10 ms·

I was thinking about it, because wife was telling me story from work, where a woman was scammed with AI generated stuff and her colleague was a little too nonch

• Nextgrid 1y ago
  > We do have a concept of fraud We only do have such a concept when it's about an individual lying to a company for profit. When companies lie to individuals it's just business as usual, or worst-case scenario a "mistake" that the company pinky-promises will not happen again.
  • janwl 1y ago
    [flagged]
    • gaul_bladder 1y ago
      [dead]
• DiabloD3 1y ago
  TBF, I just assume everyone is lying (either first hand or second) and its on them to prove to me they're not. Hasn't failed me yet.
  • A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
    I honestly hate that idea. I am slowly adjusting, but I got used to the idea that you can at least trust the other party not to outright lie ( although I was already expected omission, and other 'normal selling tactics' ). I posit that what we need is heavily enforced truth in advertising laws.
    • codeforafrica 1y ago
      It depends on the level of risk. I generally accept what people say as truth, but if you start asking me for money I require evidence. And the more money you ask for, the more evidence is needed. This is not easy. I help pay the school fees for a few students in East Africa. But, I have been to these students homes. I know their situation first hand. Now I am in a different country, and I can no longer verify if they still need help. All I can do is trust that their situation hasn't changed. And even if they are lying and they can actually afford the school fees, I know they are poor enough that helping them will still make a difference. But anyone helping me to do this needs to take my word for it. Unless they travel here and get their own first hand impression. I heard from one organization that was helping an orphanage, and then they found out that half the kids weren't even orphans. It was effectively a boarding school for some of the children. The people were at the location and saw the children in person, but they were fooled about the status of the children, or they didn't pay attention. Maybe it was a translation error, or some misunderstanding. It doesn't actually matter. The important part is that these children needed help either way. So the money was not misused, just the true reality of these children was misrepresented. The problem of course on the side of the givers is that you can't tell the difference between a genuine mistake and an intentional deception. You have to assess the risk, and, you have to decide for yourself how much you'll be hurt if it turn out to be a deception. I don't give money to people I meet on the street, because I know enough people who also need help that I can't help everyone, so I limit my help to people I know well enough to trust them.
  • floundy 1y ago
    Good approach, and was valuable and necessary prior to AI. I learned this lesson in my early 20s. Nearly every entity that you interact with is trying to transact with you, in a way that benefits themselves. Whether that's a legitimate transaction (money exchanged for a product/service exactly as advertised), a misrepresented transaction (the product/service is not as advertised), taking your money for nothing, or simply taking away your time and attention (advertising). Even before AI, if you were unable to get a good sense of legitimate transactions, you'd lose all your money on misrepresented transactions to scammy used car salesmen, door-to-door salesmen, and whole life insurance salesmen. These parasites and their ilk prey on people who are trusting by nature, and people who will say "yes" to avoid disappointing a stranger. It's unfortunate that the world has come to this, but you need to be untrusting of others' motivations by nature to not be taken advantage of financially.
  • jstanley 1y ago
    It has failed you in ways you can't see, because you've driven away the most reliable people by showing them upfront that you don't trust them. I assume everyone is telling the truth until they've given me a reason not to assume that, and I'd say that hasn't failed me yet.
    • lotsofpulp 1y ago
      This is too simplistic. There are varying levels of trust for myriad interactions. You can trust someone to drive properly and not hit you. You can trust someone to not rob you as you walk by them. You can simultaneously not trust them enough to give them money if they ask for it without sufficient proof. Or not trust them enough to invite them into your home.
      • pessimizer 1y ago
        I think there's a problem with the way the word "trust" is used altogether. I trust certain people to drive badly, I trust them to forget appointments, and I trust them not to offer to pay the bill. "Trust" being something defined as both exclusively positive and a virtue in the person that gives it is just meant to soften up marks, and is probably instilled into us by marketing and advertising. It's certainly not taught by any religion, who concentrate on being worthy of trust, not trusting. You trust people because you know them well, and you know what they will do when confronted by certain situations because you have seen them react to similar situations before. Before you know them well, you're just operating from stereotypes and comparisons with other people you've known who have similar mannerisms. Or you're projecting your own thought processes into their heads. A "level" of trust is just a confidence level in a prediction. If you don't have a friend who has had to sacrifice something for you, you don't know if you have any friends at all. That's the real reason it's hard to make friends as an adult. But after you've been through stuff with people, you'd be a fool not to know they'll come through in this new, far-less grave circumstance. I honestly think the problem is that we're trying to make people fungible in a weird secular market religion, and they're not. Trust is not a credit score.
