Category: Information Technology

Information technology has long been an interest and a passion. Over the years, I have done the following to pursue this part of me.

I earned an Associate in Technical Arts in Web Application Development degree, as well as certificates in:

  • Business Systems Analysis
  • Requirements Analysis
  • Database Theory and Design

I also studied the following topics:

  • Cisco Networking
  • Desktop Support
  • Cloud Computing Systems, mainly AWS

The following posts are based on that interested.

Some Thoughts On AI, The News, and Humanity

Carl Setzer4 Comments
bionic hand and human hand finger pointing

Meta has had two significant issues brought up this week (hat tip to Futurism):

  1. Facebook Is Hosting Huge Numbers of Horrifying AI-Generated Videos of Violent Child Abuse, and Meta Is Barely Even Pretending to Care About Taking Them Down
  2. Mother Horrified When Meta’s AI Scours Instagram and Facebook for Invasive Information About Her Young Daughters

Some quick observations:

re: #1: Meta’s PR team sent this note to the Futurism team: “Not all the links you sent violate our policies,” it read. “Can you please avoid suggesting in your reporting that they do?” My main thought isn’t “why doesn’t this violate your policies?” This is horrifying content. But it is not CSAM. Which is what has the attention of government, the public, etc. I’m not too surprised that Meta was caught off guard about both the existence of this content and its prevalence. I also expect that their “Community Standards” are much more reactive. Therefore, since they didn’t anticipate content featuring physical violence against children, they haven’t created a community standard to be violated. I expect that will be fixed “soon”, when the committee assigned to evaluate this issue finally finishes their review. This game of whack-a-mole with humanity’s darkest impulses is troubling, and I wonder if there’s a way to be proactive and not dive into Minority Report territory.

re: #2: This story is troubling in a different way. AI’s ability to analyze a monumental array of data and ACCURATELY detail someone’s personal details is amazing from a technical perspective, and terrifying from a privacy one. As I was reading this article, I came up with the phrase “stalker-tech” to describe it. Now, before we come swinging at Ms. Robins for sharing ANYTHING about her children, she’s not some influencer sharing her intimate details. Most of the information harvested was shared more privately, amongst friends and family. Meta’s AI triangulated amongst a huge spread of information in order to derive deep details about these children. On an aside: I think her response of asking folks to take down these images is, well, hopeless. The information has been harvested. Removing elements of it from one place on the internet doesn’t delete the graph. Meta’s response? “But we missed the mark because the feature never should have prompted the individual with questions like that and we’ve fixed that issue.” I’m curious about how the “issue” has been fixed. Will the prompts not ask similar questions? Is the ability to analyze huge swaths of data been minimized? My guess is that the prompting has been modified, but that the data is still mapped. Therefore, I expect this sort of misuse is still possible, it will just take more steps and bad intent to execute on it.

Humans are a reactive lot. We’re terrible at thinking technology’s negative possibilities through before we run into problems/crisises. We tend towards letting the potential positives blind us to any negatives. I wonder if we have any hope of changing that part of our nature.

    Now We’re At Risk Of AI Swarm Attacks

    Carl Setzer1 Comment
    man and woman with prosthesis in futuristic surroundings

    I just read ‘Sophisticated’ AI swarm attacks are months away, OpenAI warns: What experts say businesses must do and now have a solid guess of what I’ll be coping with the rest of 2026. Whee!

    So, as we’re cataloging all the recent rogue AI attacks, things are becoming sobering.

    • Open AI’s attack on Hugging Face is a big one
    • Anthropic had one “escape”
    • Meta
    • Grok

    The list is amazing and a bit frightening. Reading the article will give you a solid intro to the key attacks to date.

    There are some things those of us in IT need to be considering in order to harden our network’s defenses, too. The article gives some basic insights.

    But, really, what are WE, as individuals, to do? The article points to a couple of things:

    • Move to passkeys for your login credentials.
    • Do NOT reuse passwords!
    • Use a password manager

    These things are good starting points. Be watching for more news over the coming days. Do watch the ones that are tinted with hysteria, though.

    And yet more thinking about AI

    Carl Setzer1 Comment
    person reaching out to a robot

    This morning, I read a LinkedIn post by Bryan Creely, who writes about career management and job hunting. (I highly recommend his work, btw).

    I feel that this quote summarizes the whole thing:

    They spent the last 3 years scaring us into believing we were about to go the way of the dinosaur.

    And now they’re walking back that narrative and beginning to rehire for roles they eliminated due to AI.

    That’s what pundits do, prognosticate, then shift, following the zeitgeist where it leads. That’s the case with AI. When they were selling AI to corporations and investors, it was all about replacing workers. That most jobs were going to be replaced by AI. But, anyway, as I expected, AI’s costs turned out to be more than estimated. I believe the abrupt rise in costs caught many companies completely off-guard, though I don’t think it was hard to predict. I wasn’t exactly right on my reasons, but I expected that token costs would have to go up. So, yay me.

