Season 6, Post 27: “Human-like decisions, but better”
This was the expression used to describe the power embedded within generative AI by the CEO and co-founder of Harmonic Security, Alastair Paterson, with whom your author caught up recently. Alastair is well-known within the industry, having previously co-founded Digital Shadows (featured in a prior 2021 Blog post). Our wide-ranging conversation over Zoom discussed everything from AI to cyber with the intention of gaining novel insights into many key future trends.
Listening to Alastair speak, it is hard not to be excited about how AI can improve outcomes. For him, “everyone [in Silicon Valley] was blown away at the start”, when Chat-GPT initially appeared. AI is “like another Industrial Revolution.” Think of it as “the start of a new era.” However, Alastair also cautioned that we are “in a bubble” and that “hype is at a crescendo.”
We have sought to reconcile these potentially opposing viewpoints in our own work (see here and here), but Alastair’s way through is a logical one: identify what the problem is and then ask the question of whether AI will genuinely be able to help solve it. For Harmonic, the use-case is very simple. Corporate data has always represented one of the biggest moats for any business, and so how to ensure that these data are not put at risk in a world of large language models is foundational. We have long argued that data have no value unless secured, stored and analysed.
AI has given businesses such as Harmonic “a new set of tools” to help solve this problem. Data protection is “a fundamental of security.” Every potential customer “gets it”, according to Alastair. Ask most Boards what their primary concern is, and while the ethics and biases inherent in some LLMs (along with their tendency still to hallucinate) may be a valid discussion point, data privacy is front of mind. While AI may, over time, allow cyber criminals not only to accelerate the speed but also the sophistication of their attacks, the improved processes that the technology can bring to businesses as part of their defence strategy should be a reason for “cautious optimism”, in Alastair’s words. Consider this expression as an appropriate metaphor for how we believe the broader impact of AI could unfold in the near future.
17 July 2024
The above does not constitute investment advice and is the sole opinion of the author at the time of publication. Past performance is no guide to future performance and the value of investments and income from them can fall as well as rise.
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Alex Gunz, Fund Manager
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