IGF 2021 WS #271 Youth Talk about IoT Security and AI misuse

Time
Tuesday, 7th December, 2021 (16:00 UTC) - Tuesday, 7th December, 2021 (17:30 UTC)
Room
Conference Room 4

Organizer 1: Nicolas Fiumarelli, Youth IGF Uruguay
Organizer 2: Herman Ramos, Internet Society IGF Youth Ambassador
Organizer 3: Harimino Lalatiana Rakotondrainibe, i RENALA ( Research and Education Network for Academic Learning Activities)
Organizer 4: Sávyo Vinícius de Morais, Federal Institute of Education, Science, and Technology of the Rio Grande do Norte State (IFRN)
Organizer 5: Juliana Novaes, ARTICLE 19

Speaker 1: Ihita Gangavarapu, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
Speaker 2: Oarabile Mudongo, Civil Society, African Group
Speaker 3: Nicolas Fiumarelli, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Speaker 4: Sávyo Vinícius de Morais, Government, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)

Moderator

Herman Ramos, Technical Community, African Group

Online Moderator

Juliana Novaes, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)

Rapporteur

Harimino Lalatiana Rakotondrainibe, Technical Community, African Group

Format

Break-out Group Discussions - Flexible Seating - 90 Min

Policy Question(s)

Cybersecurity practices and mechanisms: What are the good cybersecurity practices and international mechanisms that already exist? Where do those mechanisms fall short and what can be done to strengthen the security and to reinforce the trust?
International standards: How should international standards address the different requirements and preferences of governments and citizens in different countries?

Additional Policy Questions Information: Security Solutions for Technological development of IoT devices and AI application: What international/regional standards and good practices exist? Which gaps currently exist in the governance of Internet of Things (IoT) and AI applications that may be in need of improvement? Which security requirements and concerns must be addressed? Which best practices to ensure development of security solutions to the IoT by design? What role do young people play in order to strengthen security and to reinforce trust? Ensuring the Security and Privacy of Data: Which stakeholders must be involved? How to determine which stakeholder responds to what part? How to articulate roles in order for an effective coordination of actions or activities? What can young people do to ensure that governance of IoT and AI includes users centred? Which tools can be used to empower young people on how to be protected about data breach, practical misuse of AI algorithms?

Virtual interactions have changed the way we communicate on a daily basis. The number of applications and interactions has been increasing in the past years, and because of Covid 19 the number has increased significantly.The same matters go with IoT devices specially taking into consideration the digital revolution and the development of smart cities. The main issue this workshop aims to address is how security threats, data breach, practical misuse of algorithms and lack of International/national standards related the technological development of IoT devices and AI application.

The development of this technology was to facilitate and revolutionize the digital space, but is becoming a threat rather than a solution. The exclusion of young people who are consumers and are the most exposed to this technology, in the discussion and decision making has been compromising the adoption and regulation of these innovations. This session intends to address these issues, and at the same time provide awareness and capacity building to the participants (especially young people) about the use of this technology, and how to become active in the standardization discussions at the international and national level. This will also provide awareness on the use of the multistakeholder model as a solution in order to engage different people, stakeholders on the same vision or goal.

SDGs

5.b
9.1
9.b
9.c
16.6
16.7
17.16
17.8

Targets: The world is becoming more and more dependent on technology. The inclusion of Artificial Intelligence and IoT will affect the Internet Ecosystem. In order to provide and sustain implementation and design of this technology, it is important to tackle and provide awareness about some security risk and provide solutions and standards in order to regulate specially young people, as they are a primary user of this technology. The session has links with SDG target 5.b which enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women. Because we aim to empower a conscious use and participation of people in technology development, discussion and use. The session also links with the target 16.6 which focuses on the Development of an effective, accountable and transparent institutions at all levels, target 17.16 that enhances the global partnership for sustainable development and target 16.7 that ensures responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making at all levels. With the participation of different stakeholders in the discussion we promote the multistakeholder model, as all stakeholders have a crucial role to play in sustainable development of technology that leverages the benefits and provides solutions to threats. All decisions must be taken into consideration with different opinions and different perspectives. Also the session aims to continue the promotion of technologies such IoT and AI, special in the era of virtual interactions. Take this into consideration, the session supports the development and adoption of technology, targeting the 9.b and 9c sustainable development goals.

Description:

The technological development of the last few years has raised the usage of smart devices, which connects sensors and actuators to the Internet (turning it into Internet of Things) and allows the automation of tasks with the support of Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms. This has opened doors for many opportunities in different sectors, and has increased the number of interactions in the virtual space. Although these benefits, it also represents high risk for the whole Internet ecosystem, specially because of the wider variety of new applications and contexts where these new technologies are inserted, increasing the possibility of more undetected threats, data breach and many other issues where the IoT and AI that can damage public trust in the technologies.

