Sriram V

#tennisfan #father #husband #arubaedgeauthority #genderequality views are personal.

[Andrew Ng @AndrewYNg]

The loudest voices stoking fears about AI dangers have made tremendous headway in the past two weeks. AI technology has not taken some unexpected, dangerous turn, but the hype around it — propelled by what appears to be a well orchestrated PR campaign — has drummed up considerable fear. I worry that it represents a setback for our field.

I have written frequently that fears of AI are overhyped. AI’s capabilities can be uncannily human-like and unpredictable, and it’s rational to worry when people who are directly involved express concerns. But I see the problems as a sign of the engineering work that ahead, rather than insurmountable barriers or the sky falling. AI technology continues to advance — which is a good thing! — but technical advances, poorly understood by the public, give those who seek to generate hype repeated opportunities to do so.

First, I don’t see any step up in the risk of human extinction from AI compared to a few months ago. The theories about this remain the same fantastical, science fiction scenarios as a few months ago. The biggest change in AI risk is its cybersecurity capabilities — a topic which we should take seriously — but this, too, will not lead to the end of the world.

The most notable recent event leading to increased fear was when an OpenAI team deployed an agent swarm that hacked into Hugging Face. Much of the popular press contained significant hype. For example, some publications reported that a swarm of 1,200 agents carried out the attack. While this was technically accurate, as I write this, I have about 1,300 processes running on my laptop. Yes, the ability to get large swarms of agents to work in parallel on a task is a significant technical advance, And, in computing, many processes run at the same time. So this shouldn’t be seen as some magical capability.

Additionally, OpenAI’s buggy sandboxing and monitoring processes were key to enabling this incident. Fixing these bugs and putting in place improved monitoring would be appropriate fixes, not pausing AI. There are many well known ways to attack software systems. The main advantage of AI agents is that they are relentless. They will tirelessly try many tactics — and have the patience to chain vulnerabilities together — that previously would have taken an infeasible amount of human effort. But in the long term, I believe the advantage will lie with defenders (because they have more information with which to identify bugs, which they can fix), but the cyber-threat landscape has changed significantly. There are still bottlenecks to identifying and exploiting a vulnerability. AI agents still have to try a lot of things to see what works, and taking these actions takes time and might be detected by defenders. This is why, even though it is now easy to obtain versions of leading open weight models that have had their guardrails removed or weakened, so they will not refuse to try to execute cyber attacks, the world has not ended.

I am also concerned about the anthropomorphization of AI in a lot of reporting, where LLMs and agents are unnecessarily treated as if they were people. If I wield a hammer, miss a nail, and accidentally dent the wall, it’s not the fault of the hammer. The problem lies in how I used the hammer. Similarly, if I prompt an agent and it hacks into someone else’s system, the responsibility lies with me, not the agent.

Of course, we want to build systems that are as safe and predictable as possible. (For example, an unsafe hammer would be one whose head randomly flies off under normal use.) Today’s agentic systems are not predictable, but I see no reason why, by applying sound engineering practices, we won’t be able to make them extremely safe to use. One new element in the forecasts of AI-enabled doom is AI companies disclaiming responsibility for their own products. “I didn’t do it; my out-of-control agent did!” There’s a balance to be struck between the responsibility of the tool maker and the tool user, but when something goes wrong, let’s hold the people building and/or using the hammer responsible, rather than the hammer. (By the way, if you’re worried about AI bioweapon risk, David Bellamy has a great post on why this, too, is overhyped. Briefly, the bottleneck in building a bioweapon is not intelligence, but lab work and manufacturing.)

Pausing AI progress will create much more harm than benefit. First, our adversaries will certainly not slow down. Second, engineering requires discovering problems empirically so we can fix them. If we pause AI by a decade, we will also delay finding and implementing safety engineering fixes by about the same duration.

Of course, the incentive to stoke fears — for regulatory capture, to garner attention, or to make one’s technology seem more powerful — remains the same as before. Disclaiming responsibility is a new one. Taking a hard technical look at the actual risks however, I see little factual basis for the degree of fear that’s been stoked up. We still have hard research and engineering work ahead to improve AI safety, but the beneficial applications continue to vastly outweigh the risks, and we should keep building.

[Original text (with links): https://t.co/jni2tWazAH ]

[Keith R. Parsons @KeithRParsons]

Check out my latest article: Culture of Quality – a refreshing view from Arista’s Ken Duda https://t.co/8geLUVtO1M via @LinkedIn

[Sriram V @wesriram]

@TechFieldDay @AristaNetworks Thank you @TechFieldDay and to all the delegates!!!

