For me, this has been surprisingly effective against robocalls. Obviously this isn’t going to work against scammers who call directly, but most of the spam calls I receive start with some pre-recorded message which isn’t going to pass the menu.
Edit: s/auto/pre
I remember being an outside sales rep for a local mom and pop wireless company in the late 90's, early aughts. We sold an automated "assistant" called Wildfire that would screen calls and stood as an intermediary between you can callers. She would answer, you would record your name and then it would call you on any number of devices you had entered. At one point, I had it calling three of my numbers (office and two mobile numbers) and at any time, you could just send people to voicemail. It was very similar to how many of the AI assistants work today. If I remember it was like $30/month, but as reps we got to use it for free which was really fun tinkering with it.
AT&T also had something like this where you could have a program they offered which would screen your calls and either connect you or you could send people directly to voicemail. It didn't have nearly the features that Wildfire had, but it was effective.
Obviously in the late 90's and early aughts, something like this wasn't really needed and after a few quarters, AT&T quietly stopped offering their service. Wildfire lived on until the mid aughts after being bought and then killed due to lack of adoption and use.
Kind of crazy these kinds of programs were pretty common before the AI assistant craze now.
Details about Wildfire here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildfire_Communications