The Hucksters & Scammers of Artificial Intelligence
Scammers and hucksters have been around forever. The ones around A.I. however, could hurt the progress of a critical technology that can benefit humanity.
If you’re on Twitter (uhm, X), TikTok, Instagram and any of these platforms, you’ve no doubt seen the posts exclaiming in fabulous, glorious, amazing hyperbole just how many incredible, groundbreaking, game-changing, enchanting and pick-your-superlative, ways AI changed the entire world in 30 seconds just, well, right this very second.
Did you know that hundreds of thousands of teenagers are making $50,000 a month from chatbots and AI tools? That you too, can make millions by using these free tools? That if you learn how to write a prompt you’ll only have to work two minutes a week? You can design, launch and make $2 million from a website in 30 minutes? It’s all true. Just pay me $20 for my cheat sheet and you too will unlock the secrets to eternal wealth and happiness.
These hustles and scams are nothing new. In fact, the very nature of them goes back nearly 200 years to the 1800’s. Snake oil salesmen. The term snake oil survives to this day so profound was its cultural impact. You can read the fascinating history of snake oil here. Scams, frauds and such have been an aspect of human societies for many thousands of years. Probably even going back to our hunter-gatherer phase.
Print newspaper classifieds were long filled with all kinds of nefarious schemes. All you had to do was send a money order or cash in an envelope and you’d get all the details on how to make millions from home. Today, you can pay that tax bill before you get arrested with pre-paid credit cards.
Such forms of anti-social behaviours and criminal activity are a part of all societies around the world. As communications technologies evolve, so does the darker side of human behaviours that seek advantage. As email became more broadly available, so the scams ramped up. Princes and former politicians in Africa wanted to generously give their millions to you because, well, they’re just super nice. All you had to do was pay a few thousand dollars for the uhm, legal fees.
In terms of AI scams, most are focused on a specific subset of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Generative AI, such as Claude, Grok and ChatGPT. Keeping in mind that there is no singular AI as I wrote before. So at least it’s relatively contained. But the deeper damage to the AI world, unfortunately, may be worse.
It doesn’t help either when Tech Giants and AI leaders are playing cheap tricks on broader society. Google ended up admitting its viral AI video about Gemini was in fact, mostly made up. OpenAI let the whole Q* story go haywire in the AI hype machine, even though it’s largely bunk. Musk, not to be outdone in the tech bro world of egos, launched Grok. Essentially just an LLM that uses swear words. Schoolboy antics at best. No added value. Lots of damage.
This is hurtful and in many ways, an insult to the many other AI tools and talents out there such as Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to Neural Networks, Cognitive Computing and Expert Systems. Tools that have drastically improved materials design and manufacturing, healthcare, business systems, airline safety and more. They are not nearly as exciting and as accessible as Grok or ChatGPT, but they’re inherently improving the human condition.
The problem however, is that the majority of society, don’t understand, nor really care, about the fact that there is no singular AI or the differences between all these tools. It’s all just AI to them and, much like crypto, it’s whatever gets the most media attention that slithers into their feed on whatever social media channel they’re using. In this case, that happens to be Generative AI.
The crypto industry is filled with fraud, scams and outright theft. Has been for years and still is. The one exception is Bitcoin, which has somehow managed to stay relatively clean, but not entirely. Yet it stands in the middle of a cesspit of nasty digital swamp things, covered in the stink of their effluence. Broader society has largely written off crypto as a result. It’s a monetary ameba in the global financial industry. Bitcoin, while not quite perfect, has a long way to go and a lot of showers needed to get rid of the stink of the fraudsters. Trust is always the hardest to win back.
Having spent well over a decade helping organisations understand how humans and culture use and relate to technology and 15 years before that marketing technologies globally, one thing I’ve found to be true is that tech companies vastly overestimate the degree of care, understanding and knowledge people have of some technologies.
As Generative AI is essentially, the spokesperson, the face, of Artificial Intelligence, it is where most public opinion is being created. When was the last time you saw a rush of media coverage about an AI tool that spots flaws in paper being made in a pulp mill?
While we shake our head at these scams frauds and hucksters and seem surprised, we ought not be. People often have a disconnect between the real and digital worlds. Yet behaviours that we have in the real world, translate to the digital. Sometimes working even better in the digital.
The scams, fraudsters, hucksters and abusers have embraced GAI tools likely far faster than any Hollywood producers, businesses or even shiny-object loving marketers. This is what the general public sees and hears. That is where public opinions are formed.
What can be done about it all? That will take law makers to put in regulations on actions such as declaring when AI is used to create content, companies that make AI tools to enforce child protections and deal with illegal uses. It will need international cooperating such as through IEEE to set standards. Civil society groups to participate. It means applying laws and regulations we use in the real world to the digital world. It also means time. To evolve our norms, behaviours and social understanding.
Many techno-optimists and AI companies say that regulations and laws will stifle innovation and progress. They couldn’t be more wrong. What will stifle them is public outcry over fears and damages being caused that demand ever more strict laws and regulations. The destructions caused will be their own failure to set guardrails and be responsible. The court of public opinion is a damming place. It broke the crypto world and it is snapping back at social media giants.
Society becomes disillusioned with digital technologies when the makers of these tools don’t take what is perceived as enough action. The social media giants have tried, to some degree. But we also need to understand that dealing with criminal behaviours and activities should not be placed upon the shoulders of the tech companies and governments alone. It is a whole-of-society issue in the digital world just as it is in the real world.
In the meantime, if you’d like to give me $4,000 I will send you an email that I copied and pasted from somewhere that will tell you nothing but wow, is it ever a game changer and the whole world will change for you in just 30 seconds…or not.