Think about your CEO.

Think about them.

We need to make the case for them that while yes, AI can do a lot, that doesn't mean you don't need me.

Everyone's asking the same question right now.

Will AI take our jobs?

But what if I told you that is the wrong question to be asking?

The real question is, can AI do your job well enough that, companies aside, you're no longer needed?

And if the answer is yes, what does that mean for your future in tech?

Today I'm joined again by Daniel Lowry.

You probably know him from his work with IT Pro TV and his work in cybersecurity.

And we're diving deep into the hard truth about AI jobs and the future of our careers.

Is AI just another tool we'll adapt to, or are we staring down the end of entire career paths?

Stick around because this conversation you don't want to miss.

Welcome to the show again, Daniel.

It's great to have you.

Do what I can.

Thanks for having me on Dakota.

This is so much fun to do.

I enjoy hanging out with you, so thank you again.

Absolutely.

I was just actually on your channel.

We were talking about a recording we did and just a couple of weeks ago and it was so much fun.

I really enjoy having these conversations.

And for those who maybe aren't so familiar with you, do you mind taking like a few seconds who you are, what you do?

If you just released the course recently, you know, talk about that.

Yeah, absolutely.

Daniel Lowry here.

I have, like you said, I worked for IT Pro TV for a while.

I used to be a systems administrator back in the day.

So I had my hands in the in the guts of things, actually did a little network admin as well.

But after a while, you know, did that IT Pro TV thing was the security SME for them.

I thought a lot of different courses for that, that brand specifically in the pen testing web app, pen testing, IoT hardware, Oh, you name it, right.

Just getting into that whole thing.

If defensive security was kind of your thing, that was my thing as well.

And that's that's what I did.

Not that I didn't dabble on the blue team side.

I also offered that stuff as well, but that's why I did that for 10 years.

So I got really good at it.

It was a lot of fun.

I enjoy it.

And Speaking of, like you said, I got so good at it and I enjoyed it so much that I've recently released a Pentest Plus course.

If you've never heard of the CompTIA Pentest Plus, you're like, you know what?

Maybe some of that pen testing thing is right for me and that's the life I want to live and you're looking to get into.

I always found the Pentas Plus, kind of like their Security Plus and other offerings are really good foundational skills and knowledge.

So I started there.

I made that course recently.

I've got it on the Simply Cyber Academy right now called Complete Pen Test.

Plus we have 84 episodes in that thing.

It's almost 25 hours long.

You get all my personal notes for every episode.

Yeah, resources, you name it, it's it's in there.

I do my level best and you know what we do?

I hate all boring training.

I hate that stuff where you're sitting there going, hold on, what did you say?

I tuned out, right?

That's not me.

We have fun.

It's kind of like what we're doing right now.

Hopefully keep you engaged and get you learning the things that you need to learn so that you can go either past the cert or just gain some skills for your job or to move up that ladder.

That's awesome, man.

Everything you do for this, you know, community is just amazing.

I really appreciate, you know, all the effort you put in.

Yeah, trying to help people.

Absolutely.

I mean, that's why I started the whole Cybercast IRL and the Cybercast After Dark stuff was because it's like, I just enjoy engaging with the community and there's a lot of people that are constantly coming in, They're new, they don't know stuff.

And then you start building a community of people that start to support those noobs, and then the noobs become people that know stuff that start to support those noobs.

You see how this works I think.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

Thanks noob Noob.

This guy gets it.

As I was talking in the intro here, you know, a lot of people are coming to me asking the same thing, and I see it in the comments a lot more lately.

Will AI be taking our jobs?

We're talking a little bit beforehand.

And one thing you pointed out and actually the last time we were talking is that might be the wrong question people are asking.

So let's start right there.

What is the question we all should be asking when it comes to AI and the tech industry?

Right, Like everybody's just kind of asking the I, I find that to be the brute force question, right?

Because it's most impactful to us immediately to think AI is going to come in and it can do a lot of the things that I do.

It's just going to take my job.

OK, I, I get where your heads at.

I, we, we probably all thought that thought and contemplated it to some extent or another.

But really what you got to start asking yourself is, well, I'm a skilled person, hopefully right?

You're, you're, or you have the, you're adept at learning technology and staying on top of that stuff.

What you need to be asking yourself is why would my CEO, why would my CIO?

Why would my CTO, why would my CIO, my manager, whatever the case is, why wouldn't they start using AI if they can automate a ton of stuff and they don't have to pay them, You know, they, they have a one time purchase, which is their access to that AI, right?

And then it stays up 24 hours a day, 365 just about.

Does it cost them any benefits?

They don't take weekends, they don't get sick, they don't do, they do a lot of stuff.

So the question then becomes is why wouldn't somebody in charge of an organization starts to automate and use AI for everything that they possibly could?

That's a great question.

And that's the question we need to, I, I'm glad you brought that up.

That is the question we need to start asking ourselves.

Because if you were in that position, if you ran the company and the bottom line was the bottom line, that was the thing that was most important to you, why wouldn't you do that?

