AI is here: What do we need to know?
Dr Zincir-Heywood with Diana Nichols Nelson, BRC
Dr Nur Zincir-Heywood is a Distinguished Research Professor, and Associate Dean Research, in the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie.
We invited her to the BRC to educate our members on the topic of AI.
Happy to do so, she gave a little background on what AI is and then talked about the Good, The Bad & The Ugly of AI.
The GOOD (in Healthcare services) includes reduced costs and smart care (think smart watches, etc. for tracking and sharing health data); neuroimaging; drug discovery and testing; precision medicine; clinical trials. One specific example that she discussed was how AI help researchers tackle the origins of dementia through Machine Learning Solutions such as Rapid data Synthesis, Drug Target Prioritization and Pattern Recognition.
The BAD includes Misinformation and Disinformation, Deepfake, Generative AI, Mimicking attacks, Phishing, Profiling (how many social media platforms are you on and what info do you share? And how are they connected?). Did you know that ChatGPT-4 can pass the Turing Test? The human expert cannot identify that ChatGPT-4 is a robot! Note: ChatGPT-4 is a subscription service.
“Don’t click before you think”
Advice from Dr Zincir-Heywood
The UGLY refers to AI attacks: Poisoning, Inference, Evasion, and Extraction and refer to protecting the data and the model.
So, what’s the answer? Education and training; adapting the appropriate technology; trust; accountability; work together - a human expert + AI working as a team.
If you want to learn more, reach out to zincir@cs.dal.ca and check out these interesting links:
Dr Alan Turing,- The Father of Modern Computer Science
Boden, Margaret A. (2016). Ai: Its Nature and Future. Oxford University Press UK
From ChatGPT to ThreatGPT: Impact of Generative AI in Cybersecurity and Privacy
Poisoning attacks and countermeasures in intelligent networks: Status quo and prospects