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Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by ryan_lane on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @07:36PM (#46804008)
Scammers are using AI to copy the voice of children and grandchildren, and make calls urgently asking to send money. It's also being used to scam businesses out of money in similar ways (copying the voice of the CEO or CFO, urgently asking for money to be sent).

Sure, the AI isn't directly doing the scamming, but it's supercharging the ability to do so. You're making a "guns don't kill people, people do" argument here.

Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by seizethecheese on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @07:42PM (#46804063)
Not at all. I’m saying AI doesn’t exist to scam elderly, which is saying nothing about whether it’s dangerous in that respect.
Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by only-one1701 on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @07:53PM (#46804173)
Perhaps you’ve heard that the purpose of a system is what it does?
Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by the_snooze on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @08:18PM (#46804405)
Exactly this. These systems are supposed to have been built by some of the smartest scientific and engineering minds on the planet, yet they somehow failed (or chose not) to think about second-order effects and what steady-state outcomes their systems will have. That's engineering 101 right there.
Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by jacquesm on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @08:30PM (#46804505)
That's because they were thinking about their stock options instead.
Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by johnnyanmac on Thursday January 29, 2026 @12:44PM (#46813602)
That's a small part on why people became more cynical of tech over the decades. At least with the internet there were large efforts to try and nail down security in the early 00's. Imagine if we instead left it devolve into a moderator-less hellscape where every other media post is some goatse style jump scare.

That's what it feels like with AI. But perhaps worse since companies are lobbying to keep the chaos instead of making a board of standards and etiquette.

Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by rcxdude on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @08:12PM (#46804353)
This phrase almost always seems to be invoked to attribute purpose (and more specifically, intent and blame) to something based on outcomes, where it should be more considered as a way to stop thinking in terms of those things in the first place.
Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by irjustin on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @08:01PM (#46804251)
In broad strokes - disagree.

This is the knife-food vs knife-stab vs gun argument. Just because you can cook with a hammer doesn't make it its purpose.

Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by solid_fuel on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @08:10PM (#46804340)
> Just because you can cook with a hammer doesn't make it its purpose.

If you survey all the people who own a hammer and ask what they use it for, cooking is not going to make the list of top 10 activities.

If you look around at what LLMs are being used for, the largest spaces where they have been successfully deployed are astroturfing, scamming, and helping people break from reality by sycophantically echoing their users and encouraging psychosis.

Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by only-one1701 on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @08:14PM (#46804366)
I was going to reply to the post above but you said it perfectly.
Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by christianqchung on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @08:24PM (#46804459)
Is it possible that these are in the top 10, but not the top 5? I'm pretty sure programming, email/meeting summaries, cheating on homework, random QA, and maybe roleplay/chat are the most popular uses.
Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by jacquesm on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @08:32PM (#46804518)
The number of programmers in the world is vastly outnumbered by the people that do not program. Email / meeting summaries: maybe. Cheating on homework: maybe not your best example.
Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by pixl97 on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @08:42PM (#46804591)
I do mean this is a pretty piss poor example.

Email, by number of emails attempted to send is owned by spammers 10 to 100 fold over legitimate emails. You typically don't see this because of a massive effort by any number of companies to ensure that spam dies before it shows up in your mailbox.

To go back one step farther porn was one of the first successful businesses on the internet, that is more than enough motivation for our more conservative congress members to ban the internet in the first place.

Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by paulryanrogers on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @09:37PM (#46805039)
Email volume is mostly robots fighting robots these days.

Today if we could survey AI contact with humans, I'm afraid the top 3 by a wide margin would be scams, cheating, deep fakes, and porn.

Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by johnnyanmac on Thursday January 29, 2026 @12:48PM (#46813651)
>that is more than enough motivation for our more conservative congress members to ban the internet in the first place

Yes, and now porn is highly regulated. Maybe that's a hint?

Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by xigoi on Friday January 30, 2026 @12:31PM (#46827234)
It’s possible to write malware in C. Does that mean that C is designed to write malware?
Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by burnto on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @07:59PM (#46804221)
Fair, but it’s an exaggerated statement that’s supposed to clue us into the tone of the piece with a chuckle. Maybe even a snicker or giggle! It’s not worth dissecting for accuracy.
Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by wk_end on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @08:27PM (#46804480)
No one - neither the author of the article nor anyone reading - believes that Sam Altman sat down at his desk one fine day in 2015 and said to himself, “Boy, it sure would be nice if there were a better way to scam the elderly…”
Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by username223 on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @09:28PM (#46804965)
An no one believes that Sam Altman thinks of much more than adding to his own wealth and power. His first idea was a failing location data-harvesting app that got bought. Others have included biometric data-harvesting with a crypto spin, and this. If there's a throughline beyond manipulative scamming, I don't see it.
Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by NicuCalcea on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @08:44PM (#46804607)
I can't think of many other reasons to create voice cloning AI, or deepfake AI (other than porn, of course).
Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by rgmerk on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @08:54PM (#46804701)
There are legitimate applications - fixing a tiny mistake in the dialogue in a movie in the edit suite, for instance.

Do these legitimate applications justify making these tools available to every scammer, domestic abuser, child porn consumer, and sundry other categories of criminal? Almost certainly not.

Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by ryan_lane on Thursday January 29, 2026 @09:41PM (#46819951)
This is satire. Its purpose is to use exaggeration to provide comedy while also drawing attention to issues.

Obviously the intended use and design of AI isn't to scam the elderly, but it's extremely efficient at doing it, and has no guard rails to help prevent it.

Why is anyone allowed to make a digital copy of me, without my permission, and then use that to call my relatives? It should be illegal to use it and it should be illegal to even generate it. Sure, it's already illegal to defaud people, but that's simply not enough at this point. The AI companies producing these models should be held liable for this form of fraud, as they're not providing any form of protection.

