S1: Welcome to Unsupervised Learning, a security, AI and meaning focused
S1: podcast that looks at how best to thrive as humans
S1: in a post AI world. It combines original ideas, analysis,
S1: and mental models to bring not just the news, but
S1: why it matters and how to respond. All right. Welcome
S1: to unsupervised learning. This is Daniel Missler. All right. Number 425.
S1: So you all know the deal here. Tons going on
S1: this week prepping for some paid talks. Going to be
S1: traveling to a few different states. Honestly really excited to
S1: be alive right now at this moment in human history,
S1: like all the different opportunities there are that are just
S1: popping off and I feel like there's always a conference,
S1: there's always people. There's so many people building right now,
S1: especially here in the Bay area. And I'm just excited
S1: about the optimism. Like the optimism has its own gravity,
S1: if that makes sense. And yeah hack build grind appreciate.
S1: That's pretty much the current vibe. So I wrote this
S1: piece called Efficient Security Principle. And I'm going to open
S1: this up in a new tab. And it's essentially explaining
S1: why a lot of security people are so upset, I think,
S1: over the course of their career. So one of the
S1: hardest things about being in security is just the frustration.
S1: And this came from the conversation with Deno, where he
S1: basically posted about raising the security minimum. And I was like, well,
S1: you know, the minimum is there for a reason. And
S1: I kind of wanted to capture that into a principle.
S1: And ideally I would have this be one item, but
S1: it was getting kind of long. So I broke it
S1: into these statements. Security baseline of an offering continuous downward
S1: pressure from customer excitement or reliance on a given thing.
S1: And then the baseline will be set at the point
S1: at which people will stop using it if it's any worse.
S1: But it can't go higher than that. And then the
S1: third piece of it, which these are all kind of
S1: saying the same thing, is that the better the offering is,
S1: or the more important it is, the lower the security
S1: baseline can go without losing people. And that's really, really important.
S1: So all this together basically means that the more essential
S1: a thing is, and the more awesome it is, the
S1: more people will put up with. And as we'll see
S1: when we move through this, it's the reason you shouldn't
S1: get too upset when the baseline is low. So the
S1: way we know something has the right amount of security
S1: is people just keep using it despite how insecure it is. Right?
S1: So online companies constantly getting hacked. My friend Sasha Geller
S1: basically talked about this one where he said that basically
S1: the biggest example of this is actually email, where it's
S1: like email gets everyone hacked. It's like the number one
S1: way to get hacked is to have email. But guess what?
S1: You need email. There's a reliance on it. It's like
S1: our national you know, our global infrastructure of it is
S1: basically emails to online banking. Everyone's getting constant fraud all
S1: the time. Door locks and the internet in general is
S1: pretty nasty. It's a cesspool, right? We use these things
S1: anyway because the value they provide massively outweighs the security risks,
S1: at least according to us in our own minds. And
S1: the moment people stop using something due to security being
S1: too bad, the baseline goes up. And Sasha had another
S1: good point in that. SMS is actually an example of
S1: this where it was deemed too nasty. And then we
S1: started moving to like app based tufa. So the way
S1: to actually use this is if you're a security tech professional,
S1: like down in the weeds, realize that it's not that
S1: level that matters at a bigger scale. So you want
S1: to like uplevel your thinking and realize it's not about us.
S1: It's not about the technical part of it. It's about
S1: how important is the offering. And that's what actually sets
S1: the baseline. And most importantly, do not take it personally.
S1: Don't take it personally that the baseline is low and
S1: you're showing them how to raise the baseline, but they're
S1: not doing anything about it, right. That's really key. And
S1: if you're a security leader, you know, you can have
S1: the same sort of problem and frustration of a technical person.
S1: And maybe you're also a technical leader. It doesn't really matter.
S1: But the point is like you can get frustrated as well.
S1: And the recommendation is first, make sure the security baseline
S1: is actually where the customer thinks it is. Maybe they're
S1: not complaining because they don't really know how bad it is.
