right now on getting answers. we are looking at the future. or perhaps it's the presence of artificial intelligence in the classroom. we have been talking about students using ai, but what about the teachers? what

we're learning about how educators are using the tool all across the state. then we look into tips to save on summer travel. as more and more americans board planes to fly to their vacation destinations, and how to get the best hotel rate even if you've already booked. but first seven on your side is always working to keep you from becoming the victim of a scam. a new report from the better business bureau shows phishing scams have hit a record high, and scammers are using ai to steal your money. you're watching. getting answers. thanks so much for joining us. i'm julian glover. we're taking you to scam school today and giving you the information you need to know to make sure you do not fall victim to one of these scams. joining us live now with that information is ama galvin with the better business bureau. ama we appreciate you joining us. thanks for being here. >> thank you so much for having me. pleasure. >> so talk to us about 2023 apparently was one for the record books. you all saw a whole lot of phishing scams. >> yes. and 2023 complaints to b-b-b about phishing scams

nearly doubled, which is actually a record high for us. so with the current year's reports trending up, phishing is clearly on the rise, and we did release a study yesterday that includes information from 2021 to 2023, using the stats from the b-b-b scam tracker report as well as the fbi. and it's incredible to see how such an old form of a scam has progressed throughout the years. now we see it via phone, which is phishing. we have smishing which is actually via text, and then you have pharming and farming is a new one for us. it's basically on the web where, for example, you start on social media and then you end up on someone's website and you get scammed that way. so this case study goes into detail about these types of different scams regarding phishing as well as providing great analytical information to help consumers see how big of an impact uh-

phishing emails are having throughout the whole entire united states, including, i, like you mentioned. >> okay, thank you for giving us the update on the vocabulary there, because i saw that in the report, the phishing, which we know. right. then there's phishing. yes. and which one is that one for again phishing. so phishing is actually via phone okay. >> and then you have smishing which these are all new terms for me as well. these are sms texting. and then you have pharming which is online where you start from one website right in a reel you into the scam website as well. >> okay. the bottom line is the scammers have all types of ways that they're trying to take your money. what are some of the reasons that you saw this drastic rise in these types of scams in just the last year? really >> well, a lot of us use the internet pretty much for everything. i mean, even myself for work. i check emails every single day. you know, i'm on social media looking at our social media platforms, and a lot of it is because we have access to so much now, technology wise, that a lot of

times when we're getting emails, we're really not verifying the email address. we open up emails. sometimes we even forward them when we're not supposed to, or we're on a website and we don't verify the web domain or, you know, you're seeing a lot of advertising on facebook where there's really good products that you want and prices that are, you know, incredible. and then you go over to the website you think you're buying, you know, a great pair of sandals, and in reality, you're never going to get that pair of sandals. they just are after your information. or in this case, they're phishing for information, whether it's your bank account information or other times. unfortunately it is personal identifiable information, social security, you know, date of birth, all of the stuff that we really do need to have good and established credit here in the us. >> this is such a really good point because i feel like especially on social media these days with facebook and even on x of course, formerly known as twitter, there are all these ads, many of them are targeted and it all just looks fake, right? like they're trying to

lead you to one of these websites farming, using that new term. we just learned to be able to steal your information. you would hope that these social media companies and their websites actually did more to protect us. so we don't fall victim to scams like this. >> exactly. and that's a really good point that you bring up is, you know, we're on these social platforms. this is personal, not personal, but our information is out there. so whenever you open up any sort of social media account, make sure that you fully do under stand exactly what their privacy policies are, what they're doing with the images that you're putting up on social media, and what privacy settings you can actually set. a lot of times when we're seeing these fake websites, we see, you know, fake facebook images or instagram images coming from maybe actual legitimate businesses that unfortunately fall victim to these scams as well as well as consumers. so that's why it's really important to take the time to fully understand any sort of privacy policy, whether you're shopping online, on a website, or, again, if you have a social media

platforms, which we all do, just really understand the privacy policies and what you're allowing people to see in your platforms. >> good advice. unfortunately going through those privacy policies, it feels like reading a book report. i mean, they can be dozens, if not hundreds of pages long, but that is on us. the onus to actually, you know, making sure that we're reading that stuff and know how our information could be used. i want in what you just mentioned, you were talking about businesses, right? because it's not just individuals like you and me who are being affected by these phishing scams, but also businesses too. how is that happening? >> i'll give you an example. we here in our service area, we have a company. everyone knows it. it's birkenstock, birkenstock is very popular. their sandals are, you know, a little bit on the expensive side. what we were seeing was companies that were replicating their website. again, phishing consumers into the website via social media ads. and when you look at the website, it looked

