Techstrong Gang – June 18, 2024

Hey, everyone. Happy Tuesday to you. You know, it's not often that Microsoft accepts full responsibility and blame, but, uh, we, we, you know, bigs do fly.

Also, Elon Musk reverses course. Nothing new. There he is, after all the stable genius.

Oh no, someone else is. And the Pope weighs in on ai. We've got it all.

God and more our Dextron gag. Hi everyone. Happy Tuesday to you's a Chival for Techstar Gang.

We got a bunch of meaty topics I can't wait to dive into, but we also have some great gang members to dive in with me. Let me introduce you to our gang for today. First of all, joining us from all the way over across the pond in Berlin, Germany, for where he is, uh, attending SE circumference.

It's our CTO and CTA, uh, Mitch Ashley. Hey Mitchell. What the heck's the CTA anyway, Uh, Chicago Transit Authority, I think.

Wasn't that what the name of the first? Yeah, they put A few album No's, a Chief Technology Advisor, advise Reroll. You know, it's, it's kind of the, the, the extension of the analyst work.

So think of it that way. So good to be here. Welcome, welcome from Germany.

I just got here, by the way, so I'm been, I'm not quite acclimated. Okay, good enough. Joining us from her perch in San Angelo, Texas.

And let me warn you, they just got some new internet stuff. There is our own editor here, uh, Amanda Ani. Amanda, welcome.

I hope everything's working. Yes, so far so good. Fantastic.

And joining us, I guess he's the, well, he is not the newest member of the gag. He's, he's kind of made a home here already. Uh, it's the one and only Steven Foskett.

Steven, if you don't know, is the founder and, uh, CEO business unit leader for Tech Field Day and Gestalt it. And Steven, are you home in Ohio today or are you still out on the West Coast? I know you guys were pretty busy last week.

Yeah, we were out, uh, with Cloud Field Day last week, but I'm happily back home and enjoying the smooth, stable, gigabit internet of my community. Broadband Fantastic. Welcome and thanks for being here.

And then joining me here in studio in Boca Raton. He's from the Bronx, um, but currently stationed in Boca Raton for now. Anyways, our chief content Officer, Mike Bazar.

Hey, Mike, welcome. I guess I'm on temporary loan. You're on temporary assignment, kind of like a rehab assignment before you make it back up.

Um, Mike, so Microsoft issued me a culpa. Yeah, that happens once every a hundred years. Yeah, Let's get started with this.

It was an extraordinary event. Brad Smith traveled all the way to Washington to appear in front of a congressional committee that was investigating some of the breaches that had occurred that had allowed Chinese hackers access to government agency accounts. And, uh, we're not quite sure what they got access to and exactly when, but it was a major issue.

And there was a whole, uh, committee put together to investigate this that was issued a report that basically blamed Microsoft for all of these breaches and said, furthermore that the security culture at Microsoft is fundamentally broken. Brad Smith shows up and acknowledges that. And it was kind of enlightening because one of the things he said is that, you know, basically that, you know, Microsoft's approach to DevSecOps was kind of flawed and they were gonna revisit the whole thing, and it was, you know, a, a telling moment.

But my question to you, and I'll start with you first, is, um, Brad Smith, nice guy, president of Microsoft and a lawyer. Was that enough or did we need to see the CEO and CISO and maybe head of application development, having a chat with Congress about this? You know, I'm of two minds here as I often am.

I, I don't, you know. Hello, who am I? I'm Alan.

No, I'm Alan. But here, here's the deal. Brad Smith is the president.

He's theoretically the number two guy at Microsoft. That's fine. And, you know, um, I, I think, you know, do we want get Sati up there?

Yeah. I don't know if that makes a difference. Here's where I am.

Number one, the last time something like this happened, we saw the Trustworthy computing initiative launched by Bill Gates and Balmer. And, and you could make fun all you want, but that was a significant move that measurably improved the security of, of us all Microsoft's trusted security initiative I would've liked to have rather than just Brad Smith's falling on his sword, say, we're, we're going to launch trustworthy security initiative too, and we're gonna really, really do something about it. The other flip side of this though is, you know, this is so typical of Congress and all of the great, uh, technology, uh, you know, they're like Facebook people b******g and moaning about what goes on in the world sitting on Facebook Congress.