Moreover, the end-users’ concern with these issues goes beyond the IoT applications. With the possibility of merging the data collected from smart things and social media, for example, the AI algorithms can succeed in more precise inferences about individuals or communities, potentializing the risks regarding the misuse of AI. Therefore, this turns more critical with the young people, who are more exposed to the first steps of these AI and IoT technologies, making our voice needed for a better management of security issues of IoT and misuse of AI algorithms. Increasing in this way the voices for more awareness of vulnerabilities and resilience among young people and others cyberspace uses from different parts of the world. The objective of the session is to invite young people to participate and discuss the need for standardization of IoT and regulation of the usage of Al applications in order to protect the users. This will be achieved by identifying key security, privacy and trust challenges for IoT and AI as well as provide indications on what solutions (policy and/or technical) can be put in place to address those challenges.

Expected Outcomes

This session will engage the youth community in order to provide a broader approach to the current topic. The expected outcome is to increase the participation of young people in the discussion related to trust, security of IoT devices and standardization of AI applications at local, national, regional and international level.

This session aims to provide capacity building to the participants, specially young people in order to participate in the policy-making process to provide solutions for new cybersecurity threats, strengthen the capabilities of the future technological developments, and in this way influence the future of technology adoption.

Another outcome of this session is the publication of the main concerns of the youth community regarding the security of IoT and the misuse of AI. Therefore, the session will be divided in two breakout groups, one for AI and one for IoT, where the youth community will list the five main concerns of the youth community regarding the group topic. Our intention with this document is to provide a source for consultation and knowledge where participants will be able to use the session outputs to create a resource for them and others who are researching this prevalent topic.

The session will be hybrid to ensure that all attendees can participate on equal footing. The organizers are prepared to ensure the best possible experience for online and on-site attendees. Since some members of organizers will be on-site and others on-line this will ensure that the communication during the session is effective and interactive.

The speakers were selected after an evaluation of their contribution on the topic of the session. The session starts with a five minutes introduction from the on-site Moderator. In the sequence, the speakers will have an opportunity to make a five minutes presentation to give an update on the topic according to their region of action. Then we will have a 40 minutes exchange conversation between the speakers, attendees and moderators. This session includes two break out rooms where the topic will be separated into IoT and AI in order to discuss more deeply about each topic and engage all participants, since every contribution is important and relevant. After that, we will again join the breakout groups and highlight the main concerns from the youth community over both AI and IoT.

The session is constituted with a Moderator on-site that will be responsible to manage the session and the physical attendees, gathering contributions and sharing them with the virtual attendees and the online Moderators. The Moderator on-site will make sure that the engagement and communication between on-site and online participants is strong and will effectively allow attendees to be part of the real-time conversation. The session is also constituted by two (2) Online Moderators that will be responsible to monitor the chat, questions and answer box, any attendees who would like to speak or contribute, and also the Breakout Rooms. The Moderators will make sure to encourage attendees to ask questions, share their experiences, and collaborate.

Online Participation

Usage of IGF Official Tool.

Key Takeaways (* deadline 2 hours after session)

The majority of participants who take part in the Mentimeter thought that the best approach to establish meaningful public participation in the development of national AI policies in Africa is to develop a common ethical and human-centered basis for AI. There is a need to ensure that AI is not biased because of the over-representation of certain factors in the training datasets and extrapolation of what is true of individuals to other groups.

To address the issue of IoT security, participants agree in the majority that there is a need for IoT security standards as in this way, despite the gap of digital skills, users still have the first layer of protection. IoT should also be more accessible to end-users by promoting education on these emerging technologies.

Call to Action (* deadline 2 hours after session)

There is a need for inclusivity in the development of AI and IoT, and young people should take action and be involved especially in standardization for an inclusive and robust standard.

Session Report (* deadline 26 October) - click on the ? symbol for instructions

The purpose of this session is to discuss AI and IoT, both in their usage, through a youth perspective. AI and IoT can be used together with AI being the brain that computes the data, and IoT the sensors that gather the data, they can also be found in one device when the computational capacity of the IoT is high enough to also run the AI algorithm which will analyze the data.

 

  • AI can be used for the public good and make our life simpler, however, there are issues and concerns that need to be addressed: the intersectionality between trust and security, and privacy; the lack of digitals and imbalance especially in developing countries, the transparency, and explainability of AI algorithm in Machine learning to avoid bias based on wrong data.

 

  • Regarding the IoT, the major concerns are security, privacy and reliability, and fragmented standards. Security because the device itself can be compromised due to malware and because the IoT devices can be used for bad purposes. However, securing the IoT is also a challenge as it needs some resources such as storage which is not always available due to cost constraints. Secondly, the IoT has a cloud-based operation, which means that all end-users data is sent to the cloud, and operation with the IoT is not always reliable.