as if someone had consulted a color theorist. It did not go unnoticed that CrowdStrike, a company that provides software to ward off cyberattacks, was responsible for the outage. Tenner, the author, points out that in the history of disasters, technologies meant to improve safety have often introduced new risks. "Lifeboats and their deck reinforcements installed after the Titanic destabilized a Lake Michigan excursion ship, the SS Eastland, in 1915. Over 840 people died in Chicago harbor when it capsized during loading," Tenner said. And then there's the safety pin: It was swallowed, open, by so many children that a surgeon developed a special tool to extract it, Tenner said. Brian Klaas, author of "Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters," wrote on X after the tech outage that "we've engineered social systems that are extremely prone to catastrophic risk because we have optimized to the limit, with no slack, in hyper-connected systems. A tiny failure is now an enormous one." Technological disasters can also be triggered by natural causes. Prominent on the minds of many natural security experts is the risk of a powerful solar storm knocking out the electrical grid, or damaging satellites crucial to communication, navigation, weather prediction and military surveillance. Such satellites also could be targeted by an adversary. U.S. officials have expressed concern about the possibility that Russia could be developing the capability to deploy a nuclear weapon in space that would pose a threat to our satellites -- and potentially create an exponential increase in space debris with catastrophic consequences. But Friday's tech outage emerged without any geopolitical machinations, or anything as dramatic as a thermonuclear explosion. It was just the result of some bad code, a bug -- a glitch in the system.

The Microsoft-CrowdStrike outage could spur a Big Tech trust reckoning and threaten tech giants' plans for AI

This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Log in. The software issue occurred an update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike on Friday, and it resulted in a Microsoft IT outage that disrupted airlines, banks, retailers, emergency services, and healthcare providers around the world. A software fix has been deployed, according to CrowdStrike, but many systems were still offline on Friday as companies grappled with bringing their services back online, some of which required manual updates. Gary Marcus, an AI researcher and founder of Geometric Intelligence, a machine learning AI startup acquired by Uber in 2016, told Business Insider that the Microsoft-CrowdStrike outage should be a "wake-up call" to consumers -- and that the impact of a similar issue with AI would be tenfold. "If a single bug can take down airlines, banks, retailers, media outlets, and more, what on earth makes you think we are ready for AGI?" Marcus wrote in a post on X. AGI, also known as artificial general intelligence, is a term for a version of AI that can achieve human capabilities like reasoning and judgment. OpenAI cofounder John Schulman previously predicted it was just a few years away. Marcus, who has been critical of OpenAI in the past, told BI that could prove to be problematic with the current systems in place, and consumers are handing over enormous amounts of power to Big Tech companies and AI. Dan O'Dowd, founder of safety advocacy group, The Dawn Project, has campaigned against Tesla's self-driving systems. He told BI that the situation with CrowdStrike and Microsoft is a reminder that critical infrastructures are not secure enough or reliable. He said Big Tech companies evaluate systems based on if they work "pretty well most of the time," because there's a rush to get products to market. Some of that has already been made apparent when it comes to AI. Companies across the board have released a deluge of AI products and offerings in the last six months, some of which have begun to transform how people work. But the AI models, which are prone to hallucination, have also spit out some well-publicized errors along the way, like Google's AI Overviews, which told users to eat pizza with glue, or Gemini's inaccurate portrayals of historical people. Companies have also taken turns announcing flashy new products and then delaying or rolling them back because they weren't ready -- or when public launches reveal issues. OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Adobe have all rolled back or delayed AI offerings this year as the AI race heats up. While some of these mistakes or product delays may not seem like a big deal, the potential risks could be more severe as technology advances. The US Department of State commissioned a risk assessment report on AI, which was published earlier this year. The report indicated AI poses a high risk of weaponization, which could take the form of biowarfare, mass cyber-attacks, disinformation campaigns, or autonomous robots. The results could lead to "catastrophic risks" including human extinction, the report said. Javad Abed, assistant professor of information systems at Johns Hopkins' Carey Business School, told Business Insider that incidents like the Microsoft-CrowdStrike outage continue to occur because companies still view cybersecurity as a "cost rather than a necessary investment." He said big tech companies should have alternative vendors and a multi-layered defense strategy. "Investing an additional million dollars in such a critical aspect of cybersecurity is far more prudent than facing the potential loss of millions later," Abed said. "Along with continuous damage to reputation and customer trust." Public trust in institutions has steadily declined for the past five years, according to a 2023 study by the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization. This erosion of confidence is particularly pronounced in the technology sector. Big Tech companies, including Facebook, Amazon, and Google, saw the sharpest drop in trust, with an average decline in confidence ratings of 13% to 18%, according to Brookings. That trust is likely to continue to be tested as both consumers and the workers at the companies impacted by the IT outage face the reality of how a software update gone wrong can cause things to come to a screeching halt. Sanjay Patnaik, a director at the Brookings Institution, told BI the government has dropped the ball and failed to properly regulate social media and AI. Without adequate defenses in place, the technology could become a national security threat, he said. Big Tech companies have had "free rein," Patnaik said. "And today is a day companies are starting to realize that." Marcus agreed that companies can't be trusted on their own to build reliable infrastructure and the outage should be a reminder that "we're playing double or nothing when we allow AI systems to be unregulated."

