Anshuman Singh, Senior Director, Product Management - Barracuda Networks

Opines Anshuman Singh, Senior Director, Product Management - Barracuda Networks, “Artificial Intelligence or more appropriately Machine Learning techniques are just tools. They can be used for good and for bad. One of the most dangerous uses has come out as ‘Deep Fake’, which is a technique for making fake videos which appear real and are very difficult to differentiate from real ones. Most advanced bots mimic human behaviour including how humans move the mouse pointer. ML will enable bad bots to mimic the human behaviour much more closely just like the Deep Fake for videos.”

ML can often be used to build out fake information that would be difficult to differentiate from real data which would lead to all associated issues where the sanctity of a document comes into question. In such situations mechanisms, as Anshuman suggests, Blockchain could be utilized to ensure that there is a chain of evidence on the changes of important pieces of information like financial records, land records and so on. 

“Numerous computing methods of AI, including Neural Networks, Machine Learning, Data Mining, pattern recognition, and more are being leveraged in cyber-crime detection and prevention. During the usage, or prediction phase, no machine learning system is 100% accurate. So it is important that systems build in mechanisms to check for false positives or false negatives. For example, ML is being deployed in banks to predict if a borrower will pay back the loan they are taking on. If we don’t put human checks into the loop there will be multiple scenarios where a deserving candidates do not get the loan because of false positive/negative,” explains Anshuman.