Latest / Brian Thomas / Tech Friday w/ Dave Hatter - Sponsored by Intrust IT - 9/18/2026
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: 6.31 Friday. It's that time.
- 0:03Speaker 2: I always look forward to it. I know everybody does.
- 0:07Speaker 2: Appointment listening with Tech Friday's Dave Hatter. This segment brought
- 0:10Speaker 2: to you by Interest IT. Dave's company, employee-owned, as I
- 0:14Speaker 2: understand it. The business carrier says they are absolutely the
- 0:16Speaker 2: best in the business when it comes to your business
- 0:18Speaker 2: computer needs. You're in the best hands with Dave Hatter
- 0:20Speaker 2: and the team. Welcome back, my friend. Love having you
- 0:22Speaker 2: on the program on a Friday.
- 0:24Speaker 1: Ryan, always my pleasure to be here and look forward
- 0:27Speaker 1: to our conversation this morning and every Friday.
- 0:30Speaker 2: Yeah, I do too. It's very informative and I implore
- 0:33Speaker 2: my listeners to heed your advice, especially when it comes
- 0:36Speaker 2: to the Internet of Things devices. We'll get to that. Apparently,
- 0:39Speaker 2: we've got a real hot one on our hands with Wi-Fi.
- 0:41Speaker 2: But moving beside that, I guess we're all going to
- 0:43Speaker 2: die and therefore... We need to free the artificial intelligence
- 0:46Speaker 2: companies of any obligations under the law for liability and,
- 0:48Speaker 2: I guess, more likely for antitrust. They want to collude
- 0:52Speaker 2: together in the name of keeping us from dying, Dave.
- 0:54Speaker 2: Any suspicions about this? Any concerns? Any raised eyebrows?
- 0:59Speaker 1: Yeah. If you recall, Brian, ever since AI has been
- 1:03Speaker 1: on the front page, really in the last four years
- 1:07Speaker 1: or so, and I just remind folks, the whole idea
- 1:10Speaker 1: of AI is not new. It's been around for a
- 1:12Speaker 1: long time. Now, obviously, It's advanced a lot and much
- 1:16Speaker 1: more capable now than it was four years ago or
- 1:18Speaker 1: prior to that. But, you know, since then, we've had
- 1:22Speaker 1: all kinds of apocalyptic warnings and, you know, there's all
- 1:26Speaker 1: kinds of theories. Now, I want to be clear. I'm
- 1:29Speaker 1: not saying there's absolutely nothing to what these folks are saying. OK,
- 1:32Speaker 1: I'm not saying that, but I'm also not saying I
- 1:34Speaker 1: think we're all going to be dead by 2030. Like there,
- 1:37Speaker 1: these guys are or at least insinuating could happen. It
- 1:43Speaker 1: is interesting that. This is not the first time someone
- 1:46Speaker 1: has said we should slow this down. And then it's
- 1:49Speaker 1: also not the first time that they've come out with
- 1:52Speaker 1: these rather apocalyptic warnings. So, you know, all these guys
- 1:57Speaker 1: are trying to IPO. There's definitely a race there. And
- 2:00Speaker 1: I think you have to take into context the idea
- 2:03Speaker 1: that other countries like China are also building this stuff. And,
- 2:08Speaker 1: you know, I think it is a legitimate concern.
- 2:10Speaker 2: That Dave, I must note that they are not subject
- 2:13Speaker 2: to the Sherman Antitrust Act or America's tort laws.
- 2:17Speaker 1: That's an excellent point, Brian. And also they typically don't
- 2:21Speaker 1: operate the same way we do in the U.S. And
- 2:24Speaker 1: that's kind of where I'm going. If they're not going
- 2:26Speaker 1: to have any sort of restraints on what they're doing
- 2:29Speaker 1: and they potentially, you know, like in the nuclear arms race,
- 2:33Speaker 1: you know, again, idea of mutually assured destruction, you know,
- 2:38Speaker 1: arms gap and all this sort of thing. I understand
- 2:40Speaker 1: the arguments for and against all that, but I think
- 2:43Speaker 1: we're in a place now where you don't want an
- 2:46Speaker 1: adversarial nation to get too far ahead on this. It's
- 2:50Speaker 1: a tricky problem. You know, there's a lot of hype.