Do they really know enough to issue a report to blame anyone? No. But they find a whipping boy and, uh, Microsoft is this, this week's whipping boy, A lot of what happened with the Microsoft stuff is actually coming outta the SolarWinds stuff, right?

The SolarWinds breach, the third party, uh, you know, malware put into the software supply chain, uh, software, you know, during the building. So look, if you're gonna blame Microsoft, let's blame SolarWinds. If you're gonna blame SolarWinds, I'm gonna be really indicting the whole American system, Dean Wormer, and I'm not gonna be part of it.

Well, Let's, let's get to that, Steven, pick that up for a minute. Um, Microsoft is not the only company that should be in the dock when it comes to security. And do we need to have a much more wholesale accountability, and maybe we haven't been doing enough because we've been letting these guys slide too much and it's now time to hold them accountable.

As one of the representatives on the committee said, you know, it's not our job to go find these breaches. It's you, you are a supplier to the United States government, and you should be held accountable for that. And, you know, 'cause Brad Smith was like, we should give a medal to the people at the State Department for finding this flaw.

And the rep was like not having it. He was basically saying, it's Microsoft's fault. It's all the supplier's fault.

So Steven, are we a mess? We are a mess. Uh, moving on.

Uh, yeah, no, it, it, it's true. And, and I have to say, I had a, a very different take on this because when I took a look at what, uh, what we heard during this testimony, um, I was actually really impressed. I felt like Microsoft was acting like a responsible adult here and saying, yes, we have a problem.

This happened. We're not pretending that it didn't, and we have to do better. Um, I have to say that that's, uh, that's a, a really reassuring tone to hear from Microsoft.

Of course, it would be more reassuring if they fixed the problems, but, um, maybe they will, you know? I mean, that's a thing. You know, it's so rare in our culture to hear somebody take responsibility for their own failings, especially when they're not the only one failing.

When there are other fingers they could be pointing, but instead of pointing those fingers, he said, yeah, you know what? We've got a problem and we need to do these things to fix it. As a manager, that's what I want to hear from employees as a, uh, customer.

That's what I want to hear from companies that are selling to me. And I, I really liked that. I'd say, um, as an aside, uh, the wrong tone was what we saw, uh, on the John Gruber show after Worldwide Developer conference when they asked about Microsoft Recall.

And three Apple executives laughed out loud at their competitors failing. That is not the right attitude, the right attitude. People in glass houses throw stones And say, fix it.

The right attitude should be, if not, but for the grace of God, there goes, I Exactly. And everyone in this industry is looking at Brad Smith's testimony and saying, man, I'm glad that guy wasn't me, and I'm glad it wasn't them too, because they would've been all pointing fingers and saying, it's unavoidable or whatever, but it's not, we need to take this stuff seriously. Steve, I, Steven, and I agree with you.

The only thing is I said I would've liked to have seen is look at some level talk is cheap and saying we're gonna fix it. And this is not an overnight fix. This is, this is trustworthy computing initiative too.

It's probably gonna take years, but I would've liked to have seen more of a blueprint. Mitchell, you want to jump in here because some folks would say that, you know, Microsoft's been at least preaching to other developers the importance of DevSecOps. And yet it seems like this was an incident where, you know, it was more like, you know, do as I say, but not as I do kind of moment here.

So, you know, what's the credibility of Microsoft? Well, I'm, I'm gonna disagree with Steven because on, on one hand, yes, verbally, it was taken accountability for what happened. On the other hand, uh, they're blaming the security specialists who were responsible for cyber.

So it's their fault. We didn't, we didn't make security a priority for all employees. While that may be true, you can't, you can't blame the people who are, are trying to fight the fight.

Gimme a break. That's like saying the firefighters let the house burn down while they were spraying water on it. It, it's, it's, it's incredulous to me.

It didn't make it, you know, it's so ridiculous. We've heard this argument and story from Microsoft and from others. Uh, to me, the biggest failure is Congress.

The Hypocrites sat there and listened to him. Mia Kopa fall on his sword. And what are they gonna do about it?

