Tuberville Discusses Plans to Protect Seniors from AI Scams

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) spoke with Matthew Ferraro, partner at Crowell & Moring, and Paul Benda, Executive Vice President for Risk, Fraud, and Cyber Security at the American Bankers Association, and Deborah Del Mastro, a victim of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled scam, during a Senate Special Committee on Aging hearing. Sen. Tuberville emphasized the importance of AI education to prevent from potential online scams. Excerpts from Sen. Tuberville’s remarks can be found below or viewed on YouTube or Rumble . TUBERVILLE: “Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We got a mess. We know it. You know, technology—it brings us more and more every day. We’ve heard the problems. My solution is education. At a young age, Baby Boomers are in trouble because we’re all gonna get scammed one way or another. And not just domestically, but internationally, I mean, it’s big time. I hear a lot of problems with that. So, Mr. Ferraro, how do we fix this? We got the problem. Give us a solution. I’m gonna ask everybody this. So, get your solution ready.” FERRARO: “Senator, there is no silver bullet as Mr. Winters said, but I do think that education is very powerful. And if you’re looking for an example, I would point the committee to the example of Finland, which has been very aggressive in teaching both young and old. This is in my written testimony about both this information more broadly, but synthetic media, particularly. And they’ve found that it works that you can actually instruct people to be on the lookout for false media. As Mr. Benda said, pause before you send any money, double check, do all the things that we should do before we make any rash decisions. And I do think education is quite important. As I said, I think from a government perspective, interagency cooperation is key here. This is an area where there isn’t now a quarterback to use a metaphor in the government on these issues. And I think that is something that the committee might want to consider, and I know that there are some bills pending for the committee on those issues. And third, as I mentioned in my testimony, I think the technology piece is important as well. I mean, just draw the analysis or the analogy rather to email spam. You receive thousands of pieces of spam every day. You just don’t happen to see them because they’re filtered out by spam filters. One could imagine a situation where similar technology operates in the background on your browser or on your phone to either tag or remove AI generated media. And that the technology largely exists now, it’s just a matter of integrating it. So, I’ll offer those.” TUBERVILLE: “Well, if you do anything in life, you know, the big thing is when you get a manual, you get ethics with it first and the same thing with AI. We have to teach our kids ethics. Again, a lot of us are lost and gone. But our young kids can learn it. Mr. Benda, you have worked for DHS and DOW—give us your solution.” BENDA: “I assume so. I think you’re right. Education is a key pillar. I think you start out young. I think having a national campaign on how to fight AI deep fakes, how to fight scams and fraud is important. ABA runs financial literacy programs for children. Integrating the AI threat into that and scam threat into that is something that we’re looking at doing. I think the national campaign could address people of all ages. And I have hope for boomers, sir. I have some boomers that I love, my mother-in-law, in one particular. And I think the focus needs to be on also a safe banking for seniors. So how do we get the message to them in channels that they respect and they use? Whether it’s directly from a banker or from people they trust. And the other piece I would point to is we have to enable and stop the tech companies from allowing the impersonation that happens out there. You should be able to trust what’s on your caller ID. If you put a name and number on there, telecom should be held accountable if it’s not the right person calling. The social media platforms need to stop the impersonation scams that are out there. They shouldn’t be allowed to post the videos that the good doctor talked about. So those types of things I think need more controls and I think there’s some legislative solutions that are out there.” TUBERVILLE: “Mrs. Del Mastro, I feel your pain. My mother-in-law got scammed. And this is internationally. She got a call from my granddaughter. She was in Europe. Please send ten thousand dollars. I need it bad. I’m broke. I gotta get out of this situation. She sent it. She sent it. She wasn’t in trouble other than the fact she just needed the money. It sounded just like her. What kind of legislation do you think we need to do for something like this? Have you talked to anybody? Since your debacle?” DEL MASTRO: “I have not spoken to any legislators until right now. I have spoken to a few experts in the field though, and I believe that, I mean, there are plenty of courses and education out there at how to use AI. And that is something you see on social media all the time, those ads, you know, how learn how take this class, learn how to use it. There’s nothing out there on how to protect yourself from AI. There’s nothing out there. So that needs to happen. We need to know how to recognize it. And how to protect ourselves from it. Besides having a safe word, not answering the phone, you know, all the things that everybody immediately goes to. There’s got to be an awareness for senior citizens certainly. You know, all of us don’t know how, you know, hand the remote to the kids to, you know, to change things. I mean, we need to be aware. If I had been aware that my daughter’s voice could possibly be an AI clone, I would have responded differently, but I did not know. So, I think education is key and awareness is key.” TUBERVILLE : “Just think about we’re just now beginning AI. Just think how much more they’re gonna be able to fool people, and it’s gonna get worse and worse. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.” Senator Tommy Tuberville represents Alabama in the United States Senate and is a member of the Senate Armed Services, Agriculture, Veterans’ Affairs, HELP and Aging Committees. ###