Blog / Living in the Age of AI
Do you have policies regarding the use of AI?
Recently I wrote about how artificial intelligence, or AI, was used to help create a deep fake that successfully scammed an organization out of a sizeable $35 million (CAD). Tools like ChatGPT and OpenArt have been growing in their scope, accuracy, flexibility, and importantly, business popularity, at an amazing rate. Everyone is trying to find new and better ways to build, train, and make use of AI models in different ways. Right now, we’re living in the age of AI (or at least its beginnings).
Another topic I fairly regularly write about is PCI-DSS, also known as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, which is a set of regulations that applies to any person or organization that accepts payment with plastic, such as credit cards, bank cards, gift cards, and the like. Because of the importance of ensuring credit and payment card transactions are secure, it’s regularly updated as new technology, and new cyberthreats, come online. That’s why most of the requirements in the latest version of PCI-DSS contain the following statement:
Good Practice
It is important to update policies and procedures as needed to address changes in processes, technologies, and business objectives.
This phrase appears no less then eleven times in the latest version of PCI-DSS.
The reason is simple; you need to be aware of the changing and fluid nature of IT, and be proactive about maintaining your defenses. It’s just not good enough to maintain a static defense, or to keep on doing what you’ve always done just because you’ve never suffered a breach. You need to maintain dynamic defenses by keeping an awareness of what is happening in the worlds of computers, cybersecurity, and now, AI and how it can be used both for and against your organization.
AI is both incredibly powerful and extremely versatile, with more tools continually being developed and deployed, and more use cases being discovered all the time. They’re also improving incredibly quickly. This doesn’t mean you should be afraid of AI tools, but you should be aware of how they’re developing, and the kind of damage they can cause. And I don’t mean just in the hands of hackers; using ChatGPT to estimate legal fees recently cost one group of lawyers almost $60,000 USD when it became clear to the court no one had vetted the tool’s output and a judge determined they were only eligible to receive roughly half of their original AI-generated quote. There’s also been a litany of incidents where real world lawyers have referenced false legal cases developed by AI in actual court settings.
The point is that although AI tools are powerful, versatile, and improving quickly, they are still just tools, at least for now. If you use them or intend to, it’s important to thoroughly evaluate the quality of their regarding the use of AI. But regardless on whether there’s a role for it in your organization, it’s imperative to be aware of the risks posed by endlessly changing and rapidly developing AI tools and to ensure your cybersecurity standards keep pace.
If you’d like to learn more about properly using AI in your business, or help developing business policies addressing its use, contact a TRINUS cybersecurity specialist and we’ll help make dealing with AI a stress-free IT experience.
This Shakespeare quote comes from The Taming of the Shrew: “Old fashions please me best; I am not so nice To change true rules for odd inventions.”
As always and until next time, be kind to one another, courtesy your friendly neighbourhood cyber-man.
