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different kind of AI
Not really, though. Sequences of tokens are predicted as {spam, not spam} via training on pair sets. It's like a token predictor where the output vocabulary is two tokens.
The main fuel is the internet , followed by mobile phones and social media. AI definitely makes the scams more believable, a Nigerian Prince can now easily forge documents. But at the same time AI is a double edged sword, it can be used for both offence and defense.
The main fuel is the "need" to have browsers that can execute code, coupled with the ability to transfer money via the internet. JavaScript was a mistake, e-commerce was a mistake, and so is everything else that came after. Let's ask Vint Cerf whether the web was meant to run logic, or just be a document format. I bet no matter what he answers, the world would be like the GIF pronunciation "I don't care if the origin…
But those are completely unrelated topics. You don't need a hint of JavaScript to do online banking.
And you don't need online banking to send someone your credit card details or banking information. Any kind of communication can turn into a scam. You can steal money over the phone or by mail.
Having run a small social media SaaS for a while, the amount of AI bots (and I say AI bots because the comments and direct messages sent by them definitely read like AI), was staggering. I'm thankful for Cloudflare and I don't think I would have had the resources to deal with it any other way.
You’re on a social media site filled mostly with AI bots right now. Try saying something negative about China in any thread
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It's been used for defense for a long time. AI is why spam filters started actually working in the 2000s.
That was mostly Bayesian probability filters, followed by SPF and more recently DKIM.. Maybe you could consider the Bayesian filter databases being trained as ML, but I feel it's a far way from our typical AI/LLM surge
I think they are about the same.
Both work about as well as autocorrect
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> Ethics, morals and whatever people call only exists if economy is stable. What is a "stable" economy? The US has the world's largest GDP, the highest nominal GDP per capita of any nation with a population over 10 million, the highest amount of investable and liquid private assets of any country in the world, more than a third of the world's millionaires, etc. And yet I think you'd have a hard time convincing most p…
Poor countries have a significantly higher rate of corruption, which means that the government itself is part of the crime syndications. It is true that we see correlation between richer countries and lower level of crimes - across all layers of society.
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The scam is usually a phone call from a loved one in jail or the hospital. It immediately creates a sense of panic and fully explains the random phone number. The voice doesn't have to sound like you either.
This is where "security questions" can be useful; neither the question nor answer need to be real, and the more outrageous the better. "You're my daughter? Then tell me the name of your twelth pet centipede."
Criminals are bad, evil, jail etc etc. I agree. But while the core problem that creates this environment is not solved, nothing will fix it. Not even if you bomb the hell out of it. Ethics, morals and whatever people call only exists if economy is stable. If you let this sort of opportunistic environment exist there will be people to work in it
> Ethics, morals and whatever people call only exists if economy is stable. What is a "stable" economy? The US has the world's largest GDP, the highest nominal GDP per capita of any nation with a population over 10 million, the highest amount of investable and liquid private assets of any country in the world, more than a third of the world's millionaires, etc. And yet I think you'd have a hard time convincing most p…
But the US have a Gini coefficient of 0.418, so a high income equality
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Agreed. If they really want to get ahold of me they'll leave a voicemail. But I feel like I have to answer when my son is at school/camp.
The scams do leave voicemails now, and they use voice genAI per the parent comment. If someone really wants to get a hold of you, they can knock on your door.
Last week I finally had an onslaught of spam voicemails, several in an hour, that caused me to disable voicemail notifications altogether. I'll just check them when I'm expecting something now, similar to mail. My phone app was successfully filtering the calls so I wouldn't see them, but it still got routed to voicemail which then created a notification.
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This really depends on how you define corruption. Rich countries have created a definition that makes it a poor country thing, conveniently ignoring the type of corruption that is institutionalized (and in some cases even legalized) in many rich countries.
The point of institutionalizing corruption is to reduce competition from competing corruption entities. Which is bad but not as bad as an endemically corrupt society. I think it can be true that we have in effect far more corruption in the west than what is readily recognized at the same time that it’s true that we have less corruption than most other countries.
In most western countries the corruption is mostly between entities with legal income, in poorer countries at least one side has its main income from illegal activities.