AI's Security Crisis: Why Your Assistant Might Betray You

Show notes

On this episode of Screaming in the Cloud, Corey Quinn talks with Simon Willison, founder of Datasette and creator of LLM CLI about AI’s realities versus the hype. They dive into Simon’s “lethal trifecta” of AI security risks, his prediction of a major breach within six months, and real-world use cases of his open source tools, from investigative journalism to OSINT sleuthing. Simon shares grounded insights on coding with AI, the real environmental impact, AGI skepticism, and why human expertise still matters. A candid, hype-free take from someone who truly knows the space. Highlights:  00:00 Introduction and Security Concerns 02:32 Conversations and Kindness 04:56 Niche Museums and Collecting 06:52 Blogging as a Superpower 08:01 Challenges of Writing and AI 15:08 Unique Use Cases of Dataset 19:33 The Evolution of Open Source 21:09 Security Vulnerabilities in AI 32:18 Future of AI and AGI Concerns 37:10 Learning Programming with AI 39:12 Vibe Coding and Its Risks 41:49 Environmental Impact of AI 46:34 AI in Legal and Creative Fields 54:20 Voice AI and Ethical Concerns 01:00:07 Monetizing Content Creatively Links:  Simon Willison’s Blog Datasette Project LLM command-line tool and Python library Niche Museums GitHub MCP prompt injection example Highlights from the Claude 4 system prompt AI energy usage tag AI assisted search-based research actually works now POSSE: Publish on your own site, syndicate elsewhere Bellingcat Lawyer cites fake cases invented by ChatGPT, judge is not amused (May 2023) AI hallucination cases database Sponsor Simon to get his monthly summary newsletter https://simonwillison.net/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonwillison https://datasette.io/ Sponsor Augment Code: https://www.augmentcode.com/

Guests

Simon Willison

Independent developer & AI blogger; creator of Datasette

DatasetteSimon Willison's Weblog