AI: Doomsday vs. A Very Bad Day with Dr. Robert Blumofe

Easy Prey

After a data breach, many criminals are beginning to use deep learning AI to categorize the information they have stolen. They’re using a steady amount of micro attacks on individuals and businesses and not just full-scale assaults.

Today’s guest is Robert Blumofe. Bobby joined Akamai in 1999 to lead the company’s first performance team. While serving as one of Akamai’s chief architects, he was instrumental in the design and development of their intelligent edge platform which now handles trillions of internet requests daily. Bobby’s technical past lends itself to a passion in machine learning and AI and he holds a PhD in Computer Science from MIT.

Show Notes:

• [1:02] - Bobby shares his background and current role at Akamai.
• [2:32] - When he joined the company in 1999, he didn’t really know what Akamai did.
• [4:29] - Customers recognized that Akamai could have the capabilities to see all the traffic to their websites and potentially block attacks.
• [7:02] - Machine learning is really remarkable. Akamai has been using deep learning as a tool to solve problems for their security products.
• [9:25] - AI has become a big part of everything we do.
• [10:35] - The quantity and quality of the data used by AI is what differentiates the machine learning and models of an enterprise.
• [12:36] - Bobby discusses what the next five years could look like for cyber criminals.
• [15:24] - Criminals only need one success out of thousands or millions of targets.
• [17:32] - Social media platforms really do want to do the right thing but there’s only so much they can do.
• [18:39] - As a consumer, you have to be on guard and not necessarily trust where information is coming from.
• [20:42] - Any new significant development in technology is hard to differentiate from magic, especially in the early days of development.
• [23:04] - Machine learning is remarkable and as a technologist, Bobby wants to love it. But there are so many examples of misuse.
• [25:29] - Use the technology, but check the output.
• [29:10] - When solving a simple problem, does the AI really need to know everything? They access so much data that isn’t useful.
• [31:19] - Just because an entity can carry on a conversation, doesn’t mean it has authoritative knowledge.
• [33:04] - What is zero trust?
• [34:51] - A misconception is that AI will take over and plan like sci-fi movies.
• [39:11] - You need to have all the checks and balances in critical areas.
• [42:07] - Leadership in organizations needs to prioritize efforts and be very involved.
• [44:52] - We need to assume that AI will continue to develop and criminals will continue misusing the technology in new ways.
• [47:23] - The changes and advances have been so fast recently, that we may need the opportunity to pause.

Thanks for joining us on Easy Prey. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes and leave a nice review.

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