Trusting artificial intelligence in cybersecurity is a double-edged sword

Applications of artificial intelligence (AI) for cybersecurity tasks are attracting greater attention from the private and the public sectors. Estimates indicate that the market for AI in cybersecurity will grow from USD1 billion in 2016 to a USD34.8 billion net worth by 2025. The latest national cy...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Taddeo, M, McCutcheon, T, Floridi, L
Format: Journal article
Language:English
Published: Springer Nature 2019
Description
Summary:Applications of artificial intelligence (AI) for cybersecurity tasks are attracting greater attention from the private and the public sectors. Estimates indicate that the market for AI in cybersecurity will grow from USD1 billion in 2016 to a USD34.8 billion net worth by 2025. The latest national cybersecurity and defence strategies of several governments explicitly mention AI capabilities. At the same time, initiatives to define new standards and certification procedures to elicit users’ trust in AI are emerging on a global scale. However, trust in AI (both machine learning and neural networks) to deliver cybersecurity tasks is a double-edged sword: it can improve substantially cybersecurity practices, but can also facilitate new forms of attacks to the AI applications themselves, which may pose severe security threats. We argue that trust in AI for cybersecurity is unwarranted and that, to reduce security risks, some form of control to ensure the deployment of ‘reliable AI’ for cybersecurity is necessary. To this end, we offer three recommendations focusing on the design, development and deployment of AI for cybersecurity.