How to Improve Cybersecurity Awareness in the AI Era

Preface

In the AI era, generative large models have dramatically lowered the barrier to fraud. Phishing emails that used to be written by hand can now be drafted by AI, and the images and videos circulating online can now be generated by AI as well — even AI face-swapping and voice cloning. Fraud schemes are getting increasingly sophisticated, while the cost of producing them keeps dropping.

This post won’t focus on specific anti-fraud techniques — how to spot a phishing email, how to detect an AI face-swap, and so on. AI evolves quickly, and technical-level tricks tend to get iterated away fast (though the corresponding detection techniques are certainly important too). So here I’ll document the underlying mindset we should cultivate in this era — not just to strengthen our cybersecurity defenses, but also as a capability worth having in the age of AI.

Before we get into the foundational thinking behind security awareness, let’s first understand how fraud works. Why can attackers succeed with these techniques? The answer lies in the brain’s processing mechanism. The core trick is to use information to stir up emotions and trust in the target. On the emotional side, think fear, greed, urgency, sympathy, and anger. On the trust side, think messages that appear to come from a company or from a friend. When emotions flare up, the impulsive brain takes over and the rational brain retreats to the back seat — and the decisions made in that state are rarely optimal. Like deciding whether to click a link in an email, or whether to download an attachment.

When a victim sees such information, their mind and emotions waver, and their thinking never reaches the rational brain. That’s why victims are deceived without ever having thought things through carefully. It doesn’t mean the victim is unintelligent — their rational brain was simply hijacked.

So in traditional cybersecurity, attackers target assets and data — that’s network security. But attackers who target security awareness attack the victim’s brain’s logic and judgment — and that’s called cognitive security.

In the past, attackers usually relied on phishing, SMS scams, and social engineering — all text-based. Now they can use AI to generate images, audio, and video, which falls under “synthetic media” — media content produced with artificial intelligence. That’s why much of what you see online is hard to tell apart as real or fake. Seeing is no longer believing.

Awareness (Mindfulness of Self)

So which capabilities matter most in the AI era, and which can help us sharpen our anti-fraud instincts? The first thing to develop is “awareness” — the ability to perceive yourself: to feel your own emotions, to know what you’re doing, to sense changes in your body, and to notice your psychological and physiological shifts at the very first moment. For example, when I get angry, I realize that I’m currently angry, I can feel my heartbeat quicken and my blood pressure spike with a jolt in my head. That ability to sense what’s happening inside you is awareness.

It’s like watching short videos: the recommendation algorithm locks you in, your rational brain gets hijacked, and you keep swiping up without realizing how much time has passed. When awareness kicks in, you recognize: “I’m scrolling short videos right now, my brain is releasing dopamine, I don’t feel like moving, I don’t want to do anything — I just want to keep watching.”

Awareness can be improved through deliberate practice, and two of the most important methods are meditation and living in the present. Practice meditation more — observe your breathing, feel the air entering your nostrils and leaving again. You can also build the habit of mindfulness: consciously feel what you’re doing and what your body is experiencing.

Then there’s living in the present. In today’s fast-paced life, combined with the information explosion on the internet, our brains take in too much every day. We’re prone to overthinking and rarely pay attention to how we feel in the moment. We may never have carefully observed the streets on either side of our own home — even walking them every day, we have no idea what shops, facilities, flowers, or grass line them.

What we need to do is pull our consciousness back to the present through our five senses. Sight: observe the things around you — their colors and shapes — just observe, without overthinking. Hearing: listen to the sounds around you, like the wind, the air conditioner, traffic, even your own breathing. Touch: feel the sensation of touching objects, the ground beneath your feet as you walk, the swing of your limbs as you run. Smell: take in the earthy scent after rain, the aroma of food, the smell of books. Taste: savor the sweet, sour, bitter, and spicy flavors of food, and notice the changing texture as you chew.

At the same time, we should cut back on entertainment time online. Too much short-video consumption dulls your attention, making it hard to focus on anything that requires a bit of time — like reading a book or an article. Take this very article: the moment the word count gets slightly long, it becomes hard to read through, and restlessness creeps in. So reduce your short-video time. In fact, on weekends or days off, if we put down our phones and other electronics, we often find there’s plenty we can do — and there’s rarely anything urgent enough to require checking your phone every few minutes. If something really matters, they can call you.

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking means having your own thoughts and questions when faced with outside information — thinking independently, making judgments, gathering external evidence to verify, and then deciding. It’s about holding a skeptical attitude toward external information, rather than going along with the crowd and accepting whatever everyone else says.

Critical thinking can also be trained. When facing information, make a habit of thinking and questioning, then engage in Socratic questioning: Is this definition accurate? Is there solid evidence for this claim? What assumptions underlie this conclusion? What consequences might follow? Are there alternative explanations? You can also read books on critical thinking, such as Asking the Right Questions and Critical Thinking.

