AI can 'disproportionately' help defend against cybersecurity threats, Google CEO Sundar Pichai says

Munich, GERMANY — Rapid developments in artificial intelligence could help strengthen defenses against security threats in cyber space, according to Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

Amid growing concerns about the potentially nefarious uses of AI, Pichai said that the intelligence tools could help governments and companies speed up the detection of — and response to — threats from hostile actors.

"We are right to be worried about the impact on cybersecurity. But AI, I think actually, counterintuitively, strengthens our defense on cybersecurity," Pichai told delegates at Munich Security Conference at the end of last week.

Cybersecurity attacks have been growing in volume and sophistication as malicious actors increasingly use them as a way to exert power and extort money.

Cyberattacks cost the global economy an estimated $8 trillion in 2023 — a sum that is set to rise to $10.5 trillion by 2025, according to cyber research firm Cybersecurity Ventures.

A January report from Britain's National Cyber Security Centre — part of GCHQ, the country's intelligence agency — said that AI would only increase those threats, lowering the barriers to entry for cyber hackers and enabling more malicious cyber activity, including ransomware attacks.

However, Pichai said that AI was also lowering the time needed for defenders to detect attacks and react against them. He said this would reduce what's known as a the defenders' dilemma, whereby cyberhackers have to be successful just once to a system whereas a defender has to be successful every time in order to protect it.

"AI disproportionately helps the people defending because you're getting a tool which can impact it at scale versus the people who are trying to exploit," he said.

"So, in some ways, we