S1: So once those are in alignment now, now you have
S1: sort of the same situation as the technical side where
S1: it's like look fine, innovative ways to raise the baseline
S1: without making it obvious or cause friction because people might
S1: want to higher baseline, but only if it doesn't cost
S1: them anything because they're only going to go as high
S1: as it can go without sacrificing that experience of this
S1: thing that they love. And I just think it's really powerful.
S1: So yeah, only as good as it needs to be
S1: to keep people from abandoning the service. And the more
S1: popular or essential the offering, the lower the security can be.
S1: This is in the summary here. And progress is still possible,
S1: especially with policy change and regulation, because that kind of
S1: like forces a baseline raise. But security experts loudly calling
S1: out how low the baseline is and gesturing wildly towards
S1: the solution seldom results in change. And most importantly, this
S1: is kind of the big takeaway is experts struggling with
S1: low security baselines should absorb the truth above and not
S1: let their job satisfaction and their mental health suffer. And
S1: got a bunch of notes here. But that's that's basically
S1: that piece. All right. A couple of really cool patterns
S1: here put into fabric this week. So the first one
S1: is like it'll analyze your prose according to my favorite
S1: writing book, which is The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker.
S1: And here's what it actually looks like after a run.
S1: This is. The analysis of me actually doing that, that essay.
S1: So I put that essay through here and this is
S1: the result I came back. So style analysis it's multiple
S1: different styles put together positive assessment. Critical assessment I talk
S1: a little bit too much about the writing itself I
S1: guess is what this is saying. It gives me examples
S1: of good writing from it. Things I can improve. No
S1: spelling mistakes, which is cool. I'm going to be using
S1: this to catch spelling from now on, and you start
S1: off with a 100 score. Oh, and it gives recommendations
S1: as well. But it starts off with 100 score and
S1: then deducts. So I got an 85. I got an
S1: 85 here because it took 15 points off for these things.
S1: So that's what that pattern does. And then this one
S1: is extract book recommendations. So this is insane. This is
S1: essentially any book you could think of that was probably
S1: brought in the training of a given model. And it's
S1: most that you could think of like a New York
S1: Times bestseller. Any big name book that you can think
S1: of is probably going to be in here. So open
S1: this one up and look at it. So this is
S1: a man search for Meaning by Viktor Viktor Frankl. And
S1: these are the recommendations that it gave me for what
S1: to do right to like improve your life. I mean
S1: look at these, these these are absolutely insane. Find meaning
S1: in life by dedicating yourself to a cause greater than yourself.
S1: Like even the prioritization here is really, really good. Take
S1: responsibility for your own life and choices. I mean, this
S1: is gorgeous and this all just came from running. I
S1: literally said Echo Man's search for meaning pipe into extract
S1: book recommendation and this is what it produced, right? This
S1: is so powerful. I'm just blown away every time we
S1: make one of these things. So those are two of
S1: the biggest ones that I put in. I actually put
S1: in more, but those are two of the big ones.
S1: So security stuff. Yeah. It looks like you can extract
S1: keys from M-series chips. I'm sure they'll fix that in
S1: the next iteration. After that, a lot of people are
S1: saying it's not really packable and that it's kind of
S1: a big problem. So and that if you do do
S1: a workaround, it might affect performance. But we'll see. And
S1: here's the other piece. We'll have to wait and see
S1: how real world these attacks are to know if it's
S1: like actually bad and the integration of drones with digitized
S1: command and control systems. Yeah, this is a US war
S1: fighting effort essentially, and they're calling it transformative trinity for autonomous,
S1: like very dangerous drones, which saved dystopian movie writers a
S1: lot of time. So that's that's good news. And yeah,
S1: along the lines of this, there's never been a better
S1: time to read Daniel Suarez's kill decision, which is all
S1: about autonomous drones. Actually, you should check out that book,
S1: a really, really good book. And Jess has a new
S1: strategy for tackling AI risks. Got the PDF here. Someone
S1: in China got arrested in New York for trying to
S1: sell Tesla's secret battery tech to undercover agents. I'm not
S1: sure if he thought he was selling it to China.