In short, it’s about constantly asking “why.” When applying critical thinking, be mindful of cognitive biases. Cognitive bias refers to the mental shortcuts the brain forms to save time and energy and boost reaction speed. For example, if you’re walking in the wilderness at night and something rustles in the grass, your first reaction might be to run — the brain instinctively concludes there’s danger and you should get away, rather than standing there pondering whether the noise came from the wind or a wild animal.

There are many such cognitive biases. Confirmation bias, for instance — we tend to focus only on evidence that supports our own views while ignoring information that contradicts them. Then there’s the halo effect: if we have a good impression of someone, we tend to believe what they say is right. Survivorship bias: we focus on the success stories and overlook the failures. And sunk cost: after investing a lot of time and energy, we know a decision is wrong but can’t bear to let it go.

These biases often undermine critical thinking. Critical thinking demands objectivity, caution, and multiple perspectives, whereas cognitive bias reflects the brain’s drive for speed, effort-saving, and subjectivity. So it helps to learn about cognitive biases — once you know which biases exist, you can use the awareness described above to recognize when your brain is falling into one, and thus avoid mistakes.

Emotional Management

Emotional management also draws on the awareness we discussed earlier. When an emotion arises, you need to be able to notice what emotion you’re feeling and what subtle changes your body is undergoing. Simply becoming aware of it lowers the emotion’s intensity, because once you label yourself as “currently emotional,” the amygdala (the emotion center) calms down and the prefrontal cortex (the rational center) takes over.

Of course, emotional management doesn’t mean suppressing or eliminating emotions — humans have seven emotions and six desires, after all. What we should do is become aware of our emotions, understand them, accept them, and then regulate them as the situation calls for. For example, when you’re angry, first become aware of it, take a deep breath, dial down the impulse, and then find a way to release it. We don’t need to suppress or push it down. Say you receive a scam message and feel a sense of urgency — first become aware of it, take a deep breath, and then think it through carefully. Don’t let emotions steer you.

Emotional management also helps in everyday life and work. Keeping your emotions stable at home improves family relationships and increases happiness. On a bigger scale, emotional stability means family stability, and a stable family means harmony and prosperity. Prosperity brings good moods, which bring not only health and happiness, but also the ability to focus on things that matter — and even to accumulate wealth.

Human Nature

Human nature is essentially the psychology and behavior people exhibit in certain situations — it’s our “default configuration” from birth. In our earliest evolution, our main tasks were to survive, reproduce, and get ahead, and over time this shaped traits like greed, fear, impulsiveness, sympathy, and curiosity. Attackers, when committing fraud, almost always build their schemes around these aspects of human nature. Only by doing so can human nature stir our emotions, allowing the emotional brain to dominate and leading us to make poor decisions.

We don’t need to fight human nature or try to change it — we just need to understand it, and know that attackers will use these traits to craft information designed to deceive us. When we see such information, awareness lets us recognize which aspect of human nature they’re exploiting — and that alone is enough to defend ourselves.

Additionally, technical-side protection matters a great deal. I’d recommend learning about the relevant fraud techniques and defensive measures on an ongoing basis, so you truly “know yourself and know your enemy, and you’ll never be defeated.”

General Protection

For online scams, let me list a few defensive points. First, delay your response. If you receive something urgent — a request to change your password, submit information, or transfer money — don’t rush. Wait a few minutes. In most scenarios, a few minutes’ delay won’t cause any meaningful harm, and those few minutes let you return to a rational frame of mind. Second, verify and confirm your inferences. If you see AI-generated misinformation online, form your own judgment and find a way to verify it — don’t just follow the crowd. Third, for AI-based scams — a friend calling to borrow money, a family member asking for help via video, a boss requesting a video transfer — besides tricks like voice recognition and scrutinizing the video background, there’s another technique: cross-channel confirmation. A message that arrives by phone can be verified through WeChat or by asking a mutual friend — or, if possible, in person. Another general technique is using a secret code word: bring up something from the past that only the two of you know, or mention something that never actually happened, and watch the other person’s reaction.

Of course, we should also learn about various scam methods in our daily lives — how to spot phishing emails, how phishing actually works, what AI-based scams look like. These are equally important, especially AI scams, which we should also explain to our families, particularly the elderly. With elderly people, telling them about awareness or critical thinking is hard to make effective; instead, we need to teach practical techniques — secret code words, cross-channel confirmation, re-contacting the person after receiving a message, and so on.

Summary

That covers how to improve cybersecurity awareness in the AI era. It leans toward foundational mindset, and it also applies to cultivating the right way of thinking in the age of AI. At the same time, I’d suggest learning some anti-fraud techniques and passing them on to your family, so we can protect our loved ones, our information, and our money.