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The main fuel is the internet , followed by mobile phones and social media. AI definitely makes the scams more believable, a Nigerian Prince can now easily fo

The main fuel is the internet , followed by mobile phones and social media. AI definitely makes the scams more believable, a Nigerian Prince can now easily forge documents. But at the same time AI is a double edged sword, it can be used for both offence and defense.

LocalH 2mo ago
The main fuel is the "need" to have browsers that can execute code, coupled with the ability to transfer money via the internet. JavaScript was a mistake, e-commerce was a mistake, and so is everything else that came after. Let's ask Vint Cerf whether the web was meant to run logic, or just be a document format. I bet no matter what he answers, the world would be like the GIF pronunciation "I don't care if the original creator said it's pronounced like giraffe, I'm gonna say it like gift because I KnOw BeTtEr" Internet 3 when (because I know that academia does already have an "Internet 2", although I bet due to Internet 1 security issues, Internet 2 is already compromised too)
- cyberax 2mo ago
  The first Nigerian Prince scams started over email.
  - krisoft 2mo ago
    Mayhaps. But Spanish prisoner letters were known much before that. Which is basically the same advance fee scam but with a different cover story. Here is a story which describes one such letter from 1913: https://web.archive.org/web/20020815055745/http://www.samizdat.com/solovieff.html https://web.archive.org/web/20020815055745/http://www.samizd...
  - jamiek88 2mo ago
    Snail mail scams like that were common for decades prior. My mates dad nearly fell for one once.
- stingraycharles 2mo ago
  > JavaScript was a mistake, e-commerce was a mistake, and so is everything else that came after. That’s a really extreme take that lacks any nuance. Might as well blame the OS as well for allowing any custom code to be executed.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  - jameshart 2mo ago
    Douglas Adams put the source of the rot a bit further back: > This planet has, or had, a problem, which was this. Most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small, green pieces of paper, which is odd, because on the whole, it wasn't the small, green pieces of paper which were unhappy. And so the problem remained, and lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches. Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake coming down from the trees in the first place, and some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no-one should ever have left the oceans.
- antonvs 2mo ago
  Itym Tim Berners-Lee, not Vint Cerf. Tim invented the web: HTML, HTTP, URLs. Vint did a lot of things, but most of it had to do with lower-level internet infrastructure, not the web per se.
- Dylan16807 2mo ago
  > browsers that can execute code, coupled with the ability to transfer money via the internet But those are completely unrelated topics. You don't need a hint of JavaScript to do online banking. And you don't need online banking to send someone your credit card details or banking information. Any kind of communication can turn into a scam. You can steal money over the phone or by mail.
cyanydeez 2mo ago
the point though of a proper scam is to filter out the believables and find the guillibles. You don't exactly want convincing evidence; you want a good story.
- im3w1l 2mo ago
  I think you are taking that line of reasoning a little too far. The point of a scam is to trick people out of their belongings. There may be certain advantages of targeting and filtering for gullible people, but it's not the point itself.
  - cyanydeez 2mo ago
    "proper scam"; if you get too many hooks, you're not going to be able to reel them in. I'm not defining a scam; if you create a really convincing scam, your problem becomes both having too many people and drawing to much attention. So I stand by my terms.
asdfman123 2mo ago
It's been used for defense for a long time. AI is why spam filters started actually working in the 2000s.
- PunchyHamster 2mo ago
  different kind of AI
  - kazinator 2mo ago
    Not really, though. Sequences of tokens are predicted as {spam, not spam} via training on pair sets. It's like a token predictor where the output vocabulary is two tokens.
    - Dylan16807 2mo ago
      The complete inability to use it to generate spam doesn't make it different to you?
      - kazinator 2mo ago
        Well, I just said that. Since what is predicated is one of two tokens <is-spam>, <is-not-spam>. Since spam is not made out of those tokens, it doesn't generate spam. (Even spam could be encoded into those two tokens via binary or whatever, it still wouldn't because it's predicting a classification, and not the next sybmol; i.e. not simply the next bit in a after a string prefix, but a 0 or 1 value indicating whether the bit string is spam, which comes from an asserted external judgment.) It's all the same sort of thing though: some functions trained to predict a value associated with an input.
        Dylan16807 2mo ago
        You did say that. And then despite that you reached a conclusion that I don't see as compatible. There is a massive qualitative and quantitative gap between the two. Even if you had a real token predictor for the word spam, you would need a thousand of these to touch LLM capability. But it's not a real predictor. It's not locational. It's something vastly weaker. > It's all the same sort of thing though: some functions trained to predict a value associated with an input. Now you made it even worse. If not for the word 'trained' this would be every program. If two programs fall under the umbrella of machine learning in any way, that kind of logic treats them the same. What would you consider a "different kind of AI"? Your definition there fits basically the entire field.
grg0 2mo ago
With all the Nigerian princes out there, you'd think one of the bastards would have already made an official claim to the throne.
Nathanba 2mo ago
That's like calling stones fuel for violence. It's everyone's choice what they use the internet or stones for.
alpaca9 2mo ago
It's true however I do feel that when talking about scams AI can be used offensively way easier. Using it for things like the prevention of phone scams seems quite a bit more difficult to me to get accurate.

