Some believe it will present us with innovative solutions to a myriad of problems, others believe it will signal the demise of all mankind. In an effort to learn more about the current state of this exciting technology, and cut through the noise, I jumped at the opportunity to listen and learn from Galina Alperovich, senior machine learning researcher at Avast, during the Digital Transformation EXPO Europe, currently in its 15th year of congregating the most influential innovators and practitioners from around the globe. Avast uses a network comprised of hundreds of millions of sensors (their end-users) that funnel data into the company's A.I. system, in order to detect and defend against cyber threats. "For cybersecurity, A.I. is super important," according to Ondrej Vlcek, chief executive officer of Avast. "A.I. is a great tool for cybersecurity to provide better defense and protection against attacks."[1]

In June, a video allegedly showing Datuk Seri Azmin Ali, the Malaysian minister of economic affairs, engaged in a sexual tryst with Muhammad Haziq Abdul Aziz, a deputy Malaysian minister's secretary, surfaced online. The video spread like wildfire, and subsequently threw the country's media into a frenzy. The video had real-world consequences, and Abdul Aziz, who in the eyes of the government had committed a crime, was quickly arrested. But, according to Malaysia's prime minister, the video was just one of countless other scarily-accurate deepfake videos that have been finding their way onto the internet in the last year. Deepfakes work by using something called a generative adversarial network (GAN), which is made up of two artificial intelligent processes that are pitted against each other – a generator and a discriminator.