OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) – It’s being used in health care, manufacturing and finance among other industries, but also poses increasing dangers.
Technology and innovation are changing how law enforcement works to keep us safe.
“We realize we can’t just sort of stand at our border keeping crime out of our country,” said Eugene Kowel, FBI special agent in charge of the Omaha Field Office. “The way crime is now, the way it’s evolved, our goal is to take cases from local to global, work our way back to where there’s cartel leaders. Whether it’s the fraudsters in another country that are targeting our senior citizens, whether it’s cyber criminals hacking into our ATMs, whatever the issue is.”
FBI adjusts to worldwide threat
Kowel said criminals are increasingly using emerging technology and the bureau is adjusting to the threat on a worldwide basis.
Kowel said the FBI deploys agents and analysts to 70 countries around the world to thwart the threat of criminals using AI technology.
“AI is becoming a high-risk factor in the criminal arena. Listen, there’s many wonderful things that AI will bring. But criminals can also use this too. They can use this to expand our network of cyber intrusions, right, they can use AI tools to deploy malicious cyber tools across a wide variety of people,” Kowel said.
Kowel said the agency has a history of shifting with technological changes.
“The way we view artificial intelligence is not too different from the way we view the internet, or phones. It’s a vector. It’s not a crime problem itself, it’s a vector that criminals can use to expand their reach,” he said.
Global operations expand to meet threat
And since criminals committing cybercrimes are many times active outside our national borders, the FBI is expanding operations to meet that threat. It’s something the agency is continually working to counter.
“If we want to have an impact in our community here, we have to have a robust footprint overseas,” Kowel said.
Experts tell us to always exercise caution and be suspicious of unsolicited information coming our way.
Kowel said things may not always be as they seem.
“There’s a lot more things that criminals can spoof, so now if you’re talking to someone viewing an image,” he said. “Even participating in video conversation, you may not have assurance that the person you’re talking to is really the person you think they are, so this is going to be a serious problem for our community.”
Special Agent Kowel said countering criminal AI activity is a problem future FBI agents will have to continually address.
Expert calls for oversight agency
In an article by Forbes, AI expert Gary Marcus said automatically generated disinformation and deepfakes are his biggest concerns.
He added that it could influence future elections and proposes the formation of an AI oversight agency in the near future.
He believes one option is prescreening new technology, and forcing companies to show how the benefits of AI use outweighs the risks.
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