Impact of AI Technology Proliferation on Internet Security

This conference presentation examines the multifaceted impact of artificial intelligence (AI) proliferation on internet security, cybersecurity practices, software engineering, and digital sovereignty. It considers both the defensive capabilities enabled by AI technologies and the emerging security risks associated with their widespread adoption. The presentation discusses how AI-based solutions can improve cyberattack detection, threat analysis, incident response, and vulnerability identification. At the same time, it highlights the growing potential for malicious applications, including automated malware generation, phishing, deepfakes, social engineering, and disinformation. Particular attention is devoted to security vulnerabilities in AI-driven and agentic systems, including prompt injection, jailbreaking, training data poisoning, goal hijacking, and context manipulation. The analysis addresses the risks associated with excessive system privileges, persistent access to external tools, non-deterministic behavior, and dependencies on untrusted information sources. Security mitigation approaches include static and dynamic application security testing, the principle of least privilege, zero-trust architectures, sandboxed execution, and input/output validation. The presentation also explores the implications of AI-assisted software development, emphasizing the necessity of comprehensive code review, testing, and validation. It identifies potential challenges associated with vibe coding, cognitive debt, declining opportunities for junior developers, and the erosion of organizational knowledge and technical expertise. Broader societal and regulatory considerations include digital sovereignty, technological dependencies, open-source alternatives, responsible AI governance, and emerging European initiatives supporting technological autonomy. The presentation concludes that artificial intelligence can become a strategic asset for cybersecurity when AI models are developed using high-quality data, deployed within appropriate security frameworks, and subjected to effective human oversight and governance.