Attacking Artificial Intelligence: AI's Security Vulnerability and What Policymakers Can Do About It

Artificial intelligence systems can be attacked. The methods underpinning the state-of-the-art artificial intelligence systems are systematically vulnerable to a new type of cybersecurity attack called an "artificial intelligence attack." Using this attack, adversaries can manipulate these systems in order to alter their behavior to serve a malicious end goal. As artificial intelligence systems are further integrated into critical components of society, these artificial intelligence attacks represent an emerging and systematic vulnerability with the potential to have significant effects on the security of the country. These "AI attacks" are fundamentally different from traditional cyberattacks. Unlike traditional cyberattacks that are caused by "bugs" or human mistakes in code, AI attacks are enabled by inherent limitations in the underlying AI algorithms that currently cannot be fixed. Further, AI attacks fundamentally expand the set of entities that can be used to execute ...