The Microsoft-CrowdStrike outage could spur a Big Tech trust reckoning and threaten tech giants' plans for AI | Business Insider India

The massive IT outage that rocked companies around the world highlights just how deeply intertwined society and the systems powering it are with Big Tech -- and how a single misstep can trigger widespread chaos. It also exposes the fragility of those systems and raises the question: Does Big Tech deserve our trust to properly safeguard a technology as powerful as AI? The software issue occurred an update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike on Friday, and it resulted in a Microsoft IT outage that disrupted airlines, banks, retailers, emergency services, and healthcare providers around the world. A software fix has been deployed, according to CrowdStrike, but many systems were still offline on Friday as companies grappled with bringing their services back online, some of which required manual updates. Gary Marcus, an AI researcher and founder of Geometric Intelligence, a machine learning AI startup acquired by Uber in 2016, told Business Insider that the Microsoft-CrowdStrike outage should be a "wake-up call" to consumers -- and that the impact of a similar issue with AI would be tenfold. "If a single bug can take down airlines, banks, retailers, media outlets, and more, what on earth makes you think we are ready for AGI?" Marcus wrote in a post on X. AGI, also known as artificial general intelligence, is a term for a version of AI that can achieve human capabilities like reasoning and judgment. OpenAI cofounder John Schulman previously predicted it was just a few years away. Marcus, who has been critical of OpenAI in the past, told BI that could prove to be problematic with the current systems in place, and consumers are handing over enormous amounts of power to Big Tech companies and AI. Dan O'Dowd, founder of safety advocacy group, The Dawn Project, has campaigned against Tesla's self-driving systems. He told BI that the situation with CrowdStrike and Microsoft is a reminder that critical infrastructures are not secure enough or reliable. He said Big Tech companies evaluate systems based on if they work "pretty well most of the time," because there's a rush to get products to market. Some of that has already been made apparent when it comes to AI. Companies across the board have released a deluge of AI products and offerings in the last six months, some of which have begun to transform how people work. But the AI models, which are prone to hallucination, have also spit out some well-publicized errors along the way, like Google's AI Overviews, which told users to eat pizza with glue, or Gemini's inaccurate portrayals of historical people. Companies have also taken turns announcing flashy new products and then delaying or rolling them back because they weren't ready -- or when public launches reveal issues. OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Adobe have all rolled back or delayed AI offerings this year as the AI race heats up. While some of these mistakes or product delays may not seem like a big deal, the potential risks could be more severe as technology advances. The US Department of State commissioned a risk assessment report on AI, which was published earlier this year. The report indicated AI poses a high risk of weaponization, which could take the form of biowarfare, mass cyber-attacks, disinformation campaigns, or autonomous robots. The results could lead to "catastrophic risks" including human extinction, the report said. Javad Abed, assistant professor of information systems at Johns Hopkins' Carey Business School, told Business Insider that incidents like the Microsoft-CrowdStrike outage continue to occur because companies still view cybersecurity as a "cost rather than a necessary investment." He said big tech companies should have alternative vendors and a multi-layered defense strategy. "Investing an additional million dollars in such a critical aspect of cybersecurity is far more prudent than facing the potential loss of millions later," Abed said. "Along with continuous damage to reputation and customer trust." Public trust in institutions has steadily declined for the past five years, according to a 2023 study by the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization. This erosion of confidence is particularly pronounced in the technology sector. Big Tech companies, including Facebook, Amazon, and Google, saw the sharpest drop in trust, with an average decline in confidence ratings of 13% to 18%, according to Brookings. That trust is likely to continue to be tested as both consumers and the workers at the companies impacted by the IT outage face the reality of how a software update gone wrong can cause things to come to a screeching halt. Sanjay Patnaik, a director at the Brookings Institution, told BI the government has dropped the ball and failed to properly regulate social media and AI. Without adequate defenses in place, the technology could become a national security threat, he said. Big Tech companies have had "free rein," Patnaik said. "And today is a day companies are starting to realize that." Marcus agreed that companies can't be trusted on their own to build reliable infrastructure and the outage should be a reminder that "we're playing double or nothing when we allow AI systems to be unregulated."

Can a Bot Be Too Good at Its Job?

This is Atlantic Intelligence, a newsletter in which our writers help you wrap your mind around artificial intelligence and a new machine age. Sign up here. AI has been cheered by proponents for its ability to automate tasks, allowing users to spare themselves from boring work assignments (or, in a less happy example, to flood the web with useless slop). What will happen when this tendency is taken to its extreme? In a recent article for The Atlantic, Jonathan Zittrain writes about the coming era of AI agents -- bots that operate on behalf of humans, not only responding to specific prompts but also undertaking much more complex interactions such as shopping and responding to emails. "This routinization of AI that doesn't simply talk with us, but also acts out in the world, is a crossing of the blood-brain barrier between digital and analog, bits and atoms," Zittrain writes. "That should give us pause." Zittrain references a man who created a bot that could manage every step of the pizza-ordering process: It called a local pizzeria, "spoke" in a synthetic voice, responded to the person on the other line, asked for the right toppings, provided the man's address, and so on. Sounds neat! Yet problems may arise when these relatively autonomous agents are left floating in the ether of the internet for all time, ceaselessly working toward goals whose relevance has long since faded, sucking up resources all the while. And some people may put these bots to nefarious ends, Zittrain notes: "Imagine a fleet of pro-Vladimir Putin agents playing a long game by joining hobbyist forums, earnestly discussing those hobbies, and then waiting for a seemingly organic, opportune moment to work in favored political talking points." Zittrain points to reasonable steps that could be taken now to avoid disaster in the future -- without ruining whatever potential good might come from this new breed of digital assistant. You likely saw the news today of the CrowdStrike bug that knocked a sizable portion of the world's digital infrastructure offline, grounding planes, halting television broadcasts, and gumming up hospitals. In an article for The Atlantic, Samuel Arbesman described the situation in a way that immediately called to mind the AI boom: "Our technological systems are too complicated for anyone to fully understand."