You put your phone down. Close your laptop. Step away from the smart speaker. You think you’ve hit pause, that the lights go out and the gadgets sleep. But no. The show goes on.
Welcome to the quieter side of your electronics — a collection of clicks, pings, hums, and whirs that continue after hours. While you relax with a beverage or watch late night TV, your devices remain active. They’re handling updates, syncing with cloud servers, and communicating behind the scenes. Let’s take a closer look at what goes on beneath the surface.
The Night Shift: What Sleep Mode Really Means
You’d think sleep is synonymous with off. It’s not. Your smart TV is still listening for the wake word. Your phone is syncing email, checking location, indexing photos you forgot you took. Your gaming console? It’s auto-downloading 16GB of updates you didn’t ask for.
Manufacturers sell it as convenience: devices ready the moment you are. But it’s also about control. They want your gadgets running maintenance tasks, pushing new features, collecting diagnostics, and, truth be told, learning more about you.
The Data Harvest Festival
When your devices aren’t busy serving you, they’re studying you. That weather app? It doesn’t just check the forecast. It might also ping your GPS at midnight to keep its location data fresh — info that could end up in marketing databases or shared with partners whose names you’ll never know. Smart fridges monitor how often the door opens. Toothbrushes log your brushing patterns.
And all this happens in the background. You don’t see it or hear it, but the servers are always online.
Phantom Firmware Updates
If your device gets smarter while you sleep, who’s really in control?
Firmware updates are quiet instructions sent from tech companies to your devices—subtle but significant. They often arrive unannounced, and it’s not always clear what’s been altered.
In many ways, silent updates resemble unexpected home repairs. Sometimes they’re useful. Sometimes they introduce new issues. But they serve as a gentle reminder: the technology we think we own often runs on terms set elsewhere.
How to Tame Your Gadgets
You don’t need to ditch your devices or declare war on the cloud. But being mindful goes a long way:
Start small. Unplug gadgets you’re not using—chargers, old streaming boxes, anything with an ever-glowing LED. They draw power and stay quietly active when they don’t need to.
Smart plugs can help. Set schedules to fully power down devices overnight, rather than letting them idle in standby mode.
Take a closer look at app permissions. Not every app needs constant location access or background updates. It’s okay to be selective.
Be deliberate with updates. Turn off automatic installs if you can, and choose when and what to update. It gives you more control over what’s changing.
And remember, not everything needs to be smart. Sometimes, a simple, offline tool—a French press coffee maker, a light switch—does the job just fine, without phoning home.
Scammers are becoming increasingly sophisticated, with more emails, phone calls and text messages crafted to look and sound like the real thing. This is often because thieves are adding artificial intelligence to its arsenal of tools to transform their tricks into messaging that genuinely looks like its coming from a person you know and trust.
Here are the top ways that scammers are using AI and what you can do to protect yourself.
How Scammers are Using AI
AI-Powered Phishing Attacks. Phishing attacks have been around for decades, but AI makes them far more convincing. AI can analyze large amounts of data to craft messages that look and sound authentic, increasing the chances of tricking victims into clicking malicious links or providing personal information.
Deepfake Scams. Deepfake technology allows scammers to create realistic videos and audio clips that impersonate real people. Some examples include fake videos of CEOs instructing employees to transfer money or of celebrities endorsing fraudulent products.
Generate Realistic Conversations. Scammers are using AI chatbots that can hold realistic conversations with potential victims. These bots can appear very convincing while pretending to be customer service agents, a friend or family member, or even government officials. The goal is to trick you into sharing sensitive information or sending money.
Fake Profiles. AI can scan all of a person’s online footprint to create a realistic profile and social media accounts. Scammers then use these fake personas to try and steal information and money from you.
Protect Yourself from AI-Driven Scams
Be skeptical of unsolicited messages. If you receive an email, text, or call from a company or person you don’t recognize, verify its authenticity before responding. Do this by contacting the company or person directly using official channels.
Use multi-factor authentication (MFA). Constantly using MFA on every website you visit may cause some frustration, but it’s nothing compared to the frustration you may experience if your identity or money are stolen. Even if scammers steal your password, they’ll need an additional verification step to access your accounts.
Verify identities. If someone claims to be a friend, boss, or family member requesting money, first verify their identity through another channel, such as a phone call or video chat.
Look for red flags. AI-generated scams often contain small inconsistencies—such as unnatural speech patterns in voice messages, slight facial distortions in deepfake videos, or unusual grammar in AI-generated texts. Trust your instincts and independently verify whenever you can.
At its heart, technology exists to solve problems and enrich our lives, but its journey is rarely straightforward. The rapid integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into everyday tools—like search engines, smart speakers, and virtual assistants—perfectly illustrates the challenges that come with disruptive innovation. Here’s a quick look at how AI is improving our lives, but where we also need to take a step back to be more cautious.
The upside of AI: Empowering efficiency
Has instant access. Unlike humans who are prone to distractions, emotions, or getting tired, AI can operate without any such issues. Since it’s powered by algorithms, human-related points of failure such as stress-induced errors are virtually eliminated.
Accelerates data processing. AI can quickly sift through vast amounts of data, pinpointing inconsistencies, outliers, and trends in seconds. Tasks that would take a human hours, if not days, are reduced to mere moments, allowing us to focus on higher-level analysis and decision-making.
Always available for automated tasks. AI automates repetitive tasks, cutting down on administrative busy work and freeing up our time for more complicated tasks. It’s also always available – wherever you have an internet connection.
The downside of AI: Tread carefully
Plagiarism is likely to occur. AI doesn’t care if the information it creates is owned by someone else. This plagiarism can happen when creating music, text, voiceovers, and other forms of creative expression.
AI blends truth AND fiction. While AI excels at many things, fact-checking and proper citations aren’t among them. Like Wikipedia, AI can be a useful starting point but shouldn’t be trusted as a sole authority. AI’s outputs may include inaccuracies, making it unreliable for in-depth research or professional use.
Lacks true creativity. AI may do a great job to organize and repackage information, but it still falls short when it comes to true innovation. Creativity, by nature, is abstract and requires out-of-the-box thinking that AI has yet to master. Its outputs are rooted in existing data, meaning that groundbreaking ideas remain out of reach.
Reduces critical thinking skills. While technology often makes life easier, it can also make us mentally lazier. Think about how difficult navigating a new city would be without GPS! Similarly, if we become overly reliant on AI for decision-making, our critical thinking skills may weaken over time, leading to a decline in actual human intelligence.
Can lead to serious legal and tax issues. Relying on AI for legal, tax, or other professional advice can leave you in hot water. While AI may be appropriate for initial research on a particular issue, remember that AI itself isn’t a registered attorney or tax preparer. You should still rely on the knowledge and experience of professionals when advice is needed.
The verdict: Use AI as a tool, not a crutch
AI has the potential to be a powerful tool to complement our own human ideas and capabilities. It’s far from ready, though, to be the sole source of truth. Like any emerging technology, it should be approached with both curiosity and caution.
