Episode Transcript
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Beth Pariseau (00:00):
In decades, if we
get to artificial general
(00:03):
intelligence, or we get to largelanguage models that are capable
of generating complexapplications, it's not going to
replace engineers. It mayreplace coders, but we'll still
the world will still needengineers.
Antone Gonsalves (00:15):
Hi, and
welcome to Tech News this week,
I'm your host, tick tockeditorial news director and
token psaltis. On today's show,we're going to talk about Amazon
opening its sidewalk wirelessnetwork to business, how
generative AI could change thejob of coding, and why security
(00:36):
professionals hold back ondisclosing security breaches
that they should be reporting.First up is Amazon business with
us with US businesses with asubscription to Amazon's AWS
cloud can now use its tools tobuild the software needed to
connect consumer and businessdevices to Amazon sidewalk
(00:59):
network. This is a big dealbecause sidewalk reaches nine
out of every 10 Americans goingto Amazon here to discuss the
ramifications of this is JackGould, Principal Analyst for
jangles and Associates. Okay, solet's start with Would you tell
us what sidewalk is.
Unknown (01:20):
So sidewalk is
interesting. It's really kind of
a stealth network that Amazonhas been deploying for years,
it's part of their echo devicesthat are you know, the the way
that we ask them questions viaaudio. And it's also part of
(01:41):
their their camera system thatwe deploy, you know, in our
houses outside of our houses orwherever it happens to be.
They've put connectivity in thethose devices that include
things like acceptingconnections to Bluetooth, low
power Bluetooth, Laura Wan,which is a wide area, low power,
low speed network. And whatthese things do is basically
(02:05):
accept data from devices andthen pumped them over our Wi Fi
connections or internetconnections that we've had in
our house, back out to AWS forwhatever, whatever applications,
we're going to run against them.So it's, it's really kind of a
social based, open source, ifyou will network. That leverages
(02:28):
what Amazon has been puttinginto the devices for some time.
Antone Gonsalves (02:32):
Okay, so how
do you proceed businesses using
using sidewalk?
Unknown (02:39):
Yeah, so sidewalk is
interesting, because Amazon
claims it covers 90% of the USpopulation, which is
interesting, I don't know wherethey get that number from
actually. But, you know, I canimagine if you're out in a rural
area, and there aren't a lot ofAmazon devices in people's
homes, it's it's not covered.But certainly in a, in a city or
(03:02):
in suburban areas, there is alot of capability inherent in
those devices, assuming by theway that people allow that to be
turned on. I mean, you can go inand set that off if you don't
want people sharing yourinternet connection, basically.
But businesses can deploytechnology that has a wireless
(03:25):
chip built in whether it'sBluetooth, or whether it's
Laura, Laura Wan, or they alsouse FSK, 900 megahertz, that
essentially will send small, lowspeed data to the internet. So
think about, I don't know, dogtrackers, or walking down the
street, and I want to have myheart beat, or my data sent to
(03:47):
the internet and not through myphone or truck rolls, or, you
know, you're delivering food andyou want people to to know when
it's been delivered. By havinglow cost smart IoT kinds of
devices deployed, I can sendthat data to the cloud and get
that information, processed itwhatever my application happens
(04:09):
to be.
Antone Gonsalves (04:09):
Right, right.
I mean, I did do a story this
week on a company on on assetintelligence that used it for
tracking goods to the left totheir final destination in
trucks. They didn't need realtime notification, you say so,
so it worked. It worked fine forthem. And that's, you know,
(04:33):
that's my that's my nextquestion. I mean, it seems, you
know, the carriers have costs ascould roll out 5g For this
purpose. We don't know yet. Butit's a possibility. But it seems
like Amazon is in a positionwhere they can really, they
could really hit the low end ofthe market. So I'm envisioning,
you know, my Kindle being ableto download a book without
(04:57):
without Wi Fi GPS. As color fordogs for dog tracking, that kind
of stuff. Is that how you seeit? Awesome.
