Cybertend’s Andy Singleton returned to the PointBank Business Breakfast at Pilot Point on March 26 to discuss artificial intelligence.
The cybersecurity professional presented community members and business professionals with four points surrounding the new tool— What it is, what it isn’t, how it can be integrated into businesses and how it can be used for “evil.”
“If you’re not using it in your day-to-day life, you’re really missing out on an opportunity,” Singleton said. “You want to embrace it for what it is.”
AI, he explained, can search and compile information based on queries and requests.
“You’re talking to it as a human, and it does have vast knowledge but, for example, if I’m not a doctor but try to ask it a bunch of technical questions without the right terminology, it’s not going to be able to answer your questions,” Singleton said. “You’ve got to have a human with the knowledge of the right questions to ask.”
ChatGPT and other chatbots have free to use options so individuals can dip their toes into incorporating them in their business and lives without any investment outside of time.
“I would encourage you to use it in your business,” Singleton said. “You talk to it just like a human, [and] it models conversation, unlike searching Google.”
He offered several examples for its use, presenting one in which he asked it to write lines of code for a program that would have been a substantial time sink if he’d done it by hand.
“That would have taken me weeks to write,” Singelton said.
To that same end, however, hackers are similarly using dark web AI to write code, compose scam emails and more.
“This is a scary one we’re seeing a lot more,” Singelton said. “This AI is writing code that can breach systems.”
For phishing emails, which corporations and individuals alike have been plagued with for several years, AI is being used to increase the quality of the fakes. He explained it can also help individuals figure out if what they’re looking at is a phishing attempt.
“That’s another thing you can use AI for as well,” Singleton said. “If you get something like that, you can paste that link into ChatGPT and ask if it’s real or fake. She’ll go analyze it and come back with some sort of answer.”
He chuckled, explaining he’s named his calling it Susan.