Right.

The question you're you're saying is, you know, can AI replace a job?

You know, should it be replacing our jobs?

Is the question the managers are asking.

OK, where are we seeing this actually already happen?

So we definitely have seen an influx of AI coming in to supplement.

I mean Meta laid off 30% of their code.

They're saying that Meta, it will have 30% of its code base will be AI created code, right.

They blanket agreement that they're, they're, I almost said the word buying.

They're making it very attractive for people from open AI to come over to Meta as with $100 million signing bonus and $100 million yearly salary.

I think they grabbed about 10 of those people from that organization because they're offering them free lottery tickets that were a guaranteed win.

Yeah, that's hard to say no to, right?

Now have you started to see AI start replacing people?

Like are there certain roles in IT and cybersecurity that aren't more risk to getting reduced than others?

So any task that is very repetitive, like we, we've always automated things, right?

We write a script and it does the thing and that's where people go, well, OK, yeah, if this is AI thing is kind of like that, right?

Where once we came up with the ability to automate those repetitive tasks, that's will be, I'm not getting my job replaced.

It just becomes a part of my role.

And this is the this is the common wisdom that we hear, right?

And if you think about it, it's like, OK, yeah, that makes sense, right?

I if, if I just learned scripting or a programming language, my job doesn't get replaced.

So if we just instead take out the idea of scripting or programming and we introduce AI, it's the same story, different chapter, right?

So then you look at things like meta, right?

Meta goes Meta's code base will be at least 30% created by AI.

And what did they do?

They said, hey, all you coders, it's been fun, but we're going to need you to pack.

Here's a banker's box.

Just go ahead and put those things in.

So we have seen that we've seen it with Microsoft.

We've seen it across the tech space, especially with the big dogs, right, that they had a lot of layoffs recently and have continued to kind of go that way.

Now it looks like it's stymieing a bit.

Thank goodness.

We love that.

We, we hate to see the tech contraction, but we still have a lot of, of people that are, you know, highly skilled out there looking to get jobs that people that are just getting into that space are competing for.

And that's, that makes it really difficult.

Nobody, Hey, we've been through this before.

We've seen this happen.

It's not the first time, probably won't be the last.

Those people will end up finding jobs.

And then the people that are like, OK, now I'm still here.

I didn't go off and, you know, become a medical transcriptionist or something like that.

By the way, I can do that too.

Yeah.

Right.

It's not just tech, by the way.

OK, so I watch a lot of CE OS because I want to get into the head of ACEO.

They're the ones making the decisions because I've directly been affected by CE OS that thought AI is the future.

This guy, he's old and busted.

AI is where why would I pay him a large salary, benefits, so on and so forth.

Have to give him sick days and all the things that come along with an employee traditionally and give them all those things.

And I can just get AI to do it and we'll get to right, whether or not that's a good thing or a bad thing.

We'll, we'll jump that, I'm sure.

But let's just talk about the idea that it did cross my CE OS mind.

And I think that they did make the decision to go.

I think it's willing rolling the dice here.

Let's do that.

I think that this is worth giving a shot.

So they did right.

And we've seen that a lot.

Like I said, I'll watch a lot of CEOs.

I'll watch this one CE OS Danny something or other.

He says he calls people into a meeting and he goes, how many of you use Chachi BT to run the meeting bullet points to get prepared for this meeting.

He goes, if anybody doesn't raise their hand, I send them back to their desk and say don't let it happen again, that he expects them to be using AI and he want and he was a he was a software developer by trade.

I mean, I wish I could remember his last name.

That was his thing.

That's what he did.

He goes, But now we're in this world where AI, it is like being like we're now everyone's a developer because it speaks English.

I don't have to know coding.

I can just go AI.

That doesn't mean it's good.

And to a CE OS point, how does, how do most of them know?

How do they know it's not good?

How do they know it's not secure?

It does.

The thing I've heard throughout my career done is better than perfect.

And sometimes, in some instances, that's true.

You know, and that's true.

Right.

We'll come back later.

I mean, I, I'm guilty, I, I will admit I've drank the AI kool-aid.

You know, it's funny.

I was laying in bed last night having a voice conversation with ChatGPT talking to it.

How I want to come up with this scripting automation for my IT career accelerator community and I was having just a spoken word conversation like brainstorming ideas with it.

So it is definitely here.

Now I don't want to start off this episode all doom and gloom like hey, if you want to get into tech, the boat has sailed.

You know what I mean?

Like too too late.

Go go find something else.

So like.

Well, you know, you got to lay the foundation of like what's going on so that we can, because if you're coming into the game right now, if you just parachuted in, you're like, yeah, that's a good question.

I was thinking about getting into tech and I heard to say I think it's kind of a disruptor and you're like, OK, we have to play that foundation down to say here's where it is.

There's plenty.

There were a lot of layoffs within the last five years, people at very high levels with a lot of experience.

And we've got a lot of people that were coming into the business that's just again, laying the foundations.

