Sadin on Digital episodes explore the fast-changing and high-stakes world of digital business. Wayne Sadin focuses in particular on what CXOs and boards must do to lead their companies successfully into the Digital Age. Today, Wayne and Bob discuss generative AI and the national cybersecurity strategy. Wayne debates whether or not generative AI is, in fact, the “next big thing.” He also discusses the National Cybersecurity Strategy, which reshifts the responsibilities from individual users to software vendors, in the instance of ransomware attacks.
Episode 43 | Generative AI and the National Cybersecurity Strategy
The Big Themes:
- Forget the headlines, what’s in this product? Is generative AI and ChatGPT truly the “next big thing,” or is this something that has been around for awhile and is just now starting to get popular? When starting college in 1970, Wayne was encouraged to study computing programming because experts were predicting that by 1975, artificial intelligence (AI) would be “writing all the programs in the world.”
- The future of generative AI: Wayne suggests that this tool is going to either be the biggest augmentation of human abilities, or it’s going to be the biggest disruption… or it’s going to be both.
- National Cybersecurity Strategy: The government’s strategy outlines the need to “rebalance responsibility.” Rather than holding the company that got attacked by malicious actors accountable, the responsibility is now on the vendor to ensure that customers aren’t getting “ransomwared.”
The Big Quote: “That’s how they [generative AI and the National Cybersecurity Strategy] tie together. We’re at the beginning of AI broadening into general use. Think about the Internet of 50 years ago. That’s where AI is today. A great tool that’s starting to reach commercial scale. And so, again, I share your fear when the government gets involved. It often doesn’t go well. But this is where we as an industry, the CISOs, the vendors, the CIOs that buy it, have got to be out there with their voices heard. I’m not so interested in anybody suing Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Cisco and everybody else, as I am in a standard that says, in two years, the product you sell me should have the standards, or else somebody’s going to sue… and cyber is becoming existential for a lot of industries, the ransomware attacks, we got to do something. And clearly, as an industry, we have not taken the leadership position.”
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