S1: I couldn't quite get that from the story. Canada is
S1: rethinking its ban of flipper zero, trying to go after
S1: misuse instead of just banning it outright, which I'm glad
S1: they listened to the feedback there. Avonte critical bug. This
S1: just continues to happen. Earth crushing Kraken. Yeah, I'm not
S1: sure how to pronounce that one, but basically a Abt
S1: group backed by the Chinese government hit over 70 organizations,
S1: mostly focused on governments, and Atlassian patched a critical SQL vulnerability.
S1: So myself and a bunch of other AI builders have
S1: found something really weird where anthropic smallest model haiku has
S1: been performing extremely well. And this one I did. What
S1: is this? So this is extract ideas. So I did
S1: extract ideas on a recent YouTube video of Jonathan Haidt
S1: coming on Rogan again. And if you look at these
S1: results here, they are remarkably similar, similar to each other.
S1: So like GPT for the first one is opus, which
S1: is like the best anthropic model. The second one is
S1: GPT four, which is the best OpenAI model. But this
S1: is the worst. It's the third level down of anthropic models,
S1: and these top level like quotes here really good. Not
S1: not quotes, but findings, ideas extracted. I mean, they're not
S1: obviously worse than any of the other two. And this
S1: has happened to me multiple times. So I'm really impressed
S1: with that. And a lot of people are reporting GPT
S1: five will be out this summer. And they're pointing to
S1: this interview that Sam Altman did with Lex. And but
S1: what he actually said was something good would come out soon,
S1: maybe like this summer. I think he might have said,
S1: like this summer. And some people are saying, well, maybe
S1: it'll be like a 4.5 release, but I don't think
S1: it's going to be five before the end of the year.
S1: That's my guess. Nvidia is patterning. Patterning. See, now you know,
S1: I don't use AI to write my stuff. I wrote
S1: this and that is misspelled. That's unfortunate. Yeah. Partnering with
S1: Hippocratic AI to introduce AI nurses for virtual patient care.
S1: So you basically looking at an iPad and it's like
S1: a face telling you what to do $9 an hour.
S1: It's actually an AI. Yeah. So there's a little point
S1: here most of the benefit will get from AI in
S1: the first few years. Won't be from doing work better
S1: than good humans, right? It's going to be doing work
S1: that otherwise would not have been done at all. So
S1: the great examples of this are therapists. We need way
S1: more therapists. We need billions of more therapists, like hundreds
S1: of millions or billions of therapists, potentially. We don't want
S1: to overindex on therapy, but we need so many therapists.
S1: We need billions of tutors, continuous tutors, that you can
S1: ask anything. Why? Well, because of this. Why? Because of this? Why?
S1: How many parents get tired of that question? How about
S1: somebody who doesn't get tired of that question? Right? And
S1: I'm not saying parents shouldn't be there to answer those questions.
S1: Of course they should. And so should teachers. But it's
S1: nice when somebody is shy or introverted or they're just
S1: alone and they have questions, you know, therapists, tutors and yeah,
S1: we don't have enough things watching for asteroids in the sky.
S1: It's extra eyes. Think of trillions of extra eyes and
S1: a little bit of brainpower tied to that skin cancer screening.
S1: How many people in the world have access to a
S1: doctor to say, hey, look at this mole? Very few,
S1: very few percentage of the entire planet have that ability.
S1: But now you can with AI, right? So that's what
S1: I'm excited about. US Department of Justice 16 state and
S1: district attorneys, district attorney generals. Actually, I think that's supposed
S1: to be pluralized attorneys general. Yeah. Lawsuit against Apple. Bottom line.
S1: And I've got a pro Apple biased, very fanboy leaning. Biased.
S1: I'm all about not avoiding bias, but actually just calling
S1: it out and naming it, which I think I saw
S1: Destiny talk about, which I thought was pretty smart. And yeah,
S1: Apple's now making iPhones in Brazil. And Tim Cook also
S1: just went to China to tell him everything's okay. And
S1: don't worry. Don't worry about the fact that we're trying
S1: to make everything not in China because you guys are crazy.
S1: He probably didn't say that, but I did. Apple and
S1: Tesla are losing market share in China. Meanwhile, as national
S1: loyalty rises, and my sort of spicy take here is
S1: one of China's greatest strengths is actually its nationalism. Right.
