The AI Risk Nobody Seems to Mention

by Felix Atter

It's coming for our jobs!!
It's going to start Skynet!!
It's 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 fourth 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 nor the company you might work for gets 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 help desk.

This is not some xenophobic rant.  It was a great process when done right.  The issues really started about five 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 of 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 on ramp.  You now had to jump into either a help desk 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, 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 when they restricted generative AI use after an employee uploaded sensitive code (Mirror) to ChatGPT.

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 Managament, 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 personnel to do leg work to letting a bot do it faster and more thoroughly sounds like an amazing opportunity.

To be fair, it's exactly that.  It's just not a free ride.  It's like we climbed the rope and now we are pulling it up after us.  Those who 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 it's 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 advice is this: Advocate within your teams and friend groups that current generative AI is not a replacement for human insight.

We are at a crossroads 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, young engineers, and hackers in our community.  I learned much of what I know from classes and books.

These days I learn 80 percent of the new things I know from videos or even shorts.  Tomorrow maybe it will be AI 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 what 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 who will follow us.