4 ms·

I think as this technology gets cheaper and better, another, more insidious application is using it to overwhelm support channels. Fake or false alarm 911 call

I think as this technology gets cheaper and better, another, more insidious application is using it to overwhelm support channels. Fake or false alarm 911 calls are a problem today. Imagine someone "attacking" the 911 system by spamming it with fake calls. Or calling up / spamming/ etc. help lines for e.g. returning defective merchandise, clogging up support agents and costing money. Spamming your local coffee shop because one morning you felt they were rude. Leaving 1 star reviews everywhere, but over time, so it's harder to detect. Placing tons of orders and cancelling them before being charged, hopefully leading to wasted effort. We may need a CloudFlare for everything, also powered by the same technology

Self-Perfection 3y ago
Every interaction that may be abused and spammed should either require payment or require strict identification of a user that it is this particular human being with permission to perform this action. In this case any spam attack can be countervailed either by rising a price for interaction or by withdrawing permissions.
- Zach_the_Lizard 3y ago
  Sometimes that's not possible or leads to less ideal tradeoffs (at least in the short run) For example, I made a doctor's appointment recently. To do so, I called, told them my name, and a few other details that are mostly in the realm of public information. No one in the office had met me. They had no ID. That would come later in some other forms to be filled out before the visit. If they require ID upfront, that friction will cause some appointments to not be made. You can't find your ID while on the phone. Grandma has an expired driver's license. On the other hand, requiring it upfront reduces fraud. Eventually we will probably have AI powered agents that perform these tasks for us, have the relevant documents handy in memory, and ultimately reduce fraud when scheduling an appointment. But then we need defense against fake appointments being a way to commit identify fraud. Before such agents are widely available, there will be growing pains
  - Self-Perfection 3y ago
    The prospect of solving this with AI dreads me. Luckily we don't need to construct solution out of the most recent hype, we can pick previous instead. Imagine convenient crypto wallet app that you always has with you on your phone. And you have two options to make an appointment: * Pay upfront total cost of an appointment. You receive NFT that indicates you appointment. To cancel appointment just send it back to receive your payment depreciated according to the time you hold the appointment NFT. * Or you may validate your identity by logging in to the clinic website with your crypto wallet. If you hold enough identity proving NFTs issued by various government agencies, you are eligible to make an appointment. I feel like half of the required pieces already exist. We just need to connect the dots.
- Slow_Hand 3y ago
  Good luck with that. Running with the example of 911 from the grandparent post, the service needs to be as low-friction as possible when people call. For them it is a matter of life or death. Imagine if you or I had to make a payment, or solve a captcha, or confirm our identity in order to make an emergency call. That is simply unacceptable in this case.
  - Self-Perfection 3y ago
    This seems solvable. Most of the phones are used with SIM cards and have non zero balance. For instance we might make a law that the last $5 from cell phone subscription plan can be spent only on emergency calls, nothing else. This will make sure that any phone in active use will have enough balance to make couple of emergency calls. Proving identity can be as easy as scanning your fingerprint twice to unlock the phone and then confirm identity proving operation in crypto wallet. And we can still process calls to 911 without identity or payment but only if we have enough capacity to do so.
sentientslug 3y ago
I think almost all of the examples you gave are already possible, why would AI be needed for any of those?
KennyBlanken 3y ago
> Imagine someone "attacking" the 911 system by spamming it with fake calls. Imagine? Hospitals and universities in my area are getting spammed with bomb threats by idiots over "anti-white discrimination" and right-wing conspiracies about young children getting gender-change operations. > We may need a CloudFlare for everything, also powered by the same technology If a wordpress install I run is any indication, Cloudflare is pretty useless for preventing bot activity. Not only do I have sensitivity turned up, I've got everywhere outside the US geo-blocked. Tons of bots sailing right through.
- NicoJuicy 3y ago
  Euh, firewall rules for WordPress through cloudflare: https://gridpane.com/blog/cloudflare-firewall-rules-for-securing-wordpress-websites/ https://gridpane.com/blog/cloudflare-firewall-rules-for-secu... Additionally, cloudflare automatically protects with the owasp ruleset: https://developers.cloudflare.com/waf/managed-rules/reference/owasp-core-ruleset/ https://developers.cloudflare.com/waf/managed-rules/referenc...

