Changing your Perspective of AI
Five years ago, ChatGPT wasn’t a recognised word in our vocabulary. Today, it’s becoming so widely used that it even has its own dictionary and many people can’t imagine doing their work without it, but is it a force of good or evil?
There’s a dangerous aspect to the widespread use of AI: mistaking it for a real person and underestimating the digital security risk it could pose as well as the lack of personality behind it.
Let’s take a look at the capabilities that AI possesses and how businesses can use it without compromising their cybersecurity.
What AI can, can’t, (and shouldn’t) do in your business
Artificial Intelligence is becoming an integral part of modern productivity systems, offering tools that can mimic human-like interactions.
However, it’s crucial to remember that mimicry isn’t the same as real intelligence.
- AI lacks consciousness and genuine understanding of reality. This makes it ideal as an assistant while employees do the thinking and strategising.
- Tasks like summarising information, identifying information sources online, and creating generic plans and templates or basic coding tasks are some of the applications that AI does well at. However, these must all be checked by staff members to ensure that no errors have been made.
Despite its impressive verbal capabilities, it’s important to remember that AI operates based on statistical patterns derived from vast datasets, without any real comprehension of the content it processes.
The illusion of intelligence
Modern AI systems, such as large language models, generate responses by predicting the next word in a sequence, based on the data they’ve been trained on. This process doesn’t involve understanding or awareness and is a sophisticated form of pattern recognition.
The danger lies in attributing human-like qualities to AI systems. This can lead to overreliance and misplaced trust in their outputs.
- Numerous instances of AI hallucinations (blatantly wrong information produced by tools like ChatGPT) have been exposed in the media.
- These include lists of nonexistent books for summer reading, made-up facts about famous people and events, and even fictitious lawsuits being used in official court documents by junior lawyers who used AI to speed up their trial preparation.
In addition to these embarrassing errors, there’s growing concern that AI could be used to carry out cyberattacks.
The cybersecurity implications of AI
While AI offers benefits as a research and planning tool in various sectors, it also causes a great deal of stress in cybersecurity circles.
- Cybercriminals can exploit AI to create more convincing phishing scams, automate attacks, and develop malware that adapts to evade detection.
- While ChatGPT has been programmed to refuse requests like this, hackers will have little trouble fooling the app into producing text for phishing messages for example, since they resemble conventional emails in virtually every respect.
The recent trend of software developers and AI specialists being sought out by cybercriminals on the dark web raises the possibility of an “evil ChatGPT” being developed for the express purpose of committing crimes.
On the flip side, AI can be used as a defensive tool and a potential weapon against cybercriminals. With speed and precision far exceeding that of human beings, it could be the last line of defense against hackers who harness the power of artificial intelligence to carry out online attacks.
Secure your data against next generation attacks
With AI becoming a permanent part of the cybersecurity landscape, business owners will need to stay ahead of the game in order to secure their data.
Our range of comprehensive secure cloud storage solutions, including Cyber Protection, will help you keep your sensitive files encrypted in the cloud no matter what technology the hackers have at their disposal.
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