How It Works
Computer worm
A piece of malicious software that copies itself from computer to computer across a network without anyone clicking anything. Unlike a virus, which needs a person to open an infected file, a worm spreads on its own. Worms matter to AI policy because the same self-spreading behavior is a worst-case scenario people worry about for AI systems that can write and run their own code.
Origin
The term comes from John Brunner's 1975 science-fiction novel The Shockwave Rider, which featured a self-propagating 'tapeworm' program. The first famous real worm was the Morris worm of 1988, built by graduate student Robert Tappan Morris, which accidentally crashed much of the early internet and led to the first conviction under the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.