Tim Draper Believes ‘AI Is Getting Smarter,’ Warns of Crypto Scams Using His AI-Synthesized Voice
Despite the risks of using AI by malicious actors, Tim Draper believes there is no need for governments to take any measures to regulate AI for now.
Tim Draper, American venture capitalist and entrepreneur, founder of Draper Associates, DFJ, and the Draper Venture Network, has taken to the X (formerly Twitter) platform to share his concerns about increasing capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) and warn his roughly 254,000 followers about the possible misuse of his voice to conduct a crypto scam.
Apparently AI is getting smarter, and people are using my voice to try to get you to send money (crypto). Please know that I will never ask the public X followers for money. If anyone asks, it is not me. They are thieves.
— Tim Draper (@TimDraper) October 19, 2023
Despite the risks of using AI by malicious actors, Tim Draper believes there is no need for governments to take any measures to regulate AI for now. During the Digital Bridge International Forum, he compared the spread of AI to the growth of the Internet, saying that former US President Bill Clinton did not regulate or tax the Internet back in the 1990s, as a result, the country benefited a lot from it. The same might happen with AI.
Tim Draper said:
“The internet flourished like crazy and the US benefited enormously. Think about Apple, Google, Facebook… They all flourished because he didn’t regulate.”
He added:
“I don’t think we need to regulate AI. I think we should let it free and see if there are some things that go against people. And if they go against people, that’s when you need to regulate them.”
Earlier, Tim Draper invested as much as $1 million in Wisecut, an AI-powered automatic video editing platform, that he believes has ‘immense potential to revolutionize the media toolbox for businesses and individuals alike’.
Rise in AI Scams
The progress in AI development has indeed led to an increase in scams using the tech. Scam artists are now using AI tools to clone voices. Fraudsters record a person’s voice or find an audio clip on social media or elsewhere on the internet, and then they create videos or make calls in order to claim money. According to the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, phone and cyber scams took approximately $10 billion out of the pockets of Americans in 2022.
Back in 2019, scammers impersonating the boss of a UK-based energy firm CEO demanded $243,000. In 2020, a bank manager in Hong Kong was fooled by someone using voice-cloning technology into making hefty transfers. In May 2022, YouTube was filled with videos featuring Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) CEO Elon Musk who promoted fake cryptocurrency giveaways. For the illegitimate video, the scammers used original footage of Musk interacting with curator Chris Anderson at a TED Talk conference in Vancouver. In just one week, the scammers made $243,000.
Another big scam involved former FTX exchange CEO Sam Bankman-Fried who was featured in a fake video offering compensation to affected users. In particular, the video was directing users to a malicious site under the promise of a “giveaway” that would “double your cryptocurrency”.
The list of such scams is constantly increasing as the opportunities offered by AI are growing. Therefore, humans must be careful and think twice before sharing their personal information, especially on public platforms.
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Darya is a crypto enthusiast who strongly believes in the future of blockchain. Being a hospitality professional, she is interested in finding the ways blockchain can change different industries and bring our life to a different level.
