Elon Musk and the age of the troll

There has been a cheering new development in the struggle against scam phone callers. AI can now be used to automate the satisfying but tricky business of ‘scambaiting’. I give you Daisy, the ‘AI granny’ – whose only purpose in life is to keep phone fraudsters on the line for hours that they would otherwise spend predating on real human victims. Scammers, as we know, play on human psychological weaknesses – the panic we feel when we’re told our accounts have been compromised, our deference to authority, our confusion about how technology works. Now, flip-flop: the AI plays on scammers’ psychological vulnerabilities – primarily, the idea that an old lady with a quavering voice will be an easy mark.

The phone company O2 has devised an AI programme that supplies a convincing telephonic facsimile of what you might call a Batty Old Doris.