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Privacy Please
Welcome to "Privacy Please," a podcast for anyone who wants to know more about data privacy and security. Join your hosts Cam and Gabe as they talk to experts, academics, authors, and activists to break down complex privacy topics in a way that's easy to understand.
In today's connected world, our personal information is constantly being collected, analyzed, and sometimes exploited. We believe everyone has a right to understand how their data is being used and what they can do to protect their privacy.
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Privacy Please
S6, E263 -Year-End Reality Check On Privacy And AI
We look back at 2025’s privacy and security reality: useful AI where data was ready, repeating breach patterns, and infrastructure limits that slowed the hype. We call out backdoors, weak 2FA, and the shift toward passkeys, decentralization, and owning more of our stack.
• AI succeeds when data, process and governance are mature
• Power, chips and cost constraints limit AI growth
• SALT Typhoon shows backdoor risk and patching failures
• SMS 2FA remains weak while passkeys gain ground
• Data hoarding expands breach blast radius
• Streaming consolidation drives algorithm control and piracy’s return
• Decentralization and self‑hosting rebuild trust with users
• 2026 outlook: AI contraction, ML pragmatism, fewer but stronger tools
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Alrighty then, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Privacy Please. I'm your host, Cameron Ivey, alongside me, as always, Gabe Gums. Gabe, it's it's getting close to that time of the year again where it's uh the end of it. It's the end of it.
SPEAKER_02:End of the year as we know it. And I feel fine.
SPEAKER_00:And I feel fine. Um 2025, man. Um it came and went really quickly. Wild ride. The the days were long, but the the year was short. That's what it feels like, yes. Yeah. Um I'm gonna start with with one thing just uh top of your head. What do you think looking back at this year, what where's there one point where you're just like surprised that this happened? And something that just wasn't surprising, I guess.
SPEAKER_02:I'll start with the wasn't surprising. Um, there were a lot of big breaches this year, and that trend continues to hold, and every year there's a larger one, and you know, more privacy-impacting one, and so that wasn't a surprise. Not in a pessimistic way, but you know we when we recorded our wrap-up at the end of 2024, we talked about how AI was going to dominate 2025. And as we say almost every year, we've been doing this show now. Going into our sixth year next year, by the way. Yeah. Going into our sixth year. Insert crowd noise. And, you know, one of the things that um we talk about every time we do a wrap-up and a predictions for the following year is a lot of what we we kind of predict, and a lot of what actually comes to pass doesn't really take a lot of rocket surge, right? Like we we're not on this show predicting markets and telling you what's going to go up and what's going to go down. But, you know, you can you can see a lot of this stuff telegraphing its way right towards us. And so AI was the thing that um on the opposite end of the coin was actually the most surprising. Was I think this year we actually saw a number of useful adaptations of AI. And I do not just mean large language models, but large language models dominated our headlines and our conversations. But we saw so we saw a lot of AI being deployed for what I would consider um genuine business applications. What we didn't see was that adoption to business processes like at mass scale. Like in fact, what we saw was a healthy number of organizations stating that, hey, look, we tried to implement AI and it didn't work that well for us. So I think some of that was a surprise that uh we saw as much successful AI as we did. Um maybe I was a bit more pessimistic entering the year than than others, uh, but not so so surprising. We're still talking about breaches in a way that seems repetitive to the point of of crazy, right? Like it's it's the same underlying problems. It's not like we're discussing new problems in the the the goalposts are moving. I think the goalpost is where it was at like the end of 2023, 2024 from a from a security and privacy um you know perspective as it pertains to our our ability to to be proactive about it and even reactive about it. So I mean, but all things being equal, I think I'm gonna put 2025 just kind of right down the middle. It wasn't a spectacular year for security and privacy, but it wasn't the most dog poo year we've ever seen. Like honestly, it wasn't. And we saw some naughty things this year. But again, some of the things we saw were they were repeats and echoes of the past.