    Not too surprising, but we haven’t heard these pundits acknowledge their error or overestimation. Yet they are quietly walking back a lot of the hype. Better than a bursting bubble, though I’m not sure we’re out of the woods on that possibility yet.

    One additional thing: I think those hyping AI were stunned by the way the public went negative on them. They seemed truly stunned by crowds of college grads booing them, by protesters at hearings for proposed data centers, and by the bipartisan nature of it all. But, really, your messaging leaned on the redundancy of most of the working population, and not-so-subtly hinted at mass unemployment and other such things. Add in electricity costs, and how the price increases are being pushed onto the communities these things are in, environmental costs, and it is so obvious that this was going to be the outcome.

    So, it makes me feel better that we’re stepping back some from the irrational exuberance before this thing exploded. Yeah, I’m not convinced we’re free of the bubble collapsing, though my hope is that it’ll gently fizzle and deflate. I can be hopeful, after all.

    Let me end with this comic from Pascal Bornett.

    Are we nearing the end of AI’s hype cycle ?

    Carl Setzer3 Comments

    I just watched this video and it got me thinking about the future of tech. One of the key things they point out is how many of the AI prognosticators are now so walking so much of it back. Companies are hiring back some of those laid off. The drive to push everyone into using AI for everything is hitting up against costs, as tokens are no longer free, or subsidized. Anyway, check it out! It’s only about 10 minutes long.

    I’ve written about AI before, and about how the current costs are not the true costs. That much of the operational costs of AI have been underwritten by investors. And that’s not tenable. I’ve been seeing more and more articles about these costs being passed long to users. I’m seeing companies burn through yearly token budgets in the first quarter of the year. I’m seeing companies pull back on the requirement to use AI. Yeah, the hype seems to be waning.

    So, are you seeing the same signs? Let me know what you’re seeing.

    Entering BIOS Gif

    Carl Setzer
    vintage apple ii computer on display

    This made me laugh louder than I should admit:

    This hits far too close to home.

    For those of you who haven’t needed to mess around in a computer’s BIOS, it’s a clunky and awkward…and inconsistent process, where manufacturers’ processes can vary widely. On boot, you hit one of the function keys, often F2, but sometimes F10, F6, or F8. And you generally have to spam the key to get it to take. It’s been a long-standing annoyance of mine.

    Anyway, happy Monday, everyone! I hope your week meets, no, exceeds your expectations.

    Claude’s Mythos and AI Magnified Fears

    Carl Setzer6 Comments

    I missed the intro of Claude’s Mythos, and only started hearing about them in the ensuing panic. This article has a good rundown of the issues that have the cybersecurity world nervous. I do recognize that this could simply be hyperbole meant to bring extra attention (marketing) to the product, but I thought it worth looking into deeper.

    Anthropic just made AI scarier

    Update:

    The Vox article above is (inconsistently) paywalled. I was able to get back and view it one more time before it locked me out again. So, let me give a quick summary of the concerns here.

    “Claude Mythos Preview was designed for general use, Anthropic says, but during testing, the company found it extremely effective at identifying vulnerabilities in the security systems of all types of software, creating potentially massive security concerns.” So, Mythos is the ultimate hacker.

    With this in mind, Anthropic has limited Mythos to a handful of tech companies and banks (Project Glasswing), with the hope that those orgs will be able to shore up their defenses before Mythos exposes their vulnerabilities.

    “How is Anthropic choosing who to share this technology with?

    They’re essentially looking for cyber defenders or companies that a lot of people depend on, and that downstream it would be a huge issue if they got hacked in any way, shape, or form.” It looks like the folks at Anthropic are deciding for themselves, which is all well and good. I think it would be good to slowly roll it out to other orgs, for the same reason. Why is Chase allowed to patch their vulnerabilities while my local credit union is not?

    Anyway, these tools are more effective than we think, and in ways we have not imagined. I’m glad that, at least in this instance, we had the ability and wherewithal to be cautious.

    Reflections on Paul Waldman’s “The death of the CIA Factbook and Trump’s war on usefulness​”

    Carl Setzer2 Comments
    woman working in lab

    As someone deeply interested in data and data systems, I’ve been thinking about how the Trump administration’s attacks on data, these collections of information that are critical to researchers and scientists. And how they’ve also been attacking science, research, and innovation.