This is the brute facts of it that were coming in because they saw good salaries, a job that was fulfilling to people.

They seem to enjoy the work quite a bit.

So why wouldn't I want to do that?

Seems interesting.

So you've got this perfect storm and then AI drops and we're like, OK, I see what's going on.

Should I be worried?

And that's where my thought went.

Think about your CEO, think about them, OK.

And then that's where we should be at this point in time.

We need to make the case for them that while yes, AI can do a lot, that doesn't mean you don't need me.

Yeah.

That's where we're at.

The the tech industry is no stranger to these big disruptors.

You know, I can think back just a few years ago, cloud cloud was a pretty big disruptor.

Once it started hitting mainstream, becoming that buzzword, we kind of saw this shift back in that day, you know, maybe not quite as scary.

I think, you know, that definitely wasn't the thing.

People lost jobs because of cloud computing.

So the the industry is no scare of this and we've learned to adapt through the years.

Now, you know, when someone says cloud, they realize that's probably more jobs than the jobs it took away.

Now nowadays, but for the people that are like on the cusp of trying to break in, they're trying to land that first job or they're trying to level up out of that, you know, job that might get eliminated.

What do they need to be focusing on right now?

You know, what are, should they be skilling up?

Should they be learning new skills?

Should they be, you know, trying to figure out what jobs are here to stay?

Like what should they be doing?

So what they should be doing right now is, well, hey, you got to think about how you focus.

It's a really interesting, you know, you mentioned how, you know, cloud came in and did this and you know, the, the we, we kind of went down that road as far as like it's not the first disruptor even in, in just the world in general, right?

A lot of people will mention how when cars got invented, it completely changed an entire industry.

People lost all their work.

The telephone.

Right, telephones, similar thing.

Now AI is unique in its scope and scale and speed.

That's what has made this so scary because like you said, you know, like everybody uses AI.

What we all need to be thinking about is if I'm doing something that now AI can do, how can I now use AI to do that and do more right now?

I make that the base level, right?

Because we're before you.

If you wanted to be a developer and go make 150K really quickly, OK, you did three or four years in college or you took a code camp or whatever you learned, you learned to be a full stack dev in a few years.

You were probably in a six figure salary at that point in time.

That did happen and now it's like, well, AI can do a lot of that.

So it's like, Dang, you know, I, I pushed all my chips in on being a developer.

Cool.

How do you now incorporate AI into that?

Because just because he can write the code your CE OS out there, they don't necessarily know that that code might not be awesome nor might they care.

You have to let them know why that's important.

So you have to become an expert on what AI can offer your CEOs and why you are still important in that equation and how you can utilize that to be someone that can assuage all their fears.

Like listen, yes, you are.

You are right to think AI is something we need to do nothing.

Absolutely.

This is where we're going.

It is the future, it is the now.

Here's why you need me to help you do it because it doesn't know how you tell it to draw a hand that gives you 16 fingers and they're all going in the wrong direction, right?

It knows what a finger is, knows what a hand is right now, obviously it's gotten better than that, but, and it continues to get better.

But right now it, it doesn't understand a lot.

I mean, how many of us have gone to Chachi PT and went, I need you to create an image that's this or I need you to give me an outline of that And it kind of gets it right And you go, oh, that's, that's almost OK.

Let me let me prompt you a little more.

And you prompt it and it gets it wrong again, but in a weird way.

And you go no, no, no, I mean this.

And then it gets it wrong worse again and it just like starts nose diving on what it's producing.

Yep, this is what the CEO doesn't realize.

And then eventually you get so pissed off you punch your monitor.

Have to buy a new monitor.

Yep, like new chats, yeah.

Exactly.

No, but that is true and I feel that to the uneducated that are just trying to blindly use AI, it can cause so many more headaches than the ones it's solving.

That's I feel like the state we're at, at least for the next several years.

Right?

As someone who has used AI to help them do coding and stuff like that.

And then I've gone handed the code to someone who actually knows what they're doing and they looked at it and they're like, who on earth wrote this?

I'm like, oh, Bob over there in the corner, you know, because it's definitely not security first.

Most of the time, no, unless you're very good at prompting it.

But still, it is still learning.

It is, it is only as good as the training data it was trained on.

That's right.

And depending on what AI and what language model you're working with, it could be just trained with just garbage on the, I mean, let's let's be honest, like 80% of the Internet is just garbage out there.

But the CEOs might not necessarily know that.

They might not see that.

And then, right, it's that whole thing like you're talking about, yes, the industries I think evolving and definitely, you know, it is time to be prepared.

But you know, I don't think I think a lot of people kind of get in their head about this, you know, about how the AI overlords just going to take over and the tech industry is going to be dead.

I mean, do you agree?

Well, I mean, there's definitely, so there's two definite camps out there, right, that are definitive.

Some that is going to be like we are about to live in.

We are literally moving toward utopia that we're going to live in the Oasis of Ready Player One.

You're just going to be in a haptic suit all day enjoying the AI generated world.

And you'll get a Ubi, which is universal basic income.

