Supported by Housing Technology, CHAI (cyber hygiene in AI-enabled domestic life, project-chai.org) is a £2.4 million research project funded by the UK EPSRC and led by the Internet of Things and Security Centre (ISEC) at the University of Greenwich in collaboration with the University of Reading, University College London, University of Bristol and and Queen Mary University of London.
As a follow-up to the €1.5 million EU project, ‘Cocoon: Emotional psychology meets cyber security” (2016-2020), which measured and established how users of IoT devices react to cyber security risks (see housing-technology.com/research), CHAI examines the particular threats introduced by AI. CHAI addresses the challenge of figuring out how to best help users protect themselves against the security risks they will face in a world supported by AI – watch the video here: bit.ly/chai-introduction-video.
In AI-enabled domestic life, new cyber-hygiene measures will be needed so CHAI will be evaluating the specific threats posed by AI technologies. To accomplish these aims, CHAI will:
- Identify theoretically and experimentally the AI-borne attack surface in domestic life;
- Isolate the psychological, social, neurological and digital literacy factors of users that influence individual susceptibility to AI risks;
- Evaluate the different approaches of AI ‘explain-ability’ in terms of their influence on an individual’s AI cyber-risk perception;
- Formulate and solve the optimisation problem of the allocation of cyber-hygiene measures against their benefits and costs;
- Develop a personalised cyber-hygiene training programme for users to protect themselves.
Dr Etienne Roesch, associate professor of cognitive science, University of Reading, said, “We aim to interact closely with all stakeholders in the housing sector so please contact us via bit.ly/chai-get-in-touch if you’d like to be involved. We will then build on these collaborations to ensure that our results aren’t just confined to academic outputs but also pragmatic ideas and use cases for the social housing sector.”
