Three AI Issues To Worry About — And One To Ignore

Autopilot for cars. Protein folding for pharmaceutical research. Detailed visual art. All of these have recently been achieved by artificial intelligence (AI).

But as AI becomes more sophisticated, the challenges around it also grow. That’s because, while AI systems have the potential to transform entire industries, they also pose new threats and raise important concerns.

Today, we’ll dive into three of the top AI issues that companies should be wary of. We’ll also explore one common but overhyped concern, and we’ll discuss a solution for AI security and privacy challenges.

Data security issues in AI

The datasets used to train AI are subject to a number of data security threats, including increasingly common techniques for data manipulation.

But there are other security issues to consider, too. For instance, chatbots have recently made the news for inadvertently revealing information they shouldn’t. Take the case of the Bing chatbot that was targeted with a prompt injection attack and manipulated into divulging its internal code name.

There’s also the issue of companies giving sensitive information directly to an AI — such as when employees submit sensitive business data and privacy-protected information to an AI language learning model. In one recent example, a business executive cut and pasted their firm’s 2023 strategy document into ChatGPT in order to create a PowerPoint deck.

Not only is this kind of information sharing an obvious security risk, but it also presents opportunities for others to benefit from your organization’s IP. Queries made to chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT will be used to continue training their models and may even be shared with third parties.

To prevent unauthorized access, breaches, and other security issues, it’s essential that data is kept secure at every stage of its use in AI platforms.

Data privacy issues in AI

The issue of personal data privacy in AI has already gained significant attention. Indeed, consumer watchdog groups in both the United States and the European Union have called for an investigation about the impact of chatbots on data privacy, data protection, and even public safety.

That’s because AI systems rely on large datasets for effective training and operation — datasets that often contain personal identifiable information (PII) like names, addresses, and financial information. As such, it’s essential that the AI companies collecting personal data put appropriate measures in place to protect it from unauthorized access.

There’s also the element of data confidentiality around the AI queries themselves, since leaked chats and queries may reveal user-identifiable information. Take, for instance, the ChatGPT glitch that recently allowed some users to see the titles of other users’ conversations.

To avoid these issues, artificial intelligence tools need to be shaped with data privacy — including frameworks like privacy by design — in mind.

Regulatory issues in AI

Even as concerns about its ethical, social, and financial ramifications grow, AI currently has very little legislation governing its use. Experts say that several aspects of artificial intelligence may likely need regulation in the near future.

First, there’s the issue of bias in sophisticated algorithms. Research shows that AI models can unintentionally produce unfair or discriminatory outcomes if a model’s training data is incomplete or unrepresentative. With the wrong data, the algorithm may inadvertently learn and perpetuate biases when making decisions.

Second, there’s the question of intellectual property rights in AI. AI models are often trained on vast amounts of copyrighted data, raising questions about ownership and licensing as well as important legal questions about authorship. In fact, three artists have already sued multiple generative AI platforms on the basis of the AI using their original works to train models without their permission.

Finally, there’s the question of safety and ethics in using AI to perform important tasks. While artificial intelligence certainly has the potential to revolutionize industries, it can also cause serious physical harm. Legislation is needed to make sure that any AI involved in projects like self-driving cars, medical diagnostic tools, autonomous weapons, and more is used carefully and ethically.

In the coming months and years, policymakers will need to develop frameworks that balance the benefits of AI with its potential risks, striking a balance between encouraging innovation and industry and respecting data ownership and privacy.

Will the robots really take over?

Spend enough time with chatbots or other cutting-edge AI technology, and you might start asking, what can’t they do? The familiar Hollywood trope of AI outsmarting humans and taking over the world is a natural concern.

Luckily, that future isn’t likely to happen anytime soon.

So far, abstract human qualities like creativity, insight, and emotion set us well apart from our robot counterparts. These qualities cannot be modeled mathematically, meaning that they cannot be emulated using machines.

Beyond that, the contextual awareness that humans have puts us in a different league than AI models. A computer, for instance, may be taught to play an excellent game of chess — but it won’t actually be aware that it’s playing a game.

It’s true that AI is expected to cause job losses, and that those job losses will be stacked in certain sectors like software engineering, devops, and similar kinds of knowledge work. However, most experts believe AI will ultimately create more jobs than it replaces.

Strengthening data privacy and security with ShardSecure

The robots aren’t coming for us — but data privacy and security threats are. ShardSecure’s Data Control Platform works to strengthen privacy, resilience, and security for unstructured data, including machine learning and artificial intelligence datasets.

Our technology detects data tampering, reconstructing affected data to its earlier state transparently and in real-time. It also maintains data confidentiality, keeping PII private and compliant regardless of where it’s stored.

To learn more about ShardSecure’s technology, visit our solutions and resources pages.