Be warned of thieves and nuisance-makers in AI space

Last week, I met Pradeep Devaiah, Chairman and CEO of Bangalore based PDA Trade Fairs? in Colombo who can speak authoritatively on how innocent people become victims of cyberspace criminals.

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Devaiah tells me that technology, specifically AI technology, is being used by cyber thieves to capture technologically illiterate people to siphon off the moneys they have. This puzzles me because this is the first time I am being told that AI is being used by cyber thieves to steal money from individuals. We have been told about stories of cyber hackers attacking computer systems of large organisations, including government websites, and demanding ransoms to allow them to start operations again. Also, another undesirable side effect of AI, we are being told, is how it will have undesired consequences on income distribution and poverty levels of national economies.

A study by Emma J. Rockel, Marina Mendes Tavares, and Carlo Pizzinelli, all attached to the International Monetary Fund, and released in April 2025 under the title AI Adoption and Inequality says that AI may reduce income inequality between the high wage earners and low wage earners by displacing the former and delivering a part of productivity gain to the latter, it is surely in favour of capital earners as against the labour earners.8 Hence, the continued embracing of AI for digital transformation will create social chaos in both developed and emerging economies. I ask Devaiah how AI victimises the technologically illiterate and hit their pockets.

Impersonation through AI