Unknown (05:06):
Yeah, it's by the way,
it's important to note what
sidewalk is not good at, it'snot good at deterministic
communications, meaning I've gotto get the information out, I've
got to get it now. And you know,it's safety kinds of stuff,
right? A fire alarm or, youknow, I'm about to fall in a pit
walking in the sidewalk, thatkind of stuff that absolutely
(05:28):
has to get out, because you'rebasically hoping that there's a
connection nearby. And if not,the data is going to wait and
get sent when you have aconnection. So that's what it's
not good at. But what it is goodat is low cost, basically, no
cost. There's no such thing asno cost, of course, but there's
no no cost of connectivity. Thecarriers, the wireless carriers
(05:48):
are rolling out network slicingin 5g, it's taken some time,
because the standard reallyhasn't been there. And the
technology hasn't been deployedyet. But what basically that
will do is it allow the carriersto take a small portion of 5g
and give it to you as a as a wayof connecting your devices. The
intent is to make it very lowcost, but it's a low cost. And
(06:10):
so Amazon is basically promotingsidewalk has no cost.
connectivity, that is there'sobviously back end cost. And so
that's that's the the issue.Now, 5g is going to have better
connectivity, it's going to havereal time connectivity, you
know, kinds of things that wejust talked about fire alarms,
and that kind of stuff. But, youknow, if you're running a water
meter, if you send my data nowor an hour from now, it's not
(06:34):
gonna make any difference. Ifyou're running a fire alarm it
is. So there's room for bothtechnology in the space. But
what Amazon is is doing isthey're putting a stake in the
ground saying, if you need lowdata rates, at very low cost,
we've got a solution for you.Want you to leverage their back
end cloud to make it
Antone Gonsalves (06:54):
this is all
about getting data, as much data
as possible into the cloud,because that's what is this is
painful. Alright, softwareengineers have good reason to
fear for the job because ofartificial intelligence.
Generative AI in particular, iscapable of performing some
(07:15):
coding tasks here to explain whoshould and shouldn't worry about
generative AI is senior newswriter, that's parasol who
covers IT operations. That'sWelcome to the show.
Beth Pariseau (07:29):
Hi, Anton. Good
to be here. Thanks for having
me.
Antone Gonsalves (07:32):
Sure. You
know, first question is what is
it that generative AI can do?Well, when it comes to when it
comes to coding,
Beth Pariseau (07:41):
as far as people
fearing for their jobs right
now, the from what I know, andI'm not an AI expert, but from
what I've heard from experts,about the impact on software
engineers, and IT opsprofessionals is that large
language models generative AI,that can do coding like codecs,
which is what GitHub uses forcopilot can do things that are
(08:03):
basic boilerplate, they can do asimple kind of application. And
otherwise, things like GitHub copilot can be compared to things
like spellcheck, AutoCorrect andautofill that you might have in
Word or Gmail or email thatpredicts the next few words that
you might type in a standardphrase, what large language
(08:24):
models and generative AI or not,is artificial general
intelligence, it can't actuallyreason about the data that it's
learning from, it can'tunderstand cause and effect, and
it can't understand how todesign a complex app to solve a
particular business problem. Sothere may be an effect on junior
(08:47):
developers, people looking toget in on the ground floor,
starting with very simple codingjobs there, there could be an
effect on people doing contractdevelopment work, where they're
doing some of the lower level,more boilerplate code that needs
to be written. But in terms ofthe profession, you know, even
(09:08):
in decades, if we get toartificial general intelligence,
or we get to large languagemodels that are capable of
generating complex applications,it's not going to replace
engineers, and they replacecoders. But we'll still the
world will still need engineers.
Antone Gonsalves (09:24):
I mean, most
most of coding, I don't know if
it's most but there's a portionof coding that's that is
routine. Right? It's it's prettymuch done the same way all the
time. A portion, yep. portion.Okay, because that I mean, I'm
thinking of the legal professionnow. For example, using
(09:44):
artificial intelligence for forcontracts for certain standard
contracts all the time. So, wethink the same thing applies for
coding, you know, what do youuse, so it is possible then Over
time, companies would need lessfewer coders.
