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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: 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.