Modern emergency helplines have now officially become sophisticated torture devices. Imagine, a person has lost his life savings in a bank fraud. In panic he calls his bank, but is greeted by a voice so calm that it seems as if he is insulting. ‘Press 1 for this, press 2 for that…’ By the time the robot reaches the eighth option, the poor human has forgotten why the call was made. We, from the outside, often wonder why we have to put up with this robotic nonsense for two minutes to reach a live human being. Nowadays calling the helpline has literally become like a survival test. Your heart is beating fast and this automated voice continues to recite a nine-step menu, as if reading a bedtime story to a child. Then comes the biggest deception. When you finally press 9 to talk to a real person, the robot says softly, ‘Unfortunately, the call volume is very high today.’ Your call is important for us. An agent will be with you within 15 minutes. Please wait.’ Then immediately the hold music starts and it sounds like a naughty child is moving back and forth on the piano keys. To make matters worse, the same automated reminder interrupts the scary music every 60 seconds. Believe me, by the time someone actually responds, you have aged two years. Most people know that trying to get help over the phone is no longer customer service, but a test of human endurance against a slow, multi-step digital maze. This was the harsh reality for victims who had previously called the Telangana Cyber Security Bureau (TGCSB). There, an average of 27 calls were put on hold, which caused huge delays in filing fraud reports and freezing the stolen money. But now it is not so. 1930 AI voice assistants deployed on cyber crime helplines have changed the game. With its help, TGCSB is able to manage a large number of calls and this has reduced the caller waiting time to zero. Instead of confusing people with endless menus, the assistant quickly gathers information including name, date of birth, amount lost, method of fraud and the exact time of the incident. Due to this, the registration time of complaint has reduced significantly. What’s better, callers can converse naturally in English, Telugu or Hindi. The system instantly transcribes these multilingual conversations into English and creates a systematic complaint report. This state-of-the-art technology is specifically designed to speed up reporting during the ‘golden hours’ when quick action can detect transactions and block stolen funds. AI assistants have become TGCSB’s most important weapon in fighting new tech threats such as voice cloning, deepfakes, automated phishing and cryptocurrency fraud. Because of this, complaints are being filed faster and financial interventions are also being taken immediately. This rapid reporting has had tremendous results. By optimizing the helpline and other reporting channels, the authorities were successful in holding an amount of about Rs 280 crore in 2025 alone. Rs 183 crore was also returned to 29,273 victims. A total of Rs 399.6 crore has been returned to more than 53,434 victims since the system was launched, officials said. An additional Rs 154.4 crore has also been frozen till May 2026. What is most impressive is that despite the huge increase in cyber crimes across the country, these complaints were down by 3% in Telangana in 2025, while in the rest of the country it increased by 24%. The bottom line is that when the quantity of a task increases, the reaction speed decreases rapidly. And this is where technology comes in to increase the speed. In short, ‘speed’ is another name for technology.
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N. Raghuraman’s Column: As the quantity of work increases, the speed of reaction decreases rapidly.
