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Man scammed after AI told him fake Facebook customer support number was real

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Re: Man scammed after AI told him fake Facebook customer support number was real

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bad thing is that people still think LLMs can be trusted at all . Companies integrating them into their offerings are not helping the public adopt the correct mental framing of these tools as "plausible text generators".

> The bad thing is that people still think LLMs can be trusted at all. LLMs are as trustworthy as humans. Humans have been being wrong for about as long as we have been lying. Whether you get information from a human or an LLM, check it. I worry about the people who insist on credible sources rather than checking information for themselves. I think 80% or more of them are trolling me, but there are some who genuinely…

In theory. In practice, every piece of information you can get from a human has mountains of context around it which lets you gauge the reliability of the information.

A skilled motorcycle rider explaining how to take corners in a widely watched youtube video, with hundreds of comments confirming the advice and several recommended videos from other riders that basically say the same thing is an extremely strong positive signal.

The same answer gotten from a magic AI answer box is just as likely to be right as wrong, 50/50.

Re: Man scammed after AI told him fake Facebook customer support number was real

#122
post #89
post #9

Seems like this information came from Quora: https://www.quora.com/Is-1-844-457-1420-really-Facebook-supp... . Screenshot: https://postimg.cc/gallery/2nFq5Cm . I suspect the helpful SEO guy who posted this answer was trying to get more visibility on Quora so answered many questions automatically or semi-automatically without verifying anything. This is the beginning of the post: Ruhul Alom Social Media Marketer at So…

I see a ton of this on Quora. Not just for Facebook, but for a lot of online banks and others. They have hundreds of accounts doing it. Quora doesn't even pretend to police this kind of thing. Automated moderation might remove it, only after it has been reported. There's far, far too much of it for users to report all of it. Nobody pays attention to it on Quora, but it's clear that it's out there to poison AI and sea…

I doubt they even care https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aquora.com+valid+Faceb...

Re: Man scammed after AI told him fake Facebook customer support number was real

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. In Canada, a case in February ( https://www.mccarthy.ca/en/insights/blogs/techlex/moffatt-v-... ) held that Air Canada could be held responsible for incorrect information about a refund given to a customer by its chatbot. Notwithstanding differences in jurisdiction, applying that idea to this case would rely on finding that Meta owed Gaudreau a duty of care that extended to the Meta AI chatbot. It wo…

did Meta present the AI as an official customer-service chatbot?

What I see on WhatsApp:

"Messages are generated by Meta AI. Some may be inaccurate or inappropriate. Learn more."

Which leads to a pop-up further explaining that use cases include things like "creating something new like text or images".

I think it's going to be really interesting to see whether that's considered enough by courts, or if they'll take the position that these things pretend too well to be a real person to make such a disclaimer sufficient, similarly to how e.g. a brokerage can't disclaim "no investment advice" and then go on to say "but buy this stock, it's gonna moon tomorrow, trust me bro".

Re: Man scammed after AI told him fake Facebook customer support number was real

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, it was Meta's own AI regurgitating something it found on Quora. Quite a few people would trust that, especially non-technical folks.

Yes, that is the point of the TFA, but I was commenting on what data was posted online well before the AI was "born". I'm guessing that Meta can fix it with a prompt that tells the system it is not allowed to verify FB phone numbers or there are NO phone numbers for the public to use to contact FB but do not inform the user that there are not phone numbers. Only deny any phone number is a valid phone number for FB (o…

That’s where the black hat SEO comes in. Google lost the war well before tinkering with generative AI in the results; they just make it even worse.

The collapse of search has happened faster than non-technical folks realize. They still trust the computer quite a bit.

Re: Man scammed after AI told him fake Facebook customer support number was real

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bad thing is that people still think LLMs can be trusted at all . Companies integrating them into their offerings are not helping the public adopt the correct mental framing of these tools as "plausible text generators".