just like the birkenstock website, except again, that domain or the web address was not birkenstock, it was misspelled. and the sandals were extremely cheap and were by extremely cheap. we're talking about $40, you know, $45. these sandals are not on that price spectrum. they're a little bit on the higher side. unfortunately, some of the consumers that submitted a scam tracker reports paid for these sandals and really never got anything. and this is a perfect example of where they might not care about the money or the scammer. but after your personal identifiable information, you're providing them your name. you're providing them your phone number, your address, and your credit card information, or your banking information. a lot of times that's what they're after, because then that way they can access your bank account on top of the $40 that you paid him. so when shopping online in situations like these, you always want to use a credit card. that way you can always, you know, try to dispute it with your credit card company. that

way. but this is just one of many examples. but it is a good way to show how sometimes businesses do fall victim to scammers as well that pretend to be them provide prices that are way cheaper rate when in reality , again, they're just after the consumer personal information, most importantly banking information. >> yeah, it's a lot easier to be able to get that money back on a credit card versus a debit card. and the scammers will always have typos. that's always something that you can look out for, especially in the websites. and even if they're sending you information that just does not seem legit really quickly, not that much time left here, ama, but talk to us about how scammers are beginning to use artificial intelligence to be able to get people to click on these things fall for these scams with artificial intelligence. >> most of the times when we're seeing these complaints, when they're using ai or scam tracking reports, there's various ways. just like phishing, ai has duplicated or cloned our voices. for example, if they're calling you, asking you, you know your child is in danger and they need to send you

money. a lot of times it's really scary how it actually does sound like a loved one. so always have, you know, safe code words between you and family members. other times, again, anyone can create an email with ai. there becoming more and more sophisticated to where they actually do look like the actual company itself, but then they redirect. you always to again that scam company where you just want to take those extra two minutes to verify the domain and actually see if they exist by checking the about us or the contact us to see if they have a location. but we cannot specify enough how important it is when they call us and pretend to be family members. it's happened to us here locally in this area. it's actually happened nationwide, as well as hackers using, you know, our wi-fi systems to look into our homes as well with ring cameras, something that has happened in the past. so just be careful with, like i said, technology is advancing for the good, but we

just want to be up to date, be able to provide education to businesses and consumers about how to protect themselves and their staff as well. >> these scammers are always looking at new ways to steal our money, and we know that you at the better business bureau, you're doing what you can to keep us safe. ama galvin, we really appreciate you. thanks for joining us. >> thank you so much. have a great weekend. >> you too. and go to org always to report those scams. but if you're the victim of a scam or have any kind of consumer issue, seven on your side wants to hear from you. send us your stories at abc seven news.com/7 on your side. well, students are told they should not be using ai to write a paper, but can their teacher use ai to grade it? how california is grappling with the new role of artificial intelligence

a heatwave, it's kinda chilly in here. oh, that's because i'm pre-cooling the house with the ac before 4 pm. then i'll turn our thermostat to a comfortable 78 or higher that way i could stay cool later. ooh, what about me? you're never cool. oh.

our day to day lives will have schools try to find ways to catch students cheating with ai. it turns out that some of their teachers are using ai to grade their papers. a survey last year found teachers are using ai as often, if not more, than their students. for many, it's a tool to help plan lessons, but for some, they're actually using it to help grade assignments. joining us live right now is doctor alex gallagher, head of strategic partnerships at stanford's policy analysis for california education center. doctor gallagher, thanks for being here. >> my pleasure. thanks for having me. >> let's talk about how common i use is in the classroom. i guess on both sides of the desk. really interesting to hear that teachers might be using it more than their students. >> well, yes. i mean, there are a lot of tasks that that teachers do that that can potentially be used in a very

productive way or helped in a very productive way by ai. i think what's what's most important to remember about thinking when we're thinking about ai in classrooms is that it's a tool, and as a tool, it could be used really effectively to great benefit. but there are also some very clearly known risks to the use of ai across all fields. and so it's really important that any time ai is being used and the people using it are really carefully monitoring what they're getting out of the ai to make sure that when it makes mistakes, which are sometimes called hallucinations, or when the results that come out of it are biased, they are aware and can address those issues. >> i have taught adjunct for a while in the college setting, and i've started to dip my toe into the ai arena and seeing what it can do. i've used it to create rubrics, for example, and even to help come up with ideas for lesson planning. what are you seeing as other ways that teachers are using ai in the classroom? >> i think those are two of the more common ways people use ai.