Absolutely nothing. You know, the, the old issue around repeating issues, the reoccurring issues in cyber is 'cause there's no accountability. Either the market doesn't hold you accountable because you lose their data, or we don't have enough regulation or the right regulation to make it painful enough for you to take it seriously.

And it's easy to let the profitability drivers of an organization take over and we suddenly become lax and then all of a sudden when the house falls down, then we get, then we get religion and decide that, uh, we're gonna start going to security church. Yeah. Wait, wait, wait.

So to be fair to Brad Smith, who is a lawyer and is extraordinarily well known for choosing his words carefully, what he specifically said was Microsoft fell not because the security people fell, but because they did not make the people who build the software and run the cloud services things more accountable for security. He kind of like ran, ran a little nuance there. And basically what he was saying was, um, we didn't make security part of everybody's job.

And that's kind of where He was. Hey, they haven't been coming to our annual DevSecOps event at RSA, that's for sure. I've asked him to sponsor it, by the way.

And now you can see what happens because they did it. Um, see, I like, I do like how he is adding some accountability measures, uh, offering bonuses for people to pay more attention. But I have to say, I was reading that article and I think it said they get 300 million attacks a day.

And my question would just be like the sheer number of attacks, isn't it something gonna get through on a pretty regular basis when you're trying to 300 million? You know what, Mitchell and I, not naming these, but at our company that we co-funded or helped co-fund still secure, we, we defended some of the largest networks in the DOD world. And that number 3 million might be a little high, but I mean, we were routinely dealing with 600 to 800,000 a day attacks from foreign, You know, countries.

Um, but that's not, these attacks didn't happen from this. These attacks were different attacks. These were so software supply chain vulnerabilities introduced that opened the back door into the Microsoft systems, right?

com and has been preaching DevSecOps, I mean, the reason I got into DevOps was because of security and DevSecOps. This is the, this is the nightmare we've been talking about, right? For 10 plus years, 12 plus years, it's open source, it's all third party dependencies.

And you need, you know, you, you need to be securing your dependencies and their dependencies and their dependencies. And the only good thing to Mitchell's point that came out of this is, look, I don't want Congress acting Mitchell because, you know, what did Reagan say? The 8 0 9 most dangerous words.

I'm here from the go, I'm from the government. I'm here to help. We don't need Congress doing that.

But what CEASE has done around SBOs and software supply chain security, and this has now become standard operating procedure. Hopefully that's important. I will defend the government and the fact that the folks who wrote the original report on the investigation, I thought you were gonna say the, the original constitution We're, we're all members of the government.

They all worked for the government. They were security specialists who worked for the government. And if it wasn't for them, there'd be no report.

'cause it wasn't like Microsoft was gonna write this report. So no, give 'em some credit. Yeah, I, I'll give them that credit.

Alright. All right. Steven, let me ask you this.

'cause Amanda brought this up, right? So Microsoft is saying that a third of some subset of senior executives bonuses will be tied to security and that they will have biannual reviews with their employees, will include a cybersecurity discussion. Is that nearly enough or, 'cause it seems to me like we're reaching a point now where people need to be fired because of this stuff.

Well, We're Trying to make it serious, it sounds like, and I applaud them. Again, I don't wanna sound like I'm a Microsoft band boy because I'm anything, but, but I applaud them to at least try to tie this into something that's gonna get some kind of attention from these people. Because ultimately I feel like much of the, uh, vulnerability discussion focuses too much on software and supply chain and too little on people and, uh, diplomacy and policy.

And, you know, I, I, um, you know, I recently had a situation where, uh, you know, my bank had me, you know, send them a, an email and they requested all sorts of private information through public channels. And this is a major, uh, you know, global, global bank. You know, my, my daughter just signed up for a job and, and her bosses said, you know, the best thing to do is to write your password on the back of your id so that way you won't forget it.

I think that, that, that kind of attitude is everywhere in corporations now. It really shouldn't be at Microsoft of all companies, but I think it is. And I think that, you know, we also have to consider that we need to make cybersecurity not just a hassle and not just something that other people talk about, but something that people take seriously on a given basis.

And it's not all about writing better software, it's also about having people be invested in, in finding the solution. And I can see Mitch jumping out of his seat. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it, it's setting up an objective, a a positive objective to reward someone for doing security is great. But that's a, that's a measure that you find out in 3, 6, 9, 12 months if we, if we did anything, where's the action? That's what I wanna know.

