Learners Should Use ChatGPT

Welcome to the 3rd edition of The Faithful Technologist. The first two editions of this newsletter have primarily been centered around breakthroughs in generative AI which may seem out of theme considering it is supposed to be about IT & Cybersecurity. That said, I've found that week by week these breakthroughs in generative AI are directly impacting IT & Cybersecurity. More IT professionals are starting to use ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, Replit and other tools to accomplish their day-to-day work. Because of this I'll continue to cover these new happenings.

Teaching Students to Use Generative AI

I teach adult college students and high school aged early college students IT & Cybersecurity skills. For those that don't know, many schools have programs where high school students can also work through college courses so they can graduate with a high school diploma and an Associates degree. We have been talking about generative AI in my classes and I have been encouraging them to use & experiment with tools like ChatGPT, Bard, and Midjourney. I understand that this is can be perceived as a controversial and contrarian approach because there are school districts and entire countries banning the technology and the academic world hasn't quite had the time to integrate it into curriculums.

• Italy Bans ChatGPT

• New York City Schools bans ChatGPT

• Leaders in Tech Petition to Slow Progress

There is concern among prominent educators and leaders in tech regarding the societal implications of innovating so quickly with these AI technologies, especially with GPT-4 and beyond. It makes me wonder what exactly many of these supporters of "the pause" are seeing that the general public isn't. I don't think it's just fear mongering, jealously or competitiveness. If you follow that link above you will see names ranging from Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple), Elon Musk, Andrew Yang to countless Ivy League professors that research & teach AI. I will not be signing because I believe it is important to allow the momentum to continue so these tools can continue to get better and better though I can understand many of the concerns. Here are some of the top concerns I've seen thus far particularly as it relates to education and workforce:

• "Students are going to use this to cheat and skip actual learning"
• "This is going to reduce the need for a large number of knowledge work focused jobs"
• "Schools can't keep up with this pace of innovation"
• "There is no reliable way to detect if papers have been written using generative AI tools"

These are all serious concerns, but I personally do not think the answer to each is to stop progress or completely ban the tools. Concerns like the ones I mentioned must've been similar when Google Search debuted and even when the calculator came on to the scene. I can hear the concerns now regarding Google, I bet they went something like:

"Well now students are going to just Google everything, find the answers on some site instead of going through books in the library."

Generative AI is the next wave of fundamentally important technologies we as humans have access to. I'm sharing this with my students in class and all around the world. In class I pulled up ChatGPT and they gave me prompt ideas. We experiment with the tool and talk about it's strengths & draw backs. Many of them heard about it before I mentioned it in class. I warn them to not use this tool to write entire papers for them. When I ask them "why am I saying this?" they all naturally agree that "if we just let it write the entire paper we completely miss out on learning."

Will they use it to cheat anyway? (time will tell). Chat Responsibly ??

This is the same thinking when it comes to Google or using any search engine in an educational setting. If we do not teach generative AI in the classroom, students are going to be at a disadvantage because somewhere out there in the workforce people are using it and it is making them more productive.

Educators, are you teaching ChatGPT & generative AI to your students? If so, how? If not, why not? Please share in the comments or message me privately, Id like to talk about it together and share ideas.

One AI project idea I am experimenting with is having students utilize art generators (like Midjourney), video generators (like D-ID) and voice generators (like Uberduck) to create a video walkthrough of one IT concept. In this project they would work together to pick an IT topic (like IP addressing) and make a practical video walkthrough where the instructor is an AI generated avatar. They would be allowed to use ChatGPT to help them create the script and the final product would be a YouTube style walkthrough of an IT concept.

Google Cloud & Replit Partnership

In a past newsletter I mentioned replit. They are an innovative company where software developers can write code completely in the browser and quickly spin up environments to run their applications in and even immediately deploy & host the application on the web for the world to use. They have been working on developing their own AI chatbot (Ghostwriter) and now they are partnered with Google's Cloud division to accelerate the creation of generative AI applications.

