I’m writing this because I went to a local future foundation event recently where the organizers, who are a non profit focused on improving the surrounding community, had ten speakers give ten, ten minute talks about AI. One of the talks was given by two regional FBI agents who used AI to demonstrate how AI could be used to carry out an AI assisted phishing attack on the average person. Then, yesterday I got a connection request from someone on LinkedIn that would have been an interesting opportunity if I was looking to switch right now. It seemed like a typical conversation at first and I’m always interested in talking about what people are trying to build and how I can help with that.
My hackles and red flag warnings kicked in when they tried to get me to give them my phone number and move the conversation to WhatsApp or Telegram. Mind you, this very well may be a real person on LinkedIn, they have a normal looking profile, however all of their posts are in a different language from the one we started conversing in. I simply ended the conversation saying that I prefer to keep the conversation on linked in.
With the FBI talk fresh in my mind, here are some simple personal security tips. If anyone reaches out to you, usually on your cell phone, and tries to get you to move the conversation to something secure (or more secure) like WhatsApp or Telegram immediately raise your ‘somethings not quite right’ red flag and think about this:
- How well do you know this person?
- How can you independently verify they are who they say they are?
- What are they asking for and why now?
- Don’t trust your intuition and if you aren’t sure find a verifiable (e.g in person) resource that can help you evaluate the context of the situation BEFORE you take any action.
- It’s never a bad thing to pause, reflect and wait when anyone asks for your help or your money.
AI is a technology that will reshape humanity in the coming decades. Personally, I believe it will be mostly for the better and that if AI is a common extinction level filter for all galactic species (if any exist besides humans) the odds of humanity making it through are at a min 50/50, maybe better.
However, I believe history has shown us that any technological advancement is neither good nor bad. It is how the humans deploy and use it use it that determines the goodness or badness of its effect on individual’s and society.
Sadly, throughout human history we can see that there are some people who will use it in criminal ways. This means that common criminals using cyber attacks, phishing for example, on the average unsuspecting people will gain extremely powerful tools of scale that give them an enormous advantage over the crude phishing email attacks of eld that seem to be from a distant relative in a far away land who needs help and money because they are in a dire situation that only you can help them with.
