A new partnership between Leonardo and the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) has fast tracked a group of students into the future of AI, by asking them to answer one of the most challenging questions posed by the modern cyber era – can machines think?
It is a question that has been posed for decades. In 1949, Alan Turing created a test (The Turing Test) which sought to identify whether machines can think and exhibit intelligent behaviour.
If the person conducting the test could not reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine would be said to have passed the test. This test played a major role in the philosophy of artificial intelligence and to date, no computer has fully passed the Turing AI test, although there have been strong contenders.
Even though this prospect may still seem far off, UWE Bristol students were nevertheless encouraged to create cyber solutions that were so convincing, that they appeared to answer the question in the affirmative.
The BSc Cyber Security and Digital Forensics final year undergraduate students were split into project teams who engaged with industry, in this case with global security company Leonardo, which has a Cyber Security business based in Bristol. The students were asked to address real world research challenges, including security assurance of autonomous flight control systems, security frameworks for generative AI, secure by design efficacy and vulnerability risk management. (Generative AI refers to systems already in widespread use such as Chat GPT, which generate intelligent responses to questions). Three of the groups mentored by Leonardo, chose to work on autonomous flight control systems, while the remaining group worked on security frameworks for Generative AI. At the end of their projects the students had to pitch their solutions to the industry partners who had mentored their project, with outstanding results.
Following their pitch presentations to Leonardo senior management, UWE Bristol Professor of Cyber Security Phil Legg, who teaches cyber security and digital forensics at UWE said: “We wanted to increase final year students’ industry involvement to help bridge that gap of industry experience. This term we introduced a brand-new course in Cyber Consultancy and this project really acted as a challenging crucible of learning in which they had to face the theoretical and industrial elements of uncertainty and come up with an assured response. I’m incredibly proud of the way they rose to the challenge, their solutions were brilliant and we’re very keen to continue our partnership with Leonardo and other industry partners to keep forging real world settings for their learning and growth.”
“It was fantastic to have representatives from Leonardo in attendance for their final presentations. They included those from the cyber operations teams and threat response teams and they were very impressed with the level of detail and level of research that had gone into the students’ projects.”
Leonardo Managing Cyber Security Consultant Steve Shortman echoed Professor Legg’s enthusiasm for the achievements of the UWE Bristol’s first ever cyber consultancy cohort.
Steve said: “Over an intense period of just 12 weeks, the students have formulated their cyber solutions as you might expect a cyber consultant to, and their presentations which they delivered to us were very convincing. This is a fascinating field to work in and it presents fresh research and challenges each day, so we’re keen for them to consider working in this industry in their future careers. Our congratulations go to the students and UWE Bristol for embedding the students so wholly within our industrial framework and leaving everyone impressed by their ability to respond to a completely new area of technical expertise.I am hoping this project has engaged some of the students enough to apply to join the Leonardo graduate scheme in 2025.”
If you would like to learn more about the Leonardo graduate scheme, please click here.
