Al firms will build principles, but it won't be easy: Mamedi

Truecaller co-founder and CEO says the spam problem is 1OOx bigger than it was 15 years ago

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With an expanding mobile user base worldwide, the proliferation of spam calls and messages exploded. Truecaller, which started out in 2009, was quick to identify this as a growing problem.

"Relevance has never been this strong during all our years. That's something we never thought of, honestly. We just wanted to solve a problem we had back then. It turned out that the problem is 100 times bigger today than it was 15 years ago," says Alan Mamedi, co-founder and CEO of Truecaller, speaking at a virtual session of the 21st edition of the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit on Friday.

He called this a "global problem", further complicated by the arrival of artificial intelligence (AI), which can be used to build engines capable of making calls to thousands of users every second. "The reason is that everything has become digitalized; your bank accounts are accessible from your phone. You're so vulnerable today, and this problem will just continue to grow," Mamedi said.