cience-fiction guru William Gibson, who coined the term cyberspace, famously pointed out that the future is already here – it is just not very evenly distributed. We veer from anticipating a new dawn to prepping for the end of days. But the future we want is up to us and it’s time to take a side. Herewith, six digital advances that prove the best (and worst) is ours to control.

1. Beneficial artificial intelligence

Where we are: You can’t move for pundits telling us what artificial intelligence is going to do for us. It is transforming our world, but it has been for the past 50 years. Every smartphone is powered by AI research, giving us information retrieval via voice recognition or apps that spot our friends’ faces in the photos we take.

Where we’re headed: A world fuelled and enhanced by AI is one to look forward to. Autonomous cars will mean efficient and safe transport. Real-time translation buds that will enable you to speak one language and hear another will transform our travel experiences. Despite the cries of alarmists, there is little reason to believe that our AIs are going to “wake up” and decide to do away with us.

2. The datasphere

Where we are: Data changes everything: our personal lives, businesses and public services. One dramatic application is digitally powered precision medicine. Our bodies are constructed according to information encoded in our genes. Understanding how these instructions make proteins, build cells, repair damage and repel viruses is all driven by data.

Where we’re headed: New drugs, therapies and treatments will produce a revolution in the delivery of healthcare. What’s true for health is true for education, leisure, finance and travel. Every aspect of how individuals, corporations and governments function can be more effectively managed with the right application of the right data.

3. New companions

Where we are: They are already in our homes and in our lives, we know them as Alexa and Siri. These intelligent assistants will assume more and more of a role. As they learn from our interests and habits, they will become more informed of the information we need. They will not have any actual interest or awareness – but that won’t matter. We will increasingly treat them as our companions.

Where we’re headed: Humans will come to confide, trust and rely on our new companions. They will support us for better or worse, in our prime and our decline. Powered by AI and abundant data, they may assume the characteristics of those dear or near to you. Imagine your late grandmother or your favourite rock star chatting helpfully in your living room.

4. Unthinking artificial intelligence

Where we are: In the Terminator film series, Skynet, a defence network, suddenly becomes self-aware and launches a full-scale thermonuclear attack to get rid of humans. Nothing of that sort is about to happen. It is not AI we should fear but our own natural stupidity.

Where we’re headed: As we give systems control of our decision-making, we must not abdicate our responsibility. The danger is the unthinking digital system, without proper restraints, that launches an unthinking attack. We need to take great care whenever we take the human out of the decision loop when it comes to matters of life and death. AI systems lack moral sense and the broader contextual judgements of humans. A future of weaponised AI is one to fear.

5. Uncontrolled data analytics

Where we are: The widespread availability of high-quality data will be a boon. But data can be used to corrupt, misdirect and misinform. Recent events around Cambridge Analytica and its use of Facebook data to profile and target particular groups have caused a furore. Data used with the express aim of achieving a desired effect without the knowledge of the subjects themselves should make us very uneasy.

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Where we’re headed: We have examples of data being used to make decisions on everything from prison sentences to credit ratings. The data can and often does encode bias. Courts in the US already use AI software to inform sentencing and the results are mixed. The AI notices the prejudices in its vast database of previous sentences and hands them down again as the usual “right” answer.

Algorithms can make decisions, but they can’t be accountable. Data collected from each of us every day and increasingly in the future can invade our privacy and reveal features of our lives that we ourselves are unaware of. Consumers and citizens should be empowered, not oppressed by data and its analysis.

6. Rampant cyber warfare

Where we are: Every second of every day computer networks around the world are under threat. Hackers and nation states all launch software to attack and subvert our digital systems. We are living in an age of increasingly frenzied but undeclared wars.

Where we’re headed: Because they are in virtual space, we don’t see the physical damage. But one day soon an airport will go dark or there will be a crash of the banking system. Countries, businesses and individuals are engaged in a digital arms race, desperately building new defences in the face of cyber attack. Computing is a dual-use technology. The same innovations that enhance our world can be used for harm. History points the way to a better future. For physical weapons, we have engineered and enforced conventions, treaties and limitations. We urgently need equivalents for our digital world.

Artificial intelligence key stats:

2.3m new jobs created by the AI industry by 2020

£5.4bn amount spent on AI by 2022

1.8m jobs lost as a result of the AI industry by 2020

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Artificial intelligence, or AI, a term that a few decades ago circled around in the realms of sci-fi and fantasy, is a reality today. The most evolved AI of our fantasy tales is often sentient machines scheming to take over the world. We are not there yet, and perhaps reality is far more benign than our imagination.

AI, as we know today, has the potential to provide solutions to many of our real-life problems. In India, which is the world’s fastest growing major economy and has the second largest population in the world, AI can be transformational.

