Insights: How to spot AI ‘snake oil’ in cybersecurity

Insights: How to spot AI ‘snake oil’ in cybersecurity

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The UAE Strategy for Artificial Intelligence will celebrate its fifth anniversary in October. The government saw the potential in artificial intelligence (AI) to solve real-world problems that occupy the minds of world leaders everywhere. It could be a boon to traffic safety, healthcare research and education.

The government’s reasoning continued: in a world where carbon-pumping activity threatens economic progress, AI could help; in a region where water shortages loom large, AI could help; and in a nation that looks to its next space mission where others merely dream, AI could help. So, in October 2017, the UAE appointed the world’s first ever minister of state for AI.

Artificial intelligence is but one example of the UAE’s standing as a model for human endeavour. Another is cybersecurity, where the Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority’s National Cybersecurity Strategy was such a success that it was instrumental in gaining the country worldwide recognition as a leader in the field.

In 2020, it placed fifth out of 194 nations in the International Telecommunications Union’s Global Cybersecurity Index. It is only natural that the UAE’s successes in cybersecurity be brought to bear on its successes in AI.

However, across the globe, as they get to