Siret Schutting
Siret is an information security and strategic communication expert and researcher, focusing on cognitive security, frontier technologies, defence and space (particularly LEO). She teaches information security and risk management at Tartu University, trains teams and organisations in cyberhygiene and resilience and consults companies on implementing infosec management systems. She is the founder & CEO of Digital Round Table, a think tank focused on security research, international infosec collaboration and technology education.
Session
Technology is a coy field: what happens on machine level is almost never what happens in the eyes of the end-user, so far are they detached. One must trust what the wizard in between claims to be happening, unfortunately therefore having to put all trust in said wizard.
With the advent and popularisation of LLMs, the masses of people who seemingly “gain knowledge” or “access” to machines has risen rapidly. This poses several threats in itself, but my research focuses mainly on how culture, specifically words and language, influence how we perceive and use technology, and why most of the tech world today is taken hostage by a handful of American software companies (Anthropic, OpenAI etc).
My talk focuses on these core topics and findings:
The Use of Anthropomorphisation in Marketing and UX language of large language models (why it’s bad and how to fight it) i.e “your model does not hallucinate, it’s just wrong”
The permeation of cultural myths in the perception and utilisation of technology (or how the Bible, the Odyssey and James Cameron affect how large-scale security decisions are made incl. on government and military level)
who benefits and who’s at risk from these misuses (and deceptions), and why it affects the security community so heavily (couple real-life examples and case studies)
Findings include:
- comparison of how varying cultures explain and utilise frontier technologies (i.e can there be AI apocalypse, if your culture does not know apocalypse)
- examples of how marketing language affects real security decisions (the holy triad of CEOs, CISOs and Mythos)
- practical thoughts on how the security community can fight back