We live in a time of rapid technological change, where nearly every aspect of our lives now relies on devices that compute and connect. The resulting exponential increase in the use of cyber-physical systems has transformed industry, government, and commerce; what's more, the speed of innovation shows no signs of slowing down, particularly as the revolution in artificial intelligence (AI) stands to transform daily life even further through increasingly powerful tools for data analysis, prediction, security, and automation.1 Like past waves of extreme innovation, as this one crests, debate over ethical usage and privacy controls are likely to proliferate. So far, the intersection of AI and society has brought its own unique set of ethical challenges, some of which have been anticipated and discussed for many years, while others are just beginning to come to light. For example, academics and science fiction authors alike have long pondered the ethical implications of hyper-intelligent machines, but it's only recently that we've seen real-world problems start to surface, like social bias in automated decision-making tools, or the ethical choices made by self-driving cars.2, 5 During the past two decades, the security community has increasingly turned to AI and the power of machine learning (ML) to reap many technological benefits, but those advances have forced security practitioners to navigate a proportional number of risks and ethical dilemmas along the way. As the leader in the development of AI and ML for cybersecurity, BlackBerry Cylance is at the heart of the debate and is passionate about advancing the use of AI for good.

The Defense Department's artificial intelligence strategy, released in February, calls for the use of standardized processes in areas such as data, testing and evaluation, and cybersecurity. Now, the DOD is starting to make that a reality. The Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center plans to work with the National Security Agency, U.S. Cyber Command and numerous DOD cybersecurity vendors to standardize data collection across the department, JAIC chief Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan said earlier this month, as Nextgov reports. Speaking earlier this month at the Billington CyberSecurity Summit in Washington, D.C., Shanahan discussed how the DOD wants to create a consistent way to curate, share and store cybersecurity data from across the Pentagon's entire IT environment. Doing so will make it to easier to deploy AI-powered cybersecurity programs, he said.

The Royal Bank of Canada is to invest $2 million into an Israeli-based university spin off to support the development of AI-based cybersecurity techniques.