With the publication of a discussion paper on AI by the NITI Aayog recently, the government has not just signalled its priority to this disruptive technology, but also thrown it open to the public for ideas and suggestions.

One of the problems requiring urgent attention, where AI can demonstrably make an impact, is urban infrastructure, and here we have taken the first key steps with Smart Cities Mission. Our scorching pace of urbanisation means India is no longer a nation of villages. Every minute an estimated 30 people are moving out from their village, lock, stock and barrel, to become city dwellers. According to some studies, around 40% of the Indian population will be living in cities by 2030.

The question is: Do we even have the cities to accommodate this gigantic population? Experts say we will need at least 500 new cities to house our urban citizens or risk turning the existing ones into unmanageable slums.

Already, our metropolises that were planned at a time when resources were abundant and urban living was a luxury not necessity, are bursting at the seams with their hopelessly inadequate infrastructure and lack of planning. And while we have been extremely reluctant urbanisers, the late start has given us some significant advantages, one of which is the use of technology to leapfrog stages of development.

Across the world, cities are using technologies to become smarter, in the sense they are using it to manage key functions horizontally—city services, transport, communications, water, smart grids, public safety, education and health—all through a digitally-managed central command room. The government has embarked on an ambitious plan to turn 99 of our urban clusters into smart cities with an expected investment of `2.04 lakh crore. The strategic components of these smart cities include city improvement, renewal and extension, in addition to a pan-city initiative in which smart solutions are applied covering large parts of the city. Many have already begun implementing projects involving smart command and control centre, smart roads, solar rooftops, intelligent transport systems, smart parks, etc.

While these ‘brownfield’ cities are being retrofitted, we have ‘greenfield’ cities being built up from scratch under the Industrial Corridor programme. Creating a brand new smart city requires a comprehensive, long-range plan to direct the future growth and development of the entire area. For these greenfield cities, some of which are bigger in size than the country of Singapore, we don’t just have physical master plan, but, for the first time, it is dovetailed with a digital master plan to manage, operate and control all citywide utilities through one command and control centre.

The challenges of developing brownfield cities are different from greenfield cities, but common to both is the understanding that technology, especially emerging ones like AI and Internet of Things (IoT), will be the cornerstone of realising India’s aspirations of building the ‘intelligent’ cities of tomorrow. The basic premise of AI is the development of intelligent machines that are capable of high-level cognitive processes like thinking, perceiving, learning, problem-solving and decision-making. You provide the system with lots of data and get actionable intelligence in return; for example, in the way Netflix or YouTube gives you suggestions based on your browsing patterns.

Cities of today are sitting on goldmine of useful data, churning petabytes of it daily through video cameras, sensors, traffic management systems, smart meters, vehicles and mobile phones. AI has the potential to make sense of the humongous data and use the intelligence to increase performance of cities, optimise operational costs and resources, and enable sound citizen engagement.

For a smart city operation, the basic ICT functions include collection of data, say using sensors, CCTVs, smart energy meters and even social media engines, for real-time human activity. This would be relayed through communication systems like fibre optics, 3G/LTE, internet, Bluetooth. The data would then need to be analysed using AI and other tools, and the intelligence generated used to direct decisions and actions.

How can AI be potentially used in smart cities? The answer is, in countless ways. For instance, for management of traffic that has become the bane of many cities today—AI can understand real-time traffic, calculate permutations in a flash, process data at local level of traffic junctions, and even turn traffic lights off and on intelligently.

Public safety and security is enhanced by AI through sophisticated surveillance technologies, accident pattern monitoring, linking crime databases, combating gang violence and so on. AI can help with crowd management, estimation of size, predicting behaviour, tracking objects and enabling rapid response to incidents. It can be invaluable for managing utilities and optimal use of resources such as distributed energy and water. AI can lead to smarter homes with resources-saving applications and easing domestic workloads. It can greatly ease citizen services delivery, processing of files and applications, through chatbots for responding to enquiries with smart conversations. These bots can free up operational staff at help centres to address more complicated and time-sensitive queries.

An inevitable outcome of digitisation is cyber-attack and cyber-crime, targeting sensitive and personal data, which again AI can help manage to some extent by detecting vulnerabilities and taking remedial measures automatically. AI can similarly assist in numerous other city functions to improve public accessibility, including maintenance of outdoor spaces, lighting, parking management, learning, education, skill development and so on.

Technology can be a great enabler in achieving our primary goals of a smart city—protecting citizens and planning for the future; building a sustainable, resilient infrastructure that optimises resource use and ensures essential needs of all are met; and enhancing the quality of life of citizens, enabling individuals to improve their health and productivity.

