Good morning, and happy Friday. We’ve talked before about AI-powered fraud, but today we’re talking about a specific subset of that wide-ranging genre: job fraud.

Spoiler alert, it’s getting worse.

— Ian Krietzberg, Editor-in-Chief, The Deep View

In today’s newsletter:

AI for Good: Tackling our food waste problem

In a bit of an extension of that circular economy that we talked about yesterday, welcome to the world of food waste. 

The FDA estimates that food waste in the U.S. is estimated at around 40% of the food supply. Food, according to the FDA, is the “single largest category of material placed in municipal landfills” — not only could this food have gone to people who need it, it also represents a massive waste of the energy that was spent producing and shipping that food. 

In short, it would be really good to reduce (if not eliminate entirely) food waste. And AI has been regarded as a tool with the potential to help us do just that. 

The details: The key to this all is that AI can process and analyze vast amounts of data, allowing it to be leveraged, according to one study, to “monitor and optimize” the food supply chain, from production to distribution. 

The key, though, is in proper cost-benefit analyses — if the sustainability achieved/energy saved by such systems exceeds the energy used to power those systems, then it might be a viable option. If it doesn’t, there’s no real point in using them. 

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Regulation is scaring US tech giants out of Europe

Meta won’t release any of its upcoming multimodal generative AI models to customers in the European Union due to concerns over regulation, Axios reported.

The details: Meta said in a statement to Axios that it would "release a multimodal Llama model over the coming months, but not in the EU due to the unpredictable nature of the European regulatory environment.”

For context: Meta’s been having problems with European regulators lately. Last month, regulators forced Meta to stop training its AI models on European user data. 

Nvidia completes its fourth acquisition of the year 

This week, Nvidia acquired Brev.dev, a San Francisco-based startup that helps AI developers find the most efficient, cost-effective GPUs across cloud providers. 

The details: Neither company disclosed the financial terms of the acquisition. 

One of four: This marks the fourth acquisition Nvidia has made this year. 

At the same time, the semiconductor sector experienced a bit of a pullback this week, with shares of Nvidia and AMD tumbling amid reports that more severe trade restrictions to China are on the way. 

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AI-assisted job fraud is spiking

Over the past few years, identity theft and fraud have been changing, supercharged by highly-accessible technology that keeps getting more and more powerful (cases of extremely convincing scam phone calls, created and scaled through generative AI, are becoming something of a common occurrence). 

A recent report published by the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) found that data from 2023 shows “an environment where bad actors are more effective, efficient and successful in launching attacks. The result is fewer victims (or at least fewer victim reports), but the impact on individuals and businesses is arguably more damaging.”

One of these attacks involves fake job postings. 

The details: The ITRC said that victim reports of job and employment scams spiked some 118% in 2023. These scams were primarily carried out through LinkedIn and other job search platforms. 

“The rapid improvement in the look, feel and messaging of identity scams is almost certainly the result of the introduction of AI-driven tools,” the ITRC said. These tools help “refine the pitch,” making these scams more believable while also compensating for cultural or grammatical difference in language usage.

By the numbers: The FTC recently said that such job scams were among the top ten types of fraud reported to the agency in 2022, with people reporting a total loss of $367 million to these scams. 

The median loss was $2,000. 

How to protect yourself from scams: The best mode of protection here, according to the ITRC, involves independent verification. 

Through AI, these and other scams have become good enough to be believable. Which means we can no longer be complacent. 

I’ve spoken with cybersecurity researchers who have said that — by default — we can no longer trust anything we see or hear online, from job offers to videos, tweets, emails, phone calls, zoom calls, articles, etc.  

If it ever existed, trust by default is dead. What this requires of us is to be more vigilant, to perform cross-platform verification, to be more conscious about what we consume and to be well aware of what generative AI is capable of. 

This will just involve a transformation of how we engage with the internet. 

A poll before you go

Thanks for reading today’s edition of The Deep View!

We’ll see you in the next one.

Your view on AI companions:

20% of you said you’d absolutely use one, 20% said you’d never use one and 20% said it’s fine in certain contexts. But 15% said the idea of AI companions sets society on a dangerous path and the remaining 25% said it’s complicated.

It’s complicated

It’s okay in certain contexts:

_{*Hims Disclaimer: Based on studies of topical and oral minoxidil. Hair Hybrids are compounded products and have not been approved by the FDA. The FDA does not verify the safety or effectiveness of compounded drugs. Individual results may vary.}

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