Alex Dhillon, founder of Outtake AI, explains the scaling dynamics of AI-powered phishing and social engineering attacks compared to legitimate AI sales outreach.
Opinion
Dhillon: AI broke CAPTCHAs and passed the Turing test without enough panic
“One of my biggest anxieties is that, like, generally, to your point, CAPTCHAs are broken, right? Which, like, hey, we passed the Turing test a while ago. For some reason, we just blew past that and don't talk about it enough. We all are blowing past what effec…”
Insight
Dhillon: Generative AI reduced the cost of malicious online behavior to zero
“The cost to be a shitty person online went to kind of zero dollars over the last, like, three years. You got infinite text, infinite images.”
Insight
Dhillon: LLMs allow grandmothers to become cyber scammers
“It's not only that grandmothers are the ones being scammed, it's actually grandmothers can become scammers now, and it's because, right, because it's like, it's just easier than ever and that's actually the real issue. It's like, sometimes people talk about la…”
Assertion Contradicted
Dhillon: Roughly 85% of Critical Data Breaches Stem from Social Engineering
“But I guess my claim is that, like you know it's something like 85% of critical data breaches happen because of social engineering attacks.”
Insight
Dhillon: Cybersecurity Firms Historically Hesitate to Hunt Threats Outside Corporate Perimeters
“Historically, cybersecurity companies have been kind of, I think gun shy of stepping outside their perimeter and saying, hey, no, I'm going to go search for threats. Out in the world, like arbitrary websites, social media, wherever it is, and we're going to go…”
Opinion
Dhillon: External threat detection has historically been a graveyard of services firms
“Candidly, this whole space is full of a graveyard of companies that were services companies, right? So, like, it intrinsically was a task so difficult that only humans can do it.”