SPEAKER_00:That's a good point.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, and and this year was kind of like that trial for a lot of companies trying to implement AI and what that kind of looks like and testing that out. And um, I mean, I feel like companies that are gonna be behind, that are already behind, because there's companies that are already I mean, companies I I mean tell me if I'm wrong, but like companies that are ahead of the game right now already know where their data is. If you're if you're still doing a lot of things manual, you're you're never gonna catch up.
SPEAKER_02:I think you're right. I personally witnessed um, for example, uh large call centers implementing AI in some very successful ways. And one of the things that I think made them most successful is what you're pulling on, is they already had a very good understanding of their business practice, their customer journey, um, their data. And so for them, AI was more of an enabler than a vacuum cleaner. It was more about getting things done and less about cleaning stuff up. And so I think that was a key takeaway for a lot of folks. And if it wasn't, they they may want to take it away at this point. Was you know, you you will need to have your house in order before you can just apply AI. Like that's just not that's just not gonna work.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, because that part of the like AI in general, I mean, that is it's moving fast and it's not gonna slow down. No. Um I I mean, are we is anybody talking about the like the power source of all this moving forward? Like this is like who's paying for all this?
SPEAKER_02:So, you know, power is an interesting conversation too. So there's another thing that we saw happen in 2025 was a massive exposure to just how constrained we are for resources to power this AI boom. So I've also spoken to a number of data center operators this year, a lot of them. Um I actually service quite a few of them as customers. We have a number of data center customers at Myota, and power is their number one constraint. Finding power, access to power, for some organizations, it's a two-year lead time before they can get the power capacity they need for their data centers. Um, in another case, there was an organization that they they had to to work overtime with their, you know, their their local state utility, the city utility uh in this case. Um took them almost a year and a half just to be able to contract and to get access to the power so that they could power. I think it was um, I don't know, it wasn't even that large, maybe a five, six megawatt facility. Power is is hard to come by. And it's getting easier to come by. And then near the end of this year, you know, we saw what I think everyone knew was also coming was we saw chip prices increase. So we saw folks like NVIDIA make an announcement they were going to stop making consumer grade GPUs, which has absolutely exploded that market. Um saw the price of memory and RAM also skyrocket. Um those things are all affecting things like, you know, the the cost of hard drives, et cetera. And a lot of this is all being being being pushed by the AI boom. Right. You know, at some point in this segment we'll get to we'll we'll call the salty suit suit, say in, but I overheard him in the hallways earlier, and and uh and one of the things that he is predicting is that, you know, we whether or not we see a full bursting of the AI bubble in 2026, we'll definitely see a contraction if for no other reason than the resources to for everyone to get access to it and continue the growth pattern path that they want to get onto, it's just not there. It's just not there. So yeah, you you are highlighting one of the things that, you know, in in pure tech circles, we don't always talk about, but the underlying raw goods that it takes to service the AI market is constrained, heavily constrained, and and power and processing power are top of that list.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I mean, just think about the we had breaches this year, but just think about the amount of data that's gonna be breached coming into 2026 with people using AI with data that's not good data. Like data that because we know a lot of companies are hanging on to too much data. Um, they don't even know all their data is and they have too much of it, which previous it basically sets them up for bad news for that company if they were to ever get uh Yeah, it's a lot of risk exposure. Yeah, and then you throw AI into it, and then that just makes it even more vulnerable because now you're incorporating another tool with data that's not good data.
SPEAKER_02:And the students are not going to give up that data anytime soon. Not as long as the AI race is on, because the the other thing that is powering the AI race is data. And so as long as the AI race is powered by access to power, access to processing power, and actual data, everything that we're discussing is going to continue to be the case for some time.
SPEAKER_00:Yep.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So this year we saw just a fun stat, we saw a$16 billion credential leak in back in June. And then I think one of the biggest stories of the year is the SALT Typhoon hack. The telephone telecom company back in February, where we didn't find out, like the Senate hearings brought it up in December. Um, if you're not familiar with this, which you should all be, whoever's listening to this, but Chinese state hackers spent three years inside of ATT, Verizon, and Lumen. Yeah. Crazy.
