What Could Singularity Mean To Security Innovation?
The Singularity is the technological creation of smarter-than-human intelligence. It’s serious business with serious potential impacts on our lives. If you think I am being sensationalist then this article on the global risk of singularity may also help puts its power into perspective.
What could singularity mean to security innovation? If we are truly at the dawn of an age where man can create technology that in turn itself can produce technology that is smarter than the humans who set it loose, what can we expect?
Just think about the ramifications of some things that are heavily reliant on the biggest and brightest brains on the planet today; incidentally the same people whose work may become marginalized tomorrow. Think about cryptographic algorithms and source code reviews, vulnerability fuzzers, intrusion and fraud detection and even risk modeling. Any such advances will of course have the potential to be used in positive and negative ways. It’s the stuff that will make sci-fi a reality!
I do hope the security community at large keeps it’s eyes on the advances being made before the bad guys brew up ways to harness singularity in digital warfare.
September 11, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Funny, I was going to blog the same thing, but different question. The real question in my mind is “What does security mean to singularity?” I was watching “I, Robot” the other day, and the most unrealistic thing to me, the one “this would never happen in the real word” deal-breaker wasn’t Will Smith flying through the air firing pistols, or cars that drive themselves, or any of that crap. It was the following thought:
“We’ll never be able to secure that sort of computing infrastructure”.
Security is arguably the second or third most significant feature for the singularity crowd. Here’s why:
No species will survive until it is reasonably capable of withstanding the forces of the predators in it’s ecosystem. We may be the creator, but we are also the predator (and possibly, as the horror movies suggest, the prey). We cannot create any assurances around abusing or being abused by AI until we can secure computing infrastructure.
FWIW- the key to creating a solution might lie in a subj. near and dear to my heart: the use of Bayesian networks to solve complex IRM issues. See this economist article:
http://economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5354696&no_na_tran=1
September 11, 2007 at 2:08 pm
However, since security is really a social problem - and we have not solved the basic issues like “how to be nice and fair to each other and just get along” there are going to be criminals; and antisocial; predatory behavior.
Perhaps the solution to security social problem is in Buddhism? Maybe it is our attachments to things that make us insecure? How can you rob the man who has nothing?
September 11, 2007 at 3:02 pm
More like attachment to self. The animal predator attacks prey in order to exist or further existence. In fact, the attachment to things might simply be a manner of attracting mates - furthering self.
The detachment of self for some other focus is not incongruent to Buddhism or Christianity (I’m not versed in other religions well enough to discuss, unfortunately).
So maybe the key to the singularity is embedding “religion” into the AI?
September 11, 2007 at 3:03 pm
More like attachment to self. The animal predator attacks prey in order to exist or further existence. In fact, the attachment to things might simply be a manner of attracting mates - furthering self.
The detachment of self for some other focus is not incongruent to Buddhism or Christianity (I’m not versed in other religions well enough to discuss, unfortunately).
So maybe the key to the singularity is embedding “religion” into the AI? Are Isomov’s “three laws” essentially religion for the singularity?
September 16, 2007 at 12:19 pm
I dont think I can say too much about this because of previous work, and I’m not sure if ex-collegues are still looking into this area, but I think Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow_hierarchy_of_needs) and applying them to computer security is potentially a step forward in the “security AI” landscape.
September 19, 2007 at 2:59 pm
The Anime “Ghost in the Shell” has a plot which involves a singularity. very interesting stuff:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell