Oracle’s Chief Security Officer Puts So-Called "Security Researchers" in Their Places

In a first-person article, Mary Ann Davidson, Oracle’s CSO, writes an account of the impact of so-called “security researchers” and evaluates whether or not these self-apppointed watchdogs are actually helping or hurting customers. Davidson’s conclusion: these “researchers” are a “problematic…

Simson Garfinkel ’87, PhD ’05archive page

August 5, 2005

In a first-person article,
Mary Ann Davidson, Oracle’s CSO, writes an account of the impact of so-called “security researchers” and evaluates whether or not these self-apppointed watchdogs are actually helping or hurting customers.

Davidson’s conclusion: these “researchers” are a “problematic bunch,” frequently doing more harm than good, getting more credit than they deserve, and never doing the hard work of cleaning up the mess that they make.

Keep Reading

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.