i mean, one of the kind of off the cuff things that that people talk about ai for is one to remove drudgery tasks that are really, really repetitive or can be kind of easily routinized. those are great opportunities for ai, and also things where you're trying to design and you want kind of a thought partner or a copilot to help you think again, those are those are really good uses of ai. and importantly, in both of those cases that you mentioned, you didn't just take the ai output and run with it, you used it as a way to further your own thinking. and i think that's a very productive, responsible way to be using ai. >> let's talk about some of the ways that students are using ai. you know, i try and encourage students, hey, use it like you mentioned as a thought partner, right? someone to help you brainstorm, not actually do the assignment itself. what are some of the ways that you're seeing students use ai that are productive and not flat out cheating? >> yeah, i mean, i think that you you mentioned the things that you would want students to

do, one of the key rules around that is typically transparency, teachers being very transparent and clear in their expectations about when ai is being used and students, in turn, being very clear in presenting assignments in explaining how it is used, people sometimes talk about citations. i think that that really, you know, the prevalence of ai in education, the fact that students can access it really raises the bar for teachers to be thoughtful about how clear they are and what they are hoping students will be able to demonstrate as a result of an assignment, what new skills, what new knowledge, and making sure that the way they are assessing that, assesses whether students have actually mastered those, as opposed to using an ai, perhaps to, you know, to replace their own thinking or their own work. >> and that's obviously the last thing that we want to see happen. but of course, can be so tempting, especially for young students. there we know there are nonprofits like quill, apparently, that let schools

across the bay area. they have them as clients and offering ai generated writing feedback also to some proofreading for papers. what are the limitations with those tools and how widely are they being implemented? >> so i don't know anything thas really difficult is we're trying to understand ai and education is there really aren't any comprehensive data sets that can give us a, you know, a very clear picture of exactly which tools are being used where. and very often the tools that are being used are being selected by individuals, whether they're individual students, individual teachers, sometimes individual schools, so i can't speak to quill, but the idea that you could have a teacher use ai to give students basic feedback on things like grammar, punctuation makes a ton of sense. if teachers can then take their time and use the their time to give students more personal feedback, spend more time on on the interpersonal relational aspects of helping students do things like learn to write, how

to how to develop their own voice, and really feel like their teacher is listening, connecting to them. if teachers were spending more time on that because they were having, an ai based tool support students and learning punctuation or grammar, that sounds like a pretty good trade off. >> we talk a lot about teacher burnout, the increase of class sizes, and there being fewer teachers, and just how hard it is to retain teachers in the workforce at this point, with that in mind, i imagine some parents might hear that, you know, teachers are using ai and say, well, especially at the college level, right. well, why am i paying for, you know, my kid to go to school and ai is essentially teaching them. what would you say to some of those parents, as we all kind of grasp and understand this dynamic and changing education environment? as i enters into the scene? >> yeah, i think you know, going back to what i said at the start, it's really important to remember it's a tool. >> so the existence of the tool isn't necessarily either going

to be a benefit or harm, what i would want as, as a parent and i do have two kids in school, is that that tool is used to change how teachers use their time so that teachers are spending less time on pretty routine administrative tasks, and more time thinking about how to engage students, how to meet the range of needs of students in the classrooms, how to motivate all students, and i think that's probably the better way to think about it. if we can support educators learning about these tools and understandings about how to use them, well, they should enable educators best case scenario to spend more time really creating caring relationship with students and less time marking off you know, right or wrong answers, to known answer types of questions. >> we've also seen some really interesting and creative uses of ai is almost kind of a tutor with folks like the khan academy, for example, especially with math assignments, right? which can be just so frustrating for some folks out there. we

know that this is really uncharted territory, right? we have opened up pandora's box. there's no closing it, what do you see out there as some of the rules, if any, that the state has when looking at individual education systems when it comes to the use and development of ai ? >> yeah, i think it's really, really critical. first and foremost, to be thinking about the, you know, privacy policies that are on the books, existing legislation around protecting minors, access to technology and making sure, first and foremost, that all of the uses of ai and education are compliant with existing best practices around everything from academic integrity to privacy, you know, that protection task is first after that, you know, one of the things that's going to be really important is thinking about, given how quickly these these products are evolving in this space, is changing how we support educators and educational systems to learn. and that's going to really mean bringing people together who are testing things to figure out,

