While peer-reviewed papers provide the formal, validated foundation of AI security research, conferences are the living, breathing frontier. Presentations, workshops, and live demos offer a view into what’s happening right now—the practical exploits, the nascent tools, and the unconventional ideas that haven’t yet been distilled into a formal publication.
The Value Beyond the Paper
As an AI red teamer, treating conference materials as a primary intelligence source is non-negotiable. The value extends far beyond the final PDF of a paper. You gain access to a much richer set of information that directly informs your operational tactics.
- Early Access to Novel Techniques: Researchers often present their work months before it’s officially published. This is your chance to get ahead of the curve on new attack vectors, model evasion strategies, or data poisoning methods.
- Live Demonstrations and Tool Releases: A presentation can show an attack in action, revealing nuances and practical steps that a paper cannot convey. Many groundbreaking open-source tools for AI security are first announced and demonstrated at major security conferences.
- Workshop and Village Insights: Specialized workshops (e.g., at NeurIPS) or “villages” (e.g., the AI Village at DEF CON) provide deep dives into niche topics. These are hotbeds for highly specific, hands-on knowledge on topics like attacking LLMs or securing autonomous systems.
- The “Hallway Track”: While not a formal material, the discussions and informal presentations that happen between scheduled talks are invaluable. Following key researchers and attendees on social media during a conference can provide a stream of these insights.
Key Conferences for the AI Red Teamer
Your focus should span both the traditional cybersecurity world and the core machine learning community. The intersection of these two fields is where the most relevant AI red teaming content emerges. Below is a curated list of essential venues to monitor.
| Conference | Primary Focus | Relevance to AI Red Teaming |
|---|---|---|
| DEF CON / Black Hat USA | Offensive Cybersecurity & Hacking | The epicenter for practical exploits and tool releases. The DEF CON AI Village is a must-watch for live hacking contests, novel attack demos, and community-driven research on LLMs and other AI systems. |
| USENIX Security Symposium | Systems Security | A top-tier academic venue that frequently features rigorous research on adversarial ML, privacy-preserving ML, and the security of ML pipelines and infrastructure. Bridges theory and practice. |
| ACM CCS | Computer and Communications Security | Similar to USENIX, this is a premier academic conference. You’ll find foundational work on AI security and privacy, often with a strong theoretical or cryptographic angle. |
| NeurIPS / ICML / ICLR | Core Machine Learning | These are the world’s leading ML research conferences. While not security-focused, their workshops on topics like “Adversarial Machine Learning” or “Robustness” are where state-of-the-art attacks and defenses are born. |
| AISec Workshop | AI Security (co-located with CCS) | A dedicated workshop focusing entirely on the security and privacy of AI systems. A highly concentrated source of relevant research papers and presentations. |
| IEEE S&P (Oakland) | Security and Privacy | One of the oldest and most respected security conferences. It regularly publishes seminal papers on adversarial examples, model theft, and the theoretical underpinnings of AI security. |
Accessing and Leveraging Conference Materials
Fortunately, you don’t need to attend every conference to benefit. Most organizations make their materials widely available after the event. Here’s how to effectively track and use them:
Primary Channels for Content
- YouTube: This is your most valuable resource. Major conferences like DEF CON, Black Hat, and USENIX upload recordings of nearly all their talks, usually within a few weeks or months. Create playlists for topics or specific conferences.
- Official Proceedings: For academic conferences (USENIX, CCS, NeurIPS), the papers are published in digital libraries like the ACM Digital Library or IEEE Xplore. Many are also available on the conference website itself.
- Speaker-Provided Resources: Pay close attention to the first or last slide of a presentation. Speakers almost always link to their slides, source code on GitHub, and blog posts with more detail. Following key speakers on platforms like X (formerly Twitter) or LinkedIn is an effective way to get direct links to these materials.
- Slide Decks: Even without a video, a slide deck can be incredibly informative. Check websites like Speaker Deck and SlideShare, or the speaker’s personal homepage. The visuals and concise text can often clarify complex concepts more effectively than a dense paper.