Artificial intelligence (AI) will pain a “whole swathe” of the UK economy before ultimately providing a net benefit, the chief technology officer of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has said.
The greatest under-appreciated AI-driven cyber threat on the horizon is models learning to find weak spots in digital spheres, Ollie Whitehouse added.
Companies that cannot effectively use AI for cyber defence will “feel the brunt” of models revealing these vulnerabilities – and this will be “quite a painful correction”, he said at a cyber security start-up event at the National Theatre, central London, on Thursday.
Meanwhile, the UK’s AI Security Institute (AISI) is focusing on the danger of advance AI creating “chemical and biological threats, cyber capabilities and autonomous systems that cause real widespread harm”, attendees heard.
The CTO at NCSC, the UK’s cyber security authority, was asked on a panel for the “most under-appreciated AI-driven cyber threat on the horizon that we’re not preparing for today”.
Mr Whitehouse told the event hosted by Harmonic Security: “It is the one where AI gets very effective at surfacing what our vulnerability truly is, and us simply not having the capacity to be able to triage and respond to that.
“At the moment, there is… this beauty in us not knowing the true extent of that and being able to quantify it – that is going to rapidly change.
“And then when we do know the true level of our vulnerability across digital states, across software, we are going to be left with some really hard decisions.”
This threatens “good corporate governance, future profits and other wellbeing in the UK”, he said.
NCSC staff are “AI optimists”, he told the room, “but I think the journey between where we are today and that sunny upland is going to be rocky and uneven.
“There is definitely going to be the risk of the haves who are able to employ AI for effective cyber defence, but there’s going to be a whole swathe of the economy who are unable to, and are going to feel the brunt and the implications of that in quite a painful correction.
“But we will net out in a far better situation”.
Ben Dewar-Powell, the recently-appointed chief information security officer (CISO) at AISI, said: “At the institute we’re focused on the most serious emerging risks from advanced AI, so things like chemical and biological threats, cyber capabilities and autonomous systems that cause real widespread harm.”
Last year the institute found that models can produce expert-level knowledge about biology and chemistry, with some providing answers equivalent to PhD-level experts. These could be used for positive or harmful purposes, it said.
AISI, which is part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, prioritises what “could cause severe damage”, what is “uniquely enabled by cutting-edge AI capabilities”, and “where Government-backed research actually adds value that others can’t provide”, Mr Dewar-Powell said.
“My take on the cyber piece is it’s really the automation of the entire kill chain, so not just bits and pieces at every stage running at pace.
“So campaigns that have taken weeks can take hours running parallel, and completely change the economics.”
A cyber kill chain outlines the stages an attacker must successfully complete to achieve an operation goal.
The comments came after Alastair Paterson, chief executive and co-founder of Harmonic Security, said the UK “cannot afford to rely on other nations for the technologies that protect our infrastructure… our technology, our economy, really our way of life, but we are right now”.
A raft of businesses have been hit by major cyber attacks in recent months, including British car maker Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), high street retailer Marks and Spencer and nursery group Kido Schools.
Mr Paterson referenced JLR and said the attack cost taxpayers £1.5 billion in a loan guarantee.
“Pretty much every week or every month we see the headlines here that just underline how important this sector is”, he said.
However Britain is being “outpaced and out-competed all the time” by other nations, notably Israel, he said.
“Israel has this incredible ecosystem that really turns their (cyber start-up) founders into serial winners, right? They go back, they help each other out again and again. And they built an incredible technology sector there, specifically around cyber security.”
He added: “At the same time, the geopolitical environment around the UK is shifting pretty fast right now… you’ve got, obviously, the rise of China; you’ve got a really belligerent Russia that is expansionist right now (and) have their shadow war going on; and then unfortunately the US is more inward-looking than it’s been before as well.”
