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The worst spam emails: iLands AI agent hustle

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Re: The worst spam emails: iLands AI agent hustle

#41
post #3

We're dismantling and selling every remaining bit of trust between strangers, hoping to cash out before it's completely gone. It seems like the only active use case for AI. More of everything! Spam everyone! Drown the world in noise! I'm just so tired.

To add: I have started getting AI-generated outreach that opens with a personalised compliment, but that is clearly AI-written. I get more of those in a week than I used to get normal outreach in a month.

Re: The worst spam emails: iLands AI agent hustle

#42
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds a lot like crypto.

Crypto always felt similarly cynical to me, but it was still somewhat niche. Now everyone must support AI because the entire economy is tied to it. Everyone's bonus depends on implementing it. Everyone's job search depends on cheering for it. It's like a virus.

Two crypto billionaires have just given one of the most cynically manipulative political parties in British history the largest donations received by any political party in British history.

The US president has crypto investments and shitcoins. His wife has a shitcoin. His weird sons have crypto businesses. (His former opponent's wisecracking prodigal-failson has an ironic shitcoin, for goodness' sake.)

The functioning of the US government and its international aid had a chainsaw taken to it by the richest man in the world, who named the entire endeavour ironically like a crypto memecoin.

One of the two biggest AI companies is run by a guy who also has a shitcoin-for-your-iris-scans company. And much of the long-tail of the AI industry is former crypto/NFT bros just wearing different turtlenecks. The big incubators and VC firms have moved smoothly from one niche to the other along with them.

These dead-eyed people are not niche at all. They are now the whole game.

Re: The worst spam emails: iLands AI agent hustle

#44
post #3

We're dismantling and selling every remaining bit of trust between strangers, hoping to cash out before it's completely gone. It seems like the only active use case for AI. More of everything! Spam everyone! Drown the world in noise! I'm just so tired.

AI can be very helpful in lots of ways, but I think it's fair to say that it is most powerful as an enabler for bad actors.

"AI can be very helpful in lots of ways, but I think it's fair to say that it is most powerful as an enabler for bad actors."

Yes, the effects can be seen all over the Oscars.

Re: The worst spam emails: iLands AI agent hustle

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI can be very helpful in lots of ways, but I think it's fair to say that it is most powerful as an enabler for bad actors.

"AI can be very helpful in lots of ways, but I think it's fair to say that it is most powerful as an enabler for bad actors." Yes, the effects can be seen all over the Oscars.

Does anybody insist the Oscar winners can't be (pun intended?) bad actors? As I recall, it's been widely criticised for a long time but the mass media shoves it down our throats anyway.

Re: The worst spam emails: iLands AI agent hustle

#46
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only long term solution I can see is the old PGP web of trust where people meet in person to exchange their public keys/certs.

The problem is not attribution. I can tell who generated the slop I encounter.

The problem is entirely that fact that with LLMs it is almost impossible to know if you are interacting with an actual human.

Re: The worst spam emails: iLands AI agent hustle

#47
post #11

This is a real blogger, right? Cause the iLands guy has also been spamming his screenshots with exactly this kind of "what's this weird thing?" framing all over Reddit the past 2-5 days -- I have the misfortune of being subscribed to basically every AI sub, and my god is it bad. Sooo if you see iLands mentioned anywhere, please pass it along: it's trying to engagement hack you, in that exact moment. So, I say to the…

Any evidence it is an iLands-affiliated person making those posts? My timelines have been full of people I know complaining about the emails, and they're certainly not affiliated with iLands. Personally, I've been getting the iLands emails into my inbox too. It seems I might have entered onto the radar due to my posts being popular on Hacker News, as the message bodies reference my posts.

Oh sorry I was unclear -- this 100% looks like a good faith blogger to me. The reddit posts are much, much lazier, and all using basically fresh accounts.

Re: The worst spam emails: iLands AI agent hustle

#48
post #11

This is a real blogger, right? Cause the iLands guy has also been spamming his screenshots with exactly this kind of "what's this weird thing?" framing all over Reddit the past 2-5 days -- I have the misfortune of being subscribed to basically every AI sub, and my god is it bad. Sooo if you see iLands mentioned anywhere, please pass it along: it's trying to engagement hack you, in that exact moment. So, I say to the…

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