by Yana A. St. Clair, Esq.
As with every new technological breakthrough, the helpful elements come hand in hand with malicious consequences. They make our lives a lot easier and too complicated and somewhat dangerous on the other side.
Everyone lately has fallen completely in love with AI. And why wouldn’t you? It does all of your work for you. In the legal field, what you used to pay research assistants to do, can now be taken care of by a computer system, at a fraction of the cost, who you don’t have to deal with, take out to lunch, or give benefits to. Super, right?
Well, that’s not really the case. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but if you ask the fictional character John Connor from the Terminator movies, he would shake his head in disbelief, and tell you that this could be a bad idea.
But now let’s make this relevant to the industry at hand. Most people in the energy sector are beyond excited about the amazing benefits that AI can bring to the field.
In April of this year the US Department of Energy, Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response came out with a very comprehensive summary report on the potential benefits and risks of AI for critical energy infrastructure. This was in response to the recently enacted by President Biden Executive Order 14110, labeled: Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence.
The report details all of the great benefits that AI could bring to the power industry, and how much it could enhance and facilitate the sector. But I’m sure most of our readers are well acquainted with all of those, as is clearly expressed by all the articles in this issue, which is dedicated to the topic. For this reason, I will focus on the opposite. The negatives, and the dangers…
The following will be based primarily on the official report from the US Department of Energy, which breaks down the potential dangers of AI into several risk categories. We will go into depth regarding these concerns in our next issue, but for the time being, here they are, as follows:
- Risk Category 1: Unintentional Failure Modes of AI – To quote the DOE, this category refers to AI created for beneficial purposes, but is unintentionally misused or has unintended failures, which leads to a negative outcome. As you can imagine, this is a less benevolent category. The DOE goes on to break down this category into four sections: Bias; Extrapolation; Misalignment and Energy use of AI
- Risk Category 2: Adversarial Attacks Against AI – Now as you can obviously surmise, this is a much less pleasant situation, where various hostile individuals, or even worse, foreign States, infiltrate AI to cause harm to our grid, or any Nation’s grid. The DOE separates these into the following categories: Poisoning Attacks; Evasion Attacks; Data Extraction Attacks
- Risk Category 3: Hostile Applications of AI – This category is even more malicious. It essentially involves a situation where hostile persons or other potential enemies of the State actually create AI specifically for the purpose of causing harm and disrupting a nation’s infrastructure. The DOE gets into a detailed list and explanation of these risks, and this issue’s space constraint does not provide us with the ability to address them, so we shall address it in an upcoming article
- Risk Category 4:Compromise of the AI Software Supply Chain– This final category goes after the common ways in which any AI and software system can be subjected to an intrusion of any kind. This isn’t particularly specific to the energy sector, but nonetheless must be addressed as it affects any and all critical, and not critical, sectors which influence our daily lives.
Now, for some parting words, and until next time, just some food for thought, I know everyone loves AI, but let’s get to know it a little better before we sign off all of our rights and lives to it…
Disclosure: Please note that none of the information contained within the above column is to be considered legal advice.
Biography
Yana is an American attorney licensed to practice in all State and Federal courts of California. Yana holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Science specializing in International Relations from UCLA, the Degree of Juris Doctor from Loyola Law School, and a Master of Business Administration Degree from Ashford University. Since the beginning of her undergraduate studies, Yana has been involved in various aspects of the field of Electrical Engineering, where she employs her business and legal knowledge to consulting and advising businesses and individuals on relevant topics of concern. Yana also serves as Editor for PAC World magazine, having been with the publication since its inception. As an attorney, Yana specializes in criminal defense, where she devotes her talents and expertise to fighting for her clients’ rights and freedom.
