Jim Dempsey is the Senior Policy Advisor to the Stanford Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance. Additionally, he’s a lecturer at the UC Berkeley School of Law, where he teaches cybersecurity law in the LL.M. program. Before joining the UC Berkeley staff, he was the Executive Director of the Berkeley Center of Law & Technology.

Jim previously served as a part-time member of the US Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board — an independent agency within the federal government charged with advising senior policymakers and overseeing the nation’s counterterrorism programs.

Jim is the author of Cybersecurity Law Fundamentals, a summation of cybersecurity law for practitioners in the field. His other publications include “Cybersecurity Information Sharing Governance Structures: An Ecosystem of Diversity, Trust, and Tradeoffs” and “The Path to ECPA Reform and the Implications of United States v. Jones.” He also pens articles on cybersecurity for Lawfare, a non-partisan, nonprofit publication dedicated to national security issues.

With the emergence of innovative technologies, cybersecurity continues to be a topic of discussion. And as the constant evolution of AI further transforms our lives both personally and professionally, the products and services we rely on are at risk of becoming fundamentally insecure.

Jim Dempsey, a cybersecurity expert, explains that many users with ill intent are on a mission to steal our information and disrupt AI technology. A particular intentional attack to be wary of is prompt injection attacks disguised as programming instructions. This occurs when a hacker hijacks a language model’s output, allowing the hacker to get the model to say anything they want. There are, however, privacy and security best-practices companies can adopt as a means of prevention.

In this episode of the She Said Privacy, He Said Security Podcast, Jodi and Justin Daniels welcome Jim Dempsey, the Senior Policy Advisor to the Stanford Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance, to discuss the risks of AI deployment. Jim explains why Open AI is suddenly a tech phenomenon, AI’s potential risks without US regulation, advice for privacy and security best practices, and more.