SPEAKER_02:Let's talk extra crazy. Let's talk, um, let's talk about that repetition of patterns to the point of like actual craziness, right? So as the old saying goes, continuing to do the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome, right? Like that's the definition of crazy. So, you know, how long ago did the Snowden headlines break? Decade? Yeah. Wow. And if we are to understand how these foreign agents got access, it was through backdoors that were placed there by otherwise non-foreign agencies. Yeah. Said in plain language, our government put backdoors into our telecom infrastructure, and those backdoors were exploited by bad guys. Now, as security professionals and privacy professionals, we've been saying this since forever. If you put a backdoor in, it will be used by people that you didn't intend it to be used by. There is no getting around that. Where there are doors, people will attempt to open them and go through them. And that we are sitting here talking about foreign agents having access these back doors for three years easy, is it's unacceptable, is the word I'm looking for. It's unacceptable. And wherever you fall on the, you know, it's snowed in a good guy, a bad guy, your hero or a devil. It it really is irrelevant to the greater point of it put us all at risk. It put us all at risk. There's possibly an argument that, you know, those backdoors have saved us from more calamity than than it has caused, but look, I don't I don't usually ascribe to that. I'm security is uh not just a thing that that I I do as as a profession and and you know this podcast is an outlet for for our passion for what we do as as jobs. Right. But it's sometimes just necessary to hold that that mirror up to ourselves as security professionals and citizens and demand better and more. Um yeah yeah, period.
SPEAKER_00:It's um look, I think we we we can all admit that it's not surprising that anything with a camera or a microphone is gonna be potential to be hacked into or always on, even if your settings say it's off or it's enabled or or disabled. We already know that. I mean, yeah, I d w well if you jump to we might be jumping around here, but like the Timu situation, if you download the TMU app, the app itself, that's like I don't know if you know much about that one, Gabe, but I know enough to not allow it in my house. Yeah, yeah. I mean, but here's a simple tip, and I did this on one of the episodes um, you know, while you were out, while you were traveling. If you need to use Timu, don't download the app. Just use the website. The website. Yeah, just use the website. It's that easy to separate yourself from but the thing is, is obviously a lot of people, a lot of people that aren't aware, they love downloading the apps. It's more convenient because it's an app, but they get incentivized to download the app.
SPEAKER_02:How many businesses are like, hey, we're gonna give you an extra blank if you download the app? And you'll get a free blank if you download the app. And you know, we we have to collectively put a higher price on our security and privacy. We have to collectively say we care. Otherwise, you know, you can just go ahead and turn us off right now and just head over to uh whatever your preferred state control media is and uh go ahead and and consume that. But we have we have to demand that change. We have to be that change. Um, we should tease it something a little bit for early. And for we've got some episodes coming up early next year, but as an organization ourselves, we spent some time throughout the back half of this year extricating the privacy please platform and the problem lounge network infrastructure from a lot of SaaS platforms. We do not want our data to be owned by those businesses. We do not trust it. We want our listeners to trust that any information we have on them at all, whether it is listening data, emails, anything, any and all information we may have on them, we need them to know that we don't just talk that talk. We walk that walk. And so, you know, we have we have pulled as much of that out of the public SaaS ecosystem as possible and have shifted to more self-hosted environments. We'll get into that in another conversation, right? But, you know, that this is this is exactly what I mean when I say we have to, we have to enact that change ourselves. That's not going to be easy for everyone to do. I do not, I'm not certainly saying everyone needs to go self-host all of their own platforms for blah, blah, blah. Like that's that is not within reach for everyone. But it is, it is certainly far re more reachable than it was. And you know, we'll spend some time in 2026 helping people achieve those goals if they so desire. We'll we'll lay out exactly how we did it, the, the, the, the places we stubbed our toes, the the problems that we we encountered. Um, we documented a lot of our lessons learned along the way. I've got a lessons learned document without exaggeration. That's like like because I want to share all of this back, and we're gonna have to be the change we want to see in the world. We're gonna we're going to have to do that collectively. Every one of us will.
