AI: Full Speed Ahead with Guardrails

The Smart IT Podcast

In this week's episode of @the smart it podcast, I chatted with Randy Lariar at Optiv Security on "AI: Full Speed Ahead with Guardrails". We explored a wide range of topics related to Artificial Intelligence (AI).

We discussed the potential and challenges of AI technology in the enterprise. Key topics included the impact of AI on jobs and workforce, use cases for AI in automating tasks, risks of AI like hallucination and data leaks, the need for governance and ethical frameworks around AI adoption, and the role of security teams in enabling safe AI deployments. Randy shared insights on approaching AI initiatives, building AI skillsets, and framing business cases for AI investments. We also discussed strategies for communicating the value of AI initiatives to leadership and securing funding for AI-related projects. There are many things organizations can undertake to realize the benefits of AI, including:

- Establish an AI governance framework tailored to the organization's specific needs, incorporating relevant regulatory and legal obligations, as well as industry-specific guidelines and best practices.

- Conduct an inventory of existing AI systems and use cases within the organization to assess risks and identify areas for improvement or additional controls.

- Develop a pattern-based approval process for AI initiatives, starting with low-risk use cases and gradually expanding to more complex scenarios as the organization builds expertise and maturity.

- Implement monitoring and oversight mechanisms to ensure AI systems are functioning as intended, producing accurate and unbiased results, and adhering to ethical and security standards.

- Foster collaboration between IT, security, data science, legal, and other relevant teams to ensure a holistic approach to AI adoption and risk management.

- Explore opportunities to leverage AI for automating tedious tasks, improving efficiency, and enabling employees to focus on higher-value work.

- Upskill and reskill employees to work effectively with AI systems, providing training on prompt engineering, model interpretation, and other relevant skills.

- Communicate the value of AI initiatives to leadership and stakeholders by focusing on measurable outcomes, return on investment, and alignment with business objectives.

- Leverage AI initiatives to secure funding for other IT and security initiatives that have been on the backlog, such as asset management, data classification, and network visibility.

Show Notes:

-Randy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lariar/

-Link to this episode: https://youtu.be/N1pVQhsjQ2E

-Randy's Newsletter on LinkedIn (BD&A - Thinks and Links) | Big Data & Analytics - Thinks and Links | News and insights at the intersection of cybersecurity, data, and AI: Randy's blog: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/bd-a-thinks-and-links-7045352334108839936/

-Data Science to Surface Transformative Insights, Better data insights arise from better questions: https://www.optiv.com/services/transformation-services/big-data-analytics-ai

-US Executive Order | Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2023/10/30/executive-order-on-the-safe-secure-and-trustworthy-development-and-use-of-artificial-intelligence/

-The EU Artificial Intelligence Act: https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/

-NIST AI Risk Management: https://www.nist.gov/itl/ai-risk-management-framework

-MITRE Atlas: https://atlas.mitre.org/

-The Smart IT Podcast YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@thesmartitpodcast

-Captivate Website for all episodes: https://the-smart-it-podcast.captivate.fm/

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