We’ve been up in Northern Ontario for the past two weeks (where we have plenty of big fish in the water, but no gators), with a week of vacation and now some remote work (and driving home as I hit ‘send’ on this one). Over the years, the dogs (Sherman, left, and Brooks, below) have come to enjoy an evening cocktail cruise. Every night, either before dinner or after. And if they don’t get it, Sherman whines and paces until we take him out on the boat. On occasion, Nancy will even put together some charcuterie (in this case, cleaning out the fridge before we head home), which adds another layer of excitement to the trip as we try to keep dogs from helping themselves more often than they should. As for the inbox this week, scroll on down for plenty of AI (sorry if you’re not a fan, but AI makes up the vast majority of what I get in my inbox any more. It’s actually getting monotonous!), a little lacrosse, some phishing (I won’t bore you with fishing), and more. Enjoy!
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Interpol
Be on the lookout for new phishing emails, purportedly sent by Interpol. As is often the case, the emails suggest a great sense of urgency and a response being required. And as is always the case, you should confirm before responding, clicking, or doing anything else of the sort. Interestingly enough, in this case, the hacker (mistakenly?) left the decryption keys to the ransomware in the code. Meaning that, should you fall prey to this one, you might be able to recover without ever having to deal with the amateur hackers.
The Costs of AI
While some of this article seems like opinion from somebody who’s in fear of losing their job to AI, it does bring up some good points. Primarily, the idea that AI (like many other things any more) is now priced on a subscription usage basis, and many people have no clue as to how much it’s going to cost them, long-term. More importantly, many execs have no idea how to use AI productively. If you’re interested in starting to use AI for your business (whether at the individual or organizational level), and doing so in a orderly fashion, let me know.
We’ve put together what we call the AI Jumpstart, which begins with AI governance, moves on to some basic hands on training, and ends with you having a working AI agent to prove just what AI can (and can’t) do for your organization.
Phishing
The percentage of cyber attacks that come through phishing continues to rise, hitting 58% of all attacks in one recent study. This article provides not only four good reminders for how to avoid being a victim, but also lays out why certain industries (financial services, construction, hospitality) are such good targets for this type of threat.
Warning Signs
Ever get a seemingly random multifactor authentication request on your phone? Or see a spike in data usage? Maybe even a sudden increase in spam phone calls and/or emails? These could be signs that one of your devices or accounts has been hacked.
Lacrosse
I know of a few lacrosse players who read this, so I figured I’d share. Back when I was playing high school lacrosse at University School, there were five teams in the state of Ohio, including our biggest rival, Western Reserve Academy. Now, there are 147 boys high school teams in the state, and Reserve just finished the season as the number one team in the country. Kind of cool to see mention of the MSLA tournament we used to play in, and to see how much the sport has grown, both locally and nationally. US can’t hang with WRA on the lacrosse field any more, considering their players come from all over North America, but it’s still good to see a local school doing well.
Google AI
More examples of Google using everything you do, and making it an ‘opt-out’ rather than ‘opt-in’. In this case, unless you opt out, any images or voice recordings you upload to Google (searching using Lens, voice prompts for search, etc.) are now being save and used to train Google AI. If you’re not a fan and missed the random email from Google back in June, here are the details on opting out by changing your settings.
On another note as it relates to Google and AI, I wasn’t aware of their SynthID tool until yesterday morning. The story goes that a photograph of Senator Mitch McConnell in a hospital bed has been making the rounds of social media and stirring up rumors. Google finally stepped up and proved that the image was AI generated, asit had SynthID’s invisible watermark attached to it. Now we need more detection capabilities like this, and even more people to actually use them before they believe everything they see!
AI Cheating
I find it more than just a little ironic that, after all the graduating college seniors who booed commencement speakers on the topic of AI, many college students still admit to cheating with AI. “Hello Pot? This is the Kettle.” Interesting story about a Brown University econ professor who decided to change his mid-term and final exams to the take home variety. With that change, the class size tripled, as students thought “Here’s an easy A”. Sure enough, scores were through the roof on the mid-term, and that’s when the prof decided to make the final exam an in-class test…
That’s all for this week. Sad to see the USMNT get bounced (much to engineer Tom’s shock, I’m sure, I actually watched a few of their matches, and have paid some attention to the rest of the World Cup), but everybody must’ve realized they were never going to win it all. From here, I’m pulling for the Brits (heritage) or Norwegians (somebody different). Maybe I’ll watch another match or two. Any favorites from anybody in the crowd?
Have a great weekend!
Abbey