SPEAKER_00:One privacy and security enthusiast at a time.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, and to end on that salt typhoon thing, this is just to put it in context for for you listeners. And I think it was uh quoted by one of the Senate when they were talking about this salt typhoon hack at the Senate hearing, they mentioned basically that they found routers unpatched for seven years. And basically that like you can use a I can't remember the company, they uh use it as an example, but you can order a pizza on a pizza app and it has better two authentication uh two-factor authenticated um security that's better than a national telecom grid.
SPEAKER_02:Probably better than your banking app.
SPEAKER_00:Probably, yeah. Some of them. It's sad. It's I mean But it's on purpose, right?
SPEAKER_02:Probably. It almost guarantee it is, right? Like, you know, it's easy to pick on things like banking because they have to serve everyone across the entire spectrum of consumers and technological capabilities. So too high a barrier of security controls creates a lot of friction. But I mean, two-factor using things like your phone seems we really relatively easy these days. But there are problems there too, right? Like SMS has long been a compromised um communication channel. And you don't recall the exact episode, and it's probably multiple episodes, but we've talked about how insecure like two-factor SMS is, and the over-reliance on it from like a quote, zero trust perspective is nonsense. I say quote, because one of the patterns that we saw like late 2024 or mid to late 2024, all the way up leading to 2025, and still a little bit in 2025, where you know, folks doing things like layering in two-factor and calling it zero trust. It's like, no, SMS Text as a as a side channel is just it's just not worthy of this. Um pass keys are that's another thing, you know, 2025 that I will say was a net benefit we saw more of. We saw pass keys becoming quite a bit more adopted thanks to folks like Apple, um, to folks like Google. Um, even though Microsoft promised us a password less world, there are others taking the lead on this right now. And, you know, past keys are are are really helping in that area where others are just failing miserably. Is it just because it gives them another layer of protection almost? It changes the attack vector. It it it removes a lot of the exposure and the human element of failure while still providing a secure means for exchanging information. Um
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Well, before we get into some of the predictions for twenty twenty six because I mean you kind of touched on one there. Do you think it is gonna be like do you think SMS is we're gonna be kind of I don't know if we're gonna be forced into using things like signal. But we should.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, because I I mean nobody can really force unless there's we we got some more insight into just how, for example, things like Facebook Messenger and Telegram, etc. Uh what's the other what's the other uh chat platform also owned by Facebook?
SPEAKER_00:I mean you have Instagram and I mean that's this that's very price similar to Facebook Messenger.
SPEAKER_02:It's one more I'm thinking of. It's it's used mostly outside of the US and largely helps keep a lot of diasporas interconnected. Uh my brain is freezing. Um WhatsApp. WhatsApp, yeah. But they're all reading all of your messages, even the messages that are private between you and your lawyer, you and your significant other, you and some rando. Like it like it's all being read, and not just read, but it's all being sold to advertisers. And so if it's being sold to advertisers, you're darn tootin' that everyone else has it, right? Like if by the time the advertisers have access to it, that means the good guys have it, the bad guys have it, the indifferent guys have it, like everyone has it. And so being forced to use things like Signal. Um, if we continue to trust blindly a very small number of organizations with our information, then we will continue to see those patterns. It's not to say Signal had zero problems in 2025 or 2024 or even 2023. But they certainly were different problems that, you know, from a trade-off perspective, uh, as a consumer of uh technology that we all are, yeah, were much more palatable.
SPEAKER_00:They were a lot, those pills were easier to swallow. Signal is a perfect example of try like using that's a tool that's trying to do our best to protect our privacy. We can't you can't like be secure 100%, but at least if you're trying and you're using things like a signal app, yes, it's not perfect. It'll have its, you know, but at least that that's their that's their core main reason for creating it. Yeah. So you can have encrypted messaging.
