Is It Safe To Use An AI Chatbot?

AI is the future of humanity. It is a revolutionary and innovative invention of humans. We can find AI platforms that can perform a variety of functions.

These AI-powered chatbots have the potential to change how humans do their work and make it more efficient, faster and correct with the rise in the use of chatbots which are powered by AI.

We have come across a different set of challenges, which is privacy and data protection. We talk about the problems and challenges that we will have to face if we want to keep enjoying the benefits of AI.

In this blog, we will discuss this question: is it safe to use an AI chatbot?

To answer this question, we will talk about all the things and precautions that one must take to be safe while enjoying the benefits of AI chatbots or AI in general.

What Are The Risks Of Using AI Chatbots?

To answer your question whether it is safe to use an AI chatbot or not. We will discuss the major problems and concerns which are raised by people and experts.

Here, we have a list of a few reasons or points of concern that are creating resistance to creating a safe and sound environment for people to use Artificial Intelligence powered chatbots.

• Collection Of Personal Information

We have seen this happen quite often in our everyday life. When we install an application on our smartphone it asks for many permissions. Sometimes a simple weather app or a gaming app requires access to contact, gallery, camera, etc.

This is similar to what happens when we log in to a chatbot, they start collecting data, sometimes without the consent of the user. Even if these chatbots take permission to get access to your data. In many cases, it is seen that they take more data than what they ask for.

• Vulnerable To Hacking

Hacking is defined as an unethical act where a person uses devices like computers, tablets, smartphones or other networks to steal and/or damage information or corrupt the systems, gather information about users and their databases or derange or disturb the normal flow of data-based activity.

Many of these chatbot’s security is easy to break, all this can create a serious problem when it comes into the wrong hands. Sometimes in the business, rival companies pay these unethical hackers to hack into their rival’s database and corrupt the system. A chatbot can be an easy way to do so.

• Biassed Data

An AI chatbot needs to be trained with data to be functional enough to work with. The data which is used to train the NLP model can be biassed. There are many chances that the chatbot might not be biassed in the first go but if it continues to talk with a certain amount of people who are biassed on things like gender, colour, race, sexuality, etc.

When an AI chatbot interacts with biassed people. It may observe and learn from their biassed behaviour. As a model is programmed to learn from its user, there is no way to delete something from its memory.

So the biasedness persists which may lead to the generation of racist, sexist, or offending comments or replies from the AI chatbot itself.

• Negative Impact On Emotional And Social Behaviour

Let’s continue from the previous point when an AI generates a biassed comment and it is read by a human. This comment goes into the mind of people and seeps into the normal conversation.

A sentence which was generated by AI in a virtual world travels into the real world and all this has the potential to create dispute and disruption in society.

• Accountability

All the answers, content or replies which are given by these AI chatbots are not held to be accountable. As the responses are not created by any human. They can not be blamed and the company that created them does not take any responsibility for their response.

How to keep your data safe from AI Chatbots?

Prevention is better than cure. This is an age-old saying which has aged like a fine wine. In older times, this was used in terms of health and now this saying is relevant in terms of modern technology.

It is high time to protect our data and keep it secure from unethical hacker and third parties who share our data with other companies for their profit. Sounds wrong? Because it is. Though it is not illegal to buy from them.

But many times, the data people buy from these platforms is acquired through the wrong means like stealing information from a different company or apps.

As chatbots are trending, people tend to spend a lot of time talking to them and as the conversations continue the chatbot learns more about their life and their tone. These chatbots get more human-like and out of their habit. Sometimes users give away their information and this information gets stored in the memory of these AI chatbots which can be easy prey to hackers.

There are a few things that a person can do to keep their data safe.

• Avoid sharing personal information

When we are using AI chatbots it is important to remember that we should not share our personal information with them. For example: if you want the AI to create a resume for you, then you don’t have to give your real name, address, or even your email ID or phone number.

You can just ask for the chatbot to create a resume with these skills, and this many years of experience.

• Use child safely

If you are a parent and your child is using chatbots. It is recommended to turn child safety on. This will make sure that you or the parent is in control of the things that the child will see or read. Not only will the child get a safe experience while exploring but the parents and guardians will have peace of mind.

• Report issues

If you are using a platform and notice something suspicious, don’t ignore it and contact the platform provider for further inquiry. Sometimes it might be a phishing attempt which is made to acquire the user data and sensitive information.

• Verify the information

After you get the answer to your question or query it is important to recheck the facts and numbers as the data on which this AI-powered Machine Learning model is trained on the data which was present at the time of training or when it got an update. This means that the data can be old and might not be factually correct.

Conclusion

In this blog, we discussed whether it is safe to use an AI chatbot or not. In the beginning, we talked about how important it is to keep your data safe and from what.

In the end, we talked about a few simple tricks that can keep your data safe from unethical activities.