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  • gaul_bladder 1y ago
    Yeah, but god it’s fucking miserable.
    • cindyllm 1y ago
      [dead]
  • amelius 1y ago
    Wouldn't it be better to be part of a community that you can trust? Sounds like you have failed to find it, and are now just coping.
  • tasuki 1y ago
    I assume you're telling the truth. (assuming everyone's lying until proven otherwise sounds like a miserable existence)
• sigmoid10 1y ago
  If you can be beguiled by random images from an unknown solicitor to make rash financial decisions, the root of the problem is probably sitting in front of the screen. "A fool and his money are soon parted" is not a new thing, it's just easier to accomplish than ever before thanks to the dopamine conditioned internet and AI content generation. These victims don't need new legal layers of trust, they need a social media detox.
  • A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
    Sigh. People will adjust. My point, and a subtle one at that, was that it does not bode well for the society of low trust ahead.
    • pessimizer 1y ago
      What people say to respond to this critique is that high-trust people were always a problem. Low-trust societies have procedures in place that nobody ever considers just skipping because we're both good guys and you're from Boston, too, right? High-trust societies are self-regulating scammers paradises. Filled with people citing Occam's Razor, and affinity fraud. Even worse, for minorities the procedures never get dropped, but they're still expected (pressured) to drop procedures to fit in, so they end up highly unequal societies.
      • jnovek 1y ago
        The kind of high-trust we need to get back (at least here in the states) is the kind between neighbors on the same block. Of course it’s never been wise to trust someone just because you’re both from Boston, but in the past neighbors generally trusted each other and socialized. It’s particularly striking when I visit my parents’ house. I’m a millennial and I don’t even know my neighbors names and my parents, who are boomers, routinely talk, text and visit their neighbors. Their neighborhood (at least among the old people) feels like a community. Mine does not.
        • SoftTalker 1y ago
• honkostani 1y ago
  Empathy is a hackable interface- those that are exposing it, are in this attention economy civil war zone- lesser beings by default. They once where protected by the state- but the state, as policeman- has been continuously reduced in its protector role, by those, who found hackable political interfaces, the ticks on the state wave through the fleas on the people. The pent-up backlash to all this results in a militant vote for anti-parasitic and exposure limiting institutions. Fascism promises to remove those attackers, by fire-walling away the exterior and prosecuting perceived attackers on the inside of the nation. Every successful scam, every allowed exploit, is a advertising for the totalitarians who promise to restore order.
  • flir 1y ago
    Doesn't talk like a human, doesn't talk like a bot. Odd.
• SkyeCA 1y ago
  > How can you possibly make due diligence when everyone around you is incentivized to lie? You can't and the correct response is a total lack of trust by default because that's the easiest way to protect yourself. They really are out to get you(r money).
  • at-fates-hands 1y ago
    >> You can't and the correct response is a total lack of trust by default because that's the easiest way to protect yourself. This has slowly eaten away at the idea that we used to live in a high trust society that has now completely transformed into a society where you cannot trust anything, ever, in any capacity. I felt like I had kind gained back some control from not clicking on any links in emails and using my phone sparingly. But with this new crop of AI tools, you're right, it makes it a lot easier to separate you from your money and the criminals are becoming way more sophisticated and persistent in their attacks.
    • zdragnar 1y ago
      Communities used to be smaller, even in big cities, so the number of scammers you encountered was fewer. Now that long distance calls are free, the Internet connects you to everyone else on it, and paperwork is digitalized across entire populations, the reach - and therefore statistical likelihood of encountering- scammers is much higher.
      • AnimalMuppet 1y ago
        Scammers have more incentive to reach widely than anyone else (well, except advertisers, but that's something of a fine line). So the ratio of scams to non-scams went way up.
  • stinos 1y ago
    > You can't and the correct response is a total lack of trust by default because that's the easiest way to protect yourself. Rather off-topic, but it's funny how this principle applies in the exact same way when it comes to traffic for instance. It is unfortunate it has to be like that, but not trusting any other traffic and assuming they can at any point do the thing you'd least expect them to do is just safer. Especially when e.g. cycling this saved my from injuries or worse more than just a couple of times. And that's even in a country with relatively high numbers of cyclists.
