A Fast Company Press book.
Defending against deception, deepfakes, and digital fraud
No technology wave in history has moved as quickly or proposes to reshape our lives as profoundly as the recent advances in artificial intelligence. Scammers and cybercriminals are actively leveraging AI advances to turbocharge their deceit, catapulting digital fraud to the fastest growing crime in countries worldwide.Through deepfake voices and images, customer service cons, and socially engineer exploitation, AI is driving the equivalent of an industrial revolution for digital fraud.
Dark Side of the Boom is a wake-up call to this immediate and sinister side of the AI revolution that is lost amidst the headline-grabbing futurist debates about whether AI will save us or destroy us. Author Patrick Coughlin draws on decades of experience in cybersecurity alongside real-world examples to shed a new light on today’s AI-powered scammers, who they target, and why they succeed. The result is an engaging and compelling guide to deception in the AI era and how we protect and secure what matters most to us all.
Patrick Coughlin is a cybersecurity expert with over two decades of hands-on experience at the intersection of technology, intelligence, and security. He has lived in Afghanistan, Abu Dhabi, Washington DC and Silicon Valley where he has worked on classified projects to advance national security and commercial products to protect Fortune 500 companies from the most sophisticated cyber threats. When his mother was targeted with a brutal fake kidnapping scam, the threat became personal.
His debut book, Dark Side of the Boom, reveal the human cost of the growing AI-powered scam economy, explore the organized criminal networks and black-market engines that power it, and offers clear-eyed strategies for how to better prepare and protect ourselves and our communities. Patrick is currently the cofounder and CEO of Savi Security, a consumer product company he started with his brother to protect families against scams and fraud in the AI era. He holds degrees from Georgetown, St. Andrews and Stanford University. While Proudly born and raised in Kansas City, Patrick now lives with his family in Los Angeles where he is consistently the least interesting person to just about everybody he meets. It is unlikely this book will change that.
