KXL-FM (Portland, OR) Radio Interview

Kayne sees a greater challenge educating younger generations about creating similar habits. How young is too young? “If you’re targeting high school-age students, you are probably too late. Focus on teaching healthy skepticism at middle school along with identifying phishing and the importance of updating devices with security patches.” The adage that if something is too good to be true, it probably is may not be familiar to this age group because they have not been personally impacted. “Question the benefit or reward claims made by a mobile game before it’s downloaded and installed. Be suspicious.”

Kayne McGladrey, IEEE Senior Member, noted that the use of generative AI models in business hinges on their ability to provide accurate information. He cited as examples studies of AI models’ abilities to extract information from documents used for financial sector regulation that are frequently relied on to make investment decisions. “Right now, the best AI models get 80 percent of the questions right,” McGladrey said. “They hallucinate the other 20 percent of the time. That’s not a good sign if you think you are making investment decisions based on artificial intelligence telling you this is a great strategy four out of five times.”

Another newer issue is that “the transition from a fully remote to a partially on-site work environment creates substantive cybersecurity concerns based on the ongoing mental health crisis,’’ said IEEE senior member Kayne McGladrey. As some businesses attempt to mandate a return to the office, they should be aware of the mental health challenges employees are facing, he said. “Research shows a significant decline in workers’ mental well-being, resulting in stress and anxiety. These mental states can negatively affect decision-making and lead to cybersecurity lapses.”

“After all, AI serves as both a force accelerator, as it will allow those threat actors to operate at large scale without having to increase the size of their workforce. At the same time, the ability of AI to generate convincing-enough speech in another language will serve to open new markets to threat actors who might have previously employed linguists,” says Kayne McGladrey, IEEE Senior Member.