Officials are warning that Russia could switch off the internet for the entire planet following a new wave of attacks.

Military chiefs at NATO were told to be prepared for potential global internet blackouts.

This is after there was a series of attacks on subsea cables that are suspected to have come from Russia.

An open letter from Telecoms companies has revealed that an increase in these type of attacks will put critical services at risk.

According to a report by the Telegraph, in the letter, it read: “The repercussions of damage to subsea cables extend far beyond Europe, potentially affecting global internet and power infrastructure, international communications, financial transactions and critical services worldwide.

Subsea cables could be at risk of an attack by Russian forces (Yao Feng/VCG via Getty Images)

“Subsea cable security must be a cornerstone of broader infrastructure protection efforts. By acting now, we can safeguard the networks that underpin our shared future.”

There have been 11 subsea cables in the Baltic Sea that have been damaged in the last couple of years and similar reports have been made over cables located in the North Sea.

Now, fears are growing that these incidents could be linked to the large presence of Russian ships in the Baltic Sea.

As per the Telegraph, UK Defense Secretary John Healey said that the internet outages were ‘another example of growing Russian aggression’.

He added: “I also want President Putin to hear this message: we see you, we know what you are doing, and we will not shy away from robust action to protect this country.”

Matt Western, who is the chairman of the committee, said: “As the geopolitical environment worsens, foreign states are seeking asymmetric ways to hold us at risk. Our internet cable network looks like an increasingly vulnerable soft underbelly.”

Fears are growing that subsea cables could be under threat of attack (imaginima/Getty Images)

The letter went on to say: “Harmonized approaches must be developed for the subsea cables ecosystem, aiming to align security objectives with operational feasibility as well as a viable business model and based on proportionate and risk-based best practices, developed in close consultation with industry.”

The telecoms companies are now calling for the entire network of subsea cables to become classified as a critical infrastructure.

This is to make sure the cables are given enough protection and security from governments.

While it is not yet clear exactly what Russian forces are planning, fears are growing that they could be preparing a sabotage operation after a Russian spy ship known as the Yanter was spotted mapping out the subsea cables in recent months.

Artificial intelligence can offer many intriguing insights into the future if you ask it the right questions, yet its indication of the number one ‘warning sign’ that WWIII is on the way might begin to worry you.

Most people use AI to summarize documents, answer queries, and even generate complex images, yet it seemingly has an alluring ability to predict the future – or at least offer an educated guess at what could happen within certain circumstances.

People have enlisted the advice of an AI-powered Nostradamus and Baba Vanga to look into the years ahead of us with surprising results, and you can even try out a ‘death clock’ that lets you know what age you’ll die and how it’ll happen.

However, the threat of World War 3 is not only more widescale but also arguably far more imminent, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT has issued its own indication of the warning signs that we should be on the lookout for.

ChatGPT has succinctly outlined the biggest sign of an upcoming World War, and it might worry you (Getty Stock)

When asked what the number one warning sign of an upcoming World War is, ChatGPT weighs up the debates of historians, analysts, and military experts to produce a clear answer:

“When multiple great powers are locked in escalating, unresolved conflict – with no clear way to back down.”

Simplifying the warning signs even further, it illustrates that “the biggest red flag is the breakdown of diplomacy between nuclear or major military powers who are engaging in proxy wars, arms buildups, or territorial threats.”

Essentially, if one of the world’s leading military powers – which also typically coincide with those who posses nuclear weapons – has a major breakdown in relations, typically spurred on by a catalyst event, we could see the beginnings of another World War for the first time in nearly a century.

One of the major reasons why we’ve not seen warfare on the scale of the First or Second World War again though is through the invention and distribution of nuclear weapons, which act as a deterrent through their immense destructive powers.

However, certain triggers could force key nations to engage in direct warfare, which would then in turn pull in allied countries that are obliged to participate through treaty arrangements.

World War 3 would carry the immense threat of nuclear weapons, which might be why it’s not happened yet (Getty Stock)

Looking specifically at conflicts that are currently ongoing, ChatGPT indicates that the most pressing ‘red flag’ that could lead to a new World War today is:

“If the U.S. and China (or Russia) move from economic + cyber warfare to direct military confrontation over Taiwan, Ukraine, or another hotspot. That would trigger global realignments, military escalation, and potentially drag in allies across the globe.”

That worryingly appears to be more than capable of happening considering current events, and all it would likely take would be one major moment before tensions would reach breaking point.

“A lot of signs matter,” ChatGPT continues, “but if you ever see major powers stop talking and start shooting, that’s the moment the world changes.”

If a new World War were to happen then it could cause devastating casualties across the globe too, as ChatGPT has also outlined a ‘horrifying’ death toll of between 50 and 100 million people if conflict was to break out.

Sometimes, the gap between AI and reality can be very hard to spot – and one YouTuber put that to the test in a sneaky experiment.

YouTuber Sambuca slowly turned his content into AI to see if any of his nine million subscribers would catch on.

“It’s basically gonna be a litmus test for how much we can get away with until my audience notices that I’m replacing myself with AI,” he explained.

