Stay ConnectedI’m Joe Reis, co-author of Fundamentals of Data Engineering, creator of Mixed Model Arts, international speaker, and long-time observer of the tech industry’s favorite recurring mistakes.
Weekly broadcasts from somewhere on the road. Expect raw solo rants and long-form conversations with the engineers and leaders actually building things. I dive into data, AI, architecture, and career survival.
This podcast is invitation-only. Unsolicited guest pitches and PR outreach are not considered.
Copyright: © Joe Reis
What are the hidden dangers lurking beneath the surface of vibe coded apps and hyped-up CEO promises? And what is Influence Ops?I'm joined by Susanna Cox (Disesdi), an AI security architect, researcher, and red teamer who has been working at the intersection of AI and security for over a decade. She provides a masterclass on the current state of AI security, from explaining the "color teams" (red, blue, purple) to breaking down the fundamental vulnerabilities that make GenAI so risky.We dive into the recent wave of AI-driven disasters, from the Tea dating app that exposed its users' sensitive data to the massive Catholic Health breach. We also discuss why the trend of blindly vibe coding is an irresponsible and unethical shortcut that will create endless liabilities in the near term.Susanna also shares her perspective on AI policy, the myth of separating "responsible" from "secure" AI, and the one threat that truly keeps her up at night: the terrifying potential of weaponized globally scaled Influence Ops to manipulate public opinion and democracy itself.
Find Disesdi Susanna Cox:Substack: https://disesdi.substack.com/Socials (LinkedIn, X, etc.): @DisesdiKEY MOMENTS:00:26 - Who is Disesdi Susanna Cox?03:52 - What are Red, Blue, and Purple Teams in Security?07:29 - Probabilistic vs. Deterministic Thinking: Why Data & Security Teams Clash12:32 - How GenAI Security is Different (and Worse) than Classical ML14:39 - Recent AI Disasters: Catholic Health, Agent Smith & the "T" Dating App18:34 - The Unethical Problem with "Vibe Coding"24:32 - "Vibe Companies": The Gaslighting from CEOs About AI30:51 - Why "Responsible AI" and "Secure AI" Are the Same Thing33:13 - Deconstructing the "Woke AI" Panic44:39 - What Keeps an AI Security Expert Up at Night? Influence Ops52:30 - The Vacuous, Haiku-Style Hellscape of LinkedIn
What's the nature of skills and competency when we're all just AI enabled button pushers? I rant about why we need to retain our sense of competence and uniqueness in an age where everything is rapidly becoming a sea of sameness and lameness.
Is AI the silver bullet for modernizing our aging software systems, or is it a fast track to creating the next generation of unmaintainable "slopware"?In this episode, I sit down with Marianne Bellotti, author of the amazing book "Kill It With Fire," to discuss the complex reality of legacy system modernization in the age of AI. We explore why understanding the cultural and human history of a codebase is critical, and how the current AI hype cycle isn't a silver bullet for legacy IT modernization efforts.Marianne breaks down a recent disastrous "vibe coding" experiment, the risk of replacing simple human errors with catastrophic automated ones, and the massive disconnect between the promises of AI agents and the daily reality of a practitioner just trying to get a service account from IT.Join us for a pragmatic and no-BS conversation about the real challenges in software, the practical ways to leverage LLMs as an expert partner, and why good old-fashioned systems thinking is more important than ever.Find Marianne Bellotti:Socials: @BellmarWebsite: https://belladotte.tech/Book, "Kill It With Fire": https://nostarch.com/kill-it-fire
Matt Housley joins me to chat about whether it matters that AI is PhD level, clanker content (the new term for AI slop), a retrospective on Fundamentals of Data Engineering, and much more.
Shane Gibson just published a book - The Information Product Canvas. We discuss his journey as an author and publisher, why shared language is critical in data projects, the iterative processes that can enhance data team efficiency, and the role of canvases in business strategy. We also get into how AI might evolve the landscape of data and publishing.
Does today's use of AI coding agents remind you of a drunken high school or college party? Just like people discovering drugs and alcohol for the first time, I feel like the tech and data industry is in a similar place. "Just vibe..." is the mantra now.
But when I talk with developers and data practitioners in private, I get different vibes. There's definitely a concern that we're collectively building lots of slopware and are setting ourselves up for trouble as an industry.
Kostas Pardalis (Co-Founder @ Typedef) joins me to chat about the rapid evolution of AI and data infrastructure, next generation architectures, and much more
In this episode, I unpack how Big Tech is using massive AI investment to justify mass layoffs. All of this AI projects keep failing for the same reasons every other tech wave and IT project has: bad data, org problems, etc. Will AI be different?
Shane Murray (Field CTO Monte Carlo, Former Head of Data NY Times) joins me to chat about the impact of AI on data teams and business strategies, data observability on unstructured data, and more.
I'm very type-A and goal-oriented to a very unhealthy degree.
In this rant, I explain how I'm slowly letting go of this and instead focusing on long-term sustainability.
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