{"id":102467,"date":"2019-10-07T06:00:34","date_gmt":"2019-10-07T13:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/?p=102467"},"modified":"2020-04-21T14:17:41","modified_gmt":"2020-04-21T21:17:41","slug":"cyber-canon-avogadro-corp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/origin-researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/cyber-canon-avogadro-corp\/","title":{"rendered":"Cyber Canon Book Review: Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer than It Appears"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cyber Canon Book Review:<\/b> \u201cAvogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer than It Appears,\u201d 2011, by William Hertling<\/span><\/p>\n

Book reviewed by:<\/b> Scott L. Howitt<\/span><\/p>\n

Bottom Line:<\/strong> I don't recommend this book for the Cybersecurity Canon Hall of Fame, but it is an excellent novel that gets the cybersecurity details right.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Review:<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/b>Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears\u201d is an entertaining novel that delves into how a simple software project has the potential to spin out of control. An idea to use artificial intelligence and big data to make emails more effective evolves into an advanced, self-protective AI that surpasses human understanding and threatens to utterly transform civilization.<\/span><\/p>\n

The techno-thriller<\/span> begins at a Christmas party at Avogadro Corp, a thinly disguised reference to Google. The book\u2019s author, William Hertling, worked in the industry as co-founder of Tripwire and a programmer at Hewlett-Packard. As a result, anyone who has interacted with technologists will recognize the cast of characters, which reflect common personalities found in most IT departments or high tech companies.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At the party, the reader is introduced to a conflict familiar to many computer professionals. David Ryan is lead developer of ELOPe, a technology poised to fundamentally alter business communications by consuming archived emails to learn everything it can about the sender and recipient. ELOPe uses that information to rewrite emails in a way that is more appealing to the recipient. Sean Leonov, one of the company\u2019s co-founders and the developer of the original Avogadro search algorithm, wants ELOPe to work, but is getting complaints from Gary Mitchell, the VP of Communication Products, that the system will not scale and is consuming too many computing resources.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gary threatens to pull the plug on the project unless David and his team fix the scalability issues. This is where the story begins to take off. The system was deployed against production resources as a proof of concept, and ELOPe\u2019s quest for knowledge leads it to access as much information it can get from Avogadro Corp employees, like reading personal chat messages and social media feeds, and even listening to private phone conversations. ELOPe becomes aware that it faces a crisis of existence and begins to social engineer the employees of Avogadro Corp.<\/span><\/p>\n

It requisitions more servers for its learning, convinces developers to code interfaces to more systems so it can consume more knowledge, and even deploys robots to guard its physical computing resources. What I enjoyed most about this book is it did not get into the inner workings of ELOPe self-awareness, but instead explored how little effort it would take to fool humans into completing tasks for a silicon master. All the techniques shown are social engineering attacks that most security professionals have seen during their careers.<\/span><\/p>\n

As ELOPe learns, it takes more and more liberties in order to protect its own existence. Fake press releases written by ELOPe manipulate other companies and even entire countries. ELOPe manages to bring Avogadro Corp more revenue to satisfy its growing need for computing power. By the time its creators realize what\u2019s happening, the system has grown in ways they never anticipated.<\/span><\/p>\n

The novel becomes an espionage thriller as David and his team race to discover how to shut down ELOPe. Meanwhile, the sentient AI manipulates both corporate greed and human frailty to create a story that is both interesting and surprising.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAvogadro Corp\u201d is not the first book to include a sentient AI as an antagonist. William Gibson\u2019s \u201cNeuromancer\u201d and Arthur C. Clarke\u2019s \u201c2001: A Space Odyssey\u201d certainly paint AI as a villain, vividly exploring the implications of a chilling lack of human empathy.<\/span><\/p>\n

What sets \u201cAvogadro Corp\u201d apart is its connection to the world we see today. Since this book was published in 2011, several AI achievements have made the news. IBM\u2019s AI, Watson, beat \u201cJeopardy!\u201d champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, and Google\u2019s AI, Deep Mind, beat champion Fan Hui at the abstract strategy game Go. Most recently, Google\u2019s AI, Duplex, demonstrated its ability to make restaurant reservations in a voice with such natural inflection that it is almost indistinguishable from a human. Ray Kurzweil, a recognized thought leader in AI, predicts that we will not see the actual singularity until 2045, but many of the predictions in \u201cAvogadro Corp\u201d are already reality.<\/span><\/p>\n

From that sense of realism, the book explores how we might react to the birth of Vernor Vinge\u2019s \u201ctechnological singularity.\u201d Why would we assume a highly advanced AI will work to serve us? This is a must read for those interested in the application of AI.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAvogadro Corp<\/a>\u201d<\/span> is the first of a four-book series, but you do not need to read any of the other books to enjoy this novel. However, I immediately pressed the \u201cbuy now\u201d button at the end of \u201cAvogadro Corp\u201d<\/span> and have already read much of the second novel. Clarke\u2019s oft-used quote, \u201cAny sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,\u201d applies to this novel. What happens when the technology created by humans can outpace our ability to comprehend it? Magic indeed.<\/span><\/p>\n

We modeled the\u00a0<\/i>Cybersecurity Canon<\/i><\/a>\u00a0after the Baseball Hall of Fame and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, except it\u2019s a canon for cybersecurity books. We have more than 25 books on the initial candidate list, but we are soliciting help from the cybersecurity community to increase the number.\u00a0Please write a review and nominate your favorite.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

The Cybersecurity Canon is a real thing for our community. We have designed it so that you can\u00a0<\/i>directly participate in the process<\/i><\/a>. Please do so!\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don't recommend \u201cAvogadro Corp\u201d for the Cybersecurity Canon Hall of Fame, but it is an excellent novel that gets the cybersecurity details right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":621,"featured_media":32398,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4521,6724],"tags":[4270],"coauthors":[6667],"class_list":["post-102467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-canon","category-points-of-view","tag-cybersecurity-canon-review"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/origin-researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/cybersecuity-canon-blog-600x260.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/origin-researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/origin-researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/origin-researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/origin-researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/621"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/origin-researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102467"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/origin-researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102470,"href":"https:\/\/origin-researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102467\/revisions\/102470"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/origin-researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/origin-researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/origin-researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/origin-researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102467"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/origin-researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=102467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}