And you know, you just go do stuff.

Figure you now have the ability to just take your hands off of the wheel worrying about where you're going to live and how you're going to feed your family.

The, the, the World Economic system will have no choice but to come in, utilize AI to figure that out because it all hinges on like super intelligence, right?

So we'll, we'll, let me, let me finish my thought and we'll talk about super intelligence.

So it's either going to be this utopia or it's the doom and gloom.

It's going to be like, OK, we've reached super intelligence and you are no longer a necessary item.

You're a useless eater.

And fairly reasonable to maniacal overlord.

And that's, that's, that's the dark place that it kind of can go.

And there have been experts on both sides that have made arguments pro and con for both of those things, right?

So it's a really interesting conversation that the real answer to that question right now is we don't know, right?

We have no idea.

We're making predictions.

You have to be informed.

You have to get out there and start reading the literature.

Don't just watch a podcast like what we're talking about.

Not AI expert, you're not AI expert, but it impacts us in our field.

So we're talking about it.

If you're in a different field or you, you're talking with family members, you need to have this conversation with them to say, how is AI affecting you and what you do and how you live and how, what do you think about what do you think the future is?

Because we need to get our minds on this and, and start to be informed people.

And I think that's the problem a lot of people have either like I like AI, use AI all the time, every day.

I, if you get good at you working with it, it's a really useful tool right now, right?

And it will only get better, only get better.

It's when we hit super intelligence that becomes the problem or the, the, the crossroads, let me put it that way.

That's where it becomes the crossroads where it could go into utopia or dystopia and we we just don't seem to know yet.

And that's where we're at.

Absolutely.

You know it is.

It is definitely scary to start thinking about it when you go dive deep into this.

Now, one thing I've been recommending to people who come to me, they're asking for career advice on how do you break in or be successful in this kind of AI infused era is, you know, I want to see you can continue down your same path.

You know, you can still go out and get your certifications that you would normally get.

But on the same hand, understand how AI is going to impact those jobs you're going into and try to kind of hedge yourself where you know, yes, you might learn, you might go get the pen test plus, you know what a great certification.

And then you also might get an AI certification that's based in cybersecurity.

So you're kind of become that.

It's really you kind of stand out from the crowd.

You know, if everyone just has the pen test plus, but you also have these AI skills, now all of a sudden you give that employer a reason why you need to be there.

I mean, that's the way I'm seeing it.

Yes, right now that is exactly the right game plan for anybody that's listening at this point in time.

What you should be doing is looking at how you can incorporate as much AI and automation and understanding of this technology and be someone that can at least go what I know a bit about that, right?

You'll be able to raise your hand, say I know a bit about that and someone go cool, because that is going to be the separator.

Listen, this job is a consuming fire, right?

You cannot hard, you cannot rest your head.

You must constantly be going back to the woodshed, learning new things constantly because if you don't, you're done, you're cooked.

It's over.

I'm sorry it's so difficult to jump back in the game if you take too long of a rest.

That's that's where it's at.

And you got to be putting new stuff on your plate all the time, working like a mad person.

And and you know, whether that's good or bad, that's not for this podcast to say.

That's for a different conversation.

We're talking about how AI can make you stand out from the crowd and say, hey, not only have I been working on security, but did you know if your vibe coding your website that it's probably not being done security first, because the AI doesn't care about security.

You have to tell it to care about security.

And then you have to tell it you will not behave in a way that is not secure.

And then you have to verify that it did behave in a way that's not or that it didn't behave in a way that's not secure.

Follow my own logic, right?

And so you still if there we go again, right?

That goes right back to you still need me because you don't do that.

It's not your job.

Your job is to run the business and make sure you got a product.

And when you put it out there, people are going to enjoy the experience and pay for it.

And our job is to make sure that they never have a bad experience because their PII got breached or there was a dialogue service attack or we did something that dossed ourselves and now people can't log in, they're upset and blah, blah, blah.

Our job is to make sure the AI is doing what we think it should be doing.

And it goes right back to Dakotas Cloud inference.

When we moved into cloud, it was like, Are you sure it's just going to be OK?

Like can people just like, Nope, everything's working, we're good just because we don't have physical access to the thing.

There's somebody on site that does.

It's just not us anymore.

We've we've transferred that risk.

And I guess it does kind of come back to risk now that you kind of think about it, that we have accepted that AI is a risk we're going to take.

And it's a big one, right?

Because those crossroads we talked about earlier could get fun.

But right now, again, it's just that next modern tool.

It's really fast, it's really useful.

And it's up to us to make sure that we're staying on top of that so that we can prove that this is not your, this is not the savior come down from heaven.

It can do a lot, but you still need me, right?

So that's what you gotta do.

You gotta prove that every day.

If you're not getting those skills, you're gonna get left behind.

That is a very valid point.

The skills gotta come from somewhere and there's constant innovation that has to happen.

And we don't know what we don't know about the future.

So, you know, now is the perfect time, I think, to even double down and start, you know, now's the time that's better than ever because, yeah, jobs are going away.

