Scammers Furious That Their Fellow Criminals Are Using AI, Saying It's Unethical

"At the upper echelons of the cybercrime world, large-scale criminal enterprises are largely using the tools for boring tasks like checking errors and probing Google for solutions to coding problems. Among smaller operations, however - scams run by low-skill cybercriminals, as the researchers characterize them - researchers identified a growing disgust with generative AI for any purpose, with criminals choosing instead to double-down on time-honored social connections and ancient attack scripts."

"“People don't like it,” security researcher and senior lecturer at the University of Edinburgh Ben Collier told Wired. Collier, a coauthor of the study, notes that low-level hackers operating on cybercrime forums accessed via the Tor network - commonly sensationalized as the “Dark Web” - still prize organic connections and social dynamics over AI."

"“These are essentially social spaces. They really hate other people using [AI] on the forums,” Collier explained. “I think a lot of them are a bit ambivalent about AI because it undermines their claim to be a skilled person.”"

"Sure enough, posts reviewed by Wired on Hack Forums (HF), a venerable social hub for hackers established back in 2007, were ripe with derision. “Stop posting AI s**t,” one poster grouse"

Generative AI is increasingly used across the internet, including cybercrime forums. A study found little evidence that AI tools are fundamentally changing cybercrime, countering claims of a new epidemic of scams and fraud. Large criminal enterprises mostly use AI for routine tasks such as checking errors and searching for coding solutions. Smaller operations run by lower-skill criminals show growing dislike for generative AI, preferring established social connections and older attack scripts. Security researcher Ben Collier reported that forum users dislike other people using AI because it undermines their identity as skilled participants. Posts on Hack Forums show derision toward AI use, including calls to stop posting AI content.

Read at Futurism