Stephen Dubner

I think about, you know, loneliness.

I think about financial fragility.

Can you give me an example?

AI in all its forms has been a great tool for scammers, right?

I can replicate the voice of a loved one and feign a kidnapping or something like that.

How has that changed your field?

I would assume that AI will also be just as good, however, at identifying scammers?

AI is already doing some good anti-scamming work.

Both Apple and Android offer a personal AI assistant to screen phone calls.

The big British phone company O2 uses an AI granny named Daisy Harris who loves to chat with scammers, hoping to keep them away from real people.

And governments, some of them late to the game, are stepping up.

I'm Stephen Dubner.

This is Freakonomics Radio.

We'll be right back.

It was the U.S.

Department of Justice that seized $15 billion worth of crypto from Chen Ji, the alleged kingpin of the pig butchering operation in Cambodia.

But most of the scam fighting in the U.S.

runs through the Federal Trade Commission.

That again is Katie Daffin, who was working at the FTC when we interviewed her.

Daffin worked at the FTC under four presidential administrations.