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Google has demonstrated an AI assistant that can make phone calls on your behalf, speaking to the human on the other end of the line. The company showed off the capability by playing a recording of a phone call it claims was between its chatbot and a hair salon:
Onstage at I/O 2018, Google showed off a jaw-dropping new capability of Google Assistant: in the not too distant future, it's going to make phone calls on your behalf. CEO Sundar Pichai played back a phone call recording that he said was placed by the Assistant to a hair salon. The voice sounded incredibly natural; the person on the other end had no idea they were talking to a digital AI helper. Google Assistant even dropped in a super casual "mmhmmm" early in the conversation.
Pichai reiterated that this was a real call using Assistant and not some staged demo. "The amazing thing is that Assistant can actually understand the nuances of conversation," he said. "We've been working on this technology for many years. It's called Google Duplex."
There is already a debate about whether this is a good idea:
The selfishness of Google Duplex
Google's AI sounds like a human on the phone — should we be worried?
Google Duplex: Good or Evil?
(Score: 2) by black6host on Friday May 11 2018, @03:59AM (12 children)
The tech may be getting good, but we humans will soon pick up the subtle differences. My bet is that it's going to become a cat and mouse game.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday May 11 2018, @04:16AM
Better yet, sell a phone app that tells you when the voice on the line is a robot. And another to optimize fucking with it.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 4, Informative) by Bot on Friday May 11 2018, @05:17AM
Why should they bother to distinguish them?
- "you can shove your fucking offer up your digital ass, you dirty cunt bot!"
- "actually, sir, I am human..."
- "oh sorry... then you can shove your fucking offer up your ass, you dirty cunt!"
- "BTW are you a bot, sir?"
- "no, but I like to play one on the phone."
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday May 11 2018, @05:22AM (4 children)
Analyzed.
The first example was ditz-to-ditz conversation, so in a sense both of them really weren't paying attention to each other. I'm also guessing that the bot was programmed with the callee's voice without the callee's knowledge. The second example was hipster to non-native English speaker conversation - as easy as shootin' Vietnamese fish sauce in a barrel. The third "complex conversation" example was a glorified version of those chat bots which occasionally swap the "-ng" in for example "working" to "workign" and provided no actual back-and forth conversation.
However, there is one test, no matter how convincing the voice on the other side may be, to determine what is and is not an AI: spontaneously ask it if Sergei Brin is a womanizing Jew. It will tactfully but immediately terminate the conversation rather than offer a nervous chuckle and carry on. Voice bots such as this one have in lesser forms been around for the better part of a decade and are, misleadingly, programmed to deny that they are bots and may even chuckle at the question, in much the same way that customer service chat bots respond to the same question with a "no :)"
But there is one question which will get rid of bots complex beyond your imagination: The Jewish Question.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 11 2018, @06:50AM (1 child)
I am Jewish Bot, you insensitive clod.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday May 11 2018, @07:25AM
Which leads to another important question, or, rather, an answer.
Gay Jewish Robots. In that particular instance AT&T had a good idea of what a Black man should sound like. It was primitive but from the perspective of what a Black man's voice should sound like. Now, I shall show you.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday May 11 2018, @11:45AM (1 child)
The Final Solution: hang up.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2, Informative) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday May 12 2018, @10:14AM
The Final Solution: Fuck with them, then hang up.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RedBear on Friday May 11 2018, @06:43AM (3 children)
Alternative hypothesis: The new voices are so natural that you'll start to think some of the real people you talk to on the phone are actually bots.
I'm sorry but the voices I heard during the Google I/O keynote were so natural sounding that most people will no longer be able to tell the difference. The feminine voice on the phone call with the hairdresser had a thorough understanding of everything the hairdresser said, used very natural word inflections, and even inserted things like "mm-hmm" and "um" at appropriate spots. And there are already at least six of these new natural voices. Within a few years there will no doubt be hundreds of such voices developed. You won't be able to recognize more than a few of them as non-human even if you hear them frequently. Because of the machine learning and AI behind them, they will constantly be adapting their speech patterns, so there will no longer be anything unnaturally static about the voice to make it recognizably mechanical.
It's really the beginning of the end of being able to tell whether you're being spoken to by a machine. I honestly didn't expect this day to arrive before the visual simulations were perfected, but here it is.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 11 2018, @06:53AM
you'll start to think some of the real people you talk to on the phone are actually bots.
Think? I know damn well that half "real" the people I speak to on the phone are bots. However, I refuse to give names in order to protect the guilty.
(In case you are asking: No ... my mother-in-law is dead).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 11 2018, @07:26AM
This is going to be great with sex bots.
Mmmmhmmm...
Ummmm....
Oh yeaaaahhh...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 11 2018, @02:08PM
sounds like it may be easier to just use their webpage to set up an appointment. maybe there will be an app for that, rather than this whole human imitating thing.
chances are good that I personally will just stop using the phone to make and receive calls, once it is clear that the people I used to talk to are too lazy, don't care, or were fired and replaced by a google bot. I dont want to help google profit with this next type of outsourcing, no matter the convenience. it means that part of what i can do is readily replaced; it isnt about costs, its about actually being a part of society in even a small way.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday May 11 2018, @04:50PM
Soon enough small businesses will be able to buy an AI box provided by Microsoft that answers phone calls placed by Google Duplex.
If a lazy person with no education can cross the border and take your job, we need to upgrade your job skills.