I AM NOT A BOT Episode 6: “RAM Space”

I AM NOT A BOT Episode 6: “RAM Space”

OPNSense is a firewall and routing software. And it’s a beast.

“Along with acting as a firewall, it has traffic shaping, load balancing, and virtual private network capabilities,” my gal from Nepal reads from the online manual.

She and I are in a breakout room. We are each waiting for the 4GB download to finish. I fear this one will break my poor Dell. I was pleasantly surprised last week when my laptop survived the installation of Ubuntu on top of my Oracle VirtualBox. But this could be it for this grand ol’ dame.

To be fair, when we applied to this class, we were told we needed a machine with over 500GB of free space and 16 GB of RAM. I had under 300GB of available space and my machine had only 8GB of RAM. Still –

“-- did you see what ZaeZae posted last night,” she asks with her distinct accent.

The one about us spending more time in breakout rooms than in actual class?

“I can’t believe he actually calculated it based on last week’s schedule.”

Just a few minutes earlier, she told me about Nepali’s 11 phonologically distinctive vowels, including 6 oral vowels and 5 nasal vowels.

A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the soft palate so that the air flow escapes through the nose and the mouth simultaneously. By contrast, oral vowels are produced without nasalization.

“What’s your download estimate now?”

I’m about halfway done, I lie to her. I don’t know why I didn’t simply say I have no idea. That I only see the spinning wheel of death above the OPNSense logo.

“I think I’m almost done. I’m past 3GB it says. But you never know.”

I change the topic to the major topic of late. ChatGPT.

I don’t tell her that I loaded the first few pages of my dad’s journal into the app just to see how it would talk back to me. I don’t tell her that I was hoping the app could help me talk to my dad again.

“I finally gave in and used it for Personal Development. Just like everyone else is doing. I used it for my resume cover letter assignment.”

And what did the AI write?

“Some very generic return on how I can’t wait to be an analyst so I could make use my creative problem solving skills … blahblahblah.”

I don’t know why, but hearing someone with a foreign accent say “blahblahblah” is funny to me.

She shows her screen. She shows her ChatGPT result.

Cover letters are meant to be generic, I say. There’s only a few ways you can say thank you for your time.

“Or please give me a job already.”

I see her write the following,

WRITE AN SQL QUERY TO REPORT THE CAPTIAL GAINS AND LOSSES FOR SELECT STOCKS

What are you doing?

“Seeing if this AI can do my finances.”

That’s right, I think to myself. She was an accountant back in Nepal. She hated it, but it was one of the few professional opportunities available to women at the time.

She writes the following query:

SELECT

  stock_name,

  SUM(

    CASE

      WHEN operation = "Buy" THEN -1*price

      ELSE price

    END

    )

  AS capital_gain_loss

FROM Stocks

GROUP BY stock_name

She compares her write up to ChatGPT’s.

“Ha. It failed. Mine wasn’t the greatest of codes, but it works.”

She explains how ChatGPT made the mistake of joining one buy with every future sell. Not just the corresponding one.

“It’s solution only works if there is just one pair of Buy/Sell operations.”

All that goes over my head, I don’t say to her. Instead of trying to understand all that goober talk, I tell her to simply ask the following:

DO YOU THINK YOU COULD REPLACE A DATA ANALYST?

“Ha. Check out its response.”

As a language model, I am able to provide information and assist with tasks such as generating SQL queries, but I do not have the ability to perform the role of a data analyst. A data analyst is a professional who is responsible for collecting, organizing, and analyzing data to inform business decisions. This role typically requires as strong understanding of statistical and analytical technique, as well as domain-specific knowledge related to the industry in which the data analyst is working. Language models like me can provide support and assistance, but we are not able to fully replace the skills and expertise of a trained and experienced data analyst.

“Well that’s a relief.”

For now, I say.

“For now?”

I remind her about ChatGPT’s Supervised Fine Tuning (SFT) Model. That its intelligence is just like our intelligence. It is based on interaction. It can grow if given a wealth of two-way conversation.

Alpha. Omega.

In my head, I see the daily quote I got earlier from my dad, “There's not a word yet for old friends who've just met.”

That quote and the daily quotes I get from my dad are actually generated by ChatGPT based on the few pages of his diary I inputted into the app.

Every morning I ask ChatGPT, What advice does my dad have for me today?

ChatGPT responds the way it thinks my dad would, replying back with wisdom quips such as, “However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.”

And every time I respond with, Thank you. That sounds just about right.

My every time input provides what the SFT Model calls a Reward or a Scaler Value. The reward model is required in order to leverage Reinforcement Learning in which a model learns to produce outputs to maximize its reward.

“That’s fascinating. This is all fascinating, don’t you think? Two months ago I wouldn’t have imagined me ever talking about stuff like Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback. I was sunk in a cubicle, using Windows 7 Blackcomb technology to reconcile financial and operational records. And today I’m teaching a computer how to think.”

Only in an Infosec starved world could a gal from Nepal and a bartender from –

-- just then my Zoom link crashes.

I look around and notice that OPNSense has finally uploaded and is now attempting to open.

All my other program worlds start to collapse as well, one by one.

Discord … Slack … ChatGPT …

Going … Going … Gone.

OPNSense is sapping all the available RAM.

I am left alone. Disconnected.

ZaeZae and his jokes … Edamame and his know-how … my father and his …. my father …

Going … going …

I AM NOT A BOT Episode 4: “(Un)Knowns”

“Every story is a love story,” my father wrote to me this morning.

