Too Many Candles
For my 60th Birthday Facebook decided I was in violation of their community standards and placed my account in “warning status”. It’s not so much that I actually have any restrictions in this mode, it’s more that it’s a strike on my record. And THE NEXT TIME the AI BOT decides I’m not ready for prime time, they are apt to bring down the hammer. Can I say bring down the hammer? Cause that’s a pretty violent description. And what if it links up with the ‘Malleus Maleficarum’ and I am found guilty of being a witch? I won’t affirm or deny that I am, I certainly fraternize in focal groups of crones that would make a damning case indeed.
And I think that’s the point because it doesn’t matter if I DID or DID NOT try to incite violence as long as the AI BOT thinks I did, then the record will show that as so. Because even though Facebook had a series of questions as part of my “dispute process” .. the final upshot of that was some version of, yeah I hear you, but you know with COVID we are down a lot of staff at the moment and it’s unlikely your request to review the decision will be looked at by an actual HUMAN so for now just take your ORANGE FLAG WARNING and go away and do better.
As far as Facebook cares, I am a menace on the fence. And it’s true, this is not the first DISPUTE I’ve raised with Facebook even in the last month. My last one was involving lawless use of copyright music as part of one of my videos. Now THAT seems almost plausible that an honest error could have happened. I DO post content for my husbands virtual world product line and it’s theoretically possible that I might have missed the CC instead of FREE attribution by their download in the official Youtube Audio Free Library. Though that has never actually happened. The video they flagged? The one that claimed I violated licensed content and my movie would have the audio removed in several countries around the world? Was the BEAR IN MY POND from our security cameras. There was no music playing in the background, no sounds at all .. .except for the spash of the water and a muffled YELL from my backwoods southern gentleman trying to encourage the bear to leave. And while I do love listening to my husband sing me a love song, he definitely wasn’t doing that on the video. It was a BEAR .. in my BACKYARD. I explained to the Facebook AI BOT that I owned all of the content of the work I posted. And they let me know they’d review it .. and get back to me.
Sometimes the glaring errors of AI technology are upfront and personal. But other times we may not even realize we are being violated as a person or a community. Take for instance the new AI generated “art” applications. The ones where you type in a few key phrases and it goes to AI Land and comes back with illustrative representations of your words. All free for you to use in any way/shape/form that you like .. that complies with their app agreement. Cause it’s NEW and ORIGINAL .. right? It never existed before and a computer just created it on the spot. That’s what we are led to believe.
But AI “Art” doesn’t really come from random pixels, there are training databases that include actual copyright material. These seed resources have been cherry picked in many cases, often containing an artists entire breadth of their work with added fields input from the programmer to describe it. The result is that these generated works of “art” are often too close for comfort to actual copyright content. And that’s just what we KNOW is WRONG with AI MODELING, the scary truth about AI copyright is nobody knows what will happen next.
How long is it before the next AI advancement is one that knows so much about your social profile that it can strategically target you and take the contents of your retirement account before you realize you have been under the spell of a confidence man. Or I suppose an AI bot ye?
Spectrum told my father that he shouldn’t stay on the line with scam callers — which my retired father enjoys doing because he likes to talk and wants to see how far the scammer will go before he realizes my father is wasting his time. For Dad it’s a harmless jokes on you game of cat and mouse. But the cable provider told him it’s not a good idea to do too much talking because they can RECORD your conversation and use it to generate a call to your bank impersonating YOU and it will sound just like you are talking.
When I was growing up prank phone calls where the lurking concern. But saying you’re from the electric company and not to answer the next phone call because they are doing work on a live wire on the pole near your house .. then calling back with a blood curdling scream when the home owner answers again…. was certainly bad karma, but no one lost their life’s savings over a bad joke. Now we have “microsoft” calling us saying our Windows operating system is in danger, “medicare” ringing to tell us our new ID card is no longer valid, and obviously you know already that your car’s warranty service is about to expire. And while we know most of the common scams, even the best of us still fall prey to the best in the business. Senator Warren has a recent report and calls for action regarding recent Zelle scams and fraud.
Earlier this year I fell for the medicare card scam, giving the caller more information than I should have before realizing they were NOT who they purported to be. My father once had ransomware on his system and permanently lost valuable files. And this week my youngest daughter who is a top tech in her own right, lost access to her bank account when her credit union called on an urgent matter that needed her immediate attention.
When my own kids were teens, I use to set up parental blocks on their computers. But it was only ever a matter of time before my tech savvy son figured out how to get around any of my road blocks. And computer criminals are always going to be on the bleeding edge of technology. Capitalizing on the beta testing of new resources to find out how it can be use to swindle, steal and circumvent the illusory safe guards you thought you had in place.
Smishing is one of the common ways a con meets their mark.
And while some carriers are trying to protect their clients from scam callers, VOIP Spoofing .. where the caller actually makes it APPEAR they are calling from a legit number from YOUR BANK is harder to detect. These are professional criminals with a wide network of fraudsters that can make it look like they are different departments in your bank. They will assure you they understand your security concerns and allay your fears with scripts designed to keep you on the line and gradually gaining all of the information they need to take control of your assets and freeze you out. Of the thousands of people who report banking scams, we can assume there are so many more who are embarrassed to admit that it happened to them. Women historically have seen that we are blamed when we are victim of a crime .. i.e. they falsely claim we dressed inappropriately, we were asking for it. One of the ways that banks have refused to reimburse customers lies in the definition of the term authorized or unauthorized transactions. Claiming in the past that because the client was mislead by the scammer, that they still in fact authorized the transaction. Which is simply not the case, you can not consent to something that you do not know is happening. However in the past this misinterpretation of the Electronic Fund Transfer Act and it’s implementation.
“According to Zelle and its partners, if you knowingly send cash to someone who’s taking your money under false pretenses, that’s an authorized transfer under the law. But under a class-action lawsuit filed in Orange County, the plaintiff — a college student who says she was conned out of $2,150 — argues that when someone induces you to send them money as part of a scam, that person is initiating a transfer without your authorization.” — Do you use Zelle? LA Times OCT. 7, 2022
While AI is playing a bigger role in Cyber Security the reality is the hackers, much like my son as a teenager, are using the same technology to defraud more victims with more success.
How Artificial Intelligence is used for cyber security attacks
Artificial intelligence is playing a bigger role in cybersecurity, but the bad guys may benefit the most
How Hackers Use AI And Machine Learning To Target Enterprises
They are using AI for more sophisticated Email Phising, constructing Deep Fakes as my father was warned of, as well as the use of social engineering to trick and convince victims to disclose confidential details.
Whether it is a wall or mote from ancient times, or AI systems designed to serve and protect there will always be criminals seeking to steal your things, your identity or your heart as the case may be. How well we succeed at teaching AI systems may be a result of who we are trusting to seed the learning databases. Much like what information do we allow on our platform and what do we deem harmful to society? Musk’s misuse of “Vox Populi, Vox Dei” is a good example of everything gone wrong. No one actually believes that Twitter polls are the voice of the people, nor do we assume that any “majority” opinion can protect minority interests or safety.
Sometimes AI systems fail us by bad design, bad people or badly missing oversight. And the cost of the mismanagement could be a minor social media slap on the wrist or the loss of your life’s savings. What seems certain to me, is that we do not even know yet how bad things can get down the line. But they are certain to be much worse, if we are not aware of the missteps and threats happening right now.
As for me, my joke about too many candles on the cake will cost me a strike against my reputation. It won’t matter that it was wrong when the AI rules view my history to see if I’m a good witch or a bad witch. As far as Facebook is concerned I’m part of the problem. Which in fact I’ve known for some time now.
