I'd love to ban all robocalls, including those from doctors,
dentists, etc. But this might hurt the feelings of robots
who can pass Turing tests, if there are any.
Instead, I propose a half-baked scheme to harness the
powers of unethical marketing and lazy customer relations
for the advancement
of Artificial Intelligence.
The law should state that no telephone calls can be made
by an entity that can't pass a Turing test (i.e., convince
the other side that they are an actual human being). With
that constraint, any call should be allowed to anyone NOT
on the Do Not Call list. There should also be a universal
hotkey (such as #42) to report non-compliant entities,
resulting in a serious-ish ($500 - $5000) fine for the
company, and a non-sentient nuisance compensation
reward for the callee.
This would be complicated to monitor and enforce, of
course, since the gov't would have to either listen to the
calls for the hotkey combo or install a recorder at
participating companies to referee non-compliance
reports.
This will also result in some human operators who stick robotically to some marketing script being classified as
sentience violators, hopefully resulting in better training.
I believe this is my most half-baked idea yet--fishbone
away!