Samsung Bans Internal Use of AI After ChatGPT Source Code Leak
On Monday, Bloomberg reported that Samsung notified staff of a new policy banning employee use of AI tools in response to discovering in April that its engineers had accidentally leaked internal source code by uploading it to ChatGPT.
The company is concerned that once data is transmitted to AI platforms it is then stored on external servers, difficult to retrieve and delete, and is then available to other users, according to the document disclosed to Bloomberg.
Furthermore, last month Samsung conducted an internal survey which revealed that 65% of respondents believe the use of AI tools poses a security risk.
Meanwhile, the company claims to be creating its own internal AI tools for translating and summarizing documents as well as for software development. It’s also working on blocking staff’s ability to upload proprietary information to external services.
Other companies that have either banned or restricted the use of AI tools include JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, and Wells Fargo.
Roy Akerman, Co-Founder & CEO, Rezonate had this comment:
“The wide adoption of AI language models is becoming widely accepted as a means of accelerating delivery of code creation and analysis. Yet, data leakage is most often a by-product of that speed, efficiency, and quality. Developers worldwide are anxious to use these technologies, yet guidance from engineering management has yet to be put in place on the do’s and don’ts of AI usage to ensure data privacy is respected and maintained.
“The aspect of AI consuming all input as source material for others queries presents a black box of uncertainty as to exactly how and where a company’s data would end up and completely upends the tight data security at the heart of most all companies today.
“Blanket restrictions are not a permanent solution and will only limit an organization’s visibility to this problem. Instead, increased control, with education of developers on the cause and effect of using these tools for code reviews, code optimization, debugging and syntax will help harness the technology for the betterment of the organization.”
Clearly there are advantages and benefits to using AI, but there are risks as well. Companies need to weigh those risks so that they aren’t inadvertently creating a situation where AI does more harm than good.
September 7, 2023 at 8:45 am
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