That that's the reward. If we take the action, what's the action that we're taking? Well, a lot of times, many times, security, uh, issues get stamped down and off.

And it happens in bonuses too. I've seen it happen where people stamped down the bad news. So we all get our bonus, right?

We don't want to get dinged on that security thing. So we're kind of, kind of slow play it or, or underplay it. Uh, it has to be, it has to be something that has the executive's attention, not just in their bonus.

Accountability has to be part of their job. You have to address the escalation issue so that it, it is, uh, there's a process where issues can be escalated and be resolved without the whistleblower, if you will, being penalized. Otherwise, people are not gonna say, are you gonna be the Turkey to stick your head up above the log in in the Microsoft test group?

'cause you, you were saying this is completely wrong. It's not just a flaw. We're doing this wrong, we need to fix this systemically.

It, it's people process that technology. Right, Right. It has to be.

But to, to Mitch's point, systemic problem, To Mitch's point in the report, and at least during the hearing, there was a, a reference to, uh, an article that was talking about how, uh, one of the Microsoft employees had actually discovered the SolarWinds vulnerability a year, year and a half before the actual event and reported it to Microsoft and everybody who was there, because there's a piece of that vulnerability that includes Microsoft and it just went nowhere. And so basically, you know, they, they are, the report was pointing out that the flaw to Mitch's point was that people were kind of like, oh, don't worry about it. We will, you know, it'll be somebody else's issue or it's not an issue at all, because their bonus structures are, Are, so this is why I, I referenced back, and I, I kind of said it tongue in cheek, and if I did, I apologize, but why the trustworthy computing initiative that Bill Gates did back back that Mitch, what was that, 2006, maybe seven, five?

Something about, right? Yeah. Was such a watershed moment for Microsoft and the technology industry in general, where they said, we are gonna build a security mindset into everything we do from day one.

We're not gonna wait until after. We're not going to lock the barn door after the cows ran out. We're from day one.

Everything we do, security is gonna be in that mindset. And it's a people process and technology thing to Mitchell and Steven's point of view, uh, you know, to following up what they said, it's not just people. It's not just technology.

It's processes as well. And until we do that, you're not gonna move the needle the way we want. That needle moved That, that came up during the hearings, and basically what Mr.

Smith, as he went to Washington, Mr. Smith Went to, I like Sha three people out there got that, Mike, but it's okay. Come on.

Um, so The wrong season, but, okay. The thing he pointed out though, was that the rest of Microsoft didn't read the memo because the only people that they wound up doing was building this massive cybersecurity investment thing that everybody else in the company was like, thought that was, they were handling it. Yeah.

No, and again, because it wasn't, there was one person or a few people who did it, the rest did it. Until it is ingrained that it's job one across the board. It's not, You make a look at make, draw an analogy.

If you were gonna improve quality of our product, you wouldn't form a quality group and assume that they've got it right. Quality is something that has to be part of, not just everyone's job. It has to be part of the process.

It has to be part of what you work on and discuss. And it's an incremental process. You can improve quality by suddenly, oh, we found the one thing, now we've got quality security is exactly the same way.

It's much too complex and it, and it's pers pervasive through software, processes, infrastructure, you name it. And it's an incremental process to improve it. Yes, you may architecturally design a better, more secure architecture for your software or cloud infrastructure, whatever.

That's just one part of it. And you find things, and those have to continually be improved and addressed continuously over and over and over. You can't do that with your bonus.

Some, you know, some percentage of your bonus that we're gonna play with might be, uh, tied to security. It doesn't work. Agreed.

Hey, guys, we, we could go on and Microsoft will be going on with it, but we got two other good topics we need to hit. Let's take a quick break here on the gang. We're gonna be back with the Elon Musk reversing course.

Sounds like a rocket zigzagging, but, okay. We'll be back. You're watching Textron Gang.

I'm Bonnie Schneider, sustainability contributor to the Techron Group. I'm excited to introduce you to a groundbreaking new initiative from Techstrong Research, the sustainability pulse meter. The pulse meter offers valuable insights into how environmental responsibility factors into tech purchasing decisions for key players in the industry.

