Embracing Digital This Week

Generative AI based Chatbots are far from perfect. ChatGPT, Microsoft's Bing chatbot, Meta's Galactica (a generative AI designed to help scientists with tasks like annotating proteins or writing code), and other systems have been taken down or reined in after they've been found to generate unreliable or incorrect information or spiraled into emotional-seeming reactions and even threats.

The US and European governments are collaborating on an AI research study to develop strategies for regulating and fostering AI innovation. The study will cover five areas: extreme weather and climate forecasting, emergency response management, health and medicine improvements, electric grid optimization, and agriculture optimization. Participants include the US Energy Department, the Department of Agriculture, the Pentagon, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, health and science agencies, and their European counterparts.

Airdot Deploy: Automatically deploy ML models and scale them. Automatically identifies the required packages, understands module dependency, re-factors the code, builds REST APIs around the ML model, packages it in a container, spins up the infra, automatically scales it up and down, and sets up automated alerts and monitoring, all with just one line of code. So much for you DevOps team.

A report by Tenable reveals that cyberattacks are primarily carried out using known vulnerabilities for which patches are already available. Threat actors continue to exploit vulnerabilities that organizations have failed to patch or remediate, including high-severity flaws in Microsoft Exchange and virtual private network solutions.

Municipal CISOs face challenges as cyber threats increase, with ransomware attacks being the largest concern. Oakland, California, recently declared a state of emergency following a ransomware attack by the Playgroup that disrupted phone systems and non-emergency services. This attack is one in a series of ransomware attacks on local governments in the US, including those in Baltimore, New Orleans, Pensacola, and Atlanta.

President Biden signed the Quantum Computing Cybersecurity Preparedness Act, requiring federal agencies to prioritize using quantum-resistant technology. The law mandates guidance for assessing critical systems with post-quantum cryptography standards. This is in response to fears of quantum technology making existing encryption vulnerable to being cracked quickly.

Accenture's annual banking cloud report found that banks targeting core systems for cloud migration face a major risk factor in the difficulty of sourcing cloud talent. Banks perceive core migration as high-risk due to a lack of staff with cloud expertise and the difficulty of recruiting the required skills in the current environment. Public cloud adoption represents both a security upgrade and a risk factor, reflected in the banking industry's lack of cloud adoption.

Cloud-based data warehouse company Snowflake plans to add over 1,000 employees in the current fiscal year, according to CFO Mike Scarpelli during the company's Q4 earnings call. This follows the addition of 1,900 people last year, in contrast to the downsizing trend among other big tech companies. Snowflake plans to prioritize hiring in product, engineering, and sales.

According to industry experts, CIOs must restructure their IT departments and strategies to take advantage of cloud transformation fully. Neil Holden, CIO at Halfords Group, believes IT departments must operate differently because of the cloud and what it means to the business. Holden reorganized his team to ensure they could maximize the capabilities and business opportunities provided by the cloud.

Check out this weeks full length episode "Innovation as a Service" where Darren interview Andrew Cohen Managing Director at Netsurit.