Self-Perfection 3y ago

Every interaction that may be abused and spammed should either require payment or require strict identification of a user that it is this particular human being with permission to perform this action. In this case any spam attack can be countervailed either by rising a price for interaction or by withdrawing permissions.

Zach_the_Lizard 3y ago
Sometimes that's not possible or leads to less ideal tradeoffs (at least in the short run) For example, I made a doctor's appointment recently. To do so, I called, told them my name, and a few other details that are mostly in the realm of public information. No one in the office had met me. They had no ID. That would come later in some other forms to be filled out before the visit. If they require ID upfront, that friction will cause some appointments to not be made. You can't find your ID while on the phone. Grandma has an expired driver's license. On the other hand, requiring it upfront reduces fraud. Eventually we will probably have AI powered agents that perform these tasks for us, have the relevant documents handy in memory, and ultimately reduce fraud when scheduling an appointment. But then we need defense against fake appointments being a way to commit identify fraud. Before such agents are widely available, there will be growing pains
- Self-Perfection 3y ago
  The prospect of solving this with AI dreads me. Luckily we don't need to construct solution out of the most recent hype, we can pick previous instead. Imagine convenient crypto wallet app that you always has with you on your phone. And you have two options to make an appointment: * Pay upfront total cost of an appointment. You receive NFT that indicates you appointment. To cancel appointment just send it back to receive your payment depreciated according to the time you hold the appointment NFT. * Or you may validate your identity by logging in to the clinic website with your crypto wallet. If you hold enough identity proving NFTs issued by various government agencies, you are eligible to make an appointment. I feel like half of the required pieces already exist. We just need to connect the dots.
Slow_Hand 3y ago
Good luck with that. Running with the example of 911 from the grandparent post, the service needs to be as low-friction as possible when people call. For them it is a matter of life or death. Imagine if you or I had to make a payment, or solve a captcha, or confirm our identity in order to make an emergency call. That is simply unacceptable in this case.
- Self-Perfection 3y ago
  This seems solvable. Most of the phones are used with SIM cards and have non zero balance. For instance we might make a law that the last $5 from cell phone subscription plan can be spent only on emergency calls, nothing else. This will make sure that any phone in active use will have enough balance to make couple of emergency calls. Proving identity can be as easy as scanning your fingerprint twice to unlock the phone and then confirm identity proving operation in crypto wallet. And we can still process calls to 911 without identity or payment but only if we have enough capacity to do so.

sentientslug 3y ago

I think almost all of the examples you gave are already possible, why would AI be needed for any of those?

KennyBlanken 3y ago

> Imagine someone "attacking" the 911 system by spamming it with fake calls. Imagine? Hospitals and universities in my area are getting spammed with bomb threats by idiots over "anti-white discrimination" and right-wing conspiracies about young children getting gender-change operations. > We may need a CloudFlare for everything, also powered by the same technology If a wordpress install I run is any indication, Cloudflare is pretty useless for preventing bot activity. Not only do I have sensitivity turned up, I've got everywhere outside the US geo-blocked. Tons of bots sailing right through.

NicoJuicy 3y ago
Euh, firewall rules for WordPress through cloudflare: https://gridpane.com/blog/cloudflare-firewall-rules-for-securing-wordpress-websites/ https://gridpane.com/blog/cloudflare-firewall-rules-for-secu... Additionally, cloudflare automatically protects with the owasp ruleset: https://developers.cloudflare.com/waf/managed-rules/reference/owasp-core-ruleset/ https://developers.cloudflare.com/waf/managed-rules/referenc...