Understanding AI’s Beneficiaries

Content Insider #913 – Otherly

By Andy Marken – andy@markencom.com

“You better wake up. The world you live in is just a sugar-coated topping! There is another world beneath it: the real world. And if you wanna survive it, you better learn to PULL THE TRIGGER!” – Blade, “Blade,” Disney, 1998

We know we’re cold-hearted:

• Mom called asking for a $1K loan to save her home 
• Son called and said he had been arrested in Wichita and needed us to send $500 to bail him out
• Nigerian lawyer said his dead client had left $1M and he wants to split it with us
• IRS called and said they were taking our home if we didn’t cough up $10K
• McAfee notified us they had billed our credit card for the $400 security package we bought
• Amazon wanted to verify we’d received the $200 for the items we’d returned

These are just some of the common internet scams fraudsters use to gain personal information.  

Yes, millions of people are scammed, flipped, tricked, bamboozled every year into giving up their identities, personal data, money.

In addition, tens of thousands of companies have had data stolen and increasingly locked out of their systems until ransoms are paid.

Even if they’re paid … there’s no honor among thieves.

Over the years, we’ve gained a healthy dose of skepticism about stuff that flies across our computer/smartphone screen.

Usually, there’s something about the communication – voice or written – that says, “Hit delete NOW dude.”   

If the communication is legit, they’ll do what we do … “Hey, did you get my message?”  

In “the old days,” the poorly written requests for information, money and/or data used to be comical.

But AI has taken all the fun out of it.

Now you know it probably isn’t even a person trying to convince you. Instead, it’s a soulless computer somewhere generating all that stuff.

While the machines are smart, they have a rotten sense of humor and their ability to make you feel something is really lacking.

But there’s good news in bad guys/gals using AI.

A lot of hackers, whackers, data thieves and cybercrooks lost their jobs.

Poof…good- paying cybercrime jobs gone!

Out of Weight Class – Trying to constantly work to protect your systems and activities from AI attacks doesn’t exactly seem like a fair fight.  

Yes, to protect ourselves, we’ve added AI-enabled safety/security software.

 Funny, it doesn’t tend to make us feel more safe, more secure.

The cybercrime software only has one thing to do … continuously poke for openings, weak points or human slip-ups. 

We have things to do, places to go, stuff to think about.

And the sudden flood of new AI “solutions” – OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, Google, DeepSeek and other half-baked stuff that’s been released into the wild – isn’t even new.

Nope!

John Markoff, a longtime NY Times reporter and author of more than six books, covered the concerns of AI and cybersecurity back in 2015.

Cyberpunk (which he co-authored) chronicled the exploits of three really great international hackers.

They penetrated even the most secure, most sensitive networks/systems and wreaked havoc seemingly at will.

You may not like what they did but gawd, you’ve gotta respect their expertise.

James Clapper, director of US National Intelligence, warned that AI would make some things easier, but they would also expand the vulnerabilities of the infrastucture to cyberattack, difficulty in ascertaining attribution and social media disinformation. 

Concerns – Whether in 2015 or 2025, the challenges and concerns company management face remain the same with little or no resolution.

Business concerns haven’t changed much since Clapper issued that warning and most intelligent people would contend they have only gotten worse.

In the past few years, groups of techies, rich quick artists and tech investors around the world have been rushing to develop, roll-out and profit from the AI wave.

Their goal has been/is to subvert automated Captchas (completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart) and release/sell half-baked work and cybersecurity solutions.  

We know, it reminds us of the gold ring illusions of crypto, NFTs and the metaverse.

Speed to Market – Solution and software developers are under constant pressure to complete a project so that it can be productized and sold.  Comprehensive testing is seldom the highest priority.

Companies still rush systems and solutions and software that are “pretty good” and poorly tested to beat “the other guy/gal” to the marketplace.

The work isn’t even as good as a B movie because at least in a film production they say, “we’ll fix it in post” and they do.

Oh sure, techies say they’ll fix their errors but then they by-pass the postproduction crew and wait for the “audience” to report the problems.

Then, they develop/issue patches/updates and expect the “audience” to make the product/service work the way it was meant to work at the beginning.  

Yeah … right!

In the cybersecurity world, there are two sides.

There are the “black hats” who exploit problems, issues and work to subvert Captchas thanks to ever-present human greed/weaknesses for profit.

Then there are the “white hat” folks who diligently delve into the programs inner workings to find problems, back doors and issues that can be corrected to increase security and shut them out.

Hack Variety – There are a wide variety of tools that individuals/organizations use to constantly penetrate organizations’ digital systems to disrupt operations and extract financial rewards for the online thieves.  It’s a never-ending challenge for good guys/gals to stay ahead of the black hatters.