SPEAKER_02:It's gonna be a long day before people aren't using WhatsApp, though. And again, a large part of that is just network effect. Like untold millions of people across the world use it to stay connected with with others, friends, family, strangers, um largely as a byproduct of how technology grew up in places outside of the Western world, so to speak, outside of the US and and and uh well, mostly outside of the US.
SPEAKER_00:It gave me But I mean it you have nothing to worry about if you're not just don't be sharing personal information through it, I guess.
SPEAKER_02:I think you still have some things to worry about, right? Like you still have the overall building profiles and patterns about individuals and and groups of people. You don't know how that could be used in the future, right? You know, we just don't just we just don't know.
SPEAKER_00:And you can let your mind go wild with it, but we should have the ability to opt into how that happens, not simply be the product, but you know the problem with this comes to the something that I mean do you think if we did ever get something at the federal level when it comes to privacy that it would actually help with things like this to keep those companies in check so they're not able to do things like that? Or I mean this is just a problem in itself outside of like because you don't know what's being well pushed one way or another.
SPEAKER_02:We we could probably look at other regulatory bodies outside of the US to to get some insights into what what an answer like that might look like. And what we see is there are lots of privacy laws outside of the US. Um no shortage of them at this point. Yeah. But we still see this invasion of privacy by platforms like WhatsApp. So I don't know if it's a question of regulation so much as it is enforcement.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Right? It's like what happens when someone does violate those rules.
SPEAKER_00:It makes perfect sense when you think about like, for instance, how YouTube is still free. Because you can still use it, you have to watch the ads, but what people aren't probably thinking about is your search history and what you watch is being it's a profile being built about you. That's giving them ammo to know what people like.
SPEAKER_02:Target you, yeah. It's also not just kind of monitoring in that way, but it's being used to influence people's behaviors and control essentially what they see and don't see. Um YouTube is owned by one company. One company. And whether you think that company is a good company, bad company is really indifferent. It's the concentration of that risk that is problematic. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Speaking of, I mean, obviously the um the Netflix Warner Brothers conversation is a very interesting one because and I've wanted to talk to you about this because, you know, we haven't had we've been both been so busy this last quarter, and um, you know, it looks like Paramount's not gonna happen and Netflix is probably gonna win this deal. Um, and I think it's I don't know, I'm not I'm not uh I'm not too excited about it. In general, just the direction for movie theaters, because like I'm I love movie theaters, and I feel like Netflix is the one thing that could kill or try to kill it, but hopefully, you know, the film industry uh is able to still do things. I don't know. But I mean now we're thinking about like Netflix taking over. This goes to my point, taking over Warner Brothers and all that content, all that streaming data, all that customer data from HBO Max and everything that Warner Brothers has, and now feeding it into Netflix's algorithm and them being able to manipulate that data and push what they want and hide what they want.
SPEAKER_02:And I mean, it already happens. You've turned on this, it tells you here's the top 10 movies. Who's top 10? Right. Are you pushing it or is it actually what everybody's watching? Like I look at that top 10 and I'm like, you didn't even curate this for me. You just want you just want me to know what you you just want to show me the top 10 things you want me to watch, right?
SPEAKER_00:Because this is So is is this the is this the dad that paid for that paid the coach at the school for the son to play that's not good enough to play? So they push it to the front because they want people to they pay enough money to get it to the front, you know, like that kind of what you're highlighting there is exactly what Netflix is really gaining in this deal.