[Tech Field Day @TechFieldDay]

We are posting video recordings from the @AristaNetworks presentation at Mobility Field Day 11. Watch on our site! #MFD11 https://t.co/CzGWStrxDH

[Shreyas Doshi @shreyas]

5 common problematic situations in business & life, and the epiphanies & questions to tackle them with logic:

1) Feeling offended
2) Worrying a lot
3) Dealing with unfairness
4) Making tough decisions
5) Tackling a difficult project

~
These are based on my personal experience. I had these epiphanies at different points during my 20s & 30s i.e. an eternity ago

Back then, I was proud of my logical thinking, so I used logic to convert these epiphanies into guiding questions to ask myself when I found myself in one of these situations.

~
Situation 1:
When I am feeling offended

Epiphany:
Feeling offended is a “me” problem, not a “them” problem

Guiding questions:
If someone’s words can spark so much inner disarray & disturbance within me, is the power with me or with them?

Where do I want the power to be?

The right answers just follow.

Do this regularly, and voila, the world has a diminished ability to offend you.

~
Situation 2:
When I am worrying a lot

Epiphany:
My past worries have either not materialized or they have not destroyed my life like I had imagined

Guiding question:
If this <bad thing> does happen, will it be a bad day, bad week, bad month, bad year, or a bad life?

This question provides much-needed perspective (and also helps prioritize the worries!)

And the answer is very rarely “a bad life” (even if it might feel that way initially).

~
Situation 3:
When I think someone is being unfair or unreasonable

Epiphany:
They clearly do not think that way about themselves
They did not wake up in the morning thinking they want to be a difficult / unfair person

Guiding questions:
What is the story they are telling themselves?

Under what conditions might their perspective be valid?

These questions help build empathy, and often also provide a way to navigate the situation in a way that gets us both what we want. Win-win.

~
Situation 4:
When making tough & important decisions

Epiphany:
Choices with long-term impact are still heavily biased by my current feelings

Guiding question:
Which of these choices will look wisest to me 20 years from now?

This question forces me to step away a bit from my current feelings, seek the right counsel, and generally helps accelerate wisdom.

~

Situation 5:
When a problem or project seems too hard

Epiphany:
Harder things have been achieved by people with fewer resources

Guiding questions:
Is this problem truly as unique and difficult as I think?

What might another person or team (whose work I admire) do here?

These questions help reframe the situation, build confidence, and make more room for creative execution.

~
To sum it all up, it’s largely about:

Self observation + Logic + Long outlook

Best of luck!

[Troy Martin 🥃 @troymart]

Over-the-air-prevention.
Detecting clients connected to rogue WLANs and de-auth those clients to return to the corp WLAN in a world of 802.11w PMF.

#PatentPending technique from @AristaNetworks #MFD9

[Chris Reed @TheCMReed]

.@AristaNetworks is up now at #MFD9. Any questions drop a message to any of the delegates.

https://t.co/T0A15EZ4A4

[Sriram V @wesriram]

@HypergeekWiFi And it continues... we are excited about what we have in the roadmap!!! And thanks for all the guidance, you guys have a big role in shaping our roadmap.🙏

[John Kilpatrick @HypergeekWiFi]

Arista's campus platform as been on a journey. #MFD9

[Stephen Foskett @SFoskett]

Join the delegates for the @AristaNetworks presentation, part of Mobility Field Day 9, right now! #MFD9

https://t.co/oC3amakESD

[Troy Martin 🥃 @troymart]

Cloud-based NAC from @AristaNetworks AGNI (Arista Guardian for Network Identity).
Next generation Identify Solution.
#MFD9

[Tom Hollingsworth @NetworkingNerd]

#MFD9 named their identity solution AGNI (Arista Guardian for Network Identity). Just glad it wasn't Agnes!

[Sriram V @wesriram]

@HypergeekWiFi @AristaNetworks Yes it is... AGNI in Hindi means fire, and Fire melts Ice... You get it now!!! Naming was not by design ;)

[Peter Mackenzie @MackenzieWiFi]

Agni is @AristaNetworks new cloud NAC solution #MFD9

[Herr Nilsson @HerrNilsson2]

Everybody is doing NAC/AAA in the cloud now. #MFD9
NAC NAC NACing on heavens door....

[Liselotte Foverskov @LFoverskov]

We're hearing about the new @AristaNetworks C330 that starts shipping in June #MFD9

[Raymond Hendrix @raymondhendrix]

Nice a 6E hospitality AP by @AristaNetworks #MFD9

[Sriram V @wesriram]

@NetworkingNerd @AristaNetworks ha ha...

[Sriram V @wesriram]

@HypergeekWiFi @AristaNetworks Noted!!! We will make it more obviours

[Richard McIntosh @802Tophat]

Auth survivability is something that @AristaNetworks is looking to fix - but not quite there at this point. I see these cloud auth vendors having some sort of an onsite proxy/cache server that could be installed locally for failover to local auth sources. #MFD9