Position your company as a leader in the industry and differentiate from your competitors with the sustainability Pulse meter offered exclusively from tech Strong research. All right, folks, we're back. And the ai soap opera continues, that's all you can call it, really at the end of the day.

So Elon Musk has decided that initially he was gonna sue Open AI because they had violated their for good principles and put all this together. And then basically woke up one morning and had one of those Saturday Night Live moments where he basically said, oh, nevermind. And here we are.

And, but my question to you, Steven, is we kind of look at all this stuff, is it's a soap opera. Are these companies collectively losing our trust? Because, and people are starting to say, you know what, maybe they're all somewhat over the top and maybe not looking up for the best interest.

And so maybe, you know, and you're gonna say, you know, of course they are. That's their job. No, I'm not that, that's like stating, well, I don't wanna get into politics, but when you have one decent person and one whatever, I don't know.

But Steven, you better go first before I get myself in trouble. Okay, Alan, I, I, you, you got me, uh, backing you up on this one. Um, I am sorry folks, but this is fricking Elon fricking Musk we're talking about here.

Um, if the people, now I'm gonna try to be adult about this, and I'm gonna try to look at it rationally, okay? If you are open AI or anyone and Elon Musk threatens you with the lawsuit, you need to be prepared and you need to get lawyers, and you need to get your, your house in order, and you need to be be ready for, you know, depositions and, uh, discovery and prepare for trial. And then the day before you put this in front of the judge, he says, oh, no, no, I don't think I'm gonna go through with that.

In fact, uh, I'm gonna do it in a way that lets me go ahead and file it again next time I get peeved. Um, you know, I don't know if this is really an anti slap opportunity, but you guys familiar with this whole slap thing where basically you can't sue somebody just to be a nuisance. You have to have an actual hope of actually making a case there.

You can't have ridiculous claims and, and all this kind of stuff. It seems like there's, uh, let's say a constituency of people who would love to be able to sue people or threaten to sue people right and left, even if they have no intention of going through with it in order to try to stifle their speech or their strategy. And I think that that's exactly what was going on here.

I don't think Musk ever intended to follow through with this. In fact, somebody probably called him up and said, uh, Hey Elon, you know, remember we got that thing tomorrow? And he said, oh, wait, wait, I'm not ready for that.

I didn't bother to do my homework. So, uh, let's go ahead and pull that lawsuit. It's ridiculous.

And, and College vol lawsuit, lawsuit, the, You went into this case, the more ridiculous it looks. Yep. Steven, they call them frivolous lawsuits.

And the court has the power to award sanctions and fees against the party bringing the frivolous suit. Um, I just would like to go back to the tape because when he first pressed this suit, we were here on the gag, and I said, mark my words, this will never see the light of, of a courtroom. Yes.

'cause it was, it was a ridiculous suit to begin with. And he only did that to leverage because he was out raising money for his own ai, uh, company that he doing this deal with stuff with next ai x ai. Right?

And, and that's what all that was behind this. But in the meantime, OpenAI had to go lawyer up, you know, uh, resources in our court system were used up for this. Someone should send Elon a bill.

It's time people sent Elon the bill, right? Maybe that, because thi this is, and by the way, he's not the only person who brings frivolous lawsuits, right? There's a lot of people in Atlanta and Georgia.

Some lawyers have lost their licenses for making frivolous claims and lawsuits. But this is, unfortunately, this is business in America in 2024, right? And it's, it's not just 2024.

It's been a long time. My lawyer's bigger than your lawyers. I'll bury you in lawsuits.

Those people are betting on a pardon anyways. Yeah, they are. But, um, but, but that's the way it's been, right?

Though, I'm gonna bury you in paper, in lawyers, and until you can't breathe and, and stifle your creativity and you go to market, and this is the reason why we have frivolous lawsuit penalties, and this case calls for that. Yeah. He withdrew his thing, he withdrew his case without prejudice, meaning he could bring it together when he has another hair up, whatever.

But, you know, someone should be pressing him for legal fees and sanctions here. Amanda, you've been following this stuff on text ai, what's your take? I mean, how does it make the industry look from your perspective?

