Bigger (Biggest?) Worry

There is a new trend. It is called global awareness. World’s media companies are increasingly sprinkling news items from beyond our shores, politicians are warning of geopolitical upheavals and perceived enemies of the American way of life, and, always, there are truly evil folks “out there” we have to safeguard against.

But who’s safeguarding us against our own stupidity?

I remember 30-plus years ago when Boeing had an espionage event. They tried to find the culprit in the company who was leaking secrets. When the investigation was over, they had identified over 100 employees leaking documents, technical specs, names, addresses, all sorts of company information. Were 100 or more people spies? Turned out the culprit was the photocopier company employee who serviced the company machines and simply copied the hard drive on several copiers.

Nowadays, we all know the need for internet security, we inform employees (and ourselves) which protection software must be active. We stress good internet practices like never opening an attachment to an email unless you scan it first with antivirus software and, especially, never, ever, click on an email link without testing it first. Companies have made billions of dollars inventing protections software. Essentially, their job has evolved to help you prevent making mistakes — protecting you from yourself.

The newest threat can be clearly laid at the feet of computer users everywhere. And this threat is so large, it could topple governments and democracy.

While the media is worried about AI taking jobs and supplanting whole industries, they are missing the greater issue, closely linked to that photocopier issue of old. People and industry are turning to AI programs to help with their daily office chores. Take, for example, the program manager at an aircraft company who needs to rearrange his classified tech sheets for a secret presentation on laminar wind flow to the upper brass. He drops his raw testing and design data into an open-source AI program and asks it to make a PowerPoint presentation. In a few minutes, out pops a great presentation — a very confidential presentation. And there’s the intern working for a senator who has to coalesce six military budgets into a hearing committee presentation on oversight watch.

How did they fix the photocopier issue? Copiers wipe their memory on command, office security demands. How do you fix the AI inadvertent dissemination issue? No one knows, yet.

Peter Riva, a former resident of Amenia Union, now lives in New Mexico.