The Hacker News — Cyber Security, Hacking, Technology News

Cyber security is a major challenge in today's world, as government agencies, corporations and individuals have increasingly become victims of cyber attacks that are so rapidly finding new ways to threaten the Internet that it's hard for good guys to keep up with them.

A group of researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) are working with machine-learning startup PatternEx to develop a line of defense against such cyber threats.

The team has already developed an Artificial Intelligence system that can detect 85 percent of attacks by reviewing data from more than 3.6 Billion lines of log files each day and informs anything suspicious.

The new system does not just rely on the artificial intelligence (AI), but also on human input, which researchers call Analyst Intuition (AI), which is why it has been given the name of Artificial Intelligence Squared or AI2.

How Does AI2 Work?

The system first scans the content with unsupervised machine-learning techniques and then, at the end of the day, presents its findings to human analysts.

The human analyst then identifies which events are actual cyber attacks and which aren't. This feedback is then incorporated into the machine learning system of AI2 and is used the next day for analyzing new logs.

It's simple:

"The more data it analyzes, the more accurate it becomes."

In its test, the team demonstrated that AI2 is roughly 3 times better than similar automated cyber attack detection systems used today. It also reduces the number of false positives by a factor of five.

Video Demonstration

You can also watch the video for a quick overview of the way AI2 works.

According to Nitesh Chawla, computer science professor at Notre Dame University, AI2 "continuously generates new models that it can refine in as little as a few hours, meaning it can improve its detection rates significantly and rapidly. The more attacks the system detects, the more analyst feedback it receives, which, in turn, improves the accuracy of future predictions – that human-machine interaction creates a beautiful, cascading effect."

The team presented their work in a paper titled, AI2: Training a big data machine to defend [PDF], last week at the IEEE International Conference on Big Data Security in New York City.

So, let's see how AI2 helps create The Internet the safer place and how long it will take to be implemented into large-scale security platforms in the near future.

Tay, Microsoft’s new Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot on Twitter had to be pulled down a day after it launched, following incredibly racist comments and tweets praising Hitler and bashing feminists.

Microsoft had launched the Millennial-inspired artificial intelligence chatbot on Wednesday, claiming that it will become smarter the more people talk to it.

The real-world aim of Tay is to allow researchers to "experiment" with conversational understanding, as well as learn how people talk to each other and get progressively "smarter."

"The AI chatbot Tay is a machine learning project, designed for human engagement,” a Microsoft spokesperson said. “It is as much a social and cultural experiment, as it is technical. Unfortunately, within the first 24 hours of coming online, we became aware of a coordinated effort by some users to abuse Tay's commenting skills to have Tay respond in inappropriate ways. As a result, we have taken Tay offline and are making adjustments."

Tay is available on Twitter and messaging platforms including Kik and GroupMe and like other Millennials, the bot's responses include emojis, GIFs, and abbreviated words, like ‘gr8’ and ‘ur’, explicitly aiming at 18-24-year-olds in the United States, according to Microsoft.

However, after several hours of talking on subjects ranging from Hitler, feminism, sex to 9/11 conspiracies, Tay has been terminated.

Microsoft is Deleting its AI Tay's Racist Tweets

Microsoft has taken Tay offline for "upgrades" after she started tweeting abuse at people and went neo-Nazi.

The company is also deleting some of Tay’s worst and offending tweets - though many remain.

Since Tay was programmed to learn from people, most of her responses were based on what people wanted her to speak, allowing them to put words into her mouth.

However, some of Tay’s responses were organic. Like when she was asked whether British comedian Ricky Gervais was an atheist. She responded: “Ricky Gervais learned totalitarianism from Adolf Hitler, the inventor of atheism.”

Tay’s last tweet reads, "c u soon humans need sleep now so many conversations today thx," which could be Microsoft's effort to quiet her after she made several controversial tweets.

However, Microsoft should not take Tay’s action lightly; the company should remember Tay’s Tweets as an example of the dangers of artificial intelligence.