- 2:52Speaker 1: There's a lot of hyperbole out there. It's hard to
- 2:55Speaker 1: know what to believe or who to believe. But I
- 2:58Speaker 1: will say this, when you look at some of the
- 2:59Speaker 1: legitimate stories that have been out there in the news,
- 3:03Speaker 1: about things like the hugging face attack and in some
- 3:05Speaker 1: of the cases where agents have gone rogue. An agent
- 3:08Speaker 1: is essentially, I'm trying to explain this in the most
- 3:12Speaker 1: basic terms. An agent is essentially software that uses AI
- 3:17Speaker 1: that can make decisions and do things on its own, right?
- 3:19Speaker 1: It can act like a human being to some extent.
- 3:23Speaker 1: And I would remind folks that these things still have
- 3:25Speaker 1: a problem with hallucination, although it's gotten better. Hallucination is
- 3:29Speaker 1: the idea that It will make something up, right? So
- 3:34Speaker 1: do you want a process that can act on its own? So,
- 3:39Speaker 1: you know, for example, you could create an agent and say, okay,
- 3:42Speaker 1: here's my credit card number. Search for the best price
- 3:46Speaker 1: on this thing. And if it drops below a certain price,
- 3:48Speaker 1: buy it. Okay. I can tell you, I'm not going
- 3:51Speaker 1: to do something like that because unless the way these
- 3:56Speaker 1: things work, they're probabilistic, not deterministic. You can go in
- 4:00Speaker 1: right now, anyone can try this, open up any one
- 4:02Speaker 1: of these tools, ask a question. You will not get
- 4:04Speaker 1: the same answer every time.
- 4:08Speaker 2: And you might not get the same answer asking the
- 4:10Speaker 2: same format, the same question multiple times.
- 4:13Speaker 1: That's exactly right. And it might literally just make something up.
- 4:17Speaker 1: So depending on your tolerance for risk and what you're
- 4:21Speaker 1: asking this to do, especially if there's no human oversight
- 4:25Speaker 1: of it, it can do things that you would rather
- 4:28Speaker 1: it not do, partially like some of these stories where
- 4:31Speaker 1: these things have gone rogue and this agent works with
- 4:34Speaker 1: that agent. I mean, there's some wild stuff out there.
- 4:36Speaker 1: It is somewhat concerning to me. I don't think we're
- 4:41Speaker 1: going to suddenly have, you know, Terminators fall out of
- 4:43Speaker 1: the sky. But, you know, some of the things they're saying,
- 4:47Speaker 1: I think there is a legitimate concern. How much? Is
- 4:51Speaker 1: it 50%? Is it 80%? I don't know, because there's
- 4:54Speaker 1: plenty of other people that know a lot about this
- 4:55Speaker 1: who are saying, This is more of a hype cycle.
- 4:58Speaker 1: They're saying these things because it helps them build a
- 5:02Speaker 1: moat around their businesses. So I don't know what to think, Brian.
- 5:05Speaker 2: I think the hurry up, we've got to do something
- 5:09Speaker 2: to save us from ourself is a mode of going
- 5:12Speaker 2: back to the IPO. If you have this emergency crisis,
- 5:16Speaker 2: oh my God, it's an existential threat to humanity. Hurry
- 5:18Speaker 2: up and free us from liability. Dave, if that actually happened, Question,
- 5:24Speaker 2: almost rhetorical, if not absolutely rhetorical. Would the price of
- 5:28Speaker 2: the IPO share be more if they had all that
- 5:31Speaker 2: protection from antitrust liability and tort liability, or would the
- 5:35Speaker 2: shares be worth less? I think it'd be a lot more. 53636,
- 5:40Speaker 2: don't go away. We're going to talk about how digital
- 5:43Speaker 2: devices are putting our right to privacy at risk. I
- 5:45Speaker 2: guess we voluntarily enter into that, don't we? First, though,
- 5:49Speaker 2: I want to mention fornication. 641-55-KRC-V Talk Station.
