AI scamming ain't brain surgery, but even neurosurgeons get fooled |
AI scamming ain’t brain surgery, but even neurosurgeons get fooled
The best type of fraud doesn’t prey on fear. It preys on your dreams — on the life you wish you had.
The recruiter from the most famous hospital in the world wrote one of my best friends — we’ll call him Doctor Dan — on Thursday night. A better job was on the cards — effectively a promotion. By Saturday morning, he had sent his CV to the recruiter after about 25 back and forth emails.
Except there was no recruiter, and there was no position. In reality, there was simply a Gmail account and a job description tailored to every line on Doctor Dan’s resume. He is a neurosurgeon who attended and now works at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, but there he was, typing out a thank-you note to an AI chatbot.
Doctor Dan and I have been each other’s sounding boards since we were little, so he forwarded the offer to me within minutes of receiving it. I was excited for him: “This is HUGE HUGE HUGE — wow!!!!” I replied.
I have spent my life learning and teaching people to be wary of and spot fakes. I didn’t spot this one, either.
The scam that took us both in was not stupid. The emails were beautifully written, perfectly paced, aimed with surgical precision at the exact role Doctor Dan had been quietly hoping someone would offer him ever since he applied to medical school so many years ago. Every bullet point was a love letter to his own ambition.
This is not an accident. It is a new and well designed kind of scam.
For 20 years, we have all trained ourselves to recognize fraud by its smell. The emails come with bad grammar an in all caps. They stink with urgency and make threats: “Pay this toll immediately or your license will be suspended!” They give you distressing news and urge you to fix a broken situation: “Your account has been locked!” “Your account has been hacked!” “Your nephew is in jail!”
Fear scams are loud and ugly, and they work on a small, tired slice of the population at a small, tired hour of the night.
But the scam that took in Doctor Dan was the opposite. It was quiet. The supposed recruiter was polite and wrote perfectly, telling........