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Reporting on AI from Technology Leaders Who Know Their Stuff

Artificial Intelligence is the discipline of thinking machines
artificial-intelligence-head The field has had its ups and downs over the years, we have seen many "AI Winters" come and go. But things are different now. The use of AI is growing dramatically with the proliferation of high powered computers into homes and businesses and especially with the growing power of smartphones and other mobile devices.
When it it time to research the great providers of Artificial Intelligence capabilities, kick off  your search in our Disruptive Technology Finder.

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There Are Ways To Improve The Security of Your Artificial Intelligence Solutions

Security of the data and algorithms and results of artificial intelligence takes new methods. At OODAloop.com Matt Devost provides a framework for improving the security and reducing the risk of problems from your AI deployment in a post titled:

Securing AI – Four Areas to Focus on Right Now

His approach: Build a strategy informed by four key components:

  1. Secure your AI infrastructure
  2. Secure the algorithms
  3. Security the training data
  4. ID and manage external risks and dependencies

His recommendations also underscore the importance of a strategy to drive results in each of these areas.

This premium OODAloop content was unlocked by Cooley LLP.

Super Bowl Ads Indicate Big Businesses Think You Are Afraid of AI

Tom Loftus provided an insightful review of some of Super Bowl ads in the 4 Feb 2019 Wall Street Journal. Like AI parody in SNL, these ads really poked fun at computers:

Seriously, did anyone catch the commercials? If the Super Bowl is the zeitgeist, then it is safe to say that America is not feeling the AI-vibe. Consider the following commercials.

Guy creates robot ‘child’ who wants to be a CPA. Alas the ‘RoboChild’ doesn’t have the emotional intelligence for a job at TurboTax. Humans win, but we are all nevertheless creeped out by the child’s laugh.

Alexa-like device talks to dudes. The poor bot can’t enjoy Pringles and she wants the two humans to know it. They shut her up by telling her to play “Funkytown.” Humans win (again), but they will go to bed aware that the bot is always listening.

Safe from technology. Home security firm SimpliSafe runs through the gamut of tech-enabled nightmares: drones, robots taking jobs, and too-smart-for-their-own good devices. So what is the solution? More technology, to guard the home. At least the devices emit a soft blue light.

I’m not sure we should read too much into this. These big businesses want to sell product and know technology is on our mind. In the cases of these three commercial’s they decided to make us laugh. I thought they were funny and hope you enjoy them too.

Here they are:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIRX3yWhgZI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rnrEQBieIQ

For what we really think about advanced technology see:

 

 

Announcing OODA: A Company Addressing Next Generation Security Challenges

Editor’s note: The below is from the press release for the launch of my new firm, OODA LLC. I’m very excited about this new venture and intend on making a positive difference in addressing several next generation security challenges. For more see: OODA.com

Industry Veterans Launch New Company to Address Next Generation Security Challenges

Security, intelligence, and technology industry experts Matt Devost and Bob Gourley have launched a new company to address current and emerging enterprise challenges.

OODA LLC will provide comprehensive consulting and advisory services including a highly specialized Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning security practice.  As Devost notes “AI and Machine Learning are quickly becoming a universal technology, yet many enterprises are adopting these approaches without appropriate consideration for the security risks.”

“We’ll be addressing not only traditional security and technology issues, but also looking at the vulnerability and integrity of emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence” added Gourley.

In addition to the AI security practice, OODA will offer comprehensive assessments using their EVALU8 methodology, Virtual CISO/CTO services, risk management consulting, and business support including market development and investment/acquisition due diligence.

Devost and Gourley have been collaborating for over twenty years and were co-founders of the highly successful FedCyber conference.  Bob Gourley is a former Naval Intelligence officer that later served as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of the Defense Intelligence Agency and founder of the popular CTOvision.com web site.  Matt Devost is an established security professional and entrepreneur having been Founder of CEO of the Terrorism Research Center and the red teaming and incident response consultancy FusionX and OODAloop.com

Iconic businessman Scott McNealy, the former co-founder of Sun Microsystems and Chairman of WayIn, is an advisor to OODA. On their formation he commented that “OODA has assembled an unprecedented combination of expertise and has the experience required to help organizations navigate the fine line between risk and opportunity. Innovation today is moving at warp speed and CEOs who want to optimize opportunity will benefit from the experience and insights of OODA.”

About OODA LLC: The firm was named to capture the spirit of the successful international business strategy OODA, which stands for Observe – Orient – Decide – Act.  The OODA Loop is a process articulated by Air Force Colonel John Boyd to teach optimal air to air combat. Devost and Gourley have applied OODA concepts to cyber risk mitigation, opportunity assessment and intelligence operations for businesses operating in multiple sectors of the economy and are focusing on this approach in their consulting and advisory services.

