Feb 1 – Amazon Web Services CTO Werner Vogels recently took to social media in order to express his concerns surrounding ChatGPT, the new artificial intelligence technology that has taken the world by storm. Vogel slammed ChatGPT in relation to cyber security. Here’s an excerpt of what he said…

AWS CTO on ChatGPT

“Security has become one of the main drivers of companies migrating to the AWS. However, if you ask ChatGPT, it will tell you the opposite, based on ‘a [supposed] recent report,’ which shows you it is not concerned about the truth, but just putting words together convincingly.”

When on ChatGPT, AWS’ CTO requested for the artificial intelligence-based chatbot to craft a journalistic piece about the impact of cyber crime on the growth of cloud computing, the AI spun up a headline that read “Cyber Crime Takes a Toll on Cloud Computing’s Rapid Growth.” The headline doesn’t make sense.

What else you should know…

Without citing any data points or further evidence, ChatGPT wrote that the rapid growth of cloud computing has attracted cyber criminals who have found ways to target the cloud. “According to a recent report, cyber crime has had a significant impact on the growth of cloud computing…,” mocked Vogels.

“I am so happy that the FUD that old IT companies were using to discredit AWS in the early days was not generated by ChatGPT, as it would have sounded a lot more convincing than ‘who would ever want to rent servers from a bookshop,” wrote Vogels on Twitter.

AWS, Google, Microsoft and ChatGPT

Amazon Web Services is the global market leader in cloud computing, with a run rate of $80 billion. Curiously, ChatGPT is owned by the startup called OpenAI, whose biggest corporate backer is Microsoft, which represents AWS’ most significant cloud computing rival.

Since investing $1 billion in the startup in 2019, Microsoft has formed a close partnership with San Francisco-based OpenAI. Microsoft has received an exclusive license to commercialize the company’s AI technology.

Vice president and global leader of cyber security sales for Google Cloud, Dominick Delfino, recently shared his distain for ChatGPT over social media, saying “In case you think ChatGPT is cool. This is what it’s being used for,” pointing out how researchers from Check Point discovered that it’s being used by cyber criminals to improve and build dangerous malware and ransomware from scratch.

“There needs to be governance in AI to avoid abuse like this!” says Delfino.

ChatGPT’s complicated security impact

In regards to ChatGPT enabling cyber criminals, “ChatGPT lowers the barrier to entry for threat actors with limited programming skills,” said researchers from threat intelligence firm Recorded Future.

At the same time, Accenture security researchers have discovered that ChatGPT can automate some capabilities involved in cyber defense.

For more on ChatGPT and malware, please see CyberTalk.org’s past coverage.

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