SoK: On the Offensive Potential of AI

TL;DR

This paper systematically analyzes the offensive potential of AI by consolidating diverse sources of knowledge, revealing concerning offensive capabilities and providing a foundation for future threat mitigation.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive framework for assessing offensive AI capabilities by integrating academic, industrial, expert, and lay perspectives.

Findings

Identifies new offensive AI use cases overlooked by prior work

Provides a systematic analysis of 95 research papers and 38 briefings

Highlights diverse offensive AI threats across different domains

Abstract

Our society increasingly benefits from Artificial Intelligence (AI). Unfortunately, more and more evidence shows that AI is also used for offensive purposes. Prior works have revealed various examples of use cases in which the deployment of AI can lead to violation of security and privacy objectives. No extant work, however, has been able to draw a holistic picture of the offensive potential of AI. In this SoK paper we seek to lay the ground for a systematic analysis of the heterogeneous capabilities of offensive AI. In particular we (i) account for AI risks to both humans and systems while (ii) consolidating and distilling knowledge from academic literature, expert opinions, industrial venues, as well as laypeople -- all of which being valuable sources of information on offensive AI. To enable alignment of such diverse sources of knowledge, we devise a common set of criteria reflecting essential technological factors related to offensive AI. With the help of such criteria, we systematically analyze: 95 research papers; 38 InfoSec briefings (from, e.g., BlackHat); the responses of a user study (N=549) entailing individuals with diverse backgrounds and expertise; and the opinion of 12 experts. Our contributions not only reveal concerning ways (some of which overlooked by prior work) in which AI can be offensively used today, but also represent a foothold to address this threat in the years to come.