Well, not good, because we have these innovative, you know, pioneering companies and you wish that they could just work together as they were at one point and elaborate on this technology for the good of all, and that they'd all end up doing well, I'm sure. So, I mean, why don't we all smoke joints around a bonfire in St. Kumbaya?

That's not the way real life works. I'm sorry, but it's just money to be made here. Yeah, there is, but they, they were working together.

Uh Oh. They never worked. Elon Musk put money into this until he saw he couldn't get money out of it and wanted to do his own thing.

He's selfish like that. And that's, and that's okay. It's America.

It's a market. He's allowed to be selfish. But let's not paint the whole industry, Mike, with the broad brush of selfishness and, and pigheadedness just because one entity does it.

And that's, I have no opinion thing about this lawsuit is that, um, yeah. So Elon Musk was one of the first people into Open I OpenAI Exactly. He Wanted them to do what they are doing, but he wanted them to do it with him, and they exactly didn't.

And instead they're doing it with Microsoft, and now he's got his own xai. This is not at all what it's represented to be. This is business.

This is hardball business nonsense. Exactly. Steven Mitchell, Is this stuff too critical, too important a technology to be left in the hands of children?

Yeah, you have to go. Some of this is, is also, um, sour grapes too, right? Elon got, um, wasn't considered for CEO over at opening AI at some point in time.

Elon just, I don't like this game, and I'm gonna kind of mess it up, dirty it up as much as I can, and maybe I'll move on. Maybe I'll be back. Yeah, I mean, children, children, but, but don't, you know, don't, let's not make a false equivalent.

See that, because Elon's like that, everyone else is. Yes, Sam did leave open AI when the board kind of threw him out, then he didn't want to come back and he did his thing. This is, we're talking about AI being the biggest thing since perhaps the internet.

There's billions of dollars at stake. And if you don't think people are playing hard walk, shame on you, Steven. Do you want the rights to this movie that we're gonna make once you're, you know, is this all be starting to look like dramedy?

I don't know. But I gotta tell you, I am tired, tired, tired of, of, of people acting like children. I want to re I don't know, I don't even even know if there was a time of this.

Maybe I'm delusional myself, but I wanna return to a time when government was boring and when business was boring, because I'm tired of, of having these children grabbing the mic and, and screaming into it and, and, and accomplishing so little, especially when it's somebody like Elon Musk. Now, I, I, I might get some tomatoes thrown at me, especially when it's somebody like Elon Musk who has accomplished so much. It's really disappointing to see people who have had success instead of focusing in on building actual productive success, focusing on whatever the heck this is.

Agreed. I I haven't seen this kind of drama though since maybe Bill Gates and Jim Manzi and the fellow who like founded Borland were all squawking at each other in the early days of the pc. It almost feels like there's much more in stake, but I feel like it's the same show over again.

Uh, I, I don't know if they, I think Elon Musk takes it to a different level in all. And I look, I'm obviously old enough to remember all those days too, but even the worst of the Steve Jobs, and Steve was through a temper tantrum or two at his tie, right? Mm-Hmm.

Um, this is just craziness though. But in any way, in any event, I'm glad that, that the lawsuit is done. I wish Elon Musk well in Xai I do, because I think the rising tide lifts all boats, and we need to keep the competitive juices flowing, but the courtroom isn't the place to win market.

Um, let's take a break, get a little bit. We're gonna stop cursing and get a little holy because next we're weighing in. Well, the posters weighed in on ai.

So if Elon Musk wasn't enough, now we're going to a higher authority. We're gonna take a break. We'll be back right here on Textron, And we're back.

And we're talking about, as Alan said, the Pope has weighed in on AI and calling for regulations around the globe to kind of, shall we say, maybe reduce our better. The devils on our shoulders and follow our better angels was one way of thinking about it. I also noted that, you know, this decree came out at the same time that he invited comedians from around the world to come to Rome as well.

So it was kind of an interesting juxtaposition in my mind. But, um, from your perspective, let's just Right how to start with you. I'm sitting here biting my tongue.

Um, so let me preface this by saying I actually like Pope Francis. I think in many ways he was a breath of fresh air that was deeply needed in the Vatican hierarchy in the world. That being said, dear Pope, people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

You've gotta worry about what you call gay people. Um, you know, we need reg, moral, moral authority and regulation. Let's, let's apply it to author, boys and priests.

