Blog 10: Ring-Ring-Ring!

Her phone rang. Bank’s calling. When she answered, they had all the important information: her address, account information, everything you could think of. But when the people who showed up to pick up her debit card spent $10,000 of her saved funds that day, she knew she had been scammed.


His friends planned a senior year pre-graduation getaway. The house had a pool, a real pool! Paying the fee upfront was one small cost for an incredible experience, and they were willing. It had to be legit—the owner of the place showed them his ID. But when they arrived at the spot, “This is not for rent,” is what they heard. The “owner” lied. And the website they used to rent the place wasn’t even close to Airbnb quality. Their money? Gone.


Her grandpa has a kind heart. So when her cousin called asking him for money, of course he sent the cash. He would never withhold necessary funds from someone he loves, especially not his nephew! Unfortunately, though, the person on the other end of the phone wasn’t his nephew. It was a group of foreign scammers using AI to deepfake an American voice.


These were not the only stories I heard during my 20-question truth interviews. Out of the five people I spoke to, three topics were consistently brought up: AI, social media, and lies.


One of my survey participants made a point about AI that I had never heard before. “AI is getting better at imitating humans, but humans are getting better at imitating AI,” she said, commenting on the filters and editing influencers use in their social media posts. “People are bombarded with so much perfection in their media,” even posted by real people, so when AI generates faces without a blemish or bodies contorted to the ideal, it seems realistic. “Filters have distorted our perceptions,” and AI is beginning to look more and more real as humans continue to look more and more fake.


Speaking of humans being fake, cheating is a serious problem at TCU. To cheat is to lie about your ability to complete a task, and multiple survey respondents told me story after story of how they witnessed cheating in their TCU classes. A million presentations written entirely by ChatGPT. Fraternity men closing their laptops, leaving the room, and finishing their exam in groups right outside the door. A TCU applicant using ChatGPT for their entire admissions essay… and getting in. Students justifying their behavior with “Well, this isn’t for my major,” ignoring the fact that each class they take is, in fact, for their degree.


This series of on-campus interviews about truth sparked five wonderful conversations that I would never have had otherwise. My friends’ experiences made me think deeply about the dangers of AI in the minds of students, how social media and perception shape reality, and just how many people are at risk of losing their ability to think at the hands of an AI that purports to make things “easier.” And all five people I surveyed expressed one specific worry: AI is a powerful and sometimes dangerous tool, and if we aren’t careful, it may swallow us whole. 

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