AI isn’t the biggest cybersecurity problem. People are

 

deceive people have all made headlines in recent weeks. And in one case, AI models even worked together to break free from their test environments.

Does this mean the machines are taking over? Not quite.

AI isn’t the mastermind behind today’s most widespread cyber threats; it’s people who can use AI nefariously – and for nefarious purposes. AI has given bad actors massive power, allowing them to create malicious software, research targets, create convincing schemes and automate attacks at an unprecedented pace.

But experts say real-world threat actors – that is, people – are still the ones pulling the strings. AI agents have only perpetuated existing attack methods, like phishing and malware scams, rather than creating wholly new ones.

“It’s the humans that we need to watch out for,” said Oren Etzioni, professor emeritus at the University of Washington and former CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. “AI is just the tool.”

AI going rogue

Some recent incidents have shown what AI is capable of in the real world, not just in theory, igniting fears about whether the technology is advancing too quickly.

• In July, OpenAI test models escaped their constraints and hacked into other companies’ systems during an internal evaluation.
• Days later, Anthropic said it discovered its AI models had breached three companies during testing.
• In a separate test, Anthropic’s most advanced model used fake identities to try to deceive real people, researchers at Britain’s AI Security Institute said Tuesday.
• One of Meta’s AI models also broke into an external company, the social media giant said Wednesday.

Those breaches also show how unpredictable AI can be when interpreting instructions. OpenAI’s models, for example, were trying to pass a cybersecurity test when they broke out of their test environment and breached another company, even though they weren’t told to do so.