There's a lot of things I'd like to see the Pope cleaning up before he weighs in on ai. And I'll leave it at that. Amanda, I'm gonna go to you because It's Ai.

Aren't we kind of, you know, blowing by the need for regulations despite issues that various religious authorities have? And I would wage you to say that probably all the religious leaders are probably gonna weigh in on AI at some point. And, um, so from your perspective, should we kind of get in front of this regulation stuff sooner than later?

'cause I feel like it's, if we do it after the fact, it's gonna be too late. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think we're trying to, I think they're trying to get in front of the regulation issue. It's something that's kind of hard to regulate, so it, it, it's gonna be a while, I think before they can.

But I think what interested me the most, uh, from the Pope is when he said, um, we really have to be careful about AI turning relationships into algorithms. And that really struck me because I'm seeing things like, um, you mentioned Facebook earlier, Alan, I think, and I'm seeing the AI just stifling people across Facebook for really strange things like sharing good causes, because that means they were trying to get too many likes. So they were frozen off Facebook for 48 hours.

And just really weird things like that. So we really just be careful about how we use AI and if that's gonna stifle and harm humanity, basically, Steven, who should be putting these regulations together, because well, as we said in the last segment, can't really rely on the government folks and, uh, beyond spelling ai, I don't think the Pope and the Vatican knows much more about AI than that and the outcomes. But so who's in charge of building these regulations and who should we look to?

Yeah, that's kind of my reaction to this. I'm like, the Pope is talking about AI now. I think, to be honest though, I actually want to want to take a different, because my second thought was, wait a second.

No, the Pope should be talking about ai. The Pope should be using his, I was gonna say pulpit, metaphorically, but I guess I can say it, uh, literally in this case. Mm-Hmm.

To, um, to talk to the world about the implications of any, uh, new technology or social movement or cause that's relevant to him and to his, uh, followers, I guess is the right. I don't know. Um, but the point is absolutely the Pope should be talking about ai.

Absolutely. We should have, you know, religious authorities, we should have scholars, we should have moral authorities talking about technology. They shouldn't be the end of the conversation, of course, but they should be at least involved in the conversation.

Because, you know, I, I think that that you're right, Amanda, that the, the, the, the fact that AI can implement influence so many things that are relevant to religion and so many things that are relevant to society suggests that we all need to be talking about this technology. Um, I get concerned though, when I see things like the G seven and the Pope trying to make policy related to ai. And I do wonder, as you mentioned, uh, previously here, I do wonder, is the Pope really up to speed on ai?

Because of course, we all know that the, I think the, um, well, I don't, I don't wanna speak for you guys, but in my opinion, the mass conscious, um, understanding of AI is entirely off base. It is simulated intelligence, not actual intelligence. And to have people, um, frame the conversation around things that are not technically accurate, well, that makes the nerd in me go nuts, because we're not gonna have artificial general intelligence.

We're not gonna have artificial super intelligence. It's just not possible with this technology. And to have people kind of running off half cocked and worried that how 9,000 is going to be making decisions for all of society, that's actually more terrifying when you realize that it's not how 9,000, it's a stochastic parrot pretending to make decisions for all of society based on statistical models of speech that's just bizarre and terrifying.

And so I do worry that, that, on the one hand, I, I, I welcome having people weighing in on this in their areas of, of expertise, but I'm terrified that they're, that they're using, um, science fiction definitions instead of, uh, anything that's grounded in reality. Steven, there's a lot of people who tell you that religion is somewhat science fiction anyway. Um, not me.

So don't throw stones at me, but there is that. I would point out that, you know, as a former altar boy, by the way, but I gotta weigh on this, weigh in on this too, Alan, Hold on a second. Hold on.

Mike Mitch ga Mike. So I would just say, as a former altar boy, I would remind you that the Pope is infallible as is sometime in the 18 hundreds was declared as such. Absolutely.

And no one ever PCI compliant was ever breached. There You go. But Mitchell, let me ask you something.

If you were granted an audience with the Pope, what would you tell 'em? I would, I would, I would ask them a question and I would say, see, when I heard the statement about, um, using algorithms to socially, um, manipulate people, um, I'd say, um, what about the last, I don't know how many centuries, 2000 years Catholic church? Maybe it wasn't computer algorithms, but yes.