S1: They have too much I would say. Um, and I
S1: would say that the left in the US has too little.
S1: I would say like the far right in the US
S1: has too much. Can we can we have some medium,
S1: can we have some, uh, some moderation, please? That would
S1: be nice. Israel's government is reportedly running covert ops at
S1: US universities. This turns out to be a little bit
S1: kind of like a biased story. But that's why I
S1: put this in here. It's like, what's the difference between
S1: marketing and counter propaganda information operations? The difference is your perspective.
S1: That's that's the difference. Like, we should consider ourselves always
S1: being hit with propaganda and marketing or whatever. And like
S1: you use the different term based on what you think
S1: their goals are and how morally aligned you think their
S1: goals are with, like good or bad. Measles was eliminated
S1: in the US in 2000, and now it's back because
S1: people don't want to take vaccines. As long Covid brain
S1: fog could be from damaged blood vessels. That's a new study. People.
S1: Young people are a lot less happy. And we actually
S1: because of this, we fell out of the top 20
S1: happiest nations in the United States. Uh, Alzheimer's might stem
S1: from a fat buildup in brain cells. UC Berkeley professor
S1: getting attacked for telling a student to get out of
S1: artillery range of San Francisco and San Jose if he
S1: wants to find a girlfriend, and he's just getting blasted
S1: for this weather forecast. Massively improved. This is a pretty
S1: cool seven day forecasts are now actually pretty accurate, and
S1: four day predictions now are as accurate as one day
S1: predictions from 30 years ago. Interesting. Yeah, four days versus
S1: one day. You imagine the level of complexity there. Germany
S1: legalized recreational marijuana. Blu ray is coming back because you
S1: always have access to it. You don't have to worry
S1: about it being pulled out of streaming. And it's still
S1: the highest quality. Cancer rates under 50 have surged by 80%.
S1: I think this might be in the US, but from
S1: 1990 to 2019. So that's what 30 years, basically 31
S1: years married people are thriving way more than unmarried. According
S1: to a ten year long Gallup study. Bidets getting way
S1: more popular. Got some recommendations here for you. And, uh,
S1: a new way of thinking about the economy. I don't
S1: want to read this whole thing. Uh, just. I think
S1: everything is starting to come down to framing for me.
S1: It's like my universal theory. So, uh, the economy might
S1: be a thing where if you believe in optimism, if
S1: you become optimistic about the economy that has, like its
S1: own gravity, it has its own weight, its own power,
S1: because it turns into action, and then the action turns
S1: into reality. So it's like, once again, you have this
S1: link between understanding or framing or viewpoints that translates directly
S1: into what actually happen, which I just find fascinating. I
S1: think we should rethink how we use the term, uh,
S1: the word technical, which I laid out in a tweet thread.
S1: And this mostly affects women who. Often are the only
S1: people at a company who could do multiple things right.
S1: We're talking about being able to, like, navigate a business process,
S1: get people from one place to another, actually do deeply
S1: technical technology related work, but also deeply technical, like law
S1: related work or business related work, other things that are
S1: like super high end, very, very difficult stuff. And the
S1: the system would not be able to function. Nobody could
S1: explain things. Nobody could actually get the work done if
S1: it wasn't for these people who are there helping. And
S1: because it's not necessarily oriented around a piece of technology,
S1: they get really diminished. So I think we should redefine that. Yeah,
S1: I'm getting all the different AI devices coming in. I
S1: really just want something that record conversations and transcribe them
S1: and get them into my AI workflows. Going back to
S1: original style of the new summary, which is like a
S1: single sentence which which I did a lot up here,
S1: rereading the Sense of style. That's why I did that
S1: pattern really helps my writing. Every time I read it.
S1: I try to do it every like 2 or 3 years.
S1: Resubscribe to the Twitter API so I could do things
S1: like this. Boom, go down here, Twitter boom. So these
S1: are actually Twitter feeds that are in Feedly because I
S1: have the connection there and the API key put in.
