bcovertigo

Black hat and Defcon just ended and I’ll share my impression from LLM related talks given there. Microsoft VPs charged additional money to CISOs attending the summit talking about how AI will disrupt and be the future and blah blah magical thinking.

Meanwhile Microsoft engineers and others said things like “this is logarithmic regression for people who are bad at math, and is best for cases where 75% accuracy is good enough. Try to break use cases into as many steps as possible and keep the LLM away from any automation that could have any consequences. These systems have no separation between the control plane and user input, which is re-exposing us to problems that were solved 15 years ago.”

I think there are some neat possibilities that are lost in marketing hype as venture capitalist anger grows that they might have been scammed by yet another hammer in search of nails.

“Nut meat” is a common phrase so I would guess the peanut product is closest, but please stop this line of thought for your own safety.

Confusingly, there’s actually two similar staves that get mixed up. The helix patterned one with two winged snakes I think you have in mind is called the Caduceus, but the the single wingless version I meant is the staff of Aesculapius (multiple spellings out there).

Go check out the alledged link between the snake wrapped staff that’s used to represent medicine and the treatment for guinea worms. Googling puts that theory with the Ebers papyrus from 1500 BC if it’s true!