He started off small by just using OpenAI’s ChatGPT as a tool to generate video content ideas.

He prompted the chatbot for 60-second YouTube Short ideas that matched his usual ‘fun’ and ‘educational’ style videos.

Sambucha then filmed ChatGPT’s suggestion of “The Most Rigged Game in the World,” while keeping all other parts of the video unchanged.

With such a minute change, no one seems to notice a difference in the comments section of his YouTube Short.

Then, the YouTuber upped his game by picking an old video that’s ‘gotten only one view in the last 24 hours’ and changed the thumbnail to an AI-generated image.

“[I will] put it into the hands of basically a single person to see if they’ll call out that the thumbnail on one of these videos is going to be AI-generated,” he described. Again, no reaction from his audience.

Later on, Sambucha used AI to generate a full voiceover for a YouTube Short, choosing one from Character.AI that closely resembled his own and sounded the least robotic.

Surprisingly, out of 1,200 comments, not a single person caught on. He even confirmed this by searching for the term AI in the comment section.

For his next step, he combined an AI-generated avatar to go with his AI voice.

“Not only are we going to have an AI voice say that line but it’s also going to be an AI-generated avatar of me,” he said.

He tested it out to one of his friends on Discord, who noticed an extreme ‘lack of blinking’ and slightly robotic tone of voice.

Finally, Sambucha slipped in an obvious AI-generated segment into one of his long-form content videos.

The YouTuber fooled his nine million subscribers / Sambucha/YouTube

It’s clear that his voice doesn’t sync with his avatar’s mouth, but with the clip being such a small part of the video, it’s quite hard to spot and goes majorly unnoticed by the masses. One comment with two thumbs up read: “Bro is not slick with the A.I”.

Laughing to himself, Sambucha thought only three people out of 1,600 to catch on was pretty impressive. “It looks like not that many people catch on if you just start slipping AI into the content,” he stated, adding that adding the technology didn’t really have an effect on his video performance metrics.

After the discovery, people were utterly shocked at how they missed all the clues.

“The amount of sambucha vids i watched and didn’t even notice,” one viewer wrote.

“Me realising all these shorts are ones I watched and I didn’t notice,” added another.

If you weren’t already worried about being replaced by artificial intelligence, you probably should be. The recent uptick in AI has those working in industries ranging from journalism to finance, customer service to manufacturing, worried about their future. Even the entertainment industry is quaking in its boots as actors and voice actors are worried they’ll soon be replaced by AI versions of themselves.

We’ve seen enough ‘AI slop’ being churned out to feel a little safer for now, but with even major brands like Coca-Cola opting for AI-powered Christmas adverts, it all seems to be heading in one direction.

There are real fears that artificial intelligence will replace us in the workplace (Andriy Onufriyenko / Getty)

Now, a famed physicist has made a concerning prediction about the future and explained why we’re destined to be replaced by AI before too long.

Posting on X, Anthony Aguirre gave his thoughts and said that tech companies investing so much in AI isn’t to get our monthly subscription for ChatGPT, but instead, they’re playing the long game by knowing that it’ll pay off big in the future.

According to Aguirre: “They’re doing it because they know your employer will pay hundreds or thousands a month for an AI system to replace you, if and when it can.”

We recently covered how OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted he’s yet to see the benefits of the $200-a-month ChatGPT Pro due to its massive overheads. Still, the idea is relatively new and is yet to really be used on a commercial scale.

There are already theories that Altman could restrict those who are making the most of ChatGPT Pro’s unlimited policy, while others think a massive price hike could be on the way.

Experts have predicted the five jobs that are most at risk of an AI overtake, but according to Aguirre, it could affect even more people than we could imagine.

Although many are currently holding the line and refusing to buckle to the cost-cutting idea of AI, there are questions about how long big companies will hold out.

AI is evolving at an immense pace, and with it constantly learning from humans, there’s a real danger that AI could do our jobs just as well for just a fraction of the price.

When Aguirre’s post was shared on Reddit, others were left pondering AI’s continued rise to power. Someone else added, “‘Consumers’ as we have them today won’t be needed. One oligarch will simply have a robot farm and a robot mine, and will trade Bitcoin to the guy who has the robot fusion reactor for electricity.”

Another mused: “While I don’t believe AI implementation will lead to widespread job loss, I think it’s important to consider that just because something is dumb doesn’t mean they won’t do it.”

Not everyone was against the idea, though. Saying it’s about time that things change, someone else added: “Jobs are sh*t right now, they should be automated. Hanging on to sh*tty jobs we hate isn’t a sign of intelligence, it’s just fear. I think the main problem is that most of us in the west were trained to be corporate slaves and now can’t see any other way of living.”

While it’s unclear where things go next, someone else concluded with a warning to all these big organizations: “You’re not going far enough. If employees are replaceable, companies also are.”

It’s true that while the automation of labor might seem increasingly inevitable, there’s also a chance that artificial general intelligence will learn simply to produce goods and services directly.

Even ChatGPT has warned of the dangers of AI, but the question still remains, will the money-conscious companies actually listen?