Knowing Me, Knowing You - AI's Contribution to Criminality

In 2012, I published a book called “Gadgets to God” - an autobiographical journey through the amazing technology developments in my lifetime. The title of the book and its principle message was that Artificial Intelligence is the biggest threat to humanity, not because it will threaten jobs and livelihoods on a scale that exceeds the 1st industrial revolution, but because of our relationship with and increasing dependence on technology in every aspect of our lives.

The concept of AI as an all-seeing, all-knowing, invisible and omnipotent force mirrors our relationship with our God as a force which knows us better than we know ourselves, which we commune with on a daily basis and which we rely on for shaping our future.

Sadly, I recently had first hand experience of how this is being used by criminals taking advantage of AI’s ability to not only craft very articulate and convincing messages but also to use its insights into our individual personalities to extract money.

One of my passions is public speaking. I am a professional speaker on a range of topics around technology and humanity and lifestyle medicine technologies. When I recently got an invitation out of the blue to speak at a conference in Australia with all expenses paid and an honorarium, I was all at once, surprised, delighted and puzzled. The initial email and subsequent interactions were very convincing, even for a sceptic like myself. The conference details and the web site seemed genuine and the organisations exist. It wasn’t until I was asked to pay to obtain a work permit that my suspicions were aroused and I quickly discovered other people affected by the same scam.

This experience reinforced in me the belief I formed in 2012 about the danger of technologies which know us better than we know ourselves and using the information not just to support legitimate personalised marketing strategies but to exploit and manipulate our relationship with and dependence on AI and its enabling technologies