• nostrademons 1y ago
  You should be distrustful of every emotion generated by a mass media campaign. They're all artificial, and generated for the benefit of the person running the campaign, not you. It's still possible to function, it's just that you have to go out and seek information, and usually seek information through channels where the organization is not delivering it to you. Every non-profit files a Form 990 with the IRS, and every public company files a form 10-Q/K with the SEC. There's a wealth of information there for figuring out what the company is doing, but they usually like to obfuscate it in some extremely boring text and financial figures, because they want you to buy into the narrative they deliver to the press and not the facts they deliver to the government. They usually will not outright lie on these, though, because doing so is a crime that can put the CEO, CFO, and Board of Directors in jail. Same for consumer stuff. Ruthlessly seek out back-channel information about products, whether it's word-of-mouth from friends, online reviews (though these are increasingly easily gamed these days), product tests from independent organizations (though again, many companies provide free products to review in exchange for favorable reviews), etc. I've found that keeping an online subscription to Consumer Reports has been well worth it because they're one of the few review sites where you pay them to review, the company doesn't pay them to get reviewed. Advertisements are worthless; treat them as such. Same goes for random cold calls; it's probably a scam, unless you can corroborate it otherwise.
  • A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
    << You should be distrustful of every emotion generated by a mass media campaign. I would like you to think through this statement and then carefully apply it what today's publicly facing technology can do. If TikTok proved anything, it is that masses of people can be influenced to do feel, think and act in accordance with desired goals. One could argue that if it is already this bad, maybe it should e reined in a tiny wee bit? << They're all artificial, and generated for the benefit of the person running the campaign, not you. Oh no man. The feelings are real. They are generated under false pretenses, but the feelings are real. Honestly, I am not sure if people running those campaigns realize that all those feelings may eventually be turned against them. << it's just that you have to How come it is not fraudster that 'has to'?
• thinkingtoilet 1y ago
  I was recently thinking about this. One of the only benefits of this AI slop is that maybe it will teach the generations growing up with it not to trust anything they see on the internet without verifying it. If you're older and not technologically savvy, I understand why it's so easy to get scammed. Hopefully younger generations will learn the lesson that you need to assume everyone is lying on the internet, that pictures, and more importantly, video are no longer reliable without verifying the source.
• Aurornis 1y ago
  > her colleague was a little too nonchalant about it ( 'it is on her to do her due diligence' ). I’m always fascinated by victim blaming culture, which has been pervasive long before generative AI. You see it most frequently in cases where the victim is thought to be a safe target: Someone wealthier, an office rival, a corporation. On HN it appears in every thread about someone being scammed, but it was most obvious in the recent threads where JPMorgan was defrauded by a startup they acquired. Seemingly 1/3 of the comments were from people commenting that JPMorgan was actually at fault for allowing themselves to be scammed. Some even declaring that the fraudster shouldn’t be prosecuted because JPMorgan was entirely to blame for allowing themselves to be scammed. I don’t know what drives it. The victim blaming people always seem to believe they would not fall prey to similar scams. They also seem to see the world as full of faceless scams everywhere and that allowing yourself to fall victim to them is a moral failing. Many of them just like to be contrarian, snide, and judgmental, so heaping scorn on the victim they know checks more of those boxes than going along with the obvious consensus that the party who committed the crime is the one to blame. This happens with every new generation of scams. The victim blamers read the news and think it would never happen to them because they’re too smart, therefore any victims deserve blame.
  • anonymars 1y ago
    > I don’t know what drives it "If the victim somehow did something to deserve it, then it won't happen to me" (just world fallacy) Seemed to come up a lot on this one recently too (fake job interview trying to get you to install malware): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45591707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45591707
    • nradov 1y ago
      I don't know about that. Regarding that particular example, anyone willing to interview with a "blockchain" company is very likely a scammer (or at least scammer adjacent) themselves. I mean there might be some legitimate use for blockchain technology but so far it's 99.9% scams and anyone unaware of that simply hasn't been paying attention for the past decade.
• throwaway48476 1y ago
  We used to live in a high trust society but since the breakdown of international barriers western countries are becoming low trust.
  • hodanli 1y ago
    Eastern cultures say the same thing about the influence of the West. Ha!
    • janderson215 1y ago
      Because people don’t respect that which they feel they have no connections to or shared community with. The Kumbaya of multiculturalism only goes so far. Assimilation is a requirement, not just a nice thing.
      • throwaway48476 1y ago
        [flagged]
    • throwaway48476 1y ago
      Which eastern cultures?
• victorbjorklund 1y ago
  And the stuff is getting really really good. Like, sometimes I have really thought this is AI, but then it turns out it is real and many times I'm unsure. It's really a different world now. And a lot of these frauds are things that could happen in the past, but only if you were a really valuable target, meaning that someone would invest a lot of time and resources on tailoring something just for you. But these days it's getting so cheap that anybody is that target now.
• ogou 1y ago
  There are multiple services that verify and rate NGOs and nonprofits. The key is to look them up on the service website and not just Google the name. Personally I use Guidestar, but that's for U.S. orgs.