    This administration has been fighting a sweeping information war meant to distort and suppress facts, ideas, and history that doesn’t “align with the president’s agenda,”

    I find this distressing and deplorable. It’s monumentally short-sighted. It’s cost is extreme. America can not maintain it’s lead in innovation and technology without this knowledge. Add this to the cuts to research funding and the US is decimating it’s future. Access to this knowledge is key to moving society forward, aka: innovating. In this case, we’re looking specifically at the CIA Factbook, an amazing tool I’ve used on many occasions as it’s extremely useful, which Mr. Waldman points out seems to be one of the criteria for deletion.

    Besides the attack on data, the Administration’s efforts to cut funding to so much scientific research is additionally concerning. This is feeding a brain drain that’s further eroding our scientific and technical leadership. These will take decades to recover from. If we ever can. The global academic community seeks to leverage our short-sidedness.

    There are some counterpoints that give me some hope. There are many organizations that are working to collect this knowledge for the Library of Alexandria is burned. Here are just a few (with descriptions provided by Gemini):

    In addition to the efforts to retain the knowledge we’ve already collected, I’m also heartened by the rest of the world seeking to recruit our leading researchers, ensuring that their critical work continues.

    An aside: I wonder if, at the macro level, this will benefit humanity. Disbursing talent might make science more diverse and richer. I hope it also make it more resilient to the manic moodswings of social opinions. Even if it’s a net benefit to society, though, this situation will have a painful, negative impact for years to come.

    So, please, take a minute to read Paul Waldman’s article “The death of the CIA Factbook and Trump’s war on usefulness”. Then take a moment and look over the list above, and give what you can to help capture this knowledge.

    Oh, Spreadsheets!

    Carl Setzer
    statistics survey sheet

    It pains me to see someone fill in data in a spreadsheet, then use a calculator to compute everything. It adds discomfort when the math errors are what first catch your eye. I hope I didn’t upset the originator by adding my =sum functions.

    Anyway, I hope your Friday is fantastic and your weekend is wonderful.

    Don’t Mess With My Gear!

    Carl Setzer

    One thing a lot of folks know: I also run and manage sound systems. I started doing this in high school and have been doing sound tech work ever since. Currently, I am the main focus for sound at the event center I work for.

    Yesterday I was called by them while at my other job because our Bluetooth transceiver wasn’t working. Long story short, they opted to not bring me in right away, but I needed to tackle this immediately when I got there (which I had planned for early afternoon).

    Once I got there, it took me a couple minutes to figure out that someone had pulled the cables out. Argh! Now, in the grand scheme, minor problem. But I struggle with understanding any “why” for this besides simply being a jerk.

    Frustrating for my poor morning users who, though they don’t depend on it, do like to use Bluetooth to play music. I do have regular users who do depend on that, though. Playing music from a modern phone via an aux port isn’t so easy anymore.

    So, please, don’t mess with my gear! Ugh!

    A Critique On AI Hype

    Carl Setzer8 Comments
    hand of a person and a bionic hand

    AI is seemingly everywhere right now, and I’ve written a bit about it before. As I’ve started diving more deeply into it, I see all the hype about how AI will be disrupting work. Well, I’ve developed a somewhat contrarian viewpoint to the prevalent viewpoint of “AI taking over everything”. Here are a few random thoughts on the whole thing right now.

    A lot of what AI is replacing now, and expected to in the near future, runs on the assumption that it will remain (nearly) free. However, most of the current costs are funded by investor dollars. As MIT recently reported, 95% of AI initiatives are failing to generate value. So, the only way companies are gaining value from AI is via its low cost. And the operating costs are significant. Data centers are expensive, both to build and to operate. GPUs aren’t cheap to buy. The environmental costs are steep. And, right now, those costs are being paid from investor dollars. When those dry up (investors need to make a return on that investment at some point, and that needs to be greater than the investment as well as the current operational costs. I expect the point when investors stop feeling FOMO and start worrying about making a return will be coming soon. I expect that when the costs become the responsibility of the consumer, the price will escalate abruptly and steeply. Will a junior developer really be displaced by ChatGPT or CoPilot? Or will we suddenly find junior developers much more cost-effective?

    Adding to this, I’ve seen discussion about how AI infrastructure investment is potentially masking a recession. Thus, I’m concerned that we’re missing the weakening economy, things like continued tech-sector layoffs, and are not paying attention to some big economic weaknesses. If AI investment dries up, and layoffs start compounding, the dominoes start to fall, and that brings a significant recession/depression. Which will muddle this significantly.

    Anyway, I think that we are in a bubble regarding AI. Like the Dot Com bubble, I think that AI will herald significant technological changes. AI is a powerful tool, and will continue to be so. However, I am confident that the techno-dystopia predicted by AI hyper-meisters will not materialize. I’m not sure we can even conceptualize what it will look like at the end of this cycle. But I am confident that those who have mastered AI will benefit greatly from the coming revolution. There are opportunities, and now is the time to make the investment in understanding them.