The AI Security Paradox

Dr. Roman.Yampolskiy@louisville.edu
Computer Engineering and Computer Science
University of Louisville - cecs.louisville.edu/ry
Director – CyberSecurity Lab

@romanyam

/roman.yampolskiy
 @romanyam roman.yampolskiy@louisville.edu

What is AI Safety?

AI + Cybersecurity
= AI Safety & Security

Science and engineering aimed at creating safe and secure machines.

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Future of Cybersecurity

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AI for Cybersecurity (Example-IBM Watson)

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AI IS in Charge

Energy: Nuclear Utilities: Water Military: Nuclear

Power Plants Plants/Electrical Grid Weapons

Communications: Satellites

Stock Market: 75+% of all trade orders Aviation: Uninterruptible Autopilot System
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generated by Automated Trading Systems
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What is Next? SuperIntelligence is Coming …

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SuperSmart

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SuperFast

Ultrafast Extreme Events (UEEs)

Abrupt Rise of New Machine Ecology Beyond Human Response Time.

By Johnson et al. Nature. Scientific Reports 3, #2627 (2013) 8
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SuperComplex

"That was a
little-known
part of the
software
that no
airline
operators or
pilots knew
about."

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SuperViruses

Relying on Kindness of Machines? The Security Threat of Artificial Agents.

By Randy Eshelman and Douglas Derrick. JFQ 77, 2nd Quarter 2015. 10
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SuperSoldiers

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“The development SuperConcerns “I think we

of full artificial
intelligence could should be
spell the end of very careful
the human race.” about
artificial
intelligence”
“… there’s some
prudence in thinking
about benchmarks
that would indicate
some general
intelligence
developing on the
horizon.”
"I am in the
camp that is “…eventually
concerned they'll think
about super faster than us
intelligence" and they'll get
rid of the slow
humans…” 12
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Taxonomy of Pathways to Dangerous AI

Roman V. Yampolskiy. Taxonomy of Pathways to Dangerous Artificial Intelligence. 30th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-2016).
2nd International Workshop on AI, Ethics and Society (AIEthicsSociety2016). Phoenix, Arizona, USA. February 12-13th, 2016.

• Deliberate actions of not-so-ethical people (on purpose – a, b) [Security]

– Hackers, criminals, military, corporations, governments, cults, psychopaths, etc.
• Side effects of poor design (engineering mistakes – c, d) [Safety]
– Bugs, misaligned values, bad data, wrong goals, etc.
• Miscellaneous cases, impact of the surroundings of the system (environment – e, f) [Safety]/[Security]
– Soft errors, SETI
• Runaway self-improvement process (Independently – g, h) [Safety]
– Wireheading, Emergent Phenomena, “Treacherous Turn”
• Purposeful design of dangerous AI is just as likely to include all other types of safety problems and will have
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the
direst consequences, that is the most dangerous type of AI, and the one most difficult to defend against.
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Who Could be an Attacker?

• Militaries developing cyber-weapons and robot soldiers to achieve dominance.
• Governments attempting to use AI to establish hegemony, control people, or take down other governments.
• Corporations trying to achieve monopoly, destroying the competition through illegal means.
• Hackers attempting to steal information, resources or destroy cyberinfrastructure targets.
• Doomsday cults attempting to bring the end of the world by any means.
• Psychopaths trying to add their name to history books in any way possible.
• Criminals attempting to develop proxy systems to avoid risk and responsibility.

With AI as a Service anyone is a potential bad actor.

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What Might They Do?

• Terrorist acts
• Infrastructure sabotage
• Hacking systems/robots
• Social Engineering Attacks
• Privacy violating datamining
• Resource depletion (crash stock market)

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AI Confinement Problem

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AI Regulation

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Security VS Privacy

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Conclusions

• AI failures and attacks will grow in frequency and severity

proportionate to AI’s capability.
• Governments need to work to ensure protection of citizens.

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 The End!
Roman.Yampolskiy@louisville.edu
Director, CyberSecurity Lab
Computer Engineering and Computer Science
University of Louisville - cecs.louisville.edu/ry

@romanyam

/Roman.Yampolskiy

All images used in this presentation are copyrighted to their respective owners and are used for educational purposes
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