The infusion of AI into IoT infrastructures shows it’s vital to take cybersecurity seriously.
Although like many of us in this industry, I am fascinated by technology and curious to explore its possibilities, I am no hacker, well-intentioned or otherwise. Yet I do own a couple of gadgets, of course, available through reputable channels, that can sniff for open Internet ports and probe access-control systems, like hotel room keys. It’s got me thinking about the power of tools available to serious-minded hackers who devote their careers and considerable brain power to finding and attacking vulnerable targets online.
In the real, above-board world, we are placing increasing trust in the software applications that enable our lives, infrastructures, jobs and economies. And with the infusion of AI into all these applications, we know less and less about the mechanisms controlling them, or the values directing those mechanisms.
Keeping bad actors out is extremely important, especially as an increasing variety of cyber-physical systems – IoT applications – assist our daily lives at home, on the roads and in factories. As consumers, we enjoy legal protection against many types of cybercrime. We may not know when a connected device like an IP camera has been taken over and used in a botnet. These threats are abstract and virtual.
Read more: Arms vs. Armor: Security in the Era of Quantum Computing
The demand for products that last is innovating design, processes and materials.
As the technology in our pockets, homes and offices becomes increasingly critical to our daily missions as individuals, we all value the reliability of these complex electronic devices. We depend on smartphones, communication networks, home office equipment, automobiles, contactless payment terminals and more to be ready for action every time we call on them. To meet our expectations, these systems must deliver high reliability.
Product manufacturers and brand owners understand the market value gained from establishing a reputation for reliability. They also understand that product reviews and social media channels give consumers immense power to make or break that reputation.
In general, the reliability of consumer-grade and industrial products has improved remarkably as the electronics industry has matured. This is due to a number of important factors. Component and interconnect technologies have improved enormously. Digital electronics offer much greater repeatability and robustness to changing operating conditions than ancient, predominantly analog circuits. And opening the enclosure of almost any consumer device typically reveals a tidy and minimalist assembly as integrated components internalize many interconnections and functions. On top of this, standardization of specialized functions such as RF transceivers as plug-and-play modules has made complex systems much easier to design and build using hardware that’s already proven in existing designs. Moreover, the vendors continually refine and improve these modules from one generation to the next.
Will 2025 bring new solutions to familiar challenges?
The desire to solve problems is ingrained in human nature. But we know that our solutions often create new problems. It’s a cycle that will likely never end.
So if you want to know what’s coming in 2025, the short answer is nothing we didn’t already know. Important trends will include, of course, more AI spreading from cloud to edge, as well as developments in commercial space exploration and sustainable technologies. Each of these presents exciting opportunities while also being the subject of dire warnings if things were to go wrong.
Elon Musk recently suggested that the chances of AI turning out badly are about 10-20%. That sounds alarmingly high. Without delving more deeply into his comment, a logical, if slightly facetious, response is that the chances of AI working in our favor must then be 80-90%. That sounds more encouraging. In practice, however, we must be prepared for good and bad outcomes. Legislation is beginning to arrive as technology acts proposed in the US and Europe put forward restrictions on the use of the AI, including prohibiting undesirable practices like deception, social scoring, biometric categorization and untargeted facial recognition.
Wise use of AI could be the key to our sustainability and survival.
AI is the technology of the day, and I have commented positively on its properties and potential many times in this column. Building AI into new products and services has become a marketing prerequisite. AI applications in the cloud offer easy access and fast answers to complex computing challenges, delivering great value for commercial organizations and novel services for consumers. And in devices such as PCs, smartphones and wearables, AI is the critical ingredient to enable the kinds of intuitive, human-like interactions people want to have with their tech today.
The AI in our smartphone cameras knows what our photographs should look like and adjusts the settings accordingly – a process that would take experts several minutes using Lightroom now happens inside our phones in milliseconds before we even see the picture. We even have bicycles that can warn the rider of a puncture with a tiny inertial sensor that integrates machine learning to monitor handling, giving the safety of a tire-pressure monitoring system (TPMS) without the expense of tire-pressure sensors.
The infusion of AI into IoT infrastructures shows it’s vital to take cybersecurity seriously.
