The Impacts of Generative Artificial Intelligence (ai) In Knowledge Discovery and Generation For Cyber Defense

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies have the potential to improve the efficiency, productivity, and accuracy in knowledge discovery and generation. Knowledge discovery through penetration testing (pentesting) is a critical step in cyber defense to learn and manage security vulnerabilities. Inspired by the knowledge principles and defense strategies from Sun Tzu’s classic work The Art of War, this research explores the role and moderating effects of generative AI and its limitations in security knowledge discovery for cyber defense. The study focuses on the strategies of discovering and knowing the cybersecurity vulnerabilities of oneself and one’s opponents, which may be enhanced by generative AI and Large Language Model solutions such as ChatGPT. The proposed AI-moderated knowledge discovery model for cyber defense is tested and illustrated with prompts and output from the interactive ChatGPT tool trained with security data from virtual network simulations for penetration testing. AI solutions such as LLM-based ChatGPT are still evolving with limitations and challenges for applications. This study will present and discuss the positive impacts as well as limitations and challenges of generative AI in pentesting for security knowledge discovery for cyber defense.