CISA chief Jen Easterly warns AI is outpacing US’s ability to regulate it

Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) chief Jen Easterly recently warned that AI may end up being not only one of the most consequential technologies of the era, but the “most powerful weapon of our time.”

Easterly told attendees at the Summit on Modern Conflict and Emerging Threats at Vanderbilt University that generative AI would likely result in an unrestricted flow of training materials and propaganda for purposes ranging from the merely illicit to the terroristic. CyberScoop reported the remarks came just one day after President Joe Biden and other senior White House officials met with CEOs of AI firms to urge them to keep potential harms in mind.

“Imagine a world in the not-too-distant future where how-to guides, AI-generated imagery, auto-generated shopping lists are available for terrorists and for criminals, providing the capability to develop things like cyber weapons, chemical weapons, bio weapons,” Easterly said. “Sounds pretty scary, right? And that’s not even the worst-case scenario.”

Easterly warned, “We really don’t have a lot of time” to institute regulatory frameworks for AI, saying the trade-off between technological advancement and security risk has until recently been “steep but not existential. AI is different.”

The CISA director previously told an audience at the Atlantic Council that AI is comparable in terms of relative technological capability to the nuclear weapons of the 20th century, warning that while there was “no incentive” for governments to launch nukes, there are few legal or regulatory controls on AI.

Easterly pointed to the White House’s proposed “AI bill of rights,” a list of principles for automated systems that includes protection from unsafe systems, human alternatives, and guardrails on data collection–as well as the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s AI risk management framework—as potential precursors of more serious regulation.