Feds Moving Cautiously on AI/ML Apps for Cybersecurity, Panelists Say – MeriTalk

While many – if not most – Federal agencies are taking at least preliminary steps towards embracing advanced technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), they are moving with a degree of justifiable caution when it comes to relying on those technologies as part of their cybersecurity defenses, government tech officials said today at an event presented by Fortinet. The measured pace of AI and ML for security purposes is tied to the crucial nature of the cybersecurity mission, panelists said. Frank Konieczny, Chief Technology Officer at the U.S. Air Force, said that ML tech in particular requires establishing baselines for access and security to be sure that adversaries are not already impacting relevant data. And, he said, resulting data outputs from ML applications can still be somewhat opaque, and need to be examined more closely by human operators. "You ask, 'how did it figure that one out,'" he said, adding that process results in "a lot of time … by a human looking at [the result] again, which we don't want to do."