But while we do have the advantages of access to a rapidly evolving technology ecosystem, there are other challenges we need to overcome. One of these is coordination between stakeholders—residents, administrators and operators. With AI, data sharing and a well-defined activity chain will be essential for efficiency. Large migrant populations in cities may skew data, so we will need to adjust a number of variables. For example, apart from actual ingress of people, increasing business activities, infrastructure expansion easing connectivity, community exchange must also be analysed.

A more technical issue with data-reliant decision-making is the accuracy of the data itself. We need to bring in a robust standardisation system for accurate data inputs. For example, in detecting wearers of safety helmets among bike riders without proper standards for helmets, AI will count as positive even those that are not approved by law. Also, ICT infrastructure requires uninterrupted network, power and regular maintenance. Difficulties remain with relation to costs, getting people with domain expertise and end-to-end solutions for this level of work.

The Smart City model has never been implemented on this scale in any part of the world. Many systems have been adopted and implemented in silos, but all the functions of the city have never been integrated right from scratch. It is an exciting new challenge for India; we could be creating new models for future cities and setting benchmarks for urban infrastructure.

The government has steered this mission in the right direction; the budget allocation for Digital India—the government’s umbrella initiative to promote AI, machine learning, 3D printing and other technologies—was almost doubled to `3,073 crore ($477 million) in 2018. Roping in the private sector, especially Indian companies that have a solid technological expertise, to shape the overall AI strategy would be a good move.

A standardised ICT infrastructure for seamless integration—state and countrywide—is essential. Start-up companies may be given access to data so they can create business models around use cases, helping both government and start-ups. What is important this time is we make a start somewhere. In many ways, public engagement is also critical for this mission since our talent, skills, creativity and ideas are largely invested with our people.

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hroughout the history of computers and cyber-attacks, security has been a lifelong war between cybersecurity experts and hackers.  When security experts plugged holes and thought of better ways to fortify their systems and information, the perpetrators came up with innovative ways to breach these systems. Exploiting one small security loophole is all it takes to defeat the whole system.

This is a vicious cycle that will continue well into the future. Fraudsters will continue to find new ways to send those annoying phishing emails, and hackers will continue to find ways to penetrate networks to steal your banking information.

Most of these vulnerabilities and cyber-attacks are well-known. They follow certain patterns and sequences but even a well-trained cyber security expert may not be able to defend against sophisticated attacks. This is where Artificial Intelligence comes into play.

A well designed AI defense system can go through years of attack logs to analyze and learn different attack methods and strategies. It can then form a baseline on normal user behavior, and analyze future behavior to mitigate anomalies. It can also do so much faster than the experts. This can save a ton of money and manual labor that security professionals pour into dealing with hundreds of cyber-attacks every day. In addition to detecting threats and attacks, AI systems can also be used to improve defense strategies and security policies. Hence, the value of AI in cybersecurity is beyond doubt.

So, the better question to ask is “Can we afford to not integrate Artificial Intelligence into cyber security?”

The Fraud as a System (FAAS) cyber-crime market facilitates and encourages better ways to break into security systems. It is a competitive market where hackers showcase their attack software and methods of conducting cyber-attacks, and put it up for sale. Naturally this forces perpetrators to build their own intelligent systems in future, if they haven’t done already. The malicious AI systems will constantly probe a secure system, learn from each probe and find holes to exploit in the future. An AI system just needs to be successful only once to defeat a secure system.

With increasing computing power, massive cache of open-source and for-sale data, and efficient storage facilities, it is becoming increasingly cheaper for anyone with the know-how to create an AI system. Let us not forget that nation-states and their spy agencies compound the threat scale by sponsoring sophisticated attacks themselves. Malicious AI systems are inevitable. Therefore, it is not a matter of comfort to use AI in cyber security, but an essence.

If companies do not use AI as part of their cyber security strategy, then their traditional security methods will be overrun by malicious AI systems. So, one cannot afford to dismiss AI.

What measures can we take?

There is no bullet-proof approach to this but there are few ways to enhance security in an AI-integrated ecosystem. What matters is “resilience” to attacks. Resilience depends on having necessary measures to prevent, detect and respond to attacks. Security experts should share all relevant data on attacks and malicious codes with others. This can then be fed to their own AI systems. The more data an AI system has, more intelligent it becomes, and increases resilience to attacks.

Another way is for the International Standards Organization (ISO) to make integrating AI to defense systems a standard operating procedure across the globe. This enables a collective approach.

As the world is moving towards an increasingly automated and autonomous ecosystem, it is important for companies to use AI to augment their security measures. These measures are significant to survive in a world where AI algorithms are essentially battling each other for dominance.

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