AI vs. AI: The Battle for Digital Dominance

Discover how AI can be used to protect us from AI threats and ensure a safer digital?future

With fast pace comes great dangers-they are fraudulent use of AI. We have already seen how easily it can turn into a tool for cyber-attacks and spreading misinformation, even bursting into people’s private lives.

So how do we move forward in the face of these threats?

Perhaps the most surprising answer to the question is in using AI as a tool to fight against AI. Its added twist was that no one had foreseen this uprising of robots. But just as much as AI saves lives in new medical research, better education standards, and global warming, it’s also bad news.

Take the case of deepfakes wherealmost completely realistic videos that could be used in fake ways and spread false information, changing public opinion. That same technology that makes us chuckle over some funny video of a cat playing the piano will eventually bring about serious mishaps.

You can almost imagine some dastardly fake video in which a politician says something just outrageously wrong like admitting they like pineapple on something goes viral.

The damage is immense, and it’s hard for an average person to figure out what’s real and what’s not quite, especially when trying to figure out whether that viral video might be a political scandal or just a really bad TikTok dance challenge.

Hackers will be more and more using AI in their attacks; and then more easily and powerfully than a human would ever have thought to apply AI. It’s as if they have a cheat code on the Internet, and we are simply looking to figure out how to play the game.

This challenge to further protection lies in the fact that these old conventional cyber measures are unable to contend with AI-driven attack speeds and sophistication levels.

So what to?do?

One promising path is to turn the tables and use AI to protect us from these very threats. We’ll train AI systems to counter those very threats; as lawbreakers are using AI to upgrade their practices, we can shape AI tools to defend against them. A bit like fighting fire with a flamethrower perhaps not the safest of approaches, but certainly dramatic.

For example, AI is already used in cybersecurity systems. Such a system can trace networks in real-time and then produce knowledge based on the data patterns to hunt any unusual activity.

When a person tries to log in some vulnerabilities, then the AI might be getting such information, so it can respond much faster than any team would have. He is such a security guard who never sleeps. He is always on the lookout for signs of a mess-and honestly, much nicer than that one co-worker who always “just wants to make sure the punch bowl is left intact” in the annual holiday party.

AI could even retaliate against the dissemination of false information itself. Already suggested and underway efforts and employ AI for monitoring the spread of false information online exist. Analysis of these social media-based trends can also alert AI to false information most likely to go viral.

In an era in which it only takes a single tweet to set public opinion racing wildly on a gigantic scale, like that time when your friend’s cat became internet-famous for being somewhat like a potato, the energetic approach is truly worth it's salt.

While AI one day may well be poised to help control it, so too might AI be leveraged in the direction of self-regulation. For example, one might create an AI that could detect and alert other like-minded AI-generated content-whatever the deepfakes or malicious bots might be.

It would be a form of oversight wherein one AI watches another AI for a safer living environment. It would be like the neighborhood watch program, but peering-on neighbors would look much more like tons of ones and zeros looking for trouble.

Of course, the dependency on AI to fight AI itself breeds its headache. We have to be very careful how we design these things. The danger is that an AI will go beyond its limits and start doing things that do not exactly suit our interests;-such as allowing your best friend to access your Netflix account whereby later you realize that he has screened all mushy romance movie films as you were trying to catch up on some serious documentary series.

That is why human oversight must feature in these systems. Now, of course, AI can tunnel through billions of bytes in scant seconds, but there still needs to be a human in the process; after all, it must be worked out within a framework that takes ethical considerations into account and, who knows, to ensure our robots do not decide that coffee is more important than human lives.

Then there’s collaboration. When all those experts in all those different fields come?—?data scientists, ethicists, cybersecurity specialists to name a few?—?we will get a more holistic solution. The interdisciplinary teams will then help us craft AI that protects itself and others from such threats we have agreed on. It’s like building the Avengers but instead of superheroes, it is nerdy tech experts who will code their way out of situations.

A second is the fact that there can be awareness only through talking about AI and its implications. We will, therefore, only better be able to handle those challenges coming along with that type of technology if society enlightens.

Public awareness campaigns, education programs, and discussions within society on how to make use of AI lead in this direction. It should not be possible to let anyone reach such a point where they, in ignorance, unleash a rogue AI who now thinks itself the next big thing since sliced bread.

It’s a fight of knowledge, in essence, we’re all along for the ride, at least as much as the technology itself-the larger our risks grow, the more we must evolve our defenses. Thus, shackled to the very technologies that imperil our society, we will build a safer, stronger future.

This would have to be done with even more caution, responsibility, and awareness. Good actions will make AI for humanity rather than against it.

The future of AI will lie in our hands and how we’ll fight back and design the future of generations yet to come. That will shape this world, and how that unfolds. So let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work, perhaps even splurge on some robot insurance, while we are at it, in case.