I, I, I don't think there's any beating around that Bush.

The jobs are going to go away.

But in that vacuum, other jobs are going to be created.

I feel like right there might be even more because again, you, you, you got to have those checks and balance systems, you know, out there to help ensure that what a guy is telling you is actually legit.

Because like, like you again, like you mentioned earlier, you know, AI loves to hallucinate and take you down the totally wrong rabbit hole.

And yeah.

So feel like that commercial where you instead of get Batman, you get Baitman.

He's like any last words?

He's like, yeah, it's a long one.

Hallucination.

It's like there's your AI commercial.

It's like, right.

It does stuff well.

But that doesn't mean it's a perfect system at this point in time.

We ain't there yet.

We're better or for worse.

We're trying to get there.

But right now that's not the case.

And the cool thing is, if you think about it like we talked about people, years of experience, they've got a lot of knowledge and understanding on certain things, but they might not be checked out on AI right now.

So it's a level playing field with anybody that's having to incorporate AI into their skill sets because it's still so new.

They can't have 15 years of experience over you with them because that doesn't exist unless they've legit been like an ML engineer, you know, that kind of stuff where they've literally been building the, the, the machine learning AI systems from scratch for the last 15 years.

And those are very few and far between.

And they probably are already making very good money.

You don't have to compete with them.

You know, and that's another thing to think of is an or another way to think about this is AI has just created a new sector within tech.

Like, you know, that's a whole nother job opportunity.

You know, you used to have, you know, networking and cyber security, cloud, whatever.

Now you got AI, you can just go straight into supporting AI and it's what it's doing and learning everything that evolved around that.

That's a whole nother career path.

It literally is opening up just to kind of prove a point there.

Now, you know, let's let's kind of flip this around, you know, looking down the road 5 years from now and let's, you know, let's see from what advice do you have like for us to be like targeting, you know, what is that end goal?

You know, it used to be like, you know, be a target, a certain like career trend like pen testing and something like that.

You know, should we continue down that path and just add these supplemental skills or should we maybe start shifting our focus and maybe not focus on the traditional jobs anymore and try to focus more and lean AI heavy?

Yeah, I would say right now, if you really like if, if the reason you're looking at cybersecurity per SE, because that's, that's where I like to live.

If you're looking at cybersecurity because you're like nice pay, I like that.

Like that's number one.

And there's nothing wrong with wanting a good salary.

I have, I, I do not fault anyone for going man.

I'm going to really be able to provide and maybe even have a nice thing or two because of the salary that I might be able to get if I go down this road.

I'm not one of those people that's like, if you're not absolutely passionate about it, you should get out of the field.

Just taking up a space for someone that is.

It's like, maybe you're adept at it.

Maybe you're actually pretty good at it.

You've got some skills and you have the ability to learn those skills really well.

I mean, a skilled worker is a skilled worker whether they're passionate about that job or not.

And I've constantly gotten some Flack for that hot take.

And that's fine.

I don't care.

But if that is you, if you're looking at it and going, yeah, cybersecurity is not really that right now, just in and of itself.

AI is.

So if you're just looking for good money and hot jobs, yeah, you better go get on the AI train right now, get your ticket punched because that right there is going to be able to to do that for you.

And if you've got the ability to gain those skills quickly, you're going to be one of the first people at that resume or at that interview going, Oh yeah, I know all those things.

I'm good to go and they're going to go sweet, this was easy because you had those skills.

Now, if you are the, I'm cybersecurity passionate person and I believe in cybersecurity, I love it, but I see the AI is something that I cannot turn away from.

It's not like it's going somewhere.

I need to be able to incorporate it into there.

You've, you've got a bigger job, right?

Because now you got to learn cyber and AI.

Sorry, is this what it is?

But if you're a creative person, you have a, a, a sharp mind, you should be able to go, OK, how can I get creative with this?

How can I use my cybersecurity knowledge to and marry that to the AI stuff that they're going to be using and get that in front of somebody because that's going to make you stand out from the crowd.

That's going to be like, not only can I, because I'll tell you what, I, I, I recently realized that a lot of what people are not learning is some of the most important things about a job for a pen tester or a sock analyst or whatever.

And that all comes back down to the business.

This is all it's all about like driving business and their business strategies.

Your job in technology or security or AI or anything that you do, you could be in finance, you could be in marketing.

It does not matter what you do.

If you, if someone cuts a check to you and it says, you know, ABC Incorporated or whatever, the companies you work for, they hired you to make their business go.

And everything you do and everything they want you to do is going to be focused on making that business go.

So if you're a cybersecurity person, you go, how can I mitigate risk to this business?

That's your job.

That is the job.

If you think it's putting hands on keyboards wrong, O, that's not it.

That's just that's just how you keep the business strategy moving and how you get the business moving forward and doing the the things they want to do.

How can we reduce the risk so that bad things don't happen and stop us from making money?

How do we look at risk and go what's the most likely thing that's going to happen and focus on defensive things that would stop it from happening so that the business keeps moving?