- 5:53Speaker 1: Happy Friday.
- 5:54Speaker 2: Tech Friday, Dave Hatter, intrustit.com. That's who you need to
- 5:57Speaker 2: get in touch with for your business computer needs. Hey,
- 6:00Speaker 2: our right to privacy is at risk, Dave. You never
- 6:02Speaker 2: talk about stuff like this.
- 6:05Speaker 1: Never, Brian, never. In all the years we've been doing this,
- 6:08Speaker 1: I never talk about it.
- 6:09Speaker 2: Never. You've never mentioned the Internet of Things devices. You
- 6:13Speaker 2: need to explain that someday because it's something that never
- 6:14Speaker 2: comes across your field of vision.
- 6:16Speaker 1: No, never. So Internet of Things, a.k.a. smart devices, things
- 6:20Speaker 1: like your ring doorbell, your Nest thermostat, your refrigerator, your TV.
- 6:24Speaker 2: Your vacuum.
- 6:26Speaker 1: Yes, your vacuum. I don't know if you've seen the
- 6:29Speaker 1: story about the LG TVs. If not, we should talk
- 6:32Speaker 1: about that one specifically next week because it really puts
- 6:34Speaker 1: a super fine point on.
- 6:36Speaker 2: Is that like part of the LGBTQ agenda then, Dave?
- 6:40Speaker 1: No. No, in this case, it's LG TVs that are
- 6:43Speaker 1: doing some insane data collection behind the scenes. And here's
- 6:49Speaker 1: the thing, Brian. I know people will tell me all
- 6:51Speaker 1: the time, hey, look, I don't have anything to hide.
- 6:53Speaker 1: I don't care whether it's flock cameras or fill in
- 6:55Speaker 1: the blank, right? Flock camera, that would be another example
- 6:58Speaker 1: of an Internet of Things device. You know, in the
- 7:00Speaker 1: simplest of terms, if it has software in it and
- 7:03Speaker 1: it connects to the Internet, well, that's an Internet of
- 7:05Speaker 1: Things device. And increasingly, that's everything now, right? It's hard
- 7:09Speaker 1: to even find a dumb device because everything has software
- 7:13Speaker 1: in it. Much of that comes from China. It's often
- 7:16Speaker 1: found to have security problems on top of the privacy problems,
- 7:20Speaker 1: in some cases backdoors built into it. In the most
- 7:24Speaker 1: layman of terms, a backdoor is either an intentional or
- 7:27Speaker 1: maybe unintentional flaw in the software that would allow someone
- 7:30Speaker 1: to take remote control of something.
- 7:32Speaker 2: Well, quickly, can I just interject a very quick question?
- 7:35Speaker 2: I don't need to labor on it, but I just
- 7:36Speaker 2: want to know. Isn't that one area where artificial intelligence
- 7:40Speaker 2: can be a wonderful benefit to humanity by finding backdoor
- 7:43Speaker 2: access and by being able to just analyze the program
- 7:47Speaker 2: and find out where the weaknesses are?
- 7:51Speaker 1: That is, yes. But that cuts both ways. I don't
- 7:54Speaker 1: know if you caught the headline. I did. Microsoft has
- 7:57Speaker 1: this Patch Tuesday thing. Once a month on a Tuesday,
- 8:00Speaker 1: they put out updates for their software to fix vulnerabilities, holes, backdoors, whatever, right?
- 8:07Speaker 1: And in this last patch Tuesday, they patched almost a
- 8:09Speaker 1: thousand problems. And that's because they're using AI to analyze
- 8:14Speaker 1: all of this code and try to find these problems. So, yeah,
- 8:16Speaker 1: that is one upside. But the flip side of that, Brian, is,
- 8:19Speaker 1: of course, bad guys, including low skilled bad guys who
- 8:23Speaker 1: would not know anything about this stuff, can use these
- 8:26Speaker 1: same tools to find these flaws. And, you know, there's
- 8:30Speaker 1: been lots of recent news, again, without going too far
- 8:33Speaker 1: down this rabbit hole. And it's important for small businesses
- 8:36Speaker 1: to understand who have this same mentality of, well, I'm
- 8:40Speaker 1: too small. I don't have anything we're stealing. You know,
- 8:42Speaker 1: I'm not P & G. I'm not CentOS. I'm not Kroger. Well,
- 8:45Speaker 1: your money is worth stealing. And thanks to these AI tools,
- 8:48Speaker 1: whether it's deep fakes or it's hackers using these tools
- 8:52Speaker 1: to attack your environment to find these flaws, the frequency
- 8:57Speaker 1: of attacks is increasing. The sophistication of attacks is increasing,
- 9:00Speaker 1: not because the people behind them are more sophisticated, but
- 9:02Speaker 1: because they're using these tools. But back to our IoT devices.
