Monday, September 09, 2024

Is Artificial Intelligence A Threat To Privacy And Free Speech?

 Businesses, government organisations and even our humble laptop and desktop computers at home are being under constant attack, not by hackers and cybercriminals but by Search Engine Operators, Social Media Networks and online marketplaces. So what’s the last thing we need corportions like Microsoft, Alphabel and Apple to do? Actually it is the very thing they are doing, which is to make the attacks easier, and park the most sensitive data in all levels of systems in front of the house with a “take what you want” sign.

As companies and governments become increasingly obsessed with artificial intelligence (AI), they are not just creating bck doors into software and operating systems, flinging open all the doors that really should be locked very tight – and in many cases, they don’t even know they’ve done it.

To illustrate the potential damage AI data mining could do, security expert Michael Bargury uses Microsoft’s own demonstration site fo their "software as a service" product" Microsoft 365. He easily makes changes to the business’s bank details; staff are oblivious to the change.

Bargury, chief technology officer of Tel Aviv-based security firm Zenity, is one of the leading experts in exploring how business AI can be used for mischief.

This kind of attack exploits one of AI’s key selling points to business: its ability to automate repetitive tasks. Previously, getting a hack to work required knowledge of a scripting language to run Operating Sytem commands. Now, anyone can create a bot with a couple of clicks, and it’s turning hacking into a public sport.

In the past, many hacks also required hundreds of hours of social engineering and a bit of behavioural science knowhow to nudge individuals into clicking on the vital link. But with Microsoft’s Copilot and other business AI bots, all provided for the user's 'convenience' and to make computers more user friendly, people with relitavely low leves of tech skill can simply say a set of words and open a Pandora’s box. Bargury calls it “promptware”.

The typical Fortune 500 company already runs around 3,000 Copilot AI bots, and some 63pc of private business chatbots can be operated by the public. “All of the defaults are insecure,” an astonished Bargury discovered.

Things are about to get much worse.

While Microsoft has changed the defaults, the underlying problem is not fixable, which is that AI can’t distinguish between data and computer instructions. I may send you a one-line message wishing you happy birthday that contains hidden hacking instructions – and the AI will obliviously let it happen. It is what I have always called 'The stupidity of Artificial Intelligence.' To put it simply a modern computer can parse millions of words in alphanumeric text in seconds but have no inkling of what anything in ll that content means. The computer is not intelligent, it hs no mind, no consciousness, no moral compass, it merely compares and matches strings of binary data (not 'little ones and zeros' as many younger generation computer pros will unhelpfully explain, but miniscule negative or positive charcges of static electricity.

Microsoft claims it is constantly revising the “guard rails” on its large language models, but Bargury isn’t impressed. “Guard rails aren’t enough because it’s not a solvable problem,” he says.

Security has always been a serious inbuilt fault of Microsoft products. They default to 'open-ness'. The famous hacker Gary McKinnon got himself into trouble because he searched for Microsoft PCs where the default administrator account (name: Administrator, password: none) was not changed on public networks, including NASA and the military. He advised people that the easiest way to protect themselves from intrusion was just to rename the admin account and add a password!

The truth is Microsoft did not want people protecting their own system because that could make access to systems fr puroses Microsoft did not publicly comment on more difficult. But this fact alone speaks volumes about how MIcrosoft views security. 

The idea of the new Recall feature defaulting to being on as opposed to being turned off is, imho, immoral and arguably even criminal.Microsoft claim, of course, that the feature is to help users keep track of their activity, but it is actually a surveillance tool, and the biggest customers for data scraped up by this tool are governments.

I am already aware of how to turn it off even though I will not be upgrading to a Windows 11 PC for some years. I have only recently moved on to Windws 10, like many other ol school computer pros I like to be well behind the bleeding edge. 

It should be a subject of legislation that all devices, be they a humble toaster, or work computer must come locked down during installation and that the user is forced during install to choose passwords and has to take active measures to open up devices to networks and AI rather than research how to lock them down. 

The biggest problem with AI (apat from its innate stupidity) is that it breaks down boundaries we have traditionally and for very good reasons, maintained in the offline world, where information was privileged, and was only shared on a need-to-know basis. Now we’re making everything accessible to anyone and anything that has a network interface.

Rather like The Suckophant, a cartoon monster in the Beatles’ movie Yellow Submarine, AI devours all the other monsters, then its creator (the Beatles,) and eventually the screen itself. In summary, it’s a lethal combination: we’re allowing far more people to do more stupid things far more easily, while exposing far more private information to the bad people.

 

 

 

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