A hint for AI spammers

By Brian Clegg

Authors are being deluged with AI-generated offers to feature their books on radio shows, podcasts, in book clubs or even with a publisher. These are all fake and tend to be easily spotted by the effusive detail of what’s in your book combined with an email address that clearly isn’t from an organisation (usually gmail).

I recently had one that showed the danger of giving an AI free rein with sending an email. It was allegedly from ‘the host and managing editor of *Think*, KERA’s nationally distributed public radio program’. As is often the case with real radio show or podcasts it gave some key points as to what might be discussed. But whoever did the prompt to the AI forgot to specify how many points to include. And the AI got a bit carried away. Actually, a lot carried away. It told me:

A conversation with you could explore:

- What inspired you to tell the history of science through its impact on society

- Why scientific discoveries should be understood within their historical context

- How a scientific idea moves from discovery to practical application

- Why some discoveries transform society while others take decades to have an impact

- The difference between discovering something and understanding its consequences

- How scientific breakthroughs can produce effects their creators never anticipated

- The relationship between scientific curiosity and technological innovation

- How scientific discoveries have changed people’s understanding of the natural world

- The importance of observation, experimentation, and evidence in scientific progress

- How scientific knowledge accumulates across generations

- Why discoveries are rarely the work of a single isolated genius

- The importance of collaboration, competition, and intellectual exchange

- How scientific communities influence the direction of research

- The role of institutions, universities, laboratories, and governments in advancing science

- How political and economic conditions can accelerate or constrain scientific progress

- The relationship between scientific discovery and industrial development

- How the Industrial Revolution was influenced by scientific and technological knowledge

- The ways scientific advances transformed manufacturing and labor

- How new technologies changed the organization of work

- The relationship between science and economic growth

- How advances in medicine changed human life expectancy

- The development of germ theory and its consequences for public health

- How vaccination transformed the relationship between disease and society

- The role of scientific discoveries in reducing infectious disease

- How medical breakthroughs changed attitudes toward the human body and illness

- The relationship between science and public health policy

- How scientific knowledge has changed our understanding of the human body

- The impact of discoveries in genetics and heredity

- How evolutionary theory changed ideas about humanity and our relationship with other living things

- The cultural and philosophical consequences of major scientific theories

- How discoveries about the Earth changed humanity’s understanding of time and history

- The significance of geology and deep time

- How astronomy transformed our understanding of humanity’s place in the universe

- The impact of the Copernican revolution

- How the discovery of the laws of motion and gravity changed scientific thinking

- The significance of Newtonian physics for the modern world

- How Einstein’s theories transformed ideas about space, time, gravity, and reality

- The relationship between theoretical science and practical technology

- How discoveries in physics eventually produced technologies that changed everyday life

- The development of electricity and its enormous social consequences

- How electrification transformed cities, homes, industry, and communication

- The relationship between scientific discoveries and the development of modern transportation

- How advances in chemistry transformed agriculture, manufacturing, and medicine

- The development of synthetic materials and their impact on modern life

- How scientific discoveries contributed to the rise of modern communications

- The relationship between scientific knowledge and computing

- How developments in information technology transformed the way people communicate and work

- The relationship between science and warfare

- How scientific advances have repeatedly changed military technology

- The complicated moral consequences of scientific knowledge being used for destructive purposes

- How the development of nuclear physics changed international politics

- The relationship between scientific research and government funding

- How wartime research accelerated technological development

- The ethical questions that arise when scientific discoveries have potentially enormous consequences

- Whether scientists can anticipate how their discoveries will be used

- The responsibility scientists have for the applications of their work

- The tension between scientific freedom and public safety

- How societies decide which scientific developments should be encouraged or regulated

- The relationship between scientific progress and public trust

- Why people sometimes embrace scientific discoveries while resisting others

- The role of religion, culture, and political ideology in responses to scientific ideas

- How controversial discoveries challenge established beliefs

- Why scientific revolutions can produce cultural as well as intellectual disruption

- The relationship between scientific uncertainty and public debate

- How scientific disagreements are resolved over time

- Why evidence can sometimes struggle to overcome deeply held beliefs

- The role of scientific communication in building public understanding

- How journalists, educators, museums, and popular science writers influence perceptions of science

- The importance of making complex scientific ideas accessible to non-specialists

- Why scientific literacy matters in a society increasingly shaped by technology

- How historical knowledge can help us understand contemporary debates about science

- What past scientific revolutions can teach us about technological change today

- How emerging technologies may produce consequences that are difficult to predict

- What the history of scientific discovery can teach us about innovation, uncertainty, and human curiosity

… that wouldn’t take more than a week or to cover, then. Strangely, I haven’t got back to Krys Boyd, who may or may not be Host & Managing Editor of Think – but certainly didn’t write this email.

Image from Unsplash by Markus Winkler

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Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.

Source: http://brianclegg.blogspot.com/2026/09/a-hint-for-ai-spammers.html