(Housekeeping notes: We’ve entered best-of-the-year-list season, and it’s a treat to see Shell Game on a bunch of podcast roundups, including Apple’s top ten “Shows We Love” for 2024, The Information, and The Economist. We’ve gotten some more really thoughtful reviews, and I’ve been out discussing AI agents in variety of mediums, including some fun interviews on Australian national radio and The Longform Lowdown. Meanwhile, we’ve been quietly developing ideas for Season 2, and hope to have more to say about it in the new year.)
Last month, the UK telecom company O2 put out a press release announcing it had launched “Daisy,” a “human-like AI ‘Granny’ to answer calls in real time from fraudsters.” Not surprisingly, I heard from a lot of people about this AI Granny, since it sounds a lot like the scam line I deployed in Episode 2 of Shell Game (and still maintain). Now, I can’t prove they picked up this idea from the show—although we do have a robust British listenership—so let’s just call it a case of parallel inspiration. The company created an AI voice agent with the persona of a slightly befuddled elderly woman, who tangles up spam and scam callers in mindless conversation about grandkids and knitting. Daisy, the company says, “is so lifelike it has successfully kept numerous fraudsters on calls for 40 minutes at a time,” supplying them with fake banking information when they try to close the deal. (Sound familiar?)
It’s my kind of fun, but in its public portrayal, O2’s efforts were described as something more than just fun. The “AI Granny” was written up in near-identical terms in dozens of publications, eventually moving up the food chain to the likes of CNN and The New York Times. The latter’s headline summed up the sentiments: “An A.I. Granny Is Phone Scammers’ Worst Nightmare.”
But… is it? As perhaps one of the world’s experts in using AI against scam callers—AI Evan Ratliff has talked to thousands of scammers over nine months—I can offer a few reasons why they’re unlikely to lose any sleep over it
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