Beth Pariseau (10:05):
Say in the
example of a standard contract
in a law office, who that'sgoing to replace first as a
paralegal, not a lawyer that'sgoing to replace the legal
secretaries and paralegals thatare already doing that kind of
rote work. So in the softwareworld, the analogy would be to a
junior developer, someone who'sgoing to do kind of more the
grunt work more the basic stuff,there is a chance that that
(10:25):
could become a less easy job tocome by. But as with a lawyer,
someone who's done law schoolwho can reason about cases that
are not standard, you know, Idoubt that large language models
will replace their expertiseanytime soon. So you know, it's
not that there's not going to beany change. But I don't know
(10:48):
that it's going to replace humanbeings, other than in those kind
of entry level positions fornow. And you know, we hear a lot
also about a general IT skillsshortage, there just aren't
enough developers, there aren'tenough skilled developers and
engineers to go around,especially if you're not one of
the unicorn startups or big techvendors. So if you can get your
(11:11):
hands on those preciousresources, you don't necessarily
want to pay them to spend theirtime writing boilerplate and
basic code. You want them to besolving business problems. And
you know, if if something canautomate that boilerplate job so
much the better,
Antone Gonsalves (11:26):
you know, it
is very similar to law firms in
that even if you use AI or whenyou use AI, to produce contract,
you still need to have a lawyerreview the contract. Once it's
done, it's really a question ofsaving time and not having to
actually write it up. Okay,finally, security. Firm
(11:48):
Bitdefender surveyed 400 IT andsecurity professionals in
companies with at least 1000employees of those working for
US companies 70% were told tokeep a security breach
confidential, while 55% kept abreach secret, knowing that they
(12:09):
shouldn't have to explain thewhy these numbers is security
news writer, Ariel Waldman. Sowhy is the Why all the secrecy
around breaches?
Unknown (12:21):
Well, there's a couple
reasons. First of all, it's not
really a new problem. A lack oftransparency into data breaches
has been ongoing for years. Thisreport kind of just highlighted
the scope, the current scope ofit, and US companies, according
to the survey that they did,were even less likely to report
(12:42):
then companies located in theEuropean Union. One reason for
that is because the general dataprotection regulations may
require stricter regulations,they could they have to report
in 72 hours or they could facehigh fines. So that's one reason
comparatively that the US isless likely to report breaches.
(13:06):
But overall, reasons thatcompanies don't report breaches
narrows down to wanting to avoidreputational damage, potential
financial and legalconsequences. And as well as
just not wanting to spend andutilize resources that the
company doesn't have. Whilethey're mitigating their, their
response. Many companies areunderstaffed when it comes to IT
(13:29):
and security as it is. Soputting those resources to
reporting and other things maynot be possible at that time. I
think reputational damage is oneof the biggest fears especially
when sensitive information isinvolved. And they have to
notify customers on that.
Antone Gonsalves (13:48):
And there's
also insurance companies that
are involved in this also, dothey play a role? Or what role
do they play?
Unknown (13:55):
Yeah, they're
increasingly adding notification
clauses. So they're requiringcompanies to notify them before
even law enforcement and otherentities, which is a big, which
is an increasing problem aswell, especially as more
companies adopt cyber insurancepolicies.
Antone Gonsalves (14:14):
That the
National Cybersecurity strategy
that's the White Houseinitiative the doesn't require
it requires companies to reporton a timely basis on breaches.
How is how does that
Unknown (14:30):
I think it's not as
strict as for example, the GDPR
but in the new National in a newNational Cybersecurity
Initiative and announced lastmonth, one of the aspects of it
was requiring criticalinfrastructures entities to
report incidences to Sisa withinhours, and the White House said
(14:50):
it's meant to improve efforts toidentify root causes of
incidents, among other things.
Antone Gonsalves (14:56):
Are there any
other interesting elements To
the report.
Unknown (15:01):
I think that one other
interesting aspect is that
nowadays, even if a companywants to keep a breach private,
it's becoming increasinglydifficult to do, especially with
ransomware attacks. Ransomwaregroups are not even deploying
ransomware sometimes andencrypting machines, they're
just stealing data. And they'lluse that data to as an extortion
(15:26):
threat. They have public leaksites, and they they'll put a
company's name on this leak siteand give them a like, certain
time to give in to the ransombefore they leak all the data
that they stole. And manyresearchers they find you can
find these these data leak sitesare public so customers will
(15:49):
find out or other people justbrings awareness to the data
breach that and then the companywill disclose after right after
that. So it's becoming muchharder to even keep them private
if they want to.
Antone Gonsalves (16:06):
Alright, that
wraps up this week's show, you
know, thanks for watching andenjoy the weekend.