 

For more on OODA see:

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CTOvision Named To Top 10 Tech Blogs Every CTO Should Follow

STXNEXT.com has named CTOvision to its list of Top 10 Tech Blogs Every CTO Should Follow.

From their write-up:

As a CTO, you need to stay up to date on the latest and greatest in the tech world. Following new trends and developments is a must if you don’t want to fall behind the competition.

But how do you sift through the noise? How do you choose your sources of information? After all, you can’t follow every valuable resource out there.

With so much content vying for your attention, it can get pretty hard to decide what’s worthy of your precious time. Not to mention keeping up with your other responsibilities, like, say, helping your CEO run a business.

That is why, having your best interests at heart, we’ve compiled a short and sweet list of the best tech blogs to follow as a CTO to make sure nothing relevant escapes your notice.

Top 10 tech blogs every CTO should follow

1. CTO Vision

You know The Lord of the Rings, right? “The one ring to rule them all”? Well, if there’s one resource for CTOs to rule them all, it’s CTO Vision.

CTO Vision offers you a broad selection of articles on a wide variety of topics, including cloud computing, AI, and cryptocurrencies.

I am so proud to have CTOvision on this short list of CTO resources.

The full list includes:

1. CTO Vision

2. The CTO Advisor

3. High Scalability

4. CIO Journal

5. IT Professional

6. Harvard Business Review

7. Searchmetrics

8. Crunchbase News

9. CIO

10. The Hustle

Thanks to STXNext for considering us. And thanks dear CTOvision readers for keeping us focused on your information needs.

Also please see:

A New AWS Snowball Edge Provides The Power Of The Cloud In Disconnected Environments

For the last decade enterprise architects have all known the importance of engineering continuous connectivity to cloud services. If you want to use the cloud you have to have a path to it.

For parts of the enterprise who may operate at the edge, where connectivity can be an issue, it has been hard to design solutions leveraging public clouds. Depending on the organization, edge users might have some mix of public cloud, private cloud, datacenter access and local compute, all complex and hardly optimized at all.

The continuously evolving capabilities of Amazon’s Snowball devices are changing these old approaches. Initially the Snowball was a great way to move data from enterprises to the Amazon cloud. Load the data on the device and ship it. This is still a key use case. But newer versions of the device (the Snowball Edge) included enough processing power to do compute on the edge, meaning many analytics could be done on data before moving it to the cloud. The device soon evolved to be a mini-Amazon instance that can be used in disconnected locations.  Now Amazon has just announced a new version of AWS Snowball Edge. The features of this device are giving enterprise architects much more flexibility in meeting the needs of users for high end processing anywhere the data is.

(A picture of the Snowball at the DoDIIS conference is below)

 

 

 

 

A key thing that enterprises can do with this new version: The extra CPUs and GPUs now enable on site, local Machine Learning (ML) and local analytics. Yep, these things are AI in a box. And this includes very high end advanced analytics like image processing and full motion video analysis.

Here are the details from Amazon:

Soon, you will be able to use AWS Snowball Edge Compute Optimized for edge processing use cases that require additional computing power in remote, disconnected or austere environments. The new configuration comes with 52 vCPUs and an optional GPU so you can perform real-time full-motion video analysis and advanced analytics before transferring the data back to Amazon S3.

Snowball Edge Compute Optimized features more powerful Amazon EC2 instances and 7.68 TB of NVMe SSD to run powerful applications in locations with little or no connectivity. It also provides storage capacity of 42 TB to transfer the processed data into AWS for further analysis or archival. With today’s announcement, customers can choose between a storage optimized and a compute optimized option to process and transfer any sized data volumes into AWS. You can also now cluster the Storage Optimized and Compute Optimized Snowball Edge together to have durable storage for data collection along with powerful compute and high-speed storage for processing in edge locations.

Just to make sure you caught that, you can do full motion video analysis with these things… as well as most any other analytical workload… on the edge. Pretty cool.

Also see:

Bob Gourley Interviews Cyber Tech Titan Richard Bejtlich On Enterprise Cybersecurity Lessons Learned

Carahsoft and Corelight are sponsoring a webinar 13 December 2018 at 1pm Eastern which features an interview of Cybersecurity Pioneer Richard Bejtlich by CTOvision publisher Bob Gourley.

For more and to register see: Lessons Learned from a Tech Titan.

