Common Risks within AI and ML

Artificial Intelligence through the Lens of Cybersecurity

Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash

Introduction

While many advancements in the modern age are simply improvements over basic processes (like cooking or keeping your home warm and safe), some of them have brought about radical changes in our daily work and family lives, especially in areas such as production and communication.

Few technologies are likely as misunderstood as those built on the concepts of Artificial Intelligence (the ability for a machine to perceive, synthesize, and make inferences about information) and Machine Learning (the development of mathematical models that can leverage new data for self-improvement).

To fully understand the scope of production AI will require some understanding of the mathematics, electronics, programming languages, SDKs, and other tools used to build and deploy them — in addition to the philosophy and ethics issues that arise when mixing people with the machines designed to emulate their thinking and behavior.

Adding to the everyday risks found within general infrastructure — risks such as zero-days or data breaches — products built with cognitive tools are also likely to have unique risks that are directly related to these technologies. We will examine a few of these risks within this article.

Background

The history of AI begins both in myths of artificial beings gifted with intelligence by master craftsmen and with philosophers attempting to describe the processes of human thinking in functional symbolic notation. This is analogous to what is done today by modern engineers and mathematicians.

The process of creating artificial beings or machines capable of some kind of sensory perception or conscious thought can be described as the scoping of whatever desired behavior is to be emulated or created, followed by the abstraction of these requirements into mathematical models and finally the design implementation of these models in physical space.

Since antiquity, mathematicians and engineers have collaborated to build machines that capture the imaginations of people around the world. The inner workings of these machines are generally kept secret for many…