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Regulate artificial intelligence to avert cyber arms race

Define an international doctrine for cyberspace skirmishes before they escalate into conventional warfare, urge Mariarosaria Taddeo and Luciano Floridi.
  1. Mariarosaria Taddeo

    1. Mariarosaria Taddeo is a research fellow and deputy director of the Digital Ethics Lab at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, UK; and a Turing fellow of the Alan Turing Institute, London, UK.

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  2. Luciano Floridi

    1. Luciano Floridi is professor of philosophy and ethics of information at the University of Oxford, UK; director of the Digital Ethics Lab at the Oxford Internet Institute; and chair of the Data Ethics Group at the Alan Turing Institute.

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Cyberattacks are becoming more frequent, sophisticated and destructive. Each day in 2017, the United States suffered, on average, more than 4,000 ransomware attacks, which encrypt computer files until the owner pays to release them1. In 2015, the daily average was just 1,000. In May last year, when the WannaCry virus crippled hundreds of IT systems across the UK National Health Service, more than 19,000 appointments were cancelled. A month later, the NotPetya ransomware cost pharmaceutical giant Merck, shipping firm Maersk and logistics company FedEx around US$300 million each. Global damages from cyberattacks totalled $5 billion in 2017 and may reach $6 trillion a year by 2021 (see go.nature.com/2gncsyg).

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Nature 556, 296-298 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-04602-6

References

  1. US FBI. How to Protect Your Networks from Ransomware (FBI, 2017).

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  2. P&S Market Research. Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Cyber Security Market (P&S Market Research, 2017).

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  3. US Defense Science Board. Summer Study on Autonomy (US Department of Defense, 2016).

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  4. Taddeo, M. Phil. Technol. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-017-0290-2 (2017).

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  5. Yang, G.-Z. et al. Sci. Robot. 3, eaar7650 (2018).

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  7. Taddeo, M. Minds Mach. 27, 387–392 (2017).

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