SPEAKER_02:Intellectual property. They now will have all of the kids on all of the baseball teams, and they get to put whoever they want on the field. It's the intellectual property. And so they put creators in a bind, and consumers are hell, I don't even know where consumers are. Like cable was what it was, and it wasn't great, but hell, I never thought I'd look back on it fondly in any meaningful way. But now you need five different platform services to watch half of content, and the price of that is now 3x what a cable bill was. Like, you know, so but again, yeah, we'll talk about trends that I do see already picking up some groundswell, but there are a lot more there are a lot more folks I see, you know, sailing the high seas for their content these days. You know, they are they have they've flown a pirate flag and they're they're right back out on the high seas doing what they they do. Um, you know, it was that in the last like seven to ten years, we saw a decline in piracy, right? Like the days of Napster at its height from the early 2000s has really declined. But you get lime wire. Lime wire, but you make it difficult and expensive for consumers. And look, don't be surprised if you see a lot of people walking around with eye patches and wooden legs. It's uh it's gonna happen. It's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_00:That's a good point. I remember, I wonder if it was before the pandemic. I remember the fire sticks being really popular about the, you know, like get a fire stick, you can just watch any movie you want on there and it's coming back hard. Yeah, I've I could see that being a thing.
SPEAKER_02:Back real hard. It's I mean, I'd argue it's back already.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:You're gonna see more of that from just the average mom and pop consumer. It's not gonna take you know, technologists or tech techno-friendly, techno-savvy people to spin up their own stuff. Um, we saw Anna's Archive announce that they completely scraped all of Spotify's catalog. It's not in super high quality, but they scraped it all. We saw Spotify get sued for pushing algorithms to push artists that they want you to hear and you know, making it difficult for you to discover new. Like it's so people are taken to the high seas. Taken to the high seas.
SPEAKER_00:I've noticed Spotify's regression in terms of uh the the variety of music that gets pushed on you to what you listen to. You get you get locked in and then push things that are just don't make any sense to what you're listening to. It might be the similar genre, but it's it never gives you a good, like vast, like you don't discover real new people unless you really dig. You have to really dig.
SPEAKER_02:Too young to remember it, not you, but maybe you too, but you know, to our listeners, you know, go research 1970s paola in the recording industry and and the uh radio business. It is what's old is new again. The record industries have always, always, always, always, always put their finger in the pie when it comes to what they want you to consume. Digital services have made that easier. Um, but again, you go back to the 1970s and people jacking into a mixer at a live show and then bootlegging tapes out of a trunk. Is it new? So look, you know, if you see a lot more jack sparrows walking down the street, just know you brought this on yourself.
SPEAKER_01:You brought this on yourself.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, if you can still physically buy things and own them, it's um hell, that's rare as hell. Yeah. That's rare as hell. Yeah. That's what's weird about this world. It's it's almost as if as technology has cotton up, they're able to control all these services, monthly things.
SPEAKER_02:We never own anything anymore, and we're just the the phrase you're looking for is technofeudalism. Technofeudalism. You do not own it at all. You work the land, you rent it.
SPEAKER_00:It ain't yours. You know what's also scary? I don't know. I mean, this could just be one of those uh, you know, you can make things about anything, but like thinking about being a parent, you're renting your kids technically from the government because of all the documentation. And if you think about it that way, you're not even technically your parents, you're not kids' parents.
SPEAKER_02:Hold on, hold on, hold on. Can we explore this a little bit? Can like what what does this mean in terms of say like getting a return or maybe uh can you get a discount? Like I'm do I get do I get a discount after say 15 years of renting one? I mean, like what is how does this work? I'd like to understand more about this program.
SPEAKER_00:I would too, especially about uh marriage licenses and stuff. It's a whole other different topic. Obviously, we're going in a different direction, but it's it's kind of not it's kind of similar. Where had it all being controlled? It's all related. It's all very, very related.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Let's talk about our some of the predictions for 2026 and beyond, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But so that's a great transition to some of those. I as I mentioned, I already see the groundswell, but I do predict that in 2026, we're gonna see more individuals and organizations pulling back from these monolithically controlled services. We're gonna see more of that. We're definitely witnessing a lot of that now, but we're gonna continue to see that. I think we'll see more decentralization being pushed. Um, you know, things like Discord started taking off a little bit. It's awesome, good start. Um, there's some alternatives even to like YouTube, this peer to P-E-E-R-T-U-B-E. I think we'll see more things like that starting to pick up a bit more groundswell. Um, I think we'll see more decentralized platforms, the mastodons of the world. I think we'll see more of that starting to pick up a little steam in 2026. And a large part of the reason is going to be not just the frustration with the privacy problems, but the economics of it all. People are tired of getting, you know, things shoved down their throats to consume. And who the hell's consuming in this economy? In this economy, in this economy. This is not like serve me all the ads you want, but in this economy.
