Artificial Intelligence (AI) has tremendous potential to change the way we live and work, and businesses are scrambling to understand how they can quickly take advantage of this major milestone in technological innovation. .
Customer service could be transformed, and jobs previously thought to require humans could soon be automated.
But along with the excitement, we also need to understand and act on the implications for online privacy.
AI use cases are on the rise. This is a potentially ubiquitous technology, which means that privacy implications need to be taken very seriously.
AI enables our health by improving security, making us safer, and providing faster and more accurate medical diagnoses. AI and ML are being used for everything from creating content for the web and writing and checking computer code to driving self-driving cars and modeling climate change.
Chatbot services (publicly accessible through apps and web pages), on the other hand, use generative AI to generate human-like responses to questions and prompts.
AI is also big business. The global market for AI-centric applications is expected to be worth more than $150 billion this year, according to IDC1.
But what about privacy issues?
AI models such as chatbots and generative AI rely on vast amounts of training data. The more data an AI system can access, the more accurate its models should be. The problem is that there is little, if any, way to control how the data is retrieved and used in these training models.2. Some AI tools connect directly to the public internet, so data can easily be included.
Then there’s the question of what happens to queries from generative AI tools. Each service has its own policy on how it collects and stores personal data and how it stores query results. Those who use public AI services should be very careful about sharing personal information and sensitive business data. New laws regulate the use of AI. For example, the European Union plans to introduce an AI law by the end of 2023.3. Individuals are also protected to some extent from misuse of their data by the GDPR and other privacy laws.
However, security professionals should pay special attention to sensitive information.
Generative AI tools are already used to create templates for malware attacks, especially phishing and ransomware. Large language models can create attack vectors such as email that are difficult to detect for both security software and human recipients.
As security professionals are a prime target group for cybercriminals and AI tools scour the net for data sources that can compromise an individual’s identity, the more information about an individual is out there, the more Attacks like this can be more effective.
Fortunately, there are steps anyone can take to limit the amount of personal information exposed on the public internet. This is the best way to prevent data from flowing into AI systems in the first place.
Of course, anyone using chatbots or generative AI tools should avoid sharing personal, financial, and medical information, as well as sensitive business data. This includes information about the business and its security measures.
And limiting your own personal digital footprint is realistic. This is where personal data deletion services come into their own.
Services like Incogni help us by contacting hundreds of search engines, websites, social media outlets and data brokers who hold personal data.
It also constantly monitors your online presence, providing a valuable extra layer of security. See and manage your digital footprint with Incogni today.
[1] IDC press releaseGlobal Spending on AI-Centric Systems Projected to Reach $154 Billion in 2023, According to IDC, March 2023 https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS50454123#:~ :text=The%20oncoming%20incorporation %20of%20AI, over%20%24300%20billion%20in%202026.
[2] Politico, Struggle to Control AI, May 2023, https://www.politico.eu/article/washington-eu-trade-and-tech-council-join-forces-to-stop-ai-harms /
[3] European Parliament, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20230601STO93804/eu-ai-act-first-regulation-on-artificial-intelligence
