Unveiling the Under-reported Aspects of AI

Emily Wearmouth [00:00:01] Hi, and welcome to this edition of Security Visionaries, a podcast for anyone working in the cybersecurity and data ecosystems. I'm your host, Emily Wearmouth, and this week I have three amazing guests who bring three different perspectives to a discussion that I wanted to have with them all about AI. So first off, let me introduce everybody. Firstly, we have Yihua Liao who's a data scientist who's worked for all the big names, really, Facebook, Microsoft, Uber, and he's now the head of the AI Labs at Netskope. So welcome, Yihua.

Yihua Liao [00:00:31] Thank you. Glad to be here.

Emily Wearmouth [00:00:32] Next, we've got Neil Thacker, who's a chief information security officer and a very experienced data protection officer. He's worked with major names like Swiss Re, Deutsche Bank, Camelot, the lottery company. And he's also served as an advisor for both ENISA and the Cloud Security Alliance. Welcome Neil.

Neil Thacker [00:00:49] Thank you, Emily. A great pleasure to be here.

Emily Wearmouth [00:00:51] And then finally, Suzanne Oliver is our intellectual property expert today. Suzanne works in private practice as an IP strategist and a lawyer at Cintra. She used to run the IP department at ARM and is also no stranger at Westminster in the U.K., where she represents a number of IP bodies and AI and machine learning associations at a government level. I first met Suzanne at London Tech Week, where we had a great conversation while trying to eat politely for little cardboard lunch boxes. So I'm really pleased that she's joining us today so I can have a second chance at a first impression. Welcome, Suzanne.

Suzanne Oliver [00:01:23] Well, thank you. And yeah, it was a great lunch. Great. Thank you.

Emily Wearmouth [00:01:28] So AI is a really hyped topic, and I think you'd struggle to find anybody that has not talked about AI this year. And so you might wonder, what can we add to this huge pool of discussion? And really, that's the thing I wanted to do today. I wanted to turn that question around to our panelists. And so I've asked each of them to be prepared to answer one question from me. And that one question is what one thing, amid all of this chat and the hype around AI, would you really like to see being discussed more? Everyone comes to this from a slightly different angle, so let's see what their answers are. And Neil, I'm going to start with you. So it's a bit like blind date. First question to you, please Neil.

Neil Thacker [00:02:05] Um, yeah, I mean, it's a great question. I think. I mean, for instance, I'd love to see everybody stop using chatGPT, AI and ML is a synonyms, so I think it helps for us to kind of move away from that so we can better understand and raise awareness of how pervasive AI is today. I think we generally say it's generally underreported. So it's similar to saying somebody we had in the past, somebody saying an organization saying, oh, for instance, we're using the cloud, but actually they're using thousands of cloud apps and each one is performing slightly different task. And I think we have that same challenge with AI. It's already quite pervasive across, again, organizations and of course, consumers as well. They are utilizing these tools and services. So again, that would be the number one. And of course, I mean, it matters because of a number of key areas. So I mean, one is just the general awareness of the current use of AI and also being aware it's not a future technology. It's happening today. I think, secondly, we need to understand the people and kind of business and data that consumers know that A.I. isn't just a specific app. So a bit like saying it's ChatGPT. I mean, my pet hate is when I hear something say I hear somebody talking about AI and they say it's it's AI such as ChatGPT it's a common misconception that there's only a few apps out there today utilizing AI type capability. So it lives in many of the apps we use today. It's being used, it's pervasive. It's critical for organizations and consumers to understand what reason, what data is being processed, what outcome is intended through the use of that app and service. So those are the kind of the key aspects that I see.

Emily Wearmouth [00:03:48] Brilliant thanks Neil. I've got I'm looking at Suzanne's reaction that I've got a question for you actually on the on the back of this. Who do you think should be owning these definitions? You know, Neil doesn't want it to be defined as just ChatGPT or is there a common definition or standard for AI? And if so, who doesn't it or who should own it?

Suzanne Oliver [00:04:07] Again, really good question. No one does own it today. And there are other standards that are used to describe levels, for example, autonomy levels in terms of autonomous cars and vehicles. And I think this era is certainly crying out for a little bit more transparency about what is and what isn't AI and what is ML. They're Often used interchangeably, and they are actually very different. So I think there's a lot of hype, and I think theres a lot of hype is because there's a lack of understanding of what these systems can and can't do. But on the flip side, there's a lack of understanding of who owns what goes in and who owns what comes out to pick up on one of Neil's points, which is my biggest is and I think Netskope in one of your reports have highlighted the amount of source code that's actually input into these tools. Proprietary source code may be a lack of understanding that these tools don't claim to keep that secret or don't claim to allow you to keep it as your own. And they claim to own any output as well. So that whole area of the transparency of who owns what. What's it called and what's it do, I think yeah. Is right for maybe not standardization but right for perhaps a new language to be created that helps us communicate these these aspects more clearly to to people who don't necessarily understand them straight away.

Emily Wearmouth [00:05:35] Neil, have you got an example, you talk about A.I. being pervasive already and it being a technology of today, not of the future. Have you got any examples of where you've seen AI in action that people wouldn't perhaps know to look for it there?

Neil Thacker [00:05:47] Yeah, I mean, we've seen this the introduction of lots of A.I. assistants, especially in meetings and video conferencing meetings, etc.. So it's quite common now join I'll join a meeting and there'll be an AI assistant sometimes taking somebody's place, which is always interesting. But yeah it's obviously straight away, I mean I do check for attendees in meetings. Not everybody does. Not everybody realizes that there's an AI assistant. And I think it's I mean, it's perhaps it's okay. For instance, if the assistant is taking notes and or perhaps documenting the minutes of the