AI can’t prevent itself from being a victim to cyber attacks right now.

New technologies bring with them new opportunities — and new threats. As we enter the new year, many eyes are on the transformative potential of artificial intelligence (AI). Some of those eyes may belong to bad actors looking to take advantage of the attack vectors endemic to new generative AI systems. This, as the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on Thursday (Jan. 4) released a “Trustworthy and Responsible AI” report identifying the four types of cyberattacks that can manipulate the behavior of AI systems, as well as key mitigation strategies and their limitations. The government agency has been charged with developing domestic guidelines for the evaluation of AI models and red-teaming; facilitating the development of consensus-based standards; and providing testing environments for the evaluation of AI systems, among other duties. NIST has found that AI systems are increasingly vulnerable to attacks from bad actors that can evade security and even prompt data leaks. “Despite the significant progress AI and machine learning have made, these technologies are vulnerable to attacks that can cause spectacular failures with dire consequences,” NIST computer scientist Apostol Vassilev, one of the publication’s authors, said. “There are theoretical problems with securing AI algorithms that simply haven’t been solved yet. If anyone says differently, they are selling snake oil.”