Highlights from NABS+ Community Event
NABS+ welcomed a cross-sector community of 70 delegates from 27 academic, government, and industry partners to discuss the evolving nature of risk to public safety. Couched in the recognition that growing digital behavioural data provides both opportunity for greater insight but also a source of vulnerability, we discussed national security and defence areas related to online harms that target vulnerable groups, disinformation, and behavioural aspects of artificial intelligence (AI).
Online Harms focused on the growing threat posed by com groups (exploitative, transnational online networks where young members gain status through acts of violence, cybercrime, and the generation of extreme content). Longer report on Online Harms available here.
Challenging Disinformation delved into issues around resilience, deterrence, and emerging challenges that might be posed by the new world order.
Behavioural Aspects of AI explored the behavioural, psychological, and organisational implications of AI, with a focus on human-AI interaction and associated concerns around trust, accountability and bias; and criminal misuse of AI in reshaping policy and security needs.
These are complex challenges that have the potential to interact and exacerbate each other. Emerging technologies, increases in digital behavioural and social data, and indeed advances in how we analyse these data, offer promise. However, to optimise on this promise, we need to find solutions to ethical and secure sharing of real-world and multimodal data, to continue to move away from siloed working and towards cross-sector and cross-discipline teams; and to equip our community with analytical tools that will prove most useful. NABS+ is committed to addressing these challenges and welcomes the community to join us.