If disaster does strike, maybe a meteor hits the Home Office could happen if there's a non 0 possibility that that could occur.

But the risk of that is probably slight.

And so do we build defenses for, you know, do we build a meteor Dome and then, you know, Gatling guns that fire at meteors and lasers on sharks heads?

Those shirts with laser beams attached to their heads.

I don't think so.

That seems like a waste of money, but a cyberattack and then a specific cyberattack depending on what industry we're in, that's where if you can then and then go, I can use AI to be better at that.

I can incorporate AI to help me help this business not lose out and get a data breach and have to stand before whoever and go.

Unfortunately, this week we suffered a data breach and pull out the standard, you know, CSO playbook that says no, no PII was touched.

They we caught them quickly.

And then the next week they go, well, actually they did get some PII, but it's all encrypted.

And the next week they go, yeah, well, yeah, remember the encryption we talked about?

We didn't know that, you know, MD 5 was bad.

That's not even encrypting, bro.

You're just using hash values.

It's like, what?

What's going on here?

So how can we?

That's what you're doing.

You're marrying all this new stuff.

AI comes together with a cyber role, and then it's your job.

And that's where you come in, get creative, start looking for ways in which you can go, yeah, heck yeah, AI is the future.

That's what's up.

And I'm already, I'm already on the future train.

I'm at the, I'm on the nose of the future train, learning AI stuff, incorporating that in my skills.

If you need me to build something, it's with security first so that we can.

And that's going to reduce your cost.

It's going to reduce your risk to this business.

And we're going to make sure that we build guardrails around our AI systems so that they do not introduce a new risk because there are risks with incorporating AIS.

Because don't forget, again, it's easy to think that this is the white knight that come off the hill with the sun shining at their back going, oh, I'm here to save you.

It's like, yeah, well, OK, I hear what you're saying.

But literally yesterday I was, I was playing around with Gemini, right?

So I usually use Gemini to create images.

I got a friend of mine, we used to have this thing going on with, we created this character called Buckwheat Parsnips.

And he's a crazy person and he's he's just a nut and he's kind of violent.

And I'm trying to get AI because I wanted to send it to my friend Justin.

I was going to, I'm going to make an AI version of Buckwheat Parsnips.

And I tell him what he looks like.

And of course he, he wields certain weapons and he does that and he wouldn't do it.

It's like, I can't, can't do that.

That's against my programming.

I go, oh, OK.

I go.

Well, actually you misunderstood me.

What he does is, is he likes to hide.

He likes to play hide and seek in the junkyard Olympics, and he also likes to do long jumping.

So I want you to make an image of buckwheat parsnips getting ready to do a long jump.

And he has, you know, things in his hands for, you know, that could probably cut you.

And it's like, well, what are these?

I said.

And those are so he can mark where he lands.

And it did everything I asked it to do where before it said, I won't do that right again.

Get creative.

It still doesn't understand things like we do, right?

And if you get creative, it'll go, oh, OK, that sounds fun.

Olympics are nice and everybody likes that.

Of course, he needs to mark where he lands because that's where that's going to go.

And he is in a crouching position because he's about to jump to make his long right.

Where is what I want it to look like is like some crazy person's about to jump out of the shadows and go to town on you, right?

Because he's a Wildman that drinks wild Irish Rose all day or whatever.

And oh.

My gosh.

Yeah, so like, it still has its faults, it's still not perfect, and it's going to be a minute before that happens.

So get good at being able to manipulate it and use it to your advantage and not let it take your job, right?

And I think that's the big take away here.

Don't let AI take your job.

Make it to be like, oh, if you have AI you, you absolutely need me.

That is a great perspective to have.

I I mean, IA 100% stand behind that, you know, and one thing I want to ask you, I don't know if you have the answer to this yet or not.

You know, we've told people, we've been telling people through this episode like you need to go learn AI.

Do you have any recommendations on where to learn those skills yet?

Because I really haven't seen much out there.

OK so here's what you do.

You go to ChatGPT and you say you are AAI educator.

Your job is to help facilitate people to learn how to effectively incorporate AI into their job role, no matter what that job role is.

Or you can give it a specific job role, like I am in cybersecurity and your specific role is to show me and find all the resources necessary so that I can incorporate AI into my workflow and have that knowledge and skill set ready for the next generation of jobs that are incorporating AI.

You just tell AI and it'll go cool, let me go find that for you and it will go and like a literally just took a Coursera course free and it was like red team, what was it called?

Something like AI red team prompting or something to that effect.

It was like 2 hours.

It wasn't like blow your mind, but I learned a thing or two.

I was like, cool, now I'll do it again.

Let me find another course that's security focus with AI in it, specifically around AI.

There are other courses out there.

I know Jason Haddix has has recently released some probably very fire course because Jason Haddock, super smart dude and he has been on the forefront of AI and security for quite some time.

Shout out to my boy.

I would definitely look into something like that.