In this relentless battle, the white hatters must constantly adapt and evolve their strategies to outsmart the increasingly sophisticated black hatters. As technology advances, so do the tactics and tools employed by cybercriminals, necessitating a proactive and vigilant approach to cybersecurity. 

The ongoing arms race between these two factions underscores the critical importance of robust security measures and continuous vigilance in the ever-expanding digital landscape. 

With the proliferation of internet-connected devices and the integration of AI in hacking tools, the stakes have never been higher, demanding a concerted effort from all sectors to safeguard sensitive information and maintain the integrity of digital infrastructures.

There’s plenty of work for both teams.

Statista estimates, the global cost of cybercrime will grow steadily over the next three years, rising from $10.29T to $13.85T by 2028.

The more people go online, the more opportunities present themselves to exploit innocence, gullibility and lax work habits.

 With automated AI tools, bad guys (and gals) get to do less to reap their rewards.

Whether it’s by a team of highly skilled, highly motivated hackers or by their AI-enabled tools, the attacks have followed the same pattern of getting better and more frequent.

In 2014, the “Guardians of Peace,” stole 100TB of data from Sony Pictures, exposed 1M accounts and leaked a ton of confidential data.

There were vague accusations, no arrests.

Last year, UnitedHealth Group’s systems were accused of being infiltrated by the BlackCat group that stole sensitive data, releasing ransomware and disruping the healthcare service nationwide costing an estimated $2.87B plus the$22M ransom.

No arrests, no financial recovery.

And with the rapid release of AI tools, the attacks and the resulting costs are only going to increase.

But … you can’t really blame them.

Sources – By accident, we have developed one of the most comprehensive surveillance systems that spans the globe gathering, processing, storing and using people’s data.

Security cameras are everywhere – at home, on the street, in the store, in the office – to the point that it is estimated that your image/location is captured 100 plus times a day.

Ring and Nest systems record your coming/going, who visits and when while your home devices, TVs and smart home devices collect data to assist you/make your life better/easier.

Your phone and apps track your location, who you contacted, where you went and sites visited.

Credit cards track your purchases,

Computers collect data on what you’re doing, what you’re saving, what you’re using.

All of this is done as a service by the company that collects a tremendous amount of irresistible data the companies can sell for added profits.

Data companies analyze, license, transfer/sell that data to third parties – advertisers, data analytics firms, financial institutions, others.

In other words, you are the product.

You live in the world’s most advanced surveillance system that wasn’t created with a devious purpose in mind, it just happened.

All of this data collection is legal because you agreed to it when you signed up for the free service, downloaded the free app, acquired your systems/services.

The tech firms convinced you to surveil yourself and the potential profit for the data you gathered for them. It proved to be a siren song too powerful to resist.

Okay, that’s not true of every country around the globe.  

In some countries that data belongs to the government.

There, you don’t want to spend much time thinking about it either.   

But even in more “open” countries, folks don’t worry about their data and its usage so the governments attempt to establish guard rails for the data providers, collectors and users.

The EU implemented GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) that pushes for explicit consent from users before sharing their data with other parties.

California passed the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) that gives citizens more control over their personal information.

The US government asked service providers to publicly agree to and post the Internet Bill of .

Rights, agreeing to tighten digital security, self-censor, enable/encourage users to stronger passwords and multi-factor authentication and carry out a more aggressive program of seeking out and blocking data abuse/misuse.

Aahh yeah, we missed the seismic shift too.

But we admit that limiting mass surveillance is difficult, if not impossible.

People like/prefer personalized ads, they rush to free dumb/dumber entertainment and summarized/prioritized news/information of the world is easier than reading/thinking.

At the same time, having systems create/write your shows/movies is less expensive and less messy than having a group of people muddle through the process.

And its faster, easier and more economic for things to create your games.

To be terribly blunt, as comedian Ron White said, “You can’t fix stupid.”

We both realize that there is no way to stem the growing tide of generative AI solutions and their business, industry and government – good and bad – adaptation of the technologies.

But as companies and people continue to turn online for work and their personal lives, there is one thing firms and individuals can do and that’s to practice Zero Trust where no one or thing is automatically trusted.

It sorta takes a lot of the fun out of all of those short videos you watch and games you play on your phone. But just remember what Blade said, “There are worse things out tonight than vampires.”

After all, AI wasn’t developed/released to benefit … you!

Andy Marken – andy@markencom.com – is an author of more than 800 articles on management, marketing, communications, industry trends in media & entertainment, consumer electronics, software and applications. An internationally recognized marketing/communications consultant with a broad range of technical and industry expertise especially in storage, storage management and film/video production fields. Extended range of relationships with business, industry trade press, online media and industry analysts/consultants.