TEMPE – After her daughter was arrested in Florida, a Tempe resident was desperate to contact her and bail her out. So when she received a call from someone claiming to be a bail bondsman in Florida, she acted quickly. She verified the person’s information, who provided her daughter’s actual case number and the name of a real Florida bail bondsman, and then sent hundreds of dollars to a CashApp account the person on the phone claimed would bail her daughter out. It was only after she sent the money that she realized it was a scam.
The story resonated with the 20 or so other attendees at Tempe’s recent artificial intelligence information meeting, which was hosted by Connect Tempe and the Arizona Corporation Commission. All of the attendees were older adults and were there with a clear goal in mind: learn more about AI, scams and their potential dangers.
“I need to be more informed with technology and what’s happening in the world, because it’s not going away,” said Dana Brazelton, 67, at the event. “If I just stay uneducated about it, it’s just going to harm me.”…