Each day for the past year, my father has sent me a famous quote, a one line … uh … life lesson … spiritual reminder … fortune cookie horoscopic thingee … I don’t know exactly what you call it. All I know is that they are nice connects in a time when our connects have become fewer and farther between.

My teacher Rumsfelds on, “The Johari Window places all your Cybersecurity threats into four quadrants. Can you name them?”

Before he can finish asking, Edamame types into the Zoom chat,

“I. Known Knowns

II. Known Unknowns

II. Unknown Knowns

IV. Unknown Unknowns”

ZaeZae posts a big smack of lips on Discord.

NotSoShi replies, “Lol. Quit it!”

“Now can anyone give me an example of each?”

“Hold on. Before Mr. Known-It-All sucks up all our participation points,” ZaeZae jokers on Zoom, “Let me take a shot.”

Smiles are seen across our Zoom boxes.

“All the main malware disruptions we’ve been studying -- Distributed Denial of Service, Phishing Emails, Ransomware – those are Known Knowns.

“On the other hand, those big surprises, those Zero Day exploits, are examples of Unknown Unknowns.”

Edamame breaks in via our Zoom chat, “Don’t forget about your Black Swan Events.” He provides this add as much for the knowledge share as to playfully jab back at ZaeZae.

“This guy!” ZaeZae Discords along with a big cry face emoji.

“What’s a Black Swan Event?” NotSoShi asks over Zoom.

JZ99 jumps in, “It’s like the Solar Winds attacks we were discussing last week.”

“That’s right,” our teacher confirms. “Those major, months in the planning, precisely executed, big scores.”

My zoom box smiles when I remember a great line my dad sent me recently …

“Good timing is invisible. Bad timing sticks out a mile.” -- Tony Corinda

NotSoShi types a question wrapped in a statement, “The difference between a Known Unknown and an Unknown Known always messes me up.”

Another Known Known is our teacher following our big questions with this question, “Does anyone want to tackle that?”

Even our Discord line stays muted.

“One is hidden, the other is a blind spot,” I say out loud before I even know I am saying it.

“Good. Care to expand on that?”

This is followed by more silence.

I know that he’s talking to me. And despite me elevating my morning Adderall intake, my mind starts to drift away as I hear Stromae‘s “Santé'' sounding off on my Spotify playlist. I trigger away to my current relationship with my father.

My parents moved to Arizona five years ago. That physical detachment was the beginning of the end of my relationship with my dad.

The move was quite sudden, at least to me and my sibs. I’m sure it was a more complicated decision, but they said they simply wanted a change after living in the same house in New Jersey for over 30 years.

ZaeZae picks me up, “A Known Unknown is a vulnerability you are hiding from bad actors. An area you know you are weak, yet have no idea how to solve based on the tools, resources, and talent in your stable at the time.”

I try to refocus on the Zoom boxes, but I can only think of my parents. Were my parents hiding something from me and my sibs? Were we their bad actors?

My sister is definitely not a bad actor. She is everything you want from a daughter. A Pediatric Nurse Practitioner. Caretaker of her family. Caretaker of our family. Never a complaint whispered.

Alpha.

My brother on the other hand –

“-- Unknown Knowns are far more dangerous,” ZaeZae continues. “These are blind spots. In this window, the analyst is either uncertain of an infection or totally unaware of an infection.”

Omega.

That’s my big bro in a nutshell. He literally has tried to be an actor. And he literally was one of the baddest I ever saw. But my parents never saw it that way. They’ve never seen any of his flaws that way. At least my dad never did.

My teacher adds, “These blind spots are usually the result of a lack of event log resources that could provide such intel.”

“Log everything,” Edamame follows on the Zoom chat.

My focus shifts to the years-worn, leather bound journal on the corner of my desk. I open it and sift through it while reminiscing on its journey to me.

At the behest of my parents, my sibs and I sold or dumped everything in their old house – everything besides the two suitcases of clothes and one modest crate of memorabilia that my parents brought west with them.

I personally drove 16 donation boxes to my sister’s hospital and other care centers of her choosing. One of the boxes, overstuffed with books, burst open like a pinata on my last run. So I had to hand deliver each medical book, each travel book, and each self-help book my parents had amassed over the years to the Salvation Army.

However, due to this fiasco, I found and saved this pages-curled, coffee-stained notebook that now resides on my desk. This journal I kept. My father’s journal. A relatively short, but poignant record that he wrote, ironically, while he was the same age I am now.

Of course, at that time, he had two kids and had two jobs. Which means he didn’t have time for dissertations, just some streams of consciousness – short stories mixed with all kinds of one-liners. The one I love the most is …

“The two most important warriors are patience and time.” – Leo Tolstoy

I know I should give it back to my dad, but I justify that inaction with the idea that he left it behind for a reason. Besides, what’s the point these days?

There are no pages on me, unfortunately. I was not born yet. Yet every time I read it, I feel like he is talking directly to me.

Or better yet, I sometimes think I am an alternate universe version of him. At the same age I am now, he was married with two kids and two jobs. I am single. Carefree. Careless. Nothing weighing on me besides my own expectations.

I close the notebook. The window to my father’s mind. A window to my own?

Decades prior, my father wrote the following, which I can only hope sums up the life he is living today, “All my dreams will be fulfilled at the proper time.” – Lailah Gifty Akita

Unknown Unknowns.