Cyberattacks also exacted a broader toll on society, shutting down schools, steel mills, hospitals, and auto factories. But while organizations scrambled to adapt to the real-world havoc of human hackers, cybercrime had already embarked on its post-human future. In 2025, AI-driven ransomware emerged, AI-generated phishing and deepfakes became standard social engineering tools, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warned that AI had already “fully defeated” the biometric authentication used by banks.