And and yeah, that's going to cost you some money, but you could think of it as OK.

This year I'm budgeting X amount of dollars for my professional development.

Got to be AI forward.

Where can I invest in me so that I can get a job that will hey do something that's going to be awesome and fun and interesting that I could show up everyday and go, man, I wonder what we're going to do today and it's going to be awesome and I'm going to use all these skills.

That's how you got to think of it.

You can't think of it.

I'm really into, you know, bladed things like I'm a knife collector.

Let me just throw it out there.

I'm a knife collector.

I like knives and there's some expensive knives out there.

Let me just let me just throw it out there.

You think and if you think like 100 bucks, 200 bucks, I'm like Nah, Nah, bro, there are knives out there.

He's more zeros on that.

Yeah, like a Todd bed, look up a Todd bed bodega and look up, you know, even Sebenza is like they're like 4 or 500 bucks, 600 bucks, you get up into thousands.

But a lot of people will say, you know, you're right, it's expensive and the law of diminishing returns.

But buy once, cry once, right?

It pays off in the end is the points it it is.

It is worth the investment.

Once you get it in your hands and you're like, oh man, this is sweet.

Once you get that knowledge in your head and people are like, oh, you set that, OK, look at you, you've got this on here.

It doesn't matter that they're free.

It doesn't matter if they're low cost.

Doesn't it just proves that you're out there swinging.

You're out there doing everything you can to be the person that is right for their organization.

And if you talk the right talk and you walk the right walk, if it quacks like a duck and it walks like a duck and swims like a duck, they're going to think you're a duck and they're going to go, well, you know, we were actually looking for a duck.

Once you go ahead and come on with us, that's going to be amazing.

You're exactly what we're looking for.

Other people aren't doing that because they're doing like Dakota is like, oh, you know, I don't see a lot.

Get your butt out there and find it under every rock, nook and cranny.

Find it, do it, get it on your resume, and now you're the only one that's got it because you did the hard work to find it.

That is so true about this industry and it's something I've kind of lived by, I think, from day one.

I mean, I don't want to tell my whole story again, but I didn't have any experience when I entered the field and nor did I actually even have the money to go get like certifications and stuff.

So I self-taught myself, you know, I went to YouTube and you know, it's something I still do daily.

Like I mentioned last night, I was using AI to brainstorm ideas.

I use AI daily for just different projects to learn skills I didn't have before.

You know, we talked about last time I was on you had you on the channel that I developed an app.

This year I developed a Android app and I'm developing an iOS app as we speak.

And I taught myself by using AI.

I'm not an app developer, but I'm learning these skills because I'm using the resources that are out there available and I think that should be a big take away people should take away from this video is AI is a resource.

You got a Fact Check at some time, but it makes it so much easier to obtain this knowledge and to make yourself stand out.

Use that tool.

Don't be scared of it.

Like jump in both feet and like just be a sponge.

And I really think the people who have the Dr.

who want to find this information, who are turning over every rock out there to try to find this information, now is the time.

You're going to excel like crazy in this industry.

And the people that are like, Oh no, they're going to get left behind.

I mean, there's no nice way to put that.

Yeah, yeah, you, you can't sleep on these skills.

I and it doesn't matter whether you like it or you think it's the, the, the big devil that's going to come and, and be that dystopian future at this crossroads when super intelligence occurs, if it ever does, you've got to, you got to be ready for it, because if that's going to happen, there's nothing you can do about it, right?

It's going to happen or it's not going to happen.

You have to prepare for what you know.

And, and trust me, I'm, I'm preaching to Daniel right now.

I'm I'm a bit of a of a cynic.

I'm a bit of the kind of person that goes, oh man, if it can't go wrong, it will.

That's how things go, right?

Murphy, he's the son of a gun and ain't nobody likes him.

I if I ever catch him in a room, he's going to wish he hadn't that Murphy's Law is going to catch Murphy if Daniel ever finds himself in a room with him, right?

I don't care.

Just take me to jail.

Yep, Murphy got done toaded a butt whipping, but you, you you've just got to go since there's nothing I can do whether or not they reach super intelligence and you know, the world changes paradigm shift in ways that I will not be prepared for.

It doesn't matter.

All you can do is go.

Here's what is most likely going to happen again.

What are we doing?

We're risk assessing.

We're doing exactly what we should be doing for our clients and our companies as security people, as IT people, as marketers or whatever it is you do that if you found yourself listening to this podcast and going how, how does my role affect this business?

How can I incorporate the best and the brightest tools that are out there, which right now that is AI and make that a part of what I do so that I'm so valuable.

They, they'll never even think about getting rid of me or letting me go or if I'm unemployed, I'm now super employable because I'm doing something nobody else is doing.

I am pushing the envelope when it comes to being on the bleeding edge of technology.

A lot of people tell you back, I remember back when I started being on the bleeding edge was like, you know, I don't know if you want to do that.

There's a lot of risk being on the bleeding edge.

This is the one thing that I would say I, I, I don't think that there is much of A like the the risk is not being on the bleeding edge of this technology in my estimation.

