Chatbots can write texts and program software with artificial intelligence. This should make it easier for hackers to attack companies and private individuals, says Fraunhofer computer scientist Claudia Eckert.
Chatbots like ChatGPT that work with artificial intelligence are disrupting the working world and can take over many tasks that people are currently doing. They write texts, answer questions, and can even program software. But how reliable are these programs? And how safe are you? “ChatGPT brings with it major security problems,” says Claudia Eckert, computer science professor at the Technical University of Munich and head of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied and Integrated Security in the podcast “The hour zero”. With programs like that of the US company OpenAI, both hacker software could be written and phishing campaigns to spy on login data could be started.
Overall, however, Eckert is convinced that ChatGPT and other applications will also have a lot of positive effects. “You can be quickly introduced to something using this software,” says the professor, who also sits on the federal government’s National Cyber Security Council. In addition, she can contribute “to being able to use qualified specialists for more complex tasks and to letting the AI do the simple things”. “We also have a shortage of skilled workers in IT. That raises the question of how well such an AI can also program software.”
At her institute, Eckert also deals with the question of which companies benefit from the use of AI programs and what that means for Europe. “Open AI has been given a lot of money to bring this to the level we are at now. It was very resource intensive,” she says. “And I don’t see a single company in Europe that would spend so much money to push this forward.” However, companies in Germany and other European countries could train the software with previously unused amounts of data and thus participate in the boom. “We could go to areas that are of great importance for Europe. For example, data from industry,” says Eckert.
