The Zen of IT (original) (raw)

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Technology expert Evan Schuman takes an authoritative look at the faults and foibles of enterprise IT.

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opinion OpenAI’s SimpleQA tool for discerning genAI accuracy — right message, wrong messenger In a perfect universe, the persuasiveness of an argument would not be based mostly on who said it. In the world we live in, though, it is. And it’s hard to find a less credible entity to create a genAI accuracy test than OpenAI. By Evan Schuman Nov 13, 2024 6 mins Generative AI

opinion Think data leaks are bad now? Wait until genAI supersizes them A group of Harvard students experimented with AI-linked eyeglasses, offering a powerful peek into the AI nightmares coming for IT in 2025. By Evan Schuman Oct 07, 2024 6 mins Data Privacy Generative AI Technology Industry

opinion California’s effort to find appropriate AI rules is a fool’s mission The adoption of generative AI is moving too quickly — and its dangers remain too unknown — for any meaningful rules to be put in place on AI vendors. Regulating enterprises makes far more sense; influence enterprise behavior and the vendo.... By Evan Schuman Oct 01, 2024 6 mins Regulation Government Generative AI

opinion GenAI vendors’ self-destructive habit of overpromising Just about every generative AI vendor offers enterprise CIOs all kinds of promises about the technology. But they’re talking up 2026 capabilities when trying to make 2024 sales. That’s a recipe for disaster for both buyer and seller. By Evan Schuman Sep 05, 2024 5 mins Generative AI Technology Industry

opinion Want genAI to deliver benefits? You have a lot of work to do first. It’s all a matter of understanding how your business can benefit from generative AI tools and platforms. But first, you need to make some difficult decisions — and then hope genAI doesn’t self-destruct. By Evan Schuman Aug 21, 2024 6 mins Technology Industry Generative AI IT Strategy

opinion Agentic RAG AI — more marketing hype than tech advance CIOs are so desperate to stop generative AI hallucinations they’ll believe anything. Unfortunately, Agentic RAG isn’t new and its abilities are exaggerated. By Evan Schuman Aug 16, 2024 5 mins Technology Industry Generative AI Emerging Technology

opinion Renegade business units trying out genAI will destroy the enterprise before they help In many ways, the rush to try out still-evolving generative AI tools really does feel like the Wild West. Business execs need to slow things down. By Evan Schuman Jul 15, 2024 5 mins Generative AI IT Strategy

opinion AI managing AI that is monitoring AI: What could possibly go wrong? Generative AI advocates say genAI tools can catch errors made by other genAI tools — but humans must still check the AI checkers’ work. By Evan Schuman Jul 09, 2024 6 mins Technology Industry Generative AI IT Management

opinion GenAI might be the least-trustworthy software that exists. Yet IT is expected to trust it. If you can't trust the product, can you trust the vendor behind it? By Evan Schuman Jun 10, 2024 6 mins Generative AI Technology Industry

opinion Privacy policies have gone insane. Doubt it? Consider Instacart Corporate privacy policies are supposed to reassure customers that their data is safe. So why are companies listing every possible way they can use that data? By Evan Schuman Jun 03, 2024 7 mins Regulation Technology Industry Data Privacy

opinion Think Shadow AI is bad? Sneaky AI is worse It’s bad enough when an employee goes rogue and does an end-run around IT; but when a vendor does something similar, the problems could be broadly worse. By Evan Schuman May 09, 2024 5 mins Vendor Management Security Vendors and Providers

opinion GenAI is to data visibility what absolute zero is to a hot summer day Given the plethora of privacy rules already in place in Europe, how are companies with shiny, new, not-understood genAI tools supposed to comply? (Hint: they can’t.) By Evan Schuman May 06, 2024 6 mins Data Privacy GDPR Generative AI

opinion A phish by any other name should still not be clicked Why are so many companies sending out emails to customers that look like phasing attempts? Don't they pay attention to their own security efforts? By Evan Schuman Apr 05, 2024 6 mins Technology Industry Communications Security Industry

opinion McDonald’s serves up a master class in how not to explain a system outage When McDonald's in March suffered a global outage preventing it from accepting payments, it issued a lengthy statement about the incident that was vague, misleading and yet still allowed many of the technical details to be figured out. By Evan Schuman Apr 01, 2024 7 mins Mobile Payment Data Center Industry

opinion Why are CIOs who anticipate the future rarely allowed to do anything about it? Wall Street’s obsession with quarterly earnings has made it extraordinarily difficult for most enterprises to spend on long-term investments, or even mid-term investments. By Evan Schuman Mar 08, 2024 5 mins IT Director IT Strategy IT Leadership

opinion The food delivery driver identification dilemma Ever use one of those mobile food delivery apps — only to realize your delivery person isn't who you expected? There's a lesson here about identity, authentication, and what happens when the best laid tech plan meets human beings. By Evan Schuman Mar 01, 2024 6 mins Small and Medium Business Mobile Apps Mobile

opinion The AI data-poisoning cat-and-mouse game — this time, IT will win The IT community is freaking out about AI data poisoning. For some, it’s a sneaky backdoor into enterprise systems as it surreptitiously infects the data LLM systems train on — which then get sucked into enterprise systems. By Evan Schuman Feb 12, 2024 5 mins Generative AI Analytics Artificial Intelligence

opinion When a customer gets defrauded, should the enterprise reimburse? The New York Attorney General’s office sued Citibank for failing to reimburse customers victimized by fraud, raising serious issues all enterprises must figure out. When should a customer be reimbursed for fraud? And at what point do a customer.... By Evan Schuman Feb 06, 2024 6 mins Financial Services Industry Security

opinion Failed unsubscribes could be a clue your data’s out of control One of the oldest and most frustrating rules about email spam is that the unsubscribe link never works — all it does is confirm your email address is active. But what if the unsubscribe failure is caused by something far more problematic? By Evan Schuman Jan 15, 2024 3 mins Technology Industry Data Privacy Legal

opinion Will super chips disrupt the ‘everything to the cloud’ IT mentality? It's no secret that enterprise IT in recent years has been disappointed in corporate clouds. But in general they've not done anything about it. That could soon change. By Evan Schuman Jan 10, 2024 6 mins Technology Industry Generative AI Cloud Computing

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