By Madyson Muresan
Co-Arts & Culture Editor

In this clip from an interview with Clackamas Community College Cybersecurity Instructor Joel Rendon, conducted by Sports Editor Morgan Armitage, Rendon explains how the advancement of artificial intelligence can affect the technological safety and security of the college. 

The Clackamas Print: With AI becoming more prevalent, what kind of effect has that had on your field? 

Joel Rendon: It’s changing constantly. Something that used to be challenging, like writing programs or creating small scripts to have a computer impersonate a person or a website, used to be a little more complicated. Now you can go to almost any tool and say, “build this website or write this program that does this”. So it has, to a certain degree, made it a lot easier. From the teaching side, I would say, what I’ve seen and what I’m learning, my opinion is [this]; you probably have heard the term garbage in, garbage out, it’s the same thing with AI. Whatever you feed it, it’s going to return the results. One of the best ways to properly use it, besides not simply copy and pasting, is just understanding what you’re asking and understanding what [the results will be]. So in those terms, I think it’s going to help those that are familiar and are proficient with whatever topic or subject you’re learning. You need to be able to know if the results you’re getting are right or not. We have already seen some companies that have been compromised because of their agents or someone who wrote a specific prompt and because it hasn’t been configured properly, they’re just giving out private information from their system. So there are different aspects of AI that haven’t been addressed and will likely be addressed. But because of the constant changes, it’s a challenge in trying to keep up with everything that’s coming out. 

TCP: So would you say that it serves as a threat to cybersecurity?

Rendon: Yes, but also an opportunity for protection and defense. This is applicable to a lot of things, but the same systems that can be used to attack can be used to defend. It will be an opportunity for both. In terms of cybersecurity, there’s what they call the blue team and red team. One is trying to defend and protect, and the other is just trying to attack and hurt. It’s the same with [AI], it’s an opportunity for both teams, — both sides, if you will, to use the technology to automate. Especially automate programs, automate attacks, or responses to an attack. So it is an opportunity for both.

This interview has been edited for clarity and space.