- 9:07Speaker 1: You know, I hate this stuff. I have essentially none
- 9:10Speaker 1: of this stuff in my house. And when people tell
- 9:13Speaker 1: me why I have nothing to hide, I encourage everyone
- 9:15Speaker 1: to go out and look into this LG TV thing.
- 9:17Speaker 1: You know, if a device is connected to the Internet
- 9:20Speaker 1: and especially if it has a microphone and camera in it,
- 9:22Speaker 1: it can be used to surveil you. If you have
- 9:25Speaker 1: an LG TV or any of these TVs, for example.
- 9:29Speaker 1: in let's say a boardroom where you're having sensitive conversations
- 9:32Speaker 1: about trade secrets or lawsuits or whatever, it's entirely possible
- 9:37Speaker 1: that these devices are listening to you, collecting data, and
- 9:42Speaker 1: it's being shipped off to some third party somewhere. And
- 9:46Speaker 1: the more of these things you have, and this particular
- 9:50Speaker 1: article we started out with, there's a book out there
- 9:52Speaker 1: from a law professor named Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, who wrote
- 9:57Speaker 1: a book called Your Data Will Be Used Against You.
- 10:00Speaker 1: And it talks about this and why you should care
- 10:03Speaker 1: about these things. And, you know, there are folks out
- 10:05Speaker 1: there like Mikko Haponin. I've brought him up on the
- 10:07Speaker 1: show before. I'm a big fan. He wrote a book
- 10:10Speaker 1: called If It's Smart, It's Vulnerable. If it has software
- 10:13Speaker 1: in it, it is vulnerable. I don't care what it is.
- 10:15Speaker 1: It's not possible to write software that is completely invulnerable.
- 10:19Speaker 1: And we're seeing that more and more and all the
- 10:21Speaker 1: attacks on critical infrastructure and so forth. So my point, Brian,
- 10:25Speaker 1: is the less of these things you have, I get
- 10:28Speaker 1: they're cool, I get the convenience, but they are increasingly
- 10:31Speaker 1: putting you, your family, your business at risk. You should
- 10:34Speaker 1: be divesting yourself of this stuff.
- 10:36Speaker 2: Indeed, and for those who think they don't have anything
- 10:38Speaker 2: to hide, just wait until we elect a bunch of communists,
- 10:41Speaker 2: and then they start engaging in the purge, where they'll
- 10:43Speaker 2: look for people who have political dissent, who are not
- 10:45Speaker 2: ideologically wed to the party in power, and then you're
- 10:49Speaker 2: sent off to the gulag. That has happened in history,
- 10:51Speaker 2: has it not, Dave Hatter?
- 10:53Speaker 1: I believe it has.
- 10:54Speaker 2: It's just one moment away from them coming after you
- 10:56Speaker 2: because of something that you said or did when it
- 10:59Speaker 2: was normal and rational and logical to maybe say what
- 11:01Speaker 2: you said or did. Mm-hmm. Futures, well, can learn a
- 11:05Speaker 2: lot by studying the mistakes of the past. 646 right now,
- 11:07Speaker 2: we will talk about a really freaky thing, your Wi-Fi.
- 11:11Speaker 2: 651-55-KRC-D Talk Station. IntrustIT.com, where you find Dave Hatter and
- 11:17Speaker 2: his crew to help you with business needs. And, of course,
- 11:19Speaker 2: LinkedIn.com is where you find Dave and the resources he
- 11:22Speaker 2: relies upon throughout the week. And, of course, here on
- 11:25Speaker 2: the 55-KRC Morning Show on a Friday. This one is weird.