That's huge! Google Cloud has an incredible infrastructure and I'm sure the teams focusing on generative AI at Google and at replit will be having many fruitful collaborations together on this. I had a conversation with a brilliant friend of mine Brandon Froehlich aka Command B. He is a music producer, creative genius and IT guru. Check out his latest album Homebrew Computer Club (its also on all major music streaming services):

This is my favorite beat on the album (turn your speakers up some):

One thought he shared on the partnership was "the time from thought/idea to actual invention is going to be immediate and almost in real-time. We pondered on that idea. Imagine you are in the kitchen, shower or wherever your ideas suddenly hit you (for me it is the shower) and you get an idea. You know it is a good idea so you call out to your phone

"hey siri" or "okay Google"

"Write me a web-based game that is a platformer similar to Mario but the character is Yoda and the setting is Dagobah from Star Wars. Deploy the game on replit so people can immediately play and test it."

Then before you are even done drying off, a version of the game is live. It is magical to consider that an idea could immediately become reality using just human language. Developing software has gotten a whole lot more accessible this year for the average person because now you can easily program computers with natural human language.

HackedGPT

According to a report by OpenAI, a bug in the Redis client open-source library caused the ChatGPT service to expose other users' chat queries and the personal information for approximately 1.2% of ChatGPT Plus subscribers. The bug was discovered in the Redis client open-source library, redis-py. OpenAI has disclosed that certain ChatGPT plus users' sensitive data, including their names, email addresses, and payment information, may have been leaked by ChatGPT due to a race condition vulnerability in the redis-py open-source library. Even AI chat bots aren't safe from crafty hackers. It is still an Internet-based web service created and maintained by humans relying on systems developed by humans so there will most certainly be flaws.

Security is only going to get more important as these systems scale quickly. Personally I still can't envision how security can outpace innovation or even keep pace with it though traditional means. In the past, I would say & think "well lets just bake security in" but in practice security is a constant process to achieve & maintain (I see security as a state of being that will always change) and software services often rely on many dependencies managed by separate organizations. It sometimes feels like knowing and testing every possible scenario is impossible. This is why it is important to employ teams of professional hackers (ethical hackers, bug bounty hunters, and penetration testers) to test the security of IT infrastructure and applications during development and after deployment continuously & employing different methodologies.

If you did not already know Redis is a popular, high performing open-source database not maintained by OpenAI. There could be employees at OpenAI that contribute to the Redis project and we know ChatGPT uses Redis, but it is not primarily what they would be building on a day-to-day basis making it easy to overlook the bug. I'm explaining this because I am not a fan of shaming people and/or organizations when a security incident occurs and I want everyone reading to understand that mistakes happen especially in IT & Cybersecurity. It is a highly complex world that is ever changing and to achieve a consistent state of security is a daily practice.

Content Spotlight

There is some great content from other creators that came out recently that I got valuable insight from. Here is a list below:

• Bill Gates Interview
• Sam Altman Lex Interview

• Thought provoking Ideas on AI Revolutionizing Infosec by Daniel Miessler

• A helpful resource for aspiring penetration testers and ethical hackers to get into Active Directory penetration testing by mrb3n

Don't Worry About Anything

Philippians 4:6 reads :

"Do not be anxious?or?worried about anything, but in everything [every circumstance and situation] by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, continue to make your [specific] requests known to God."

This is a constant reminder for me. I am an overthinker which isn't always good. I deeply ponder the direction I should go in a given situation and try to calculate potential obstacles and outcomes. Some of the primary focuses in the security industry are to calculate risk, what could go wrong, work towards prevention and have plans for the worst case scenarios. Worry can be attached to all of that. If you are on the defensive side full-time (often referred to as Blue Teaming) you will need to constantly be on alert for hack attempts which can easily turn into constant worry.

In family matters there can be an endless number of things to worry about.

Am I doing enough as a Dad?

Am I doing enough as a husband?

Am I being a good son? etc..

When I feel this sense of worry bubble up I pray to God:

"Why am I worrying about this God?"

I receive direction and often realize my sense of worry comes from a lack of being properly prepared or uncertainty about the future outcome.

What if the worst case did happen?

While I do not expect the worst case scenario to happen, I've trained my brain to embrace it and be ready if it does. In a strange way this helps me avoid worrying and have faith that God will guide me through the storms that come. Everything will be okay when placing faith in God and stepping boldly in who God has called you to be & doing what you are called to do.

May your week ahead be blessed and full of meaningful impact. You are loved and have a unique purpose that will impact many in a mighty way!

Happy easter!