The global ‘one-click crisis’ serves as a wake-up call

It all came from a software update from a cybersecurity specialist, CrowdStrike, and affected devices using Microsoft's Windows operating system, which runs on around 72% of the world's computers, highlighting the scale of the problem.

London's Evening Standard newspaper described it as a "meltdown" in a reminder of how dependent the world has become on technology and the internet. Indeed, commercial life has much to fear from the extent of the potential problems.

Modern technology is now deeply integrated into supply chains to improve inventory management, coordinate shipping and logistics, make decisions, and share information. When it works, it makes operations more efficient and transparent. But this has increased the level of risk when things do go wrong, up to potentially fatal consequences.

A serious wake-up call

The glitch revealed the extent to which a handful of major tech firms are relied upon by the global economy to run critical infrastructure. Even the 911 emergency contact number in the United States was affected.

Much of day-to-day life can now be compromised by one single botched software release. So much can now go so wrong so quickly. This is the exact vulnerability that was evoked by Leave the World Behind.

The events of 19 July should serve as a serious wake-up call to reconsider the trajectory of rapidly advancing technology, which continues apace without serious controls in place.

There is a need for better back-up plans to manage data and minimise the damage when things go wrong. Alternatives should be found for cloud computing services in emergencies. More is at stake than financial losses, although they can run into the tens of billions of dollars.

But the reach of this tech is now so deep that lives are on the line, not least in hospitals where there were delays to treatment of critical importance.

The one-click crisis

There are other reasons why the one-click crisis has sent such a deep chill around the world. The crisis unfolded just at a time when the next phase of technological change looms large, in the form of Artificial Intelligence. AI remains both little-understood and dull of huge potential, up to and including the prospect of autonomous robots.

While some see an even deeper potential threat here, the vast majority of people are entranced by a rosier image of AI, as highlighted by its best-known proponent, ChatGPT. It can handle a range of user requests at the click of a button, helping ease workloads by dispatching time-consuming tasks with ease.

As the world deepens is need for this kind of tech, the problems sparked last week shows that, as yet, there is no failsafe smart button that can stop sudden or even fatal failures and the potential for catastrophic problems is very real, as well as being the stuff of movies.

Despite our critical need for them, many servers and computers need manual repairs. There were reports that Microsoft advised people to reboot 15 times consecutively to solve the recent issue. With over 8 million devices affected, that is a lot of switching off and on again.

If these are the requirements to fix the foundations of the information age and the tech economy, the one-click crisis has left them looking extremely fragile.

It is useful to recall the resignation of AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton from Google last year over very similar concerns. He was not alone in his warnings. Others came from his peers, including Yoshua Bengio and Nick Bostrom.

Existential risks

The global disruption last week left by the CrowdStrike incident reminds us of the world's helplessness during the COVID-19 pandemic, which isolated family members from each other and created a state of fear until the vaccine appeared.

Even when it appeared, the vaccine faced scandals. And the economic and financial shockwaves sent by COVID reverberate around the planet to this day.

Vulnerability is a real and present danger, even as killer robots run by AI remain the preserve of cinema and science fiction (for now).

If there is a lesson to be learned, it is that humans need to be more humble and prepare to confront the reality that what they create can be dangerous, up to and including the point of potential extinction.