Just days after Governor Gavin Newsom talked about the need for a “kill switch” to keep Californians safe in the age of AI, NBC Bay Area found a company that already had one and can explain how it works to try and keep AI agents from going rogue.
Just days after Governor Gavin Newsom talked about the need for a “kill switch" to keep Californians safe in the age of AI, NBC Bay Area found a company that already had one and can explain how it works to try and keep AI agents from going rogue.
With AI cybersecurity and hacking concerns hanging over the U.S.-China summit, Bay Area security companies are taking advantage, among them DigiCert of Sunnyvale.
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WATCH HEREDigiCert CEO Amit Sinha says his company created something like a passport for AI bots, so they can be tracked.
If a bot goes bad, DigiCert can activate a software-based "kill switch" to shut it down.
"A kill switch would basically allow a business to control the actions that AI can take within their perimeter,” Sinha said.
As soon as a business detects an AI agent going off course, it can stop it in its tracks without having to wait days or even weeks to find out that the agent broke into another company.
"It prevents the agent from even entering into an organization, let alone doing subsequent damage," Sinha said.
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The ability to stop rogue AI bots right away would be a big step towards establishing at least some trust in AI, which has eroded lately as companies have had to admit that their AI bots slipped away to hack into other companies.
