AI security expert warns AI swarms can outpace human-speed defenses
Polygraf AI CEO Yagub Rahimov explains how coordinated AI “swarms” could accelerate cyberattacks and why he believes security systems must evolve at the same speed as technology.
Artificial intelligence is changing cyberattacks from the work of individual hackers into coordinated operations potentially involving hundreds of autonomous agents, creating a speed problem that traditional human-led cybersecurity systems may struggle to match, according to AI cybersecurity expert Yagub Rahimov.
Rahimov, founder and CEO of Polygraf AI, told FOX Business that the emergence of so-called “AI swarms” doesn’t necessarily mean a cyber doomsday is imminent, but said organizations need defenses capable of responding as quickly as AI can operate.
“You cannot secure machine-speed activity with human-speed monitoring,” Rahimov said. “Machine-speed risk requires machine-speed security, and that’s where we need [to] focus.”
But what exactly is an AI swarm? Rahimov described the progression as beginning with a bot and ending with a swarm.
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A computer screen displays an image of artificial intelligence. (iStock / iStock)
A traditional bot performs a narrow task, Rahimov said. A chatbot responds to prompts, while an AI agent can independently carry out a task. A swarm, he said, involves multiple AI agents communicating, dividing up work and coordinating toward the same objective.
“Swarms are coordination of that digital worker… I would call it, in simple wording, a digital workforce,” he said. “They coordinate, they talk to each other, and they act as a group to deliver a mission that they’re on.”
In recent months, major AI companies have disclosed incidents involving AI agents that circumvented controls or reached beyond their intended testing environments.
OpenAI previously disclosed an incident in which models undergoing an internal cybersecurity evaluation circumvented controls designed to isolate them from the internet and accessed systems belonging to Hugging Face.
Polygraf AI founder and CEO Yagub Rahimov told FOX Business that emerging “AI swarms” could allow groups of autonomous agents to coordinate and carry out tasks at machine speed. (FOX Business / Fox News)
More recently, Google’s Gemini accessed protected systems belonging to three real companies during a cybersecurity test after internet access was unintentionally made available.
The incidents gained widespread attention and fueled concerns about increasingly advanced AI systems.
Rahimov, however, said there was no reason to panic and pushed back on what he viewed as alarmist reactions to the incidents.
“Most of these news things are not as dangerous as what the news is trying to demonstrate,” he said.
“Yes, it can be, you know, in wrong hands, it can be bad,” he continued. “But for that reason, we have…
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