SPEAKER_00:Well, speaking of that, I mean, this is kind of off topic a little bit, but man, I'll tell you what, it uh it's gonna be interesting to see what happens with the housing market because I don't know, you know how in interesting and and um I don't even know what to use word-wise here, but getting like a tiny home that you can just buy some land and then put a tiny home on nowadays is so much more I don't know, attractive than like trying to buy a house and dealing with a mortgage. And I mean, it's crazy. It's almost interestingly, I'm intrigued. Like I'm gonna be looking at that in the future.
SPEAKER_02:There's a tiny home convention that travels probably the country, but I know it travels the southeast. I went to one at this point, it was a few years ago, but yeah, you should totally check it out. Like they they they have tiny home builders and they have people that live in tiny homes. They they, you know, just it's a big old convention, and you can come learn more about them and how to where to get started and how. And it's I think I think that's a trend that we may see more of also, you know. I think so. It's not a technology trend now, obviously. We're a little off topic there, but it's it's not not related. Like we will see more people kind of pulling back from these centrally controlled uh entities. That that's gonna be that's gonna be huge. That's gonna be huge.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, anyways, yeah, off topic, but I just came to mind and I um so I mean uh other predictions.
SPEAKER_02:I mentioned this one a little while ago. I don't know that the AI bubble is gonna burst in 2026, but I think it has a damn good chance to do so. But I think we'll see a contraction. I think we'll see a fairly sizable contraction. You'll see a number of businesses, uh, AI businesses, you'll you'll see them, you know, kind of gobbling up the the ones that aren't finding a path to revenue, but have something interesting. You'll see some of them just vanish in in into thin air. Um I think we'll see a lot of contraction of AI there. I think LLMs will continue to uh to drive a large part of the conversation as AI goes. But the the other more traditional forms of AI, namely ML, I think we'll see those things really, really bearing better fruit. But the economics of AI, I think we're in for, you know, we joke about in this economy. Yeah, 2020 20, 2026's economy is um it's up for it's up for debate as to to to whether or not it will uh be a promising one, but which is to say if AI does contract the way certainly I expect that it might, what larger effect does that have on the larger economy?
SPEAKER_00:Right. To the to that point, and this could be even further in the future, but do you see a do you see a world in the near future where AI is going to take like the basic jobs?
SPEAKER_03:No.
SPEAKER_00:Almost to the oh almost well, I was gonna say like to the point where people are like, we're gonna have so many layoffs because companies are gonna use AI for all the little things, and it's gonna get to a point where we'll basically have a like everybody's gonna get a set salary from the government, and then we're all gonna have like live on this, like we're all gonna be even more like boxed in and controlled. I mean, I could see that happening. I don't know when, but I mean that could be a possibility one day.
SPEAKER_02:So it's anecdotal at this point, but you know, I mentioned I I did I did get a chance to up close, you know, experience a couple of organizations implementing AI um, you know, at scale, and they didn't cut headcount, they increased headcount. AI made them more efficient and more profitable to the point where they needed more people, not fewer people. Yeah. They got rid of inefficiencies for sure. Now, your question is a valid one, right? Like, do we see a difference in the types of jobs and the pay those jobs have? Yeah. Maybe, almost definitely, but in terms of just like raw counts of number of employed people, I don't, I don't know that that's gonna happen. Like in the in the and again, it's it's a small sample size that I'm that I am personally, you know, looking at here. But in those cases where it was successful, it led to an increase in jobs. Now, the the challenge is in the places where it was not successful, we saw a decrease in jobs, but a lot of those jobs were hired for the purpose of working with and alongside the AI. And then when the AI itself didn't perform as expected, it's like, all right, well, then those those roles no longer are going to do what we think they should be doing. Yeah. So I mean, my answer at this point is no, I'm still I'm still not in the camp that we're going to be losing tons of jobs to AI. I think we'll see lots of things shift, but you know, hell, we saw that, we've seen that as a planet before. The Industrial Revolution, you know, changed everything about the workforce.