- 11:28Speaker 2: Everybody's freaked out about flaw cameras. I know you're not
- 11:30Speaker 2: a fan, Dave, in the interest of privacy protection and
- 11:32Speaker 2: maybe people that are using it for nefarious purposes like tracking,
- 11:36Speaker 2: stalking girlfriends or whatever. But that's nothing compared to what
- 11:40Speaker 2: I'm reading here. Wi-Fi, I think, is pretty much everywhere, Dave.
- 11:44Speaker 1: Wi-Fi pretty much is everywhere now, Brian. And maybe you
- 11:49Speaker 1: recall that we have talked about this particular thing before,
- 11:53Speaker 1: but as the technology progresses— Of course, like so many
- 11:57Speaker 1: of these things, it gets better in helpful ways and
- 12:00Speaker 1: it gets better in potentially unhelpful ways like this. This one.
- 12:04Speaker 1: This is a story from the New York Post. Big
- 12:06Speaker 1: routers watching you. Wi-Fi could secretly track you even if
- 12:08Speaker 1: you leave your phone at home. So I think anyone
- 12:12Speaker 1: who's ever watched a crime show realizes that your phone
- 12:15Speaker 1: is a source of tracking, right? And that's not necessarily nefarious.
- 12:20Speaker 1: It's just the way the cellular network has to work, right?
- 12:22Speaker 1: It has to know where your phone is in order
- 12:24Speaker 1: to be able to connect to it, to send you
- 12:27Speaker 1: a phone call or receive a text message, email, whatever, right?
- 12:32Speaker 1: And I'm constantly surprised. If you watch a show like Dateline,
- 12:36Speaker 1: it seems like people, generally criminals anyway, don't seem to
- 12:39Speaker 1: get that like, hey, if I'm going to go out
- 12:41Speaker 1: and get murdery, it's a good idea not to take
- 12:43Speaker 1: my phone with me because it's going to, going to
- 12:46Speaker 1: tell the police where I was, that I was in
- 12:48Speaker 1: the vicinity of the crime. But what this story is
- 12:51Speaker 1: pointing out is that, you know, even if you don't
- 12:54Speaker 1: have some sort of device like that on you, and
- 12:57Speaker 1: to your point, Brian, Wi-Fi is pretty much, certainly at
- 13:01Speaker 1: least in urban areas, everywhere now. There's the capability through
- 13:07Speaker 1: the radio signals that the Wi-Fi is sending out to
- 13:10Speaker 1: make it possible to connect to the internet over Wi-Fi.
- 13:15Speaker 1: to essentially in sort of like a radar-ish type of way,
- 13:19Speaker 1: if you will. I think most people at least generally
- 13:21Speaker 1: understand the idea of radar. You send out a radio signal,
- 13:24Speaker 1: it bounces off something. You could tell how far away
- 13:27Speaker 1: it is, how fast it's going, what it is generally,
- 13:30Speaker 1: especially as the technology's improved over time. And that's essentially
- 13:34Speaker 1: what researchers are pointing out here. So, I mean, I'll
- 13:36Speaker 1: just read a couple of lines from the article. The
- 13:38Speaker 1: finding raises the unsettling possibility that millions of Wi-Fi routers
- 13:41Speaker 1: surrounding us could become a vast, invisible surveillance network potentially
- 13:45Speaker 1: allow corporations, governments, and others to identify people without their knowledge.
- 13:49Speaker 1: And then it goes on to say connected devices routinely
- 13:52Speaker 1: send back to routers to optimize wireless communications. These are
- 13:57Speaker 1: signals known as beamforming feedback information and are transmitted without
- 14:00Speaker 1: encryption researchers found. So basically, you know, this in the
- 14:05Speaker 1: most basic terms, This is just bouncing off of you.
- 14:10Speaker 1: And it goes on to say further in here, you know,
- 14:12Speaker 1: that this can essentially create. So quoting from the article,
- 14:16Speaker 1: this technology turns every router into a potential means of surveillance.
