This has to be illegal. If it isn’t, it is certainly unethical.
I got a call this morning with a caller ID that stated it was from a hospital. If I say “hello” and there is an odd pause, usually followed by a telltale <click> and voice saying “Hello?” I hang up immediately. because it’s a robocall. This time, however, there was no click, and a clear, unaccented, assertive voice called out, “Hello!” I was curious, so I responded,”What do you want?” “We’ve been trying to reach you,” the cheerful young woman said. “Have you been made aware of Medicare cash paybacks?” THEN I hung up. I know an AI bot when I hear one.
The problem is, most people over the age of about 40 do not. This one was good, the best I’ve heard yet. Way back in 2015, Ars Technica wrote about the then-new use of interactive robocalls, but that was before the AI revolution. Last night I had been watching a new streaming series starring Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis in which a character is addicted to conversing with an AI version of her dead wife. These fake people are improving at a logorhythmic rate, and in about a week the non-humans calling me will be undetectable. That doesn’t mean they will be the same as real callers, which means neglecting to announce to an individual that the voice on the other end of the line is AI-generated is fraud, dishonest, a lie, and, of course, unethical.
There needs to be a tough law or regulation against this practice. Now.
Ethics Alarms 
I get these calls every day. Plus, a lot of others.
Whoever calls I don’t give any information. Even if they sound official, I tell them, “I do not conduct or give any personal information over the phone.” One time “the IRS” called and said I owed back taxes. I told them: “Then contact me by an official means like a registered letter” and I hung up.
I’m over 40 and I’m not falling for any of that crap. But, I’ve always been cynical.
This call about being in an accident recently is relatively new (I think). At least I’ve only started getting them recently. They are fishing or should I say phishing! A lot of people have been in fender benders.
Caller ID is useless – almost every call we get is a spoofed caller ID.
Many calls now are AI robocalls but some are still the recorded responses which is a form of AI automation but it has a limited set of responses. It’s easy to tell either way. Just talk over them or ask them if you can order a pizza. “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand your response. Do you have Medicare Part A and Part B?” See answer above in list.
Not only do they prey on older people as you say in your post but they also prey on uneducated or naive people.
Wow, just got a new one. I’m telling you I get multiple calls every day. As Charles Abbott related below; it’s a “hot button topic” for those who still have a landline. Although, I think they do target cell phones too, but mainly landlines as they are more likely to be used by older folks.
Here’s the call I just got that I never got before:
They’re out of luck calling here. You’re supposed to press ‘5’ to find out more, I just hung up.
I don’t often engage nuisance calls, but when I do, my response is a tad more direct; recommendations that suggest certain activities which include anatomical specificity.
PWS
As I said last week, quoting wisdom I can’t manage to attribute,
“Life is an IQ test and it’s getting harder every year.”
I may write more in a bit. This is a “hot button topic” for anyone who still has a landline.
–charles w abbott
rochester NY
The whole telemarketing business is out and out unethical. Automating the telemarketing business with AI makes it only slightly more unethical.
The first reason for me to consider the telemarketing business unethical is the lack of transparency. I have no idea whether the the caller is trying to engage me in an outright scam, an unethical hard sell of a charity or overpriced product, or something else. I have no idea whether the telephone number they are calling from is real or spoofed. One of my banks had to add a service to their banking app in order to verify that is it is actually the bank that is calling me when my phone indicate a call from the bank.
The second reason is that such calls are an imposition; I do not want to be accosted by total strangers with which I do not have a relationship, neither at street, by phone or by email. I do not trust those folks, I do not want my meals interrupted by sales phone calls, and I do not want to plow through an inbox full of spam.
The third reason is the resulting decline in manners. There used to be a telephone etiquette, where the phone had to be picked up in three seconds and then answered by stating your name. Today we let the call go to voice mail by default, and only answer the phone when it is a good friend or family member in our contact list. Emails from acquaintances go to spam and are therefore not replied to. We avoid strangers at street even those who only want to ask for directions.
It’s worse than that. AI can now clone your voice with a sample as small as 3 seconds.