you know, how to use these tools well, how to make sure that that they are used safely in classrooms and that the uses don't in a sense give students, who some students are robot, while other students get a teacher's attention. so any one of these tools can have really excellent uses and relatively poor uses and really creating ecosystems that support educators to learn about the good ones and create ways of monitoring risks are going to be critical. >> so many things to think about, from equity to how it's going to be implemented and deployed, doctor alex gallagher, we really appreciate you joining us with all of these insights about ai. thank you. >> thank you. >> well, we know may was the busiest month ever for air travel. if you're planning a summer vacation, we have a couple of ways you can save on plane tickets and especially hote

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feels like the price of everything is just at a record high. so how do we save money to make those vacation dreams come true without going into debt? katie nastro with going.com has some ideas for us. katie welcome back. >> thanks so much for having me. >> okay, so we got to talk about this really interesting number out from the tsa. apparently airports were busier than ever last month. why is that? >> yeah. you know, look, friday before memorial day saw almost 3 million people breaking the record for the most traveled day in tsa history, which was previously the sunday after thanksgiving. and look, you know, with everything going on, inflation and everything feeling like it's getting more and more expensive, people are actually prioritizing travel, and they may be waited until the summer months when the weather is a little bit better to take those big ticket vacations. >> do you think this is just where travel is going to be going forward? because in 2023 we said, well, maybe it was the pandemic revenge travel, right? you didn't get to go for a

couple of years. now you're doing it. here we are in 2024 and memorial day weekend is breaking records. that's crazy. >> it was definitely shocking, especially because memorial day is a kickoff to summer travel. it's not necessarily the biggest marquee weekend. and so, you know, a lot of people are yes, prioritizing travel. but this is really now looking at the state of travel. if the pandemic had never happened. so if you went to sleep in, say, you know, january of 2020 and then woke up, now this is really what the travel landscape would have looked like if we didn't have covid 19. and that sort of big halt in travel. and, you know, we are just anticipating this summer to really give us a showcase of what travel is going to be like from now on. >> really interesting. okay, so with that being said, let's talk about prices because it feels like airfare along with everything else is up. but going.com you found something different. >> yeah. you know look we are seeing that it even though more people are traveling more than

ever airfares actually renormalized you know it's down 7. the average ticket price year over year. and it's down quite a bit, almost 15% from those shockingly high prices. we saw in 2022, sort of this time that year when it definitely was revenge travel and we didn't have enough capacity, there weren't enough flights, there weren't enough personnel to be able to handle the amount of people that were looking to get back out there, but we've now sort of demand has met supply, which is really good news. but for those of us who are procrastinators out there and haven't really booked our tickets yet, you know, typically summer travels, summer airfare is typically more expensive than any other time of the year. however, we are seeing some sort of last minute close in deals, you know, especially during the month of august when a lot of people are going back to school. it's not as busy and hectic as the middle of july. so some examples of some deals that you can book right now from the san

francisco bay area. you can head to vancouver a quick 2.5 hour flight, 147 round trip if you want to go across country, visit some family and friends on the east coast. take advantage of their nice weather during the summer. 198 round trip to new york or you can head down to hawaii honolulu for only 210 round trip. or maybe you've been saving and you really want to take that big ticket trip. a lot of people are looking to go to tokyo. 736 round trip, all on full service airlines available towards the end of the summer. mostly around the end of august. >> katie only like 30s left so we have to make this really fast here. but i saw this on social media. thought it was too good to be true. this kind of hotel hack where you can save money even if you've already booked. how does it work, right? >> so the biggest thing here, if you want to save money after the fact, after you booked, make sure you're not booking a hotel room. that cannot be that is nonrefundable. that's when you're locking yourself into the rate. definitely choose a

refundable rate so you can keep checking back because hotel prices a little bit different from airfare. they just might drop closer in. so definitely don't book a nonrefundable hotel room if you can. >> that's really good advice right there. katie nastro going.com. we appreciate y

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>> david: tonight, several breaking stories as we come on the air. president biden's call to action from the cliffs of normandy to stay true to what america stands for. in the u.s. tonight, the fiery plane crash. the adults and children pulled from the small plane by good samaritans. also, the flames seen