LocalH 2mo ago

The main fuel is the "need" to have browsers that can execute code, coupled with the ability to transfer money via the internet. JavaScript was a mistake, e-commerce was a mistake, and so is everything else that came after. Let's ask Vint Cerf whether the web was meant to run logic, or just be a document format. I bet no matter what he answers, the world would be like the GIF pronunciation "I don't care if the original creator said it's pronounced like giraffe, I'm gonna say it like gift because I KnOw BeTtEr" Internet 3 when (because I know that academia does already have an "Internet 2", although I bet due to Internet 1 security issues, Internet 2 is already compromised too)

cyberax 2mo ago
The first Nigerian Prince scams started over email.
- krisoft 2mo ago
  Mayhaps. But Spanish prisoner letters were known much before that. Which is basically the same advance fee scam but with a different cover story. Here is a story which describes one such letter from 1913: https://web.archive.org/web/20020815055745/http://www.samizdat.com/solovieff.html https://web.archive.org/web/20020815055745/http://www.samizd...
- jamiek88 2mo ago
  Snail mail scams like that were common for decades prior. My mates dad nearly fell for one once.
stingraycharles 2mo ago
> JavaScript was a mistake, e-commerce was a mistake, and so is everything else that came after. That’s a really extreme take that lacks any nuance. Might as well blame the OS as well for allowing any custom code to be executed.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- jameshart 2mo ago
  Douglas Adams put the source of the rot a bit further back: > This planet has, or had, a problem, which was this. Most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small, green pieces of paper, which is odd, because on the whole, it wasn't the small, green pieces of paper which were unhappy. And so the problem remained, and lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches. Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake coming down from the trees in the first place, and some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no-one should ever have left the oceans.
antonvs 2mo ago
Itym Tim Berners-Lee, not Vint Cerf. Tim invented the web: HTML, HTTP, URLs. Vint did a lot of things, but most of it had to do with lower-level internet infrastructure, not the web per se.
Dylan16807 2mo ago
> browsers that can execute code, coupled with the ability to transfer money via the internet But those are completely unrelated topics. You don't need a hint of JavaScript to do online banking. And you don't need online banking to send someone your credit card details or banking information. Any kind of communication can turn into a scam. You can steal money over the phone or by mail.

cyanydeez 2mo ago

the point though of a proper scam is to filter out the believables and find the guillibles. You don't exactly want convincing evidence; you want a good story.

im3w1l 2mo ago
I think you are taking that line of reasoning a little too far. The point of a scam is to trick people out of their belongings. There may be certain advantages of targeting and filtering for gullible people, but it's not the point itself.
- cyanydeez 2mo ago
  "proper scam"; if you get too many hooks, you're not going to be able to reel them in. I'm not defining a scam; if you create a really convincing scam, your problem becomes both having too many people and drawing to much attention. So I stand by my terms.

asdfman123 2mo ago

It's been used for defense for a long time. AI is why spam filters started actually working in the 2000s.

PunchyHamster 2mo ago
different kind of AI
- kazinator 2mo ago
  Not really, though. Sequences of tokens are predicted as {spam, not spam} via training on pair sets. It's like a token predictor where the output vocabulary is two tokens.
  - Dylan16807 2mo ago
    The complete inability to use it to generate spam doesn't make it different to you?
    - kazinator 2mo ago
      Well, I just said that. Since what is predicated is one of two tokens <is-spam>, <is-not-spam>. Since spam is not made out of those tokens, it doesn't generate spam. (Even spam could be encoded into those two tokens via binary or whatever, it still wouldn't because it's predicting a classification, and not the next sybmol; i.e. not simply the next bit in a after a string prefix, but a 0 or 1 value indicating whether the bit string is spam, which comes from an asserted external judgment.) It's all the same sort of thing though: some functions trained to predict a value associated with an input.
      - Dylan16807 2mo ago
        You did say that. And then despite that you reached a conclusion that I don't see as compatible. There is a massive qualitative and quantitative gap between the two. Even if you had a real token predictor for the word spam, you would need a thousand of these to touch LLM capability. But it's not a real predictor. It's not locational. It's something vastly weaker. > It's all the same sort of thing though: some functions trained to predict a value associated with an input. Now you made it even worse. If not for the word 'trained' this would be every program. If two programs fall under the umbrella of machine learning in any way, that kind of logic treats them the same. What would you consider a "different kind of AI"? Your definition there fits basically the entire field.

grg0 2mo ago

With all the Nigerian princes out there, you'd think one of the bastards would have already made an official claim to the throne.

Nathanba 2mo ago

That's like calling stones fuel for violence. It's everyone's choice what they use the internet or stones for.

alpaca9 2mo ago

It's true however I do feel that when talking about scams AI can be used offensively way easier. Using it for things like the prevention of phone scams seems quite a bit more difficult to me to get accurate.