The Internet and AI!

My name is Nigel Cummings. I am a semi-retired I.T. Consultant who has worked with many businesses over the last 40+ years managing I.T. systems of all sizes across many industries. After 20 years at IBM UK creating and managing their I.T. systems I left IBM to help other businesses get the benefit of the processes that I had been instrumental in creating and applying to IBMs own critical business systems. During my time at IBM the emergance of the Interenet and it's use as a component for carrying business data safely was particularly challenging.

The Internet and World Wide Web are fantastic tools and, properly managed, could deliver benefits far beyond what we can imagine even now. However the way the Internet has evolved over the last 30 years and it's current trojectory means that it is more likely to cause irrevocable damage to humanity, particulatly the more "developed" countries whose dependancy on it is increasing daily.

Because of the current focus on AI and for the sake of my grandchildren I have decided to dedicate my web site and my "I.T. time" to sharing my experience in the hope that countries will get together to ensure that commercial interest, political pressures and technicians who are seduced by the technology do not unwittigly take us over the edge. Given that I.T. is an essential part of running nuclear reactors and most other potentially dangerous activities you could argue that making "I.T." safe is probably the highest priority for humanity right now.

So where does A.I. fit ?

The recent explosion in A.I. has actually highlighted the problems above. AI has been around for years and needs to be subject to the same controls that all I.T. systems that access sensitive or business critical information must have. Unfortunately these basic "Service Management Controls", particularly Security, have been sacrificed accross the industry in favour of the demand for new function and facilities due to commercial pressures on those that use them and those that develop and supply hardware and software.

The reason that A.I. has taken off so rapidly recently is that it needs vast amounts of computing power which has never been available to it before. Unfortunately the current security and management controls for the Internet and for many critical legacy business systems are not sufficient to protect them from A.I. or accidental and malicious programs running across the Internet. This inbalance has actually been getting worse for at least twenty years and is now at a critical point. Fixing it will be costly and time consuming but technically it can be done. The challenge is to get global agreement and to remove control of the Internet from commercial enterprises and tech billionares who must not be allowed to contine to police themselves.

The role of I.T. companies is to provide solutions. The requirements come from governments and commercial and non-commercial organisations. We now have the situation where the tale is wagging the dog across ALL I.T. not just A.I.. Every day, the control of these large companies and exceptionally rich individuals is expanding and our dependency on I.T. is also increasing. We must reverse this process starting with A.I. and the Internet. The frequency of the recent types of failures at JLR and NATS will accelerate and get bigger until we do so and our freedom as individuals will decline.

I will continue to develop this web site with relevant information to try and explain in non technical terms the level of risk we are now at and what we need to do about it. The problem we have to fix is actually not a technical one, so we must stop asking the "techies" how to fix it, so please come back....