I get probably 10 or 15 spam calls per day. Some are AI, others are live scammers, likely out of some foreign country. Any time spent in discourse with them is potentially providing them with the tool they need to immitate me. God knows what kind of mischief they could wreak if they could successfully duplicate my voice.
Whenever I get a call from an unknown caller, I am extremely short with them. Instead of “Hello”, I’ll begin with a one syllable “Lo?” At that point if it sounds like a scammer I’ll hang up. Unfortunately there are some calls I get from unknown callers that I have to take, so if I’m unsure I’ll be extremely curt, saying something like, “Who’s this?”, cutting the vowels as short as I can. Again, if it sounds like a scammer, I’ll hang up right away.
It’s hard to do this. It feels uncomfortable because it’s against my nature to be rude. (My wife might disagree with that.) My inclination is to at least provide an explanation to the person I’m about to hang up on. Unfortunately, the explanation itself could be what does me in, so I skip it.
If, on the other hand, the caller ends up being someone I want to talk to but just didn’t recognize from their phone number, I’ll apologize and explain why I’m so rude at the beginning of phone calls from unknown callers. To this point, every one of those callers has been understanding, since they’re experiencing the same problems.
Here is the bad news with your strategy. If you respond in any way to telemarketers or spam emails, your phone number and/or email address gets logged in their system as somebody who responds. This means that you will het more fully automated for the foreseeable future. The calls are made by a computer, which then routes them to you and a human being or AI robot at their side.
Agreed.
As I said, unfortunately I occasionally get calls from unknown callers that turn out to be important and/or urgent and I need to take. In order not to miss those calls, I’m forced to answer all calls and vet them as well as I can without giving too much away.
One of the worst things about robocalls is this: the phenomenon depletes social trust. The phenomenon is far worse than a nuisance. It is like termites.
I believe that is a useful perspective.
“Generalized Trust” is a resource that some countries have in abundance and some countries have much less of. It tends to be larger in stable, rich, mono-ethnic countries that are small in population and where “social control” is maintained largely by guilt rather than shame. Really, I’m not a sociologist or an anthropologist, I’m just doing the best I can here.
Consider the hypothesis–the USA has a certain amount of “generalized trust”–how much consideration do you give to (1) a stranger asking for directions, (2) a phone call from an unknown number, (3) a USPS charitable solicitation from an group you have never heard of, or (4) a child knocking on your door to sell cookies to raise money for a trip?
Every time you give a stranger the benefit of the doubt and they are honest and helpful, it sustains generalized trust. Every time you give a stranger the benefit of the doubt and they take advantage of you, your personal store of trust is partially depleted.
The robocalls deplete social trust. The winning strategy becomes the following: Do not answer the phone for any unrecognized number. Assume that anyone who calls you is lying to you. Assume that every encounter is the feeler in some sort of a racket.
There are other things that deplete social trust. That’s a topic for a different essay.
thanks for reading!
charles w abbott
rochester NY
btw, I was unaware of the “guilt vs. shame” distinction until introduced to it in a college sociology course. It took a while for it to make sense to me, and I still may not fully understand it.
You may enjoy this 12 year old blog essay from Peter Frost. If not, please ignore.
https://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-origins-of-northwest-european-guilt.html
There’s actually a fine line between a “robo-call” and a human call-center call. I once whimsically tried to provoke a robot with the self-contradictory assertion that “I don’t talk to robots”. There was a click, and a real human, somewhat raspy, voice took over. “Well, then, will you talk to me?” Then I realized that I might be listening to a robot, but a human was listening to me. It makes sense: rather than wearing out the vocal cords talking all day, let the recording make the hundreds of pitches that get rejected, with a human hovering overhead to close a sale.
AI robocalling is indeed already illegal, and surprisingly I’ve only recently encountered one.
The other surprising factor is the robot was who I talked to after the foreign call center individual spoke to me and screened me. The robot belonged to the company paying for the illegal calls and the robot just could not understand that the email address (I refused to provide twice before and finally relented to give the third time) she asked for it ended in ‘.com’.
“These fake people are improving at a logorhythmic rate, and in about a week the non-humans calling me will be undetectable.”
“these are new. They look human… sweat, bad breath, everything. Very hard to spot” Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn in Terminator)
PWS