The Exchanges

Q though that tells maybe not a different story, but an interesting story about where AI usage is going. So Anthropic recently put out this economic index that said that the, uh, percentage of use of its tools in the workplace has actually flipped. It began with augmentation, maybe when the tools were a little bit less reliable and now it's gone to automation. So what do you make of that?

A I think that's right. I saw the pod you do with, uh, Dario Amadei. I thought it was, It was great. And I'm a big fan of what they're doing. Um, I'll tell you when we started, so we had an experiment in a way we, uh, we licensed, uh, AI tools, cloud code from Anthropic and, uh, chat GPT from open AI. We put them out there just to see what kind of uptake there would be. And there was, you know, huge uptake. Everybody wanted to use it. Um, but I recently wrote a script that analyzes like the sentiment, what people are doing with AI and the company. And it was about 35, 40% of the usage was just rewriting things. Right. So it's helping people get more efficient, which was great. I didn't mind that necessarily, but it wasn't like innovative leaps and bounds ahead, but then we're doing some more advanced stuff. That was sort of the control group. If you will, we have people who we've given space and time to like really get trained and really set out like, what do I want to accomplish? How much more efficient do I want to get like a more structured use of AI? And so we're doing, I'll give you an example. Um, a few really cool ones. One is, uh, every time an inquiry comes into our customer service desk, you know, customer services sort of In a way it's like ground zero for AI, right? There's a lot of, a lot of sort of human decisioning that can be replicated there. So every time a mess…

AI assessment note: “I think that's right. I saw the pod you do with, uh, Dario Amadei.”

Q But on the other, you've written scripts on your own. So where do you stand here?

A Yeah. So, uh, I think there's a few ways you can do it. We could start like, Hey, we're going to start with the most foundational, uh, we'll build our own models. We'll train our own models. And that's too expensive for so many companies like ourselves. Uh, or we can say, hey, we're going to tap directly into those APIs. Um, or we can say we're going to use cloud code to build faster. I, I view those as like levels of maturity. What I've said we won't do at Netrix is look, I think AI is going to be so like instrumental critical to the future of the company, like how we grow. And if I believe that it's so critical, I can't outsource all of that. Right. I mean, who are we if in five years we have this amazing automation or two years, incredible automation with AI, we're moving faster. And what I mean by that is it can't just be, we're gonna go turn on the Salesforce Einstein thing, or we're gonna go to, you know, every one of our vendors and check the box and pay them an extra 50% to get their AI module, right?

AI assessment note: “if I believe that it's so critical, I can't outsource all of that.”

Q but I'm seeing all the money that they're raising and you have to make a lot of revenue to justify that and eventually profit. So, so, so does that factor into your decision at all in terms of like how much to rely on these tools? Because one day maybe they could go away or maybe they could be 10 X more expensive and then it might change the calculation.

A Yeah. It's a funny question because right now I feel like we and everybody, all of us are beneficiaries of, you know, venture capitalists that are helping subsidize our AI usage really. Right. I mean, you, you, I think you're referring to the fact that it often costs more to service customers than you're bringing in revenue. I mean, you know, the big AI houses are not profitable now. But we're certainly the beneficiary of it now. So we'll make, hey, well, the sun shines. And I think for us, it's about making sure that we're so efficient and judicious in how we use AI that it's not ridiculous and wasteful. And so like we're doing, we, we monitor, we see people who have like, uh, some of our best developers might be using, you know, a thousand dollars in anthropic credits a month. And then we find somebody who's using like 4000 a month. Like, well, what are you doing over there? And so we're, we're working to corral and make sure that our usage is responsible, that we protect our customer data, that we use it at the right pace, that sort of thing.

AI assessment note: “it's about making sure that we're so efficient and judicious in how we use AI”

Q Is the voice AI more effective at getting employees to fall for these scams than text?

A Yeah, it is until the employees know to be looking for it. And it's like, uh, it's very much along generational lines. You won't be surprised to hear this. I mean, it's, um, you know, my parents, uh, kind of their baby boomer generation and You know, I've talked to my mom and like, they're a little bit like in awe of what's going on. Like, did you see that thing on Facebook? And I'll be like, mom, that was fake. You know, um, she's very discerning in other things, but, uh, sometimes the AI stuff gets her. Meanwhile, um, I was playing something for my kids the other day, uh, and they immediately were like, that's fake AI voice. It was a famous person saying something like, that's not real. I'm like, how did you know? You know, but they're 1618 years old. Like they're in tune with this stuff.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, it is until the employees know to be looking for it.”

Q So have you seen the, um, the sophistication of attacks increase and the volume of attacks increase thanks to generative AI?

A For sure. You know, it's, um, at our company now, I'm not directly dealing with threats, but, uh, I've worked at companies where we are and I look back at the things that we had to deal with just a few years ago when we were doing incident response and the attacks that I see even directed at us now. And it used to be You know, take a phishing email. It's an example that everybody can relate with, right? We've all seen, gotten phishing emails. They used to be sort of broken English, clunky. Look at the URL. You'd be like, that's not real. Um, they've gotten so convincing now that someone who's been doing this for a long time, I still have to like do a triple take and say, is this thing real or not? I find myself now, especially, you know, you have to be really careful in my position. So I'll, I'll call the CFO or the general counsel and just say, Hey, does this thing look real? Like, let me bounce it off you. So I don't know. We're all have to be, we have to be a lot more careful, a little more cynical of what we receive.

AI assessment note: “For sure... They used to be sort of broken English... gotten so convincing now”

Q it into practice in your company. Yeah. And you're finding that there's been some uses from the current capabilities. I'm just curious where you think this is heading because on the show we, we have AI skeptics and true believers, um, going basically from the biggest skeptics to the biggest believers. Uh, where do you think this, this technology is going to go? Where do you stand on that spectrum?

A You know, it's fascinating to be in the seat of someone running an enterprise software company, a cybersecurity company, because in the industry and on your pod, we, you know, there's a lot of conversation about like doomers and accelerationists and like this sort of macro picture. And sometimes I feel like we're in the trenches here trying to do a weekend to like go faster and get more innovative all the time. So like we bring, I think a different perspective to it, like actually giving AI to developers, asking them to do more with it. Um, So no, look, it's going to be a net good. We're all in on it at net rigs. Um, it's making us faster. It's better. We're getting a customer requests so much quicker. So yeah. So it could be a huge net positive, not just for our industry, but like for our customers. I think for cybersecurity too.

AI assessment note: “look, it's going to be a net good. We're all in on it”