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Casey Newton (caseynewton@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 06-Dec-2024 11:19:53 JST Casey Newton
- Kevin Beaumont
@GossiTheDog i mean why would we assume he doesn't know what he's talking about?

In conversation about 3 months ago from mastodon.social permalink
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  Casey Newton (caseynewton@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 06-Dec-2024 10:34:51 JST Casey Newton
  
  One of the most important debates in tech right now is the group of folks who think AI is fake and sucks vs. the people who think AI is real and dangerous. I wrote about why I'm in the latter camp, and talked about my differences with Gary Marcus https://www.platformer.news/ai-skeptics-gary-marcus-curve-conference/
  In conversation about 3 months ago permalink
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  1. Most people know these systems are flaws, and adjust their expectations and usage accordingly. The “AI is fake and sucks” crowd is hyper-fixated on the things it can’t do — count the number of r’s in strawberry, figure out that the Onion was joking when it told us to eat rocks — and weirdly uninterested in the things it can. And that’s a problem, because just as these systems are more honest and helpful than they have ever been, they are also causing greater harm. And to name a real harm, already happening today, I offer the chief security officer of Amazon, CJ Moses, who had this to say about how generative AI is being used in efforts to disrupt critical infrastructure in an interview with the Wall Street Journal last month: We’re seeing billions of attempts coming our way. On average, we’re seeing 750 million attempts per day. Previously, we’d see about 100 million hits per day, and that number has grown to 750 million over six or seven months. This is the ongoing blind spot of the “AI is fake and sucks” crowd. This is the problem with telling people over and over again that it’s all a big bubble about to pop. They’re staring at the floor of AI’s current abilities, while each day the actual practitioners are successfully raising the ceiling.
    https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/603/304/069/679/128/original/6d996496f2e4864b.png
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    The phony comforts of AI skepticism
    
    from @CaseyNewton
    
    It’s fun to say that artificial intelligence is fake and sucks — but evidence is mounting that it’s real and dangerous
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  Reed Mideke (reedmideke@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 06-Dec-2024 18:59:46 JST Reed Mideke
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  - Kevin Beaumont
  @caseynewton I'm with @GossiTheDog on this. To really evaluate Moses' statement, we'd need some explanation of what he means by "hits" and what role he claims AI plays, but on its face it sounds like someone throwing big numbers around out of context.
  Looking at the interview (archive link https://archive.ph/ZziuM) it seems like he claims there was a 7.5x increase in some unspecified type of attack, suggesting that AI played some unspecified role, but…
  In conversation about 3 months ago permalink
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    The AI Effect: Amazon Sees Nearly 1 Billion Cyber Threats a Day - WSJ
    
    archived 5 Dec 2024 16:35:34 UTC
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  Reed Mideke (reedmideke@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 06-Dec-2024 18:59:46 JST Reed Mideke
  in reply to
  - Kevin Beaumont
  @caseynewton @GossiTheDog …the examples he gives are meh and not really tied to the 750 million claim. There's the claim that generative AI lets non-developers do things they couldn't do before, which cites a story about the FBI warning it makes phishing easier. Followed by Moses citing phishing directly.
  Which sure, phishing is a real thing, but the connection to the "OMG 750 million attacks a day" is tenuous, and "more better phishing" isn't really some big shift in the threat landscape
  In conversation about 3 months ago permalink
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  1. Screenshot of part of the previous linked article: WSJ: Is that a sign hackers are using AI? Moses: Without a doubt. Generative AI has provided access to those who previously didn’t have software-development engineers to do these things. Now, it’s more ubiquitous, such that normal humans can do things they couldn’t do before because they just ask the computer to do that for them. We’re seeing a good bit of that, as well as the use of AI to increase the realness of phishing, and things like that. They’re still not there 100%. We still can find errors in every phishing message that goes out, but they’re getting cleaner.
    https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/603/539/641/340/787/original/fd522d620a64f046.png
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  Reed Mideke (reedmideke@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 06-Dec-2024 18:59:46 JST Reed Mideke
  in reply to
  - Kevin Beaumont
  @caseynewton @GossiTheDog Also, as far as I can tell reference to "attacks on critical infrastructure" in the Moses interview refers to Anonymous Sudan, which was mostly DDoS stuff that has nothing to do with AI
  
  In conversation about 3 months ago permalink

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