S1: So that's pretty cool to be able to consolidate, bring
S1: everything in. You could also do it with Twitter lists
S1: which I use quite a bit. Yeah. Analyze pros talked
S1: about that one and getting into the three body problem
S1: on Netflix. Really enjoying this. The books were fantastic. Found
S1: this service called Opus Clip. Um, Jason pointed me to it.
S1: It's basically you take a video like this video, it'll
S1: be output and it cuts it up into pieces. And
S1: you're going to see some of these. You're going to
S1: see clips from like this will go out in my
S1: feeds and it'll be like, you know, a 32nd or
S1: 92nd or whatever little clip of a cool little section,
S1: but it does it automatically. Normally you would send this
S1: to like an editor, and it's really difficult because they
S1: have to know the subject matter to know what are
S1: the coolest parts of what you said. Well, this thing,
S1: you don't have to do that because it's actually automatic.
S1: You just upload it extracts like whatever, three or 5
S1: or 10 different clips out of it. Rag Tune Tool
S1: for tuning and Optimizing rag Pipelines by Misbah, said collects,
S1: takes a web page, returns all the URLs, and switch
S1: back to this view. Open dev an open source project
S1: to clone and improve Devon Unreal Engine I mean, look
S1: at this. This is. Come on. This is content from
S1: Unreal Engine.
S2: They're combing the streets.
S1: It looks like sort of video I mean searching helps to.
S3: How real.
S4: If they arrest you too, they will take you to
S4: their headquarters and you will not return.
S5: I'm more concerned. It looks like a six foot cat.
S5: It's got claws that can cut through. Vibranium alloy. Slightly tongue. But.
S6: Let's just go forward. Okay. So let's boom down and
S6: take a closer look at this environment. Yeah, sure. Look
S6: at this. So we're talking about nanites. New adaptive tessellation feature.
S6: Look at this. So while I let you or something.
S1: Yeah.
S6: There you go. For artists to create a series of
S6: layers in the environment and then build up. So one
S6: angle that.
S1: We're approaching this from. This is another. Speaking of.
S6: Set dressing. Let's go check out that.
S1: In terms of like creating content that's completely controllable in
S1: creative but realistic look as a skill. The secret to
S1: a meaningful life I love this so much. A long term,
S1: ambitious vision that pushes you to grow smarter, wealthier, and
S1: mentally stronger. That is very concise. A guide to espouse
S1: and use. Prompt injection and jailbreaking are not the same thing.
S1: By Simon Wilson and Recommendation of the week. Think about
S1: your hedonic baseline. So this is like well I'll just
S1: keep reading. So it's thinking about my life just walking
S1: upstairs or walking to the car. It's a stoic technique
S1: of imagining that you're not able to do these simple things.
S1: And as you start removing them from your life and
S1: imagining yourself without them, you can imagine how unhappy you
S1: would be now, like a Jedi or a monk or
S1: something would say, well, you shouldn't care about that. You
S1: shouldn't care about losing anything. But I like to appreciate
S1: the things that I do have, including the ability to
S1: walk outside in the sun and not not be assaulted
S1: or something to breathe fresh air like all these things.
S1: I'm trying to micro appreciate a thousand different things in
S1: my life, which is a very stoic thing. You imagine
S1: the things that you have, you imagine them gone, and
S1: then you get appreciation when you realize that you still
S1: have them. Right. So relationships, mobility, the ability to think,
S1: being in the Bay area at this crazy moment with
S1: AI and stuff, and it's like actively cultivate appreciation by
S1: lowering my baseline, what is the minimum thing that I
S1: need to be happy? And ideally that would be nothing.
S1: And it's just something I'm thinking about. So think about
S1: what you have and think about those things by subtraction
S1: and the aphorism of the week. Contentment is natural wealth.
S1: Luxury is artificial poverty, contentment is natural wealth and luxury
S1: is artificial poverty. Socrates Unsupervised Learning is produced and edited
S1: by Daniel Missler on a Newman 87 AI microphone using
S1: Hindenburg intro and outro. Music is by zombie with a Y,
S1: and to get the text and links from this episode,
S1: sign up for the newsletter version of the show at
S1: Daniel missler.com/newsletter. We'll see you next time.