EAGER: SaTC AI-Cybersecurity: Faking It: Facilitating Public Awareness of Cybersecurity Issues in AI

公众对人工智能（AI）技术缺乏深刻的理解，这既是对国家安全的威胁，也是开发网络安全教育和研究新方法的机会。该项目旨在开发和支持一系列公开的人工智能挑战赛，旨在促进公众对人工智能技术和网络安全的理解。所有挑战都将作为大规模数据收集平台，帮助研究人员更好地了解人工智能系统的可信度和可解释性。项目计划包括创建课程计划和同时设计的挑战，以扩大对人工智能中网络安全问题的理解，并为K-12和高等教育中对人工智能和网络安全感兴趣的学生提供一个入口。总的来说，项目团队希望为正在进行的开发和管理免费在线课程的努力做出贡献，并扩大规模，以促进公众对人工智能的认识。由于人工智能和机器学习的高度跨学科性质，在人工智能和网络安全的交叉点上，迫切需要将研究，教育和劳动力发展工作联系起来，以及人工智能技术的快速发展和采用。该项目将通过以下研究问题来解决这些紧迫的挑战：首先，个人如何识别值得信赖的人工智能系统和输出？其次，人工智能/网络安全概念如何与当前的教育标准保持一致？最后，如何进一步提高公众对人工智能的理解和信任？为了回答这些问题，该项目将在网络安全和人工智能的交叉点开发脚手架挑战，名为“Deeperfakes”和“P0150 N”。该项目团队将与非营利的人工智能教育项目合作，专门研究深度伪造和人工智能在网络安全劳动力中的作用。Deeperfakes挑战将要求参与者验证一系列人工智能生成的图像和媒体，解释他们接受或拒绝各种媒体作为真实的或捏造的理由。同样，P0150 N挑战将让学生对抗简单的AI系统，这些系统可以检测拒绝服务攻击。这将使学生能够实验毒害AI的机制，并成功地进行攻击。这些挑战还将作为数据收集工具，为人工智能和网络安全研究提供大型开放数据集。该数据集将为人工智能和网络安全研究人员提供有关人们如何将“伪造的”算法媒体解读为真实的或捏造的信息。该项目得到了安全和值得信赖的网络空间（SaTC）计划的特别倡议的支持，以促进网络安全，人工智能和教育领域之间新的，以前未探索的合作。SATC计划与联邦网络安全研究和发展战略计划和国家隐私研究战略保持一致，以保护和维护网络系统日益增长的社会和经济效益，同时确保安全和隐私。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The lack of a strong public understanding of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies represents both a threat to national security and an opportunity for the development of new approaches to cybersecurity education and research. The project intends to develop and support a series of publicly accessible AI challenge competitions aimed at facilitating the public’s understanding of AI technologies and cybersecurity. All challenges will additionally serve as large-scale data collection platforms, assisting researchers in better understanding the trustworthiness and interpretability of AI systems. Project plans include creating lesson plans and challenges designed simultaneously to broaden understanding of cybersecurity issues in AI and provide an on-ramp for students interested in AI and cybersecurity across K-12 and higher education. Overall, the project team hopes to contribute to and scale ongoing efforts to develop and administer freely available online curricula that fosters public awareness of AI.There is a clear and urgent need to connect research, education, and workforce development efforts at the intersection of AI and cybersecurity due to the highly interdisciplinary nature of AI and machine learning challenges, as well as the rapid development and adoption of AI technologies. This project will address these urgent challenges through the following research questions: First, how do individuals identify trustworthy AI systems and outputs? Second, how do AI/Cybersecurity concepts align with current educational standards? Last, how can public understanding and trust of AI be enhanced further? To answer these questions, the project will develop scaffolded challenges at the intersection of cybersecurity and AI entitled “Deeperfakes” and “P0150N”. The project team will work with the non-profit AI Education Project, working specifically to include modules on deep fakes and the role of AI in the cybersecurity workforce. The Deeperfakes challenges will ask participants to verify a series of AI-generated images and media, explaining their reasoning for either accepting or rejecting various media as real or fabricated. Similarly, the P0150N challenges will pit students against simple AI systems modeling those that detect denial of service attacks. This will allow students to experiment with mechanisms to poison the AI and successfully carry out an attack. The challenges will also serve as data collection tools and produce a large, open dataset for AI and cybersecurity research. This dataset will provide AI and cybersecurity researchers with information on how people read “faked” algorithmic media as real or fabricated. This project is supported by a special initiative of the Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program to foster new, previously unexplored, collaborations between the fields of cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and education. The SaTC program aligns with the Federal Cybersecurity Research and Development Strategic Plan and the National Privacy Research Strategy to protect and preserve the growing social and economic benefits of cyber systems while ensuring security and privacy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.