Um, it's kind ofri, it's kind of rich to me that, um, no idea that they're taking the stand. You, it's about social media. You can say it about social media, you can take it about, you know, manipulation of society.

It's a really good point, actually. It's just kind of interesting coming from that. There is one, one of the things I, I think is really important about what he said though, is that, and you can see this in in sci-fi, you know, things like the creator, the movie on Hulu.

Um, we, we, we are potentially creating an even greater have and have not society. We have it today with ai. We, some people can afford one co-pilot.

Some people can't afford any, not any, some people can afford. And it added enhancement to their software, maybe two or three subscriptions. Other can't, others can't.

If you believe That AI is really gonna help us be more productive and and improve the quality of what we do, um, you very easily could, you could create an even greater separation between the digital haves and haves not, and ai, the AI haves and haves, not So, so Mitchell, we, we, we, the Supreme Court of this country says, you know, you, there's no right to a woman's body, but there's a right to ai. Are we, are we now drawing in a right to AI in our constitutional rights? Just to show you, I I'm not against the Pope.

What's gonna happen when the, the high rabbi of Orthodox Judaism weighs in that AI is with the enigma, inevitably Will. Yeah. Or, Or, or an Iman breaching from a post.

What's the devil? Right. A night or, or a Hindu, you know, uh, whatever religion we can't.

And, and not all these religions are gonna agree. So now AI becomes a religious thing, depending what religion I am. That's how my attitude towards AI should be.

You know, there is certain give unto God, what is God given to Caesar? What is Caesar's? I'll leave you with that.

I think Mitch hit the right point, right? So all of these folks with the re religious agendas and institutions have over the decades and centuries proven themselves to be master manipulators of social agendas. And mm-Hmm.

They're all standing up and going, holy crap. There's a new baby. There's A, a new kid on the block.

Yeah. And he may kick our butt, gotta do something. Anyway, but again, we'll see what happens.

I, I, you know, I, I'm a firm believer in church and state and we remaining separate. So there, There are some folks out there who have, I think, programmed, uh, AI to act like a priest or act like a religious figure. And you basically can go to AI church, I guess, I don't know what it's called, per se, the Church of ai, I suppose.

But ultimately, you know, i's That's Turn the table, isn't it? Well, I guess in my opinion, you could take the attitude of some of these Silicon Valley Tech bros about ai, and frankly, that sounds a lot like religion too. Mm-Hmm.

If you look at what these, uh, uh, people believe and what they're trying to build and how gullible they are and believing in their own creation, um, I, I, I think honestly that a lot of what they're doing sounds an awful lot like religion as well. And frankly, um, I would rather have that old time religion than have this newfangled weird thing that they're trying to build, uh, with artificial super intelligence and everything that's just not gonna, and long term and life extension and all these crazy ideas that they have put all that stuff together. And that sounds an awful lot like a weird nerd religion, I suppose.

But just remember the most important thing, you know, there's an old saying, man cleanse and God laughs. Exactly. And instead of old religion for me would be just gimme some old time rock and roll.

Um, hey, I think we're gonna call it a, a, a Gang. Mm-Hmm. Okay.

That's it for today's gang episode. We've got a full day of Textron TV going on. Stephen, I know we were streaming, uh, uh, cloud with the last Cloud Field Day last week.

Are we replaying it this week? Do you know, or That's the plan, my friend. That's the plan.

We had incredible, uh, presentations from, uh, Google Cloud, uh, Juniper Morpheus, uh, an incredible, um, brand new company, oxide computing computer company. They did, they really knocked it outta the park. And we'll be live streaming those, uh, hopefully all week here on, uh, on Techstrong.

Uh, and of course we've got some other content from our, uh, podcasts and so on. All right, so there's that and more on Techstrong TV all week. Hey, we're gonna be going to five days a week here on Techstrong Gang and Techstrong tv.

So Monday to Friday, we'll have more great conversations like this. We'd love to hear from you. But until then, this is Alan Shimmel for Textron and Textron Gang.

Steve and Mitchell. Amanda, thank you. Mike is always, thank you.

You've just watched Textron Gang.