You're exactly the person that this article is satirizing.

Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by criley2 on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @07:48PM (#46804133)
Sure, phones aren't directly doing the scamming, but they're supercharging the ability to do so.

Phones are also a very popular mechanism for scamming businesses. It's tough to pull off CEO scams without text and calls.

Therefore, phones are bad?

This is of course before we talk about what criminals do with money, making money truly evil.

Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by only-one1701 on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @07:55PM (#46804183)
Without phones, we couldn’t talk to people across great distances (oversimplification but you get it).

Without Generative AI, we couldn’t…?

Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by shepherdjerred on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @07:58PM (#46804205)
Are you really implying that generative AI doesn't enable things that were not previously possible?
Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by Larrikin on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @08:14PM (#46804365)
It's actually a fair question. There are software projects I wouldn't have taken on without an LLM. Not because I couldn't make it. But because of the time needed to create it.

I could have taken the time to do the math to figure out what the rewards structure is for my Wawa points and compare it to my car's fuel tank to discover I should strictly buy sandwiches and never gas.

People have been making nude celebrity photos for decades now with just Photoshop.

Some activities have gotten a speed up. But so far it was all possible before just possibly not feasible.

Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by simianwords on Thursday January 29, 2026 @02:58AM (#46807117)
What did internet bring?
Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by shepherdjerred on Thursday January 29, 2026 @11:15AM (#46812229)
Would it be fair to say a car or plane aren’t significant then, given we could always traverse by horse or boat?
Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by jamiek88 on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @08:15PM (#46804378)
Name some then! I initially scoffed too but I can only think of stuff LLM’s make easier not things that were impossible previously.
Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by pixl97 on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @08:56PM (#46804716)
Isn't that the vast majority of products? By making things easier they change the scale it is accomplished at? Farming wasn't previously impossible before the tractor.

People seemingly have some very odd views on products when it comes to AI.

Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by solid_fuel on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @08:11PM (#46804344)
Can you name one thing generative AI enables that wasn't previously possible?
Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by pixl97 on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @08:57PM (#46804725)
Can you name one thing a plow enables that wasn't previously possible?

This line of thinking is ridiculous.

Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by Larrikin on Thursday January 29, 2026 @01:54AM (#46806705)
A plow enables you to till land you couldn't before with your bare hands.

The phone let's you talk to someone you couldn't before when shouting can't.

ChatGPT let's you...

Please complete the sentence without an analogy

Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by simianwords on Thursday January 29, 2026 @02:56AM (#46807105)
This conversation is naive and simplifies technologies into “does it achieve something you otherwise couldn’t”.

The answer is that chatgpt allows you to do things more efficiently than before. Efficiency doesn’t sound sexy but this is what adds up to higher prosperity.

Arguments like this can be used against internet. What does it allow you to do now that you couldn’t do before?

Answer might be “oh I don’t know, it allows me to search and index information, talk to friends”.

It doesn’t sound that sexy. You can still visit a library. You can still phone your friends. But the ease of doing so adds up and creates a whole ecosystem that brings so many things.

Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by mcv on Thursday January 29, 2026 @03:08AM (#46807183)
...generate piles of low quality content for almost free.

AI is fascinating technology with undoubtedly fantastic applications in the future, but LLMs mostly seem to be doing two things: provide a small speedup for high quality work, and provide a massive speedup to low quality work.

I don't think it's comparable to the plow or the phone in its impact on society, unless that impact will be drowning us in slop.

Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by pixl97 on Thursday January 29, 2026 @10:15AM (#46811303)
There is a particular problem that comes with your line of thinking and why AI will never be able to solve it. In fact it's not a solved human problem either.

And that is slop work is always easier and cheaper than doing something right. We can make perfectly good products as it is, yet we find Shien and Temu filled with crap. That's not related to AI. Humans drown themselves in trash whenever we gain the technological capability to do so.

To put this another way, you cannot get a 10x speed up in high quality work without also getting a 1000x speed up in low quality work. We'll pretty much have to kill any further technological advancement if that's a showstopper for you.

Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by criley2 on Thursday January 29, 2026 @06:04AM (#46808512)
They tilled by hand for thousands of years before inventing a plow to speed it up.

They spoke slowly, through letters, until phones sped it up.

We coded slowly, letter by letter, until agents sped it up.

Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by pixl97 on Thursday January 29, 2026 @10:07AM (#46811193)
>A plow enables you to till land you couldn't before with your bare hands.

It does not. You could still till the land with hand tools. You just get a lot more done.

ChatGPT let's me program in languages I was not efficient in before.

Anyway, I'm done with your technology purity contest, it has about zero basis in reality.

Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by Larrikin on Thursday January 29, 2026 @11:14AM (#46812215)
Why are you so mad? You're the only one in these comments dismissing arguments because you don't like them. Are you invested?
Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by pixl97 on Thursday January 29, 2026 @11:48AM (#46812690)
No. I'm just stating that a huge portion of these comments have their own emotional investment and are confusing OUGHT/IS. On top of that their arguments aren't particularly sound, and if they were applied to any other technologies that we worship here in the church of HN would seem like an advanced form of hypocrisy.
Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by queenkjuul on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @08:34PM (#46804532)
For the most part, it hasn't. What do you consider previously impossible, and how is it good for the world?
Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by freejazz on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @09:03PM (#46804781)
> were not previously possible?

How obtuse. The poster is saying they don't enable anything of value.

Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by simianwords on Thursday January 29, 2026 @02:57AM (#46807114)
Whats the big deal in talking to people across great distances? We can live without it.
Re:Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested... by JumpCrisscross on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @07:50PM (#46804147)
> Therefore, phones are bad?

Phones are utilities. AI companies are not.