Artificial Intelligence: Ethical Issues and its

Applications in Cyber Security Nathan Vargoshe

What is Artificial Cybersecurity and

Conclusion
Intelligence? Applications
Artificial Intelligence can be Cybersecurity is a field of study in the computer science industry Artificial Intelligence is undoubtedly becoming a
defined as technology that that is dedicated to countering malicious attacks and exploits on large part of society today, and while this
demonstrates some form of networks. Having the proper countermeasures to these attacks advanced technology introduces new issues, it
basic intelligence, including the are necessary, as the results of a successful attack can be also provides many benefits to a number of
ability to learn and make catastrophic for the victim. industries, including the cybersecurity field. It is
decisions. Theoretically, important to note that this technology is still fairly
advanced AI may even have the AI technology has a promising future in the field of cybersecurity. new, and although there are ethical issues
capacity to simulate and surpass Machine learning has been used to identify anomalous events on
concerning the integration of AI into society, the
a network, which is often a signal of many types of attacks.4
the cognitive abilities of the technology continues to develop and improve.
Because of its ability to detect these signs of an attack, AI can be
human mind.1 This technology incorporated into intrusion detection systems (IDSs), which The benefits offered by AI in the cybersecurity
has been playing an increasingly monitor network traffic and detect malicious activity.5 field outweigh the controversies in, and since the
large role in today’s society. industry of cybersecurity is ever-changing, AI is
necessary to keep up with the changes.

How does Artificial Ethical Issues

Intelligence Work?
The simple calculations and processes that occur in the
human mind during every second of the day are actually much Bias: AI has the potential to be biased due to it needing to learn
more complex than they initially seem, and developing a from information that is given to it. Therefore, it has the potential
computer program to perform these same calculations takes to inherit the biases of the human creators. 3
time. Machine Learning is the term that is used to define how
an AI “learns.”

A technique known as genetic programming involves feeding More Advanced vs. Less Advanced: As AI becomes more advanced, it becomes more
an algorithm data and telling the algorithm what this data is. integrated into our society. There are concerns on how AI would handle ethical dilemmas, and
The algorithm interprets this data, and when it is asked whether a more advanced AI would make more moral decisions over a less advanced AI..
questions about this data, developers determine if the results
fall within a certain acceptable frame. Algorithms that succeed
are built off and “reproduce,” while algorithms that fail are
destroyed. This happens repeatedly until an algorithm Cybersecurity Issues: AI may also pose some threats to the industries that they are implemented in. For
emerges that can essentially understand and make decisions example, in the cybersecurity field, an AI tasked with assigning users on a network certain privileges may
about the data that it is fed.2 automatically deny a user certain privileges based on biases that it may have.

Picture Credits:
1 Parnas, David Lorge. 2017. “The Real Risks of Artificial Intelligence: Incidents from the Early Days of AI Research Are Instructive in the Current AI Environment.” Communications of the ACM 60 (10): 27–31. doi:10.1145/3132724.
https://openclipart.org/tags/Artificial%20Intelligence
2
Milad Fatehnia, and Gholamreza Amirinia. “A Review of Genetic Programming and Artificial Neural Network Applications in Pile Foundations.” International Journal of Geo-Engineering, no. 1 (2018): 1. doi:10.1186/s40703-017-0067-6.
3
Howard, Ayanna, and Jason Borenstein. 2019. “Trust and Bias in Robots: These Elements of Artificial Intelligence Present Ethical Challenges, Which Scientists Are Trying to Solve.” American Scientist, no. 2: 86. https://www.istockphoto.com/ca/illustrations/artificial-intellig
4
Pierre Parrend, Julio Navarro, Fabio Guigou, Aline Deruyver, and Pierre Collet. “Foundations and Applications of Artificial Intelligence for Zero-Day and Multi-Step Attack Detection.” EURASIP Journal on Information Security, Vol 2018, Iss 1, Pp 1-21 (2018), no. 1 (2018): 1. doi:10.1186/s13635-018-0074-y. ence?sort=mostpopular&mediatype=illustration&phrase=art
ificial%20intelligence
5
M Rhodes-Ousley, Information Security: the complete reference (McGraw-Hill Education, 2013).