{"id":10208,"date":"2023-06-22T22:34:35","date_gmt":"2023-06-22T22:34:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/?p=10208"},"modified":"2023-06-22T23:02:49","modified_gmt":"2023-06-22T23:02:49","slug":"in-a-world-of-ai-pstn-is-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/2023\/06\/22\/in-a-world-of-ai-pstn-is-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"In a world of AI, PSTN is dead"},"content":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve been thinking about this article<\/a> all day. A woman received a call from her distraught, crying daughter, who said she had been kidnapped. The kidnappers then told the woman the terrifying things they would do to her daughter, unless she paid them a ransom. She called her daughter\u2019s phone and found that she was actually fine \u2014 the \u2018kidnappers\u2019 had generated her voice using AI technology. It\u2019s absolutely terrifying.<\/p>\n

I think that calls over the public switched telephone network (PSTN) are now effectively dead. The traditional telephone system runs on a protocol where you can call any number in the world and start a conversation, but you do not need to verify who you are. In a world of AI, this is going to be unsustainable. I am guessing that rogue calls like the one in the article will become more ubiquitous in a similar way to the rise of phishing and spam emails. However, unlike with email there are no audio equivalents of looking for specific clues<\/a> to reason that the call is fake.<\/p>\n

Perhaps in the future we\u2019ll need to use another protocol, one that uses authentication. Before picking up an incoming call, there should be a simple indicator showing that the call is authentic. We already have caller ID, but this is trivial to spoof<\/a>. The solution needs to be so simple that everyone can understand it, and it needs to work seamlessly without anyone needing to jump through hoops to enable it.<\/p>\n

We already authenticate to our smartphones and other devices via our biometric data \u2014 our faces or fingerprints \u2014 or by entering a passcode. Perhaps whatever system we use for voice calling can use this to \u2018prove\u2019 that a call is coming from an authenticated source. When a call comes in, it could have a red\/amber\/green rating along these lines:<\/p>\n