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The AI Risk Nobody Seems to Mention
by Felix Atter
As first published in the WINTER 2023-2024 issue of 2600.

 Its coming for our jobs!!
Its going to start Skynet!!
Its a threat to our privacy!!

  We have all heard the big scary talk about artificial intelligence (AI). I opened with the three I hear most often and each of these can be partially or completely eliminated as a risk if managed properly. I can dive into them but many other articles from many other organizations have done so extensively.

  I want to talk about the 4th horseman of the AI apocalypse. This is not about sowing more fear, uncertainty, and doubt in a world saturated by it. This is about taking sane steps to ensure neither you or the company you might work for get tripped up again by a well known trope. We cannot trade away our next generation of experts without paying for it. Let me explain.

  I remember when everyone I knew in a tech job got started as a low level help desk operator. They would then vary and either work through college or move up through the ranks. When we as an industry moved those help desk jobs overseas it was a fantastic boost to profitability, and in some cases even the effectiveness of the helpdesk. This is not some xenophobic rant. It was a great process when done right. The issues really started about 5 years after the bulk of large organizations started to do this. Suddenly, finding a senior help desk admin looking to become a junior systems administrator was not so easy. A couple years later, even finding cost effective mid level system admins was a fight. We sold off the farm team. Entering the IT work force no longer had a well known, gently sloped, onramp. You now had to jump into either a helpdesk manager role or do enough schooling to actually jump straight in as a network engineer or server admin. It took us years to recognize the issue and correct for it.

  Now consider AI. I have spent the past several months learning more and more about it and talking with people across several industries and there is a mix of curiosity, fear, and even open doubt regarding its future. I see article after article talking about how it will replace creative jobs, or how general AI is right around the corner (it might be), and how it is a huge gaping hole in our data security if used wrong as Samsung found out in May 2023. (tech.co/news/samsung-restricts-generative-ai-use)

  From all that conversation and research the one risk I am most worried about is the idea that it will take the place of the humble paid intern. If we look at what Large Language Models (LLMs) like chatGPT are really good at; we find they are fantastic research assistants to mid and senior level technical assets from Governance Risk and Compliance (GRC) folks to developers and DevOps engineers. Last time we eliminated a wide array of entry level work chasing efficiency and profit, it took most of a generation to recover and adapt. This shift from hiring entry level personnel to do leg work and letting a bot do it faster and more thorough sounds like an amazing opportunity. To be fair, its exactly that. Its just not a free ride. Its like we climbed the rope and now we are pulling it up after us. Those that come after will be forced to climb even higher up the IT/infosec tree before they can try for a job.

  So what do we do? Hold still and hope it goes away? Rage on forums and article comments about how its all terrible? Pass laws trying to restrict access? We know those will happen. We know those are unlikely to stop the forward march of progress. My simple advise is this: Advocate within your teams and friend groups that current gen AI is not a replacement for human insight.

  We are at a cross roads where teams all over the world are seeing an opportunity to accelerate their projects and reduce costs. My one glimmer of hope is that this will be just as valuable to students and young engineers and hackers in our community. I learned much of what I know from classes and books. These days I learn 80% of the new things I know from videos or even shorts. Tomorrow maybe it will be AI that I use to design a lab just to see if I can fix what they got wrong.

  This has been called the next revolution, just as the industrial revolution and the information revolution changed with it meant to create or to work hard. I don't believe we can stop it or put the smoke back in the circuit board. I do believe it is up to us to leave a path open to those that will follow us.

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