Yearly Archives: 2024

I. Introduction

Thank you for that kind introduction, Neil [Strauss, VP and Senior Credit Officer, Moody’s Investors Service], and thank you for inviting me to speak with you and your colleagues at Moody’s here today.

We are living through a transformation, as the world shifts from analog to digital. Economies, markets, commercial enterprises, and governments are becoming more data-driven and technology-dependent. Companies increasingly are becoming more intertwined with technology, restructuring their operations and businesses accordingly. What is clear is that technology continues to offer the promise of a more modern world with interconnected economies and communication and financial systems.

Now the technologies of artificial intelligence are being added into this transformation. AI has the potential to accelerate the diagnosis of disease, help combat climate change and streamline manufacturing processes. Most large companies already use AI in some form in their operations and financial reporting. It helps enhance efficiency and accuracy, and boosts productivity.

But real perils exist, too. Generative AI models, which create new data in response to queries, can hallucinate or make up content. AI can accelerate the spread of disinformation and the erosion of privacy. It presents risks to cybersecurity, as well.

To many of us in this room today, it may seem like “déjà vu all over again” as Yogi Berra famously quipped … because these are some of the same risk-reward tradeoffs we faced through earlier stages of the move from analog to digital. And, at the same time, it’s exponentially different in its breadth and speed of change.

Over the next thirty minutes or so, I’d like to share my thoughts on the current state of cybersecurity and how AI is affecting the threat and response environment, in particular. I’ll also touch on public policy challenges AI presents to cybersecurity and how governments and regulators are responding. Global cooperation remains essential.

READ MORE »