It's Never Been Easier to Be Scammed: Deception in the Era of AI

You are receiving this post/email because you are a patron/subscriber to Of Two Minds / Charles Hugh Smith. This is Musings Report 2024-8.

Once a technology becomes ubiquitous, it becomes fertile ground for inventive scammers. 

Telephones have been around a long time, but their value to scammers went parabolic when credit cards became ubiquitous: now a scammer could con us into giving them instant access to our credit and cash. 

Robocalls have ruined telephony, but that's a separate subject: our topic today is the ease of being conned.

Once email became ubiquitous, spam went parabolic for the same reason: an imposter / counterfeit / phishing email could con us into giving up passwords and credit card numbers or download worms by clicking the offered link.

Once SMS texts became ubiquitous, spam texts (a.k.a. phishing texts or SMS spam or smishing) went parabolic for the same reason: the unwary could be conned into clicking a link, to the financial benefit of the spammer.

Now a variety of AI tools are on the way to becoming ubiquitous, and the potential for creating new kinds of compelling cons will soon go parabolic.

Let's consider the emotional foundations of cons.

1) Urgency: the con demands our immediate attention: your credit card has been compromised, click this link now.

2) Too good to be true, but plausible: click now to collect your free gift.

3) Exploiting our trust: this is your credit union fraud detection service.

4) Preying on our vulnerabilities and desires for love, wealth, recognition, success: a Hollywood producer wants to option your novel.

5) Fear: we've kidnaped your spouse. 

6) A benefit we should have: don't you want to protect your loved ones?

7) Social trust: most of us still have a default setting of trusting people and institutions.

The goal of any con is to get money out of us by exploiting our vulnerabilities and trust, and exploiting us when our guard is down.