The United States managed to destroy the utility of Antonio Meucci‘s invention, the electromagnetic telephone. We did this via a combination of (1) free calling, and (2) failure to authenticate callers. This has enabled half of India and their robots to work as phone scammers.
Why not simply turn off conventional phone calls completely? Health care, banking, and some other essential-for-most-people services still rely on this now-useless technology.
But why can’t the phone itself screen all calls and make phone scamming unprofitable? An AI resident on the phone could put through calls from recognized numbers and silently answer the rest of the calls to see if a legitimate human is on the other end. It should be able to quickly learn to recognize folks offering home renovation, solar panels, final expense insurance, Medicare benefits, etc., from some combination of long wait before caller speaks, Indian accent, saying “the reason of my call” instead of “the reason for my call”, and the use of previous scripted phrases. The AI could be programmed to lead on scambots and the human scammers behind them (“transfer to my senior supervisor”) so that 5-10 minutes of their time is wasted without any personal information being divulged. Answer
It seems as though there are some third party apps vaguely trying to do this, but since answering a phone call is a core function of an iPhone or Android phone, shouldn’t the capability be built directly into the operating system?
“Who’s Making All Those Scam Calls?” (New York Times, January 27, 2021):
I flew to India at the end of 2019 hoping to visit some of the call centers that L. had identified as homes for scams. Although he had detected many tech-support scams originating from Delhi, Hyderabad and other Indian cities, L. was convinced that Kolkata — based on the volume of activity he was noticing there — had emerged as a capital of such frauds.
Late in the afternoon the day after I met with Nath, I drove to Garden Reach, a predominantly Muslim and largely poor section in southwest Kolkata on the banks of the Hooghly River. Home to a 137-year-old shipyard, the area includes some of the city’s noted crime hot spots and has a reputation for crime and violence. Based on my experience reporting from Garden Reach in the 1990s, I thought it was probably not wise to venture there alone late at night, even though that was most likely the best time to find scammers at work. I was looking for Shahbaz.
Definitely coming, especially for women. Could imagine it actually being beneficial for men to get an artificial response instead of nothing. It has to be done at the data center. There are going to be a lot of court cases about corporations directly ingesting private phone calls for language models, monetizing the content, & sharing it with cops.
I got a call today from someone with an Indian accent asking if I was satisfied with my T-Mobile service. After I hung up, I thought I should have told her that I recently lost three members of my family due to a malfunction of my T-Mobile phone, and that it was too painful to talk about, although one of them I hadn’t liked very much.
Because the capabilities of recursive Bayesian filters, “AI”, is greatly over-hyped and it is not actually capable of doing this.
Shut down the internet. two weeks to stop the spread.
If you had a budget like bin Laden its cheaper than knockin down towers and truly effective. Load up fed mental hygiene authority with paleocons (GUILTY!) and we got federal justification. Now get those non-round-eyes Winnie the Poohs to do it and the Dems are all in!
Vargammor protects us. We welcome the cold winds that heal. The wet kills in the cold. Survive. Never stop fighting, Her will be done.
Cantus Lupus. Agnus Dominus. Sanctus Lupus.
Fly Fight Die
I don’t take calls unless it is from a recognized number. Why would anyone do that? Answer that for me, because I don’t understand the need to answer calls from unknown callers. Is there some FOMA at work here or is everyone just very lonely?
Me too, I’ve been doing this ever since call ID was introduced. I keep my phone on do-not-disturb so it only rings if a contact is calling.
Off-topic, but of interest:
https://media.scored.co/post/nqs9AbUfS6uI.jpeg
https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/1910441473910140928/vid/avc1/720×1280/fc3lWzz1OqVk8qap.mp4
https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/1910433813060345861/vid/avc1/720×1280/j1Or7iqniibzmHEM.mp4
I’m not interested in your AI idea — it’s not going to work. I have got AI-generated calls that test if a real human picks up, and then you get handed off to an actual spammer.
That said, what did catch my attention was the picture of Garden Reach. Wow, everyone looks so calm, relaxed, and just enjoying the moment. It honestly looks like a great place for a peaceful vacation. But, where are all the women and girls? Not even one in the photo! Did they all step out at once for the picture, or is this place operating on a “no female presence allowed” policy?
@georgea:
perhaps out of the picture women are making the boys who make pleasure for the men out of the picture.
Everyone is so relaxed. One of the righteous is wearing a mask, on his chin. He is definitely going to heaven. Kukri is probably all that is needed to peacefully walk there at night. I am sure that the place is mostly peaceful. But it looks a little shabby for vacations.
\\it could be my browser but it seems this server has cache syncing problems or something.
\\New comments get listed on the home page and the link goes to an old page without the new comment.
\\ignorethis. checking if yer spam filterwerkz
I think the problem is free calling. I vaguely remember that in one of your posts, you suggested that calls should be priced low but not free (if you never suggested that, forgive me—as Mark Twain once said, “The older I get, the more clearly I remember things that never happened.”).
Paying 5 cents per call would eliminate the profit from scams and wouldn’t be onerous at all for most people.
That has been one of my repeated points! We thought free calls were great just like we thought free emails were great!
I get few spam calls, but then again I am sparing with who I give my number to.
I would like to selectively charge a toll, that gets credited to my phone account, on calls; variable rates — if I don’t recognize the number — up to $100 toll, refundable at my discretion.
You can get an Android phone with this feature. Google Pixel series has it.
https://support.google.com/phoneapp/answer/9118387?hl=en
Thanks. That’s almost what I want, but not quite. If we want to counterattack against the spammers we need a robot that will persuade the spam robots that it is human and then keep the human “senior supervisor” to whom the call is “transferred” on the line for a few minutes. Since our regulators won’t protect us from spammers we need to fight them with our own robot army.
How about an improved idea on Philip’s good starting point; The person receiving the call gets to set the price for being contacted (and receives the income). For example, everyone off the known caller list 50 cents, everyone on the known caller list except the mother-in-law for free. The mother-in-law is going to be five dollars.
I can just reply myself as ‘Hello, this is an AI answering program. I will be discussing with you the reason of your call for 5 to 10 minutes, and then either pass you on to a person, or abruptly terminate the call. I will record your voice as you speak’. That should do it.