In early February, Lakshmi Katrapati learned a neighbor had been scammed out of $30,000.
The neighbor saw a deepfake video of Elon Musk on Facebook claiming that anyone who invested in an opportunity he was promoting would get rich. Believing the video was authentic and needing the money, the neighbor invested. It turned out to be a scam.
Katrapati then asked her grandparents whether they were aware of deepfakes and quickly realized that “for my generation at least, we’re all on the AI hype. But for seniors, a lot of them don’t know or have really little knowledge what AI is.”
That realization prompted her to launch a community initiative called Word by World, which aims to make AI more equitable. A student at George Mason University, Katrapati is visiting senior centers across the D.C. region to give older adults information they need to avoid scams.
“I hope that people realize what they see online is not real a lot of the time and they don’t believe what they see,” Katrapati said. “I want to prevent cases like my neighbor.”
On Monday afternoon, about a dozen people attended Katrapati’s session at Brightview Fair Oaks in Fairfax, Virginia. Some attendees shook their heads or reacted aloud as she described what the technology is capable of.
During the hourlong presentation, Katrapati played examples of AI-generated videos and explained how to distinguish them from real ones. She also offered tips on responding to scams, using ChatGPT and building an “AI defense toolkit.”
“I just want to be aware of what artificial intelligence is all about,” resident Charlie Potock said. “Being an older person, we should be very aware of it. It’s scary.”
Katrapati has delivered the presentation more than 30 times this year, often at senior community centers. She continued the outreach during a recent summer internship in Mississippi.
In some cases, Katrapati has returned to the same communities to talk more about AI, including its history.
“Some of them are more suspicious of the internet now, which is good, because a lot of them before used to be trusting of scams,” Katrapati said.
Grace Mingione said she left the session hoping to learn even more about AI and how to determine “what’s good and what’s not good.”
“Most everyone here is alone,” Mingione said. “I’m already very cautious about anything I do, so this only makes it more important to do.”
Katrapati said the sessions motivate her “to know that I can make some sort of impact in the elderly generation.”
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