Earlier quoted context omitted.
Until they catch on and un-blacklist the numbers periodically.
we all know the end game: ai scammer talking to ai granny
AI Guilfoyle and AI Dinesh
Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time
171–180 of 277 posts
Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
My Pixel 8 (not sure what other Android phones do this) can screen calls using their AI assistant. It asks what the call is about. If they answer, it displays the text to you as it rings through. It sounds surprisingly human-like, even saying "Hello?" in a slightly annoyed tone when the other person doesn't respond in time.
Those Pixel features are underrated. Another good one is for the phone to stay on hold for you. That one has been extremely valuable to me as Qantas would regularly keep me on hold for over 5 hours when I tried to get my money back for a cancelled flight. The operator would sometimes be a bit confused when I pick up, but it usually worked well and certainly beats listening to hold music for hours.
… until Qantas deploys AI bots that can keep your AI going indefinitely!
Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time
#173The scam and spam call problem is really bad in Germany to this day. And has been for 10 years. A couple years ago I would sit at my desk thinking about a really hard problem in silence. The phone rings. Spam call. Every 30-180 minutes another one. If you now think turn the phone off, well not that easy as CEO of a business when people expect you to be reachable. It creamed my corn so much that I recorded my own voic…
Screen unknown callers to VM. Solved all my problems
I simply don’t answer calls that aren’t in my contacts.
Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time
#174I love that they are weaponizing the perceived kindness of senior citizens in this way. Many of the victims of scams are some of the nicest people ever that were taken advantage of in some capacity - usually while trying to help someone. It's the digital age equivalent of staging a broken down cart and then robbing some old folks. I think most of us hate the idea of the "solution" being to not go near anyone with a b…
> I would rather a world where scammers odds at making a living at this are so poor they won't bother
Then what's stopping the scammers from finding another "evil" job that makes money? You have to remember that humans tend to not enjoy accomplishing thievery and the scammers most often do this out of necessity. Of course there are big call center operators who truly are terrible people, but this conclusion is true for the bulk of their workforce.
Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's similar to the idea I had for combating texting spam: - If your number is in my address book then texts are free for you - If this is the first time you are contacting me then you pay me $1 There are probably downsides and ways this will screw up real relationships but it will certainly increase the cost of spam.
You just made the new scam ‘persuading you to text me’. I get $1 for everyone I fool!
Presumably the money would go to the telecom company, I think. Still very good for trolls though.
Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time
#176Seems like the logical endpoint of a lot of this is people getting paid directly for their attention. Want to call me? I've set a price of $5/call that I answer, and an additional $10/minute of listen time after the first 10 seconds. Want to send me an email? $1/email and $5/100 words. Anyone I have emailed is automatically on my allow-list, which I can also adjust manually.
That's EVE Online's approach to fighting ingame "email" spam [0]. Every player can configure an amount of ingame money that is levied from a sender's account to deliver a message to them. It's a currency sink, so it's themed as a "tax" levied by the NPCs and its value is destroyed rather than paid to the recipient of the message. I thought it used to default to 5 ISK (a pittance, something you can make back by shooti…
Great real world functioning example.
The idea in general seems to have been around since 1992: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash
Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then suddenly, calls from consenting callers to consenting receivers are labeled as spam and blocked. What can you do about it? Nothing. Switch to email, I guess. Oh wait, same problem.
You sound like an advocate for telemarketers. Am I correct? I doubt very seriously that the pool of people who have knowingly and intentionally and explicitly opted in/consented to telemarketing - that is, without any dark pattern involvement and with a clear and unmbiguous consent experience, is very large. In fact I think it is infinitesimal because I can’t recall seeing such a consent UX- they ALL involve dark pat…
I’m not OP, but my worry is about the false positives. I have real inbound calls and emails getting detected as spam all the time. Luckily my VoIP provider has a spam box I can look in, but at this point I just have to go through them every so often to make sure I’m not missing anything important.
If the telecoms can perfectly predict the telemarketers, then I’d love it. But in practice how often is this going to block people I know from calling me? Probably not never, and then we just have to give up on phones as a reliable method of communication.
Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds like a great solution to the minority of people like you and me who wouldn't mind the added steps of approving every real phone call as not spam after, having to remember how to set that you're expecting a call from a random number, etc. I can't see it being acceptable to enough people for any network to go down this road unless spam levels get way worse.
Reporting spam should be the other way around, it defaults to assuming a normal interaction. Consider: if you get harassed with a call or text you don't like, you send an SMS with that phone number to some known short code. You then receive $1 from the caller. If the caller cannot be found, the last verifiable link in the chain is responsible for paying the fine. This would cause carriers to behave overnight, instead…
At least we can dream, ehh?
Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
The new fad among wireless carriers here in the US is to route what they think are spam calls to a fake voicemail box. Voicemail that is left in this generic voice mail box never makes it to their customer and the customer is completely unaware that some of their calls have been diverted.
Then suddenly, calls from consenting callers to consenting receivers are labeled as spam and blocked. What can you do about it? Nothing. Switch to email, I guess. Oh wait, same problem.
I’ll take my chances. 99%of the people I want to talk to either email/text me first or are already in my contacts list (which I’m not really all that picky about). I’ll accept that failure rate.
Re: Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time
#180Very nice to see, my grandmother was recently scammed out of a large amount of money. Luckily the bank reimbursed her. Scammers are a stain on the reputation of India. You could argue it's unfair to tar an entire country with the same brush, but quite clearly rule of law isn't properly functioning over there and there's complicity in letting them do this. Same goes for Nigeria.
I'd imagine India will gradually crack down on it more over time. The tech industry there is growing massive and they surely aren't happy about being associated with scammers.
They won't. The companies that operate these scam centers are diversified criminal enterprises run by ultra-wealthy and politically connected individuals. These people own the police, they own the politicians, and until fairly recently, they owned the voters through massive vote-buying schemes.
You can get away with murder in India if you're wealthy enough (e.g. the case of Jessica Lal, murdered by a politician's son in front of at least a dozen witnesses). The egregious corruption of the INC or "Congress party" (which is ideologically progressive) over many decades has created a massive voter exodus to the conservative BJP party, the majority party in India since 2014. However, the corruption and inefficiency at all levels of civil society has remained endemic.