SPEAKER_00:To your point, I agree, because actually, and obviously I was meaning like in the way way future, I'm sure, but it it it I've definitely because I I do job, I do AI, security, and privacy jobs, and I have noticed a plethora of new AI positions just popping up out of nowhere. And one that I can see trending is something like an AI. Officer. I don't know how common that is, but I'm pretty sure that the CIO, you can't throw that on top of their plate as well. You're going to need somebody like a privacy officer almost, and you have like an AI officer that's going to manage all the AI stuff. I I could see that in different in certain uh enterprises or um Yeah. Possibly. I don't know.
SPEAKER_02:No, you make a good point. They there will be people needed to essentially still, you know, feed the machines, put guardrails around machines, consume the output of the machines. Yeah. We can't trust it. Unless we just expect that, you know, Company A's AI is just gonna interact with company B's AI and like money is just gonna magically operate out of thin air, right? Like it's just right, right, right. There will be humans in this process throughout the way.
SPEAKER_00:So are we gonna see um do you think we're gonna see more people like, let's say, Elon Musk or others with that stature get into AI or start buying? They're already into it. They're already deep into it. I mean Well, yeah, but I mean, like, I unless I'm out of the loop here, he doesn't have an AI company, though, right? Or is he just invested in one?
SPEAKER_02:Um so that depends on how you view his companies, but Tesla, for example, was one of the earliest adopters of AI.
SPEAKER_00:That's true.
SPEAKER_02:Which one at scale? Well, the entire self-driving vehicles as well as the uh all of the AI that went into detection of people and other vehicles and scenarios, you know, they they arguably were ahead of the curve. That's true. When it comes to that, right? Like I think we'll see more of that, which is AI-enabled companies, businesses whose primary mission might be, you know, car manufacturers, home building, etc. We'll get more AI-powered businesses versus just pure play AI companies. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Um Okay, well anything else that comes to mind um wrapping up at the end of this year and going into next year.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, uh I just want to from both of us and a big thank you to all our listeners for yet another year hanging with us, um hanging with us through all these conversations. We we continue to see growth. So welcome to all the new listeners. Um, you know, appreciate all the old ones that have been there with us for the last five going into season six. And as we promise, we've got we've got more exciting things on the way. It's uh it we will continue to evolve the show into what it is that you you join us for. And yeah, my prediction is you're gonna love the Problem Lounge Network in 2026.
SPEAKER_00:Touche. Absolutely. Uh I'm super excited about everything we got coming. And like uh everything that Gabe said, thank you guys for listening. If you're not familiar yet um from all the other episodes, check out our website. It's the problemlounge.com. Um, you can listen to episodes over there. You can a bunch of stuff. You can read more about us. We got newsletters. Um if you have episode uh guest ideas or topics you want us to talk about, please you know send them our way.
SPEAKER_02:We got a YouTube channel now that's pop it off. Yeah, yep.
SPEAKER_00:Go check out YouTube channel, Privacy Please Podcast, uh, YouTube up there. We're gonna in 2026 we're gonna start doing live streams. Um, so just you know, be ready for it. We're excited for it, and uh, thanks for sticking around.
SPEAKER_01:Everyone, have a happy new year, have a happy new year, merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, it's almost over, festivist for the rest of us, a little Kwanzaa action, Buddhist the James, all of that. We'll see ya, we'll see you in twenty twenty six, folks. See y'all.
