While I celebrate the advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), as a business ethics keynote speaker, business ethics consultant and book author, I must also issue a warning: AI technology is being used in fraud schemes and it could easily affect all of us in the billions if not trillions of dollars.
In a recent (June 20, 2023) Fox News article by Chris Eberhart, in an interview with AI expert Haywood Talcove of LexisNexis Risk Solutions, “he warns about dangers of AI scams. He believes there will be more than $1 trillion in artificial intelligence-assisted fraud [annually] if U.S. doesn’t act quickly…(Talcove) said he’s already seeing criminals on the dark web using people’s faces to steal from government and state agencies.”
A vulnerable government
As a business ethics motivational speaker, business ethics consultant and ethics book author, I well-noted the massive amounts of fraud perpetrated in terms of the payment protection plan or PPP. Up to $40-billion is unaccounted, and many believe foreign players had a free-for-all with hastily constructed give-away programs being particularly vulnerable to scams. Using AI, scam artists could easily penetrate those receiving benefits from unemployment insurance, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Talcove: “Being one of the wealthiest countries in the world makes us a huge target. The amount of money that we’re going to lose over the next 12 months, if we do nothing, is going to make the COVID pandemic look like child’s play. AI, particularly generative AI, poses the greatest risk to the security of our most vital government agencies and entitlement programs that we’ve ever faced.”
Virtually anyone in any area where they receive government assistance is subject to being defrauded. Part of the problem with this vulnerability is due to we, the people. Is it “our fault?” Yes – and no.
In our daily lives, people post anything from beautiful selfies to information on their health conditions (Think I’m kidding? Look up any disease-related group on Facebook), to their political orientations. Information, as well as their likenesses used to be at least semi-private and personal; now, it is open to the world. If the AI-fraud prospect seems frightening, have no fear, it is going to get scarier as the software improves.
More sophisticated than imagined
The basic problem is that the new software is far ahead of authentication systems. The software easily matches names, faces, voice and even political orientation to create a highly sophisticated profile.
Anyone’s profile can be constructed and exceed a government screen. This means that scam artists are getting more sophisticated and adept at constructing AI-driven models and profiles while the government is still stuck with methodology that is well past its prime.
Solving this problem isn’t an option. While the business world is “going ga-ga” over AI animated images of Socrates spewing rap or guides leading tourists through the back alleys of an Italian village, highly sophisticated fraudsters in North Korea or Russia or Kenya or wherever, are about to steal us blind. This social media and software distraction is about to hit us while we are locked in partisan political debates.
The ethical solutions are directly in front of us, staring with the “admission” that PPP fraud taught us, front and center, that when vulnerabilities in programs are discovered, they are first discovered by scam artists and fraudsters.
As AI becomes more sophisticated, our second ethical imperative must be that it is not just individual cyber-crooks who are out to get us, but large organizations and foreign governments.
The need for U.S. cash is great, and with AI-driven software, access to that cash is simple. Perhaps Congress (Left and Right) rationalizes a lack of strong response as they see other issues as far more important – and that includes daily bickering and contention. Unless AI is addressed in terms of fraud scenarios, we can expect massive drains and disadvantages on the world stage.
Business ethics, demands action. Is the government ready to honestly address the threats?
LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS!