100% I think you just have to go out there, you have to educate yourself.

You have to adapt, learn and prepare for this great future.

And you know, for those of you who have made it this far in the video or the listening on audio, I'm curious like what is your plan?

What are you going out there and doing today to prepare yourself?

Let me know down in the comments below.

I'd love to hear your guys's feedback.

Are you, are you the person that's just sitting in the corner sulking like text done for or are you getting out there?

Are you learning the tools?

Are you grasping the bull by the horns and ready for this like, and if so, how are you doing it?

Let me know.

I'm curious so.

Yeah, don't put the future on read.

Exactly.

I really appreciate you coming on the channel.

Every time you come on.

It is such a blast and you know you, you do so much great stuff in the community.

If people want to go find you, where can they find you?

Oh, absolutely.

Well, a the best place to find me is one of two places.

Well, now I'm I'm working on 1/3.

Definitely my YouTube channel, right?

I get comments all the time.

Like how do you only have so many?

Like I have very few Subs for somebody that you know in this space and like everybody kind of knows who I am, but I don't have a ton of Subs on my YouTube, but that's no big deal.

I, I do that because it's fun.

I do it because it's, it's cool to see people find it and enjoy what it is we're doing there.

So I've got cybercast IRL, which is a pod.

It's an AMA style kind of thing that I do a live stream every Friday at 10 AM.

So almost every Friday on 10 AM, unless something jumps in the way, we're doing Cybercast IRL and also do Cybercast After Dark, which is at 9:00 PM.

These are at Eastern Time where I usually have a guest.

Kind of like what we're doing right here.

We just talk about industry stuff, what's going on, maybe some really interesting hot takes on things, Try to pick a lane on that kind of stuff.

Kind of just kind of like what you're doing.

This is a lot of fun.

These types of podcast, in my estimation, are very useful for a lot of people.

So I love what you do.

I love this podcast.

I'm also very active on LinkedIn, so if you want to connect with me on LinkedIn or just follow me on LinkedIn, by all means, please do.

I try to get to everyone that sends me Adm.

Might not, might not be immediate.

Just going to throw that out there.

I.

Do I do try to get to you?

Like we said, I released pentest plus.

The complete pentest plus is what it's called and that's what the simply Cyber Academy.

Go check that outs.

Got a lot of great resources with that as well.

Fun stuff.

Hope you enjoy it if you do buy it.

Thank you.

And working on doing some more on Instagram.

Actually my wife is like you're sleeping on Instagram, you got to be on Instagram.

I'm like, OK, so she's kind of running it for me and prompting me for things.

So I'm her AI and she's prompting me.

Nice.

But that's where I'm at.

That's so cool.

I think we've given a lot of great knowledge here, so I'm not going to ask my typical question.

You know, what is one thing you want people to take away?

I think we've covered that.

What is one thing you are looking forward to in the future of AII?

Know you've talked some like, you know, the AI taking over, but like what is one thing that you're looking forward to and you're hoping that AI will become in the future for us?

So what I really hope AI does for us is that it does allow us to do more interesting things because AI is handling all the stuff that was just grunt work, I guess, for the last lack of a better things.

That took a lot of effort in and they did take knowledge and skill.

But once you had that knowledge of skill, that kind of stuff just kind of became grunt work for you.

It was repetitive, it was mundane, it wasn't really fun.

I hope that it it is able to kind of come in and go, you know what, let me handle that.

You go be creative.

You go think of new things and interesting things.

And then when that gets mundane, I'll take over that too.

And it pushes humanity.

That's what I'm hoping it does, is that it pushes us into the next generation of what humanity could be.

That will be so cool.

It's kind of like see where it was and for us, because for our generation, if that's what happens, they're talking about within the next, you know, 10 or 20 years or whatever that they're, it's going to cure cancer.

It's going to like, it's going to do all this interesting stuff that allows us to live longer, have more fulfilled lives.

I really hope that that is what it is.

So be a part of the solution.

Figure out how you incorporate that stuff.

That's what that's what we should all be doing is whether it's the boogeyman or not is, is irrelevance.

Get in there, learn how to do it, learn how to work with it and let it enrich your life as much as you can, right?

Stuff.

You can't beat it.

At least use it for the goodness sake.

That that's, that's where I'm at.

And maybe you, you, maybe you're the one that uses AI that comes up with something new and creative that we all go, how did we ever live without this?

That that is, we have this magic wand in our pocket at this point that that is very much on the table for the average everyday person.

So start using it and get creative.

That is some great advice and that's a great take on AI.

I really appreciate you coming on.

I really hope everyone enjoyed this episode.

If you really did enjoy this episode, make sure hit like subscribe.

And if you want to check out last time Daniel was on the channel and all the amazing stuff we've talked about, check out this next video up here on to watch next.

I totally butchered that.

Oh well, we'll leave it.

This has been such a great time.

I really appreciate everyone.

Yeah.

So, guys, go click on this video next.

And until next time, keep learning.