- 14:19Speaker 1: Warren co-researcher Julian Tote, if you regularly pass by a
- 14:23Speaker 1: cafe that operates a Wi-Fi network, you could be identified
- 14:26Speaker 1: there without noticing it and be recognized later.
- 14:28Speaker 2: So they study things like, I mean, AI, your gate,
- 14:32Speaker 2: your height, your weight, it immediately computes this and calculates it.
- 14:35Speaker 2: And only so many people have the exact gate that
- 14:37Speaker 2: you have. So they can narrow it down just by
- 14:39Speaker 2: process or by analyzing that kind of thing. Right.
- 14:42Speaker 1: Exactly. And there's, you know, this, this goes even further.
- 14:46Speaker 1: They're saying that basically, you know, this will almost create
- 14:48Speaker 1: a picture of you, you know, quite not the same,
- 14:50Speaker 1: like a camera would per se. Um, but yeah, it's, uh,
- 14:56Speaker 1: It's interesting how, as this stuff advances, you see all
- 15:00Speaker 1: these different ways that it can be used that aren't
- 15:03Speaker 1: immediately obvious and aren't necessarily beneficial to you as a
- 15:07Speaker 1: regular person. So, yeah. And, you know, the genie's out
- 15:12Speaker 1: of the bottle on a lot of this stuff.
- 15:13Speaker 2: It is.
- 15:15Speaker 1: So, you know, one of the things I think we
- 15:17Speaker 1: need to look at as a society, and, you know,
- 15:19Speaker 1: the Supreme Court did recently weigh in on geofencing that
- 15:23Speaker 1: potentially affects flocks. you know, the Fourth Amendment has been
- 15:27Speaker 1: kind of upended by all this. And I think, you know,
- 15:29Speaker 1: we need to, as a society, take a look at
- 15:32Speaker 1: how is this technology potentially being used in ways that
- 15:37Speaker 1: violate your constitutional rights now? You know, I'm not on
- 15:40Speaker 1: the Supreme Court. I'm not making these decisions. You know,
- 15:44Speaker 1: the old standards for so much of this stuff don't
- 15:46Speaker 1: really apply anymore because the technology has changed so quickly
- 15:51Speaker 1: and advanced in ways that Again, probably the average person
- 15:54Speaker 1: is not even aware of that it's creating some real,
- 15:59Speaker 1: at least in my mind, concerns.
- 16:01Speaker 2: Legitimate ones. Well, and as you point out, I remember
- 16:04Speaker 2: we talked about this several years ago about using Wi-Fi
- 16:07Speaker 2: within someone's residence to where people are and just identify location.
- 16:12Speaker 2: But that was just like location. There's movement over there.
- 16:16Speaker 2: The Wi-Fi can recognize that. Now it can determine exactly
- 16:19Speaker 2: who the identity of that particular person is, not just
- 16:21Speaker 2: in that controlled environment, but literally everywhere. And about five
- 16:24Speaker 2: minutes in tech time from now, it's going to be
- 16:27Speaker 2: as if a photograph was taken without any devices on you,
- 16:30Speaker 2: wherever you happen to be. I think it's going to
- 16:32Speaker 2: get that smart, Dave. It just seems obvious right now.
- 16:36Speaker 1: It's certainly headed in that direction. Yeah. Again, it creates
- 16:42Speaker 1: interesting challenges that 30, 40 years ago, you wouldn't have
- 16:46Speaker 1: even been able to predict. Unless, of course, you're working
- 16:50Speaker 1: in that technology yourself and knew about the potential future advances.
- 16:54Speaker 2: May you live in interesting times, Dave.
- 16:57Speaker 1: Well, we do, Brian.
- 16:58Speaker 2: Yes, we do.
- 16:58Speaker 1: Very interesting.
- 16:59Speaker 2: And that's not a good thing, necessarily. interestit.com, linkedin.com to
- 17:04Speaker 2: find Dave in the articles and find him here every
- 17:06Speaker 2: Friday beginning at 6.30. Thank you, Dave, for being here
- 17:08Speaker 2: for all of us and keep up the great work.