Few defenders have seen as much action in cyberspace as Richard Bejtlich. His career in network security started in the early days of the Internet, as the Air Force recognized the need for enhanced focus in this critical mission domain (he served at the Air Force Information Warfare Center, AFIWC), and continued service with commercial firm responsible for removing intruders from government and industry customers. Bejtlich is Principal Security Strategist at Corelight, the firm that’s making open source Zeek network monitoring tools enterprise ready.
Bob Gourley was the first Director of Intelligence for the Department of Defense’s first joint cyber conflict organization, the Joint Task Force for Computer Network Defense, and is a pioneer in the new discipline of cyber threat intelligence. He is also the publisher of CTOvision, the blog for enterprise technologists.
Join us and participate  directly as Gourley interviews Bejtlich with a focus on lessons learned for enterprise-grade cyber defense. Topics covered will include:
  • The most critical factors in attracting and retaining technical talent (hint: it’s not just about pay, leadership is required)
  • The importance of repeatable processes that can be taught, managed, and measured
  • How cyber threat intelligence has helped defenders collaborate and coordinate in defense against nation-state adversaries
  • How to efficiently leverage technology, especially open source technology, in defense of networks

Register at: Lessons Learned from a Tech Titan.

Opinion: Anyone with desire and a computer can have a successful career in AI

With this post I would like to provide an opinion on Artificial Intelligence.

Everything I have observed for decades leads me to believe that with hard work anyone can succeed in a career in AI.

Of course this is a technical field, but it is actually not the most technical field. Everything a person needs to know about the tech of AI can be self taught using online sites like Udemy or Coursera or MOOC. If a person has just a little exposure to computer tech they can start with basic courses and work their way up to programming and before long can be working through tutorials that show the real meaning of machine learning, deep learning and neural networks. It is really not as difficult as calculus or organic chemistry. Like anything else it can take hard work, but I really believe almost anyone can learn this stuff.

And, for those who already have time in a career field, your successes there can contribute to your successes in AI, since the real power of AI will be in applying it to real world challenges.

So, if you want a successful career in AI, it is yours for the taking. With hard work and persistence, the same two factors that drive success in other fields, you can have a fantastic career in AI.

For some other opinions and insights:

Cyberwar and Cybersecurity:

SciFi:

Robots:

Working in Cybersecurity: Life on the front lines, in the C-suite, and everywhere in-between

I am excited to announce a new book by Michael Tanji titled “Working in Cybersecurity” (and very happy to be among those profiled in the book).

Michael has been a pioneer in modern cyber security and digital risk mitigation. He is a former soldier and intelligence officer who at one point managed the how the entire department of defense intelligence enterprise (under the Defense Intelligence Agency) managed indications and warning for cyber threats.  As a practitioner he  has spent years starting and running various cybersecurity start-ups. He is also an accomplished author (publishing many places including here at CTOvision).

His latest book is an oral history of an interesting spectrum of people who have spent years in the cybersecurity domain.

From the book write up:

Inspired by the book Working by Studs Terkel,Working in Cybersecurity looks at both the day-to-day activities of those working in myriad roles in cybersecurity – technical, operational, and policy – as well as the mental, social, and emotional impact associated with working in one of the most in-demand and important fields of the information age.

Everyone likes hearing about significant events of the past; no one likes ‘history’ because their only exposure to it is colored by years of having to memorize dates, often about topics of nominal personal interest. An oral history of cybersecurity is different. For starters, we’re talking about something you’re interested in. Secondly, there is a pretty decent chance we’re going to talk to someone you admire and uncover something you didn’t know about them. Third, there is an equally good chance we’re going to talk to someone you’ve never heard of before, but whose story will fascinate you.

Finally, you’re going to hear about events from the people who were there, elbow deep into what was going on at the time. History by those who helped make it. What is working in the field really like? How did some of the field’s top experts acquire their skills? What was it like working on major cyber crime or digital espionage cases – or being the subject of those investigations? What was it like working with the pioneers in the field? What is it like building a cybersecurity company, and succeeding in one of the most challenging markets What makes a cybersecurity expert tick and how can you use that knowledge to help build and retain people with such rare skills? Working in Cybersecurity is both a series of compelling personal stories, as well as a resource for those who interact with cybersecurity professionals of all types. We hope that it will be an informative and engaging way to learn meaningful lessons about our past, appreciate the work that previous generations have put in, and to serve as a guide future generations so that their energies are not wasted.Proceeds from the sale of Working in Cybersecurity will be used to help aspirants to the field pay for or off-set the costs of education and training.

 

Other topics of interest:

 

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