What is the connection between artificial intelligence and your network? Honestly, I don’t have an answer to that yet. Artificial intelligence is most definitely a rising trend. One which people of all sorts of occupations are using for various purposes, but using it on your network, I have not yet figured out that use. No doubt though, a use will come along.
The thing about artificial intelligence is that in some ways it’s getting smarter. In some ways it’s getting stupider. It’s getting smarter in that it’s getting better and better at reading situations and putting data based on those situations. It’s getting stupider because social justice warriors are concerned that it might somehow be racist or offend people living fringe lifestyle. So they’re demanding that changes be made to it so that it doesn’t do or say anything offensive. This, of course, is going to dumb it down considerably.
My hope is that we will have access to whatever sort of artificial intelligence we prefer. I would clearly go with the version that is not dumbed down, that shoots me straight. I still have not figured out how I can use it in networking and computer security. However, I’m keeping an open mind and I’m continuing to read articles about it about from other IT techs who have figured out usages for it. So stay tuned here. I may come up with something that is an absolute essential use.
For now, I’m just using regular human intelligence. And that’s something that can be fooled very easily. For example, most phishing attempts, which are successful, take advantage of people’s naivete. They will click on a link and follow it, thinking it’s legitimate, when in fact it’s some kindly gentleman from Bulgaria.
I can see artificial intelligence being put to work scanning your emails. AI would probably spot phishing efforts. A vast majority of the time. And any phishing emails that we can weed out before a user sees them… Are definitely a good thing. I’m guessing that the big players in the game like Outlook are already doing this. They do send a lot of things to the spam folder. Unfortunately, they send a lot of good things to the spam folder. However, as time goes by, we can expect them to get better.
Another area where artificial intelligence could conceivably help us out is in checking out new players on your network. Many of you have offices where people come in and connect to your network with their iPhones and other portable devices. This is usually harmless, but occasionally you may get a bad behavior. One thing that I do when I connect to networks is sometimes scan them. That can be recognized as the work of a hacker. It can also be recognized as the work of someone who’s just curious about the network and is seeking to find out more. Artificial intelligence should be able to check the difference.
For example, I do one quick scan and never do any deeper drilling. That should be considered fairly safe. But if someone does a scan and then does a port probe on every device it finds, they appear to be looking for a way in. That is a different situation altogether. And I would expect artificial intelligence to figure that out and act accordingly.
Like any other new technology, artificial intelligence is getting a lot of hype. And a vast majority of the hype it’s getting is inaccurate or misrepresenting things. What we have to do is dig down and find out the truth about AI. Honestly, I have not yet begun that process. I have a lot of irons in the fire with my business. My main priority is pleasing my customers and keeping them secure. As time goes by, though, I will be finding out more.
For now, there is a lot of free training seminars being offered to IT people online, And I’m taking advantage of as many of them as I can. Training is always good as long as the information you’re receiving is accurate. And I’ve been picky about who to choose. I’m not going to recommend anyone here. I’m going to leave that up to you to determine who’s a good source. But the big companies have a responsibility to tell the truth. If they don’t, word gets around. And these companies start losing business and become small companies.
So, you’re usually safe hearing something from the likes of Google or Microsoft, even though they are, in fact, corporations which don’t have a lot of good things going for them. It’s in their own best interest to shoot their customers straight about new technology.
Be particularly careful with Google, because their leadership leans quite far to the left. So they do politicize things. Spot social justice and stay far away from it, because social justice is not profitable. It’s also not practical. It makes your heart feel good, but it’s hard on your brain. We’re dealing with logic here. So let’s keep things logical. Find out the facts about things like artificial intelligence. Go with your brain, not your heart.
Yes. In the meantime, look for people like me who continue to just crank out content, manually. Google knows the difference. Some people will add articles to their blogs with the help of artificial intelligence, and Google will discount it. They spot it. On the other hand, even rambling stuff like this, Google places a higher value on because it’s coming from a real human, with real feelings, real brain cells, real emotions. Does that mean you should not use artificial intelligence to create content? No. It has its place. But keep in mind that artificially created content is never going to be of the same quality of that created real brain cells. So don’t get carried away in deploying artificial intelligence in creating content for you or your business. Keep it real, folks. Very, very real.