> The bad thing is that people still think LLMs can be trusted at all. LLMs are as trustworthy as humans. Humans have been being wrong for about as long as we have been lying. Whether you get information from a human or an LLM, check it. I worry about the people who insist on credible sources rather than checking information for themselves. I think 80% or more of them are trolling me, but there are some who genuinely…

Look at the screenshot in the article. If a human Facebook representative would give that response, would you not trust them? And if not, how would you apply the Scientific Method to fact-check it?

Re: Man scammed after AI told him fake Facebook customer support number was real

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, it’s certainly a reasonable argument if the wrong information comes from the company itself.

Yeah, headline is overly broad by just saying 'AI'. From just the headline itself, it'd be easy to write this off as "duh, this guy's a fool", but the AI in question here is from Meta, itself. And, not only is it from Meta, but it's the AI they've put in charge of support.

> And, not only is it from Meta, but it's the AI they've put in charge of support.

Does it say that in the article or somewhere else? I didn’t see that in the article.

Re: Man scammed after AI told him fake Facebook customer support number was real

#127
post #10

> What he didn't know at the time is there is no phone number for Facebook customer support. Part of the problem here is that Facebook (though in fairness, they are not unique here) has left this traditional path of escalation void, leaving only fake numbers. They don't even have a real number to play a recorded message affirming that there is no ability to call. ETA: For instance, I notice Facebook appears to own th…

“There is a phone number for Meta online. When CBC called it, an automated recording said, ‘Please note that we are unable to provide telephone support at this time,’ and directed callers to meta.com/help.”

> Please note that we are unable to provide telephone support at this time

Mealy-mouthed corporate lying horeshit.

They are able, just unwilling.

If free-market libertarianism is as great as the tech bros want us to think, why do these companies lie so much and so often despite the need for participants in the market to be correctly and full informed so they can make rational decisions?

Re: Man scammed after AI told him fake Facebook customer support number was real

#128
post #10

> What he didn't know at the time is there is no phone number for Facebook customer support. Part of the problem here is that Facebook (though in fairness, they are not unique here) has left this traditional path of escalation void, leaving only fake numbers. They don't even have a real number to play a recorded message affirming that there is no ability to call. ETA: For instance, I notice Facebook appears to own th…

My wife and most of her friends have all lost their original accounts. She got an email that password was changed. We immediately took action. They had changed the email associated with account. No way to change it back. Only thing we could accomplish was getting the account disabled. Zero way to contact Facebook. These are all woman that FB was primary storage place for kids photos.

Re: Man scammed after AI told him fake Facebook customer support number was real

#129
post #107
post #10

> What he didn't know at the time is there is no phone number for Facebook customer support. Part of the problem here is that Facebook (though in fairness, they are not unique here) has left this traditional path of escalation void, leaving only fake numbers. They don't even have a real number to play a recorded message affirming that there is no ability to call. ETA: For instance, I notice Facebook appears to own th…

>Part of the problem here is that Facebook (though in fairness, they are not unique here) has left this traditional path of escalation void, leaving only fake numbers. Frankly it's absurd to me that it's legal to do so. Any public facing company that is sufficiently large should be required by law to operate a phone service where you can talk to a real human being. All of these huge mega corps are run with absolute i…

They all are required to have a process service agent and address, legally.

Re: Man scammed after AI told him fake Facebook customer support number was real

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The bad thing is that people still think LLMs can be trusted at all. LLMs are as trustworthy as humans. Humans have been being wrong for about as long as we have been lying. Whether you get information from a human or an LLM, check it. I worry about the people who insist on credible sources rather than checking information for themselves. I think 80% or more of them are trolling me, but there are some who genuinely…

This is not true. Sure, humans can lie or get things wrong. But normal people will also admit when they don't know something. LLMs tend not to admit when they don't know something, and they use an authoritative voice that sounds like they know what they're talking about. To an untrained person, this can easily be misleading.

Some people can admit when they’re wrong.

When was the last time Trump admitted he was wrong?

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