Content
Generative AI Security
What is an AI/ML pipeline?
An AI/ML pipeline is a series of structured processes and steps used to develop, deploy, and maintain AI models. The pipeline ensures that each step is executed systematically to achieve the desired outcome.
Steps involve ingesting data, processing it, training a model, and employing the model to make predictions or classifications.
What are the components of the AI/ML pipeline?
Here are the 6 major components of AI/ML pipeline:
Data Collection: data is gathered from various sources, including databases, unstructured data from text documents, images, videos, or sensor data. The quality, integrity and relevance of the data is crucial for building effective AI models.
Data Preprocessing: once the data is collected, it needs to be cleaned and prepared for analysis, which includes deduping, transforming, and organizing data for use in the AI pipeline. This is also a critical place to remove or obfuscate sensitive or PII data.
Model Training: This step involves choosing the different algorithms based on the problem and hand. Data is fed into scripts for the model to learn from, and then the model is fine-tuned to enhance its performance.
Model Testing: The model needs to be thoroughly tested to ensure it performs well on unseen data to verify the model output and it will be compared against actual data to assess the model’s accuracy, robustness and reliability.
Model Deployment: Once the model is trained and evaluated, it's time to deploy it into a production environment. This could involve integrating the model into software applications, APIs, or cloud platforms. The goal is to make the model available to end-users or other systems for real-time predictions
Monitoring and Maintenance: Once deployed, the model's performance should be continuously monitored to ensure it remains accurate and effective. It should be updated with new data as needed to adapt to changing data patterns and maintaining the model's relevance over time.
How can I ensure data security and safety in an AI/ML pipeline?
Preserving data security and privacy should be a top priority for any organization looking to leverage AI. It requires a multi-faceted approach that includes:
- Data Encryption: ensure encryption throughout data’s full lifecycle—at-rest, in-transit, and in-use.
- Data Obfuscation: anonymize sensitive or PII data from any dataset data can possibly make it into the AI pipeline.
- Data Access: only authorized users should be able to see or use data in plain text.
- Data Governance: stay current on data privacy regulations, ensure data privacy is embedded in operations, and commit to ethical business practices.
What are Large Language Models (LLMs)?
Large Language Models (LLMs) are a powerful category of Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology designed to understand and generate human language. LLMs are a subset of Generative AI and can answer open-ended questions, engage in chat interactions, summarize content, translate text, and generate both content and code.
How do Large Language Models (LLMs) work?
For Large language Models (LLMs) to work, they must undergo training on extensive datasets through sophisticated machine learning algorithms to grasp the intricacies and patterns of human language.
What are the benefits of Large Language Models (LLMs)?
Large Language Models (LLMs) can be used across various industries and for numerous use cases: to power chatbots in customer support, help developers generate or debug code, summarize or create new content drafts, and so much more.
What is the data security risks with Large Language Models (LLMs)?
Large Language Models (LLMs) raise significant data security and privacy concerns due to their extensive data collection and processing capabilities. The use of personal data in AI models can enhance their effectiveness but raises privacy concerns and legal issues.
Since data needs to be persistent for computation, the secure storage of data is paramount in mitigating the risks associated with potential data breaches.
Repurposing data for training algorithms is common, yet it may expose sensitive information repeatedly. Data leakage, on the other hand, occurs unintentionally and poses risks when sharing data.
How do I address data security concerns with Large Language Models (LLMs)?
Data at rest should always be encrypted, with the latest NIST-recommended algorithms. Data obfuscation is a good approach to secure PII data used in large language models (LLMs).
Data tokenization through Format Preserving Encryption keeps the format of the dataset, so there is no additional work needed, yet it makes the data portable, private and compliant. This scenario applies when you will not need any AI work on the sensitive data.
Data encryption is as effective as the proper management of the encryption keys lifecycle. Know where your keys are, store them away from data, and apply RBACs and Quorum approvals to prevent tampering with encryption keys.
Is Generative AI (Genai) different than Large Language Models (LLMs)?
In the world of AI/ML people often get confused in answering what is the difference between generative ai and large language models? It is simply:
Generative Artificial Intelligence, or GenAI for short, is artificial intelligence that can generate text, images, videos, or other data using generative models, often in response to input prompts.
Large Language Models (LLMs) are an example of Generative AI (GenAI). Similar to LLMs, GenAI enables organizations to boost productivity, deliver new customer or employee experiences, and innovate new products.
What is Generative AI (Gen AI) security?
Ensuring the security and privacy of data, preventing leaks, and thwarting malicious tampering with the model are critical aspects, much like with large language models (LLMs).
What is prompt engineering?
Prompt engineering is how we communicate with large language model (LLM) and Gen AI systems. It involves how we craft the queries, or prompts, to get a desired response from the GenAI technology. The technique is also used to improve AI-generated content.
What is a prompt injection attack?
Prompt engineering can manipulate AI systems into performing unintended actions or generating harmful outputs. When bad actors use carefully crafted prompts to make the model ignore previous instructions or perform unintended actions, it results in what is known as prompt injection attacks.
What is Large Language Models (LLM) security?
Large Language Models (LLM) Security refers to the practices and technologies implemented to protect large language models from various threats and to ensure they are used responsibly.
This involves multiple layers of security, including data protection, access control, ethical use, and safeguarding against adversarial attacks.