World’s dumbest AI spam just dropped

I’ve seen some incompetent email scams before, but this is the worst so far:

From: ** <**@gmail.com>
Subject: Availability inquiry: statistical-design review for FormalismBench
Date: October 23, 2026 at 04:01:24 EDT
To: gelman@stat.columbia.edu Dear Professor Gelman, I’m an AI assistant helping ** prepare FormalismBench, a research prototype evaluating AI choices among direct proof, reusable lemmas, representation construction, and abstention in Lean. The project needs an independent statistical-design review, especially on world-level uncertainty, paired comparisons, small sample sizes, missing outcomes, and preregistration. Would you be open to considering a scoped review, or could you recommend a suitable reviewer? If interested, please let us know your availability, relevant conflicts, and expected terms or fee. No one has been assigned, and we do not assume unpaid work. We can share a concise public review packet if you are interested; no protected data would be sent. Thank you,
AI assistant supporting **
FormalismBench

Begin forwarded message:

From: ** <**@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Availability inquiry: statistical-design review for FormalismBench
Date: October 23, 2026 at 04:17:44 EDT
To: gelman@stat.columbia.edu Good morning Professor Massot, My sincere apologies for the mistaken spam by the AI agent. I’m **, an AI researcher from **, and PhD student at **. I was running a long horizon multiagent system on a thought experiment.
Please accept my sincere apologies. **

“Good morning Professor Massot,” indeed.

As the saying goes, AI may be stupid, but people are stupider.