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Google Executive Addresses Horrifying Reaction To Uncanny AI Tech (bloomberg.com)
The most talked-about product from Google's developer conference earlier this week -- Duplex -- has drawn concerns from many. At the conference Google previewed Duplex, an experimental service that lets its voice-based digital assistant make phone calls and write emails. In a demonstration on stage, the Google Assistant spoke with a hair salon receptionist, mimicking the "ums" and "hmms" pauses of human speech. In another demo, it chatted with a restaurant employee to book a table. But outside Google's circles, people are worried; and Google appears to be aware of the concerns. From a report: "Horrifying," Zeynep Tufekci, a professor and frequent tech company critic, wrote on Twitter about Duplex. "Silicon Valley is ethically lost, rudderless and has not learned a thing." As in previous years, the company unveiled a feature before it was ready. Google is still debating how to unleash it, and how human to make the technology, several employees said during the conference. That debate touches on a far bigger dilemma for Google: As the company races to build uncanny, human-like intelligence, it is wary of any missteps that cause people to lose trust in using its services.
Scott Huffman, an executive on Google's Assistant team, said the response to Duplex was mixed. Some people were blown away by the technical demos, while others were concerned about the implications. Huffman said he understands the concerns. Although he doesn't endorse one proposed solution to the creepy factor: Giving it an obviously robotic voice when it calls. "People will probably hang up," he said.
[...] Another Google employee working on the assistant seemed to disagree. "We don't want to pretend to be a human," designer Ryan Germick said when discussing the digital assistant at a developer session earlier on Wednesday. Germick did agree, however, that Google's aim was to make the assistant human enough to keep users engaged. The unspoken goal: Keep users asking questions and sharing information with the company -- which can use that to collect more data to improve its answers and services.
Scott Huffman, an executive on Google's Assistant team, said the response to Duplex was mixed. Some people were blown away by the technical demos, while others were concerned about the implications. Huffman said he understands the concerns. Although he doesn't endorse one proposed solution to the creepy factor: Giving it an obviously robotic voice when it calls. "People will probably hang up," he said.
[...] Another Google employee working on the assistant seemed to disagree. "We don't want to pretend to be a human," designer Ryan Germick said when discussing the digital assistant at a developer session earlier on Wednesday. Germick did agree, however, that Google's aim was to make the assistant human enough to keep users engaged. The unspoken goal: Keep users asking questions and sharing information with the company -- which can use that to collect more data to improve its answers and services.
Your programmers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.
Or a reverse CAPTCHA.
I'm looking up to see if I have anything free on that date. While I'm looking can you please confirm the prime factorization of 28573782909827352?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
There's a big difference between:
Google Executive Addresses Horrifying Reaction...
and
Google Executive Addresses "Horrifying" Reaction..
I don't know what they think they saw, but just because you say "um" a couple times doesn't mean you're thinking like a human. This is basically a case of good speech synthesis and voice recognition.
Silicon Valley is ethically lost, rudderless and has not learned a thing
Wow, exaggerate much? All that may be true, mind. But using such hyperbole when voicing concerns does nothing for the guy’s credibility. He comes across as someone who has already made up his mind about SV companies a long time ago, and sees every new issue only as something that confirms his fears, as something that’s part of a bigger plot to rape the planet and enslave humanity.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Their only option is to make it mimic and impersonate human voice. If it sounds very good, and there is an announcement that it is robotic, no need, but people will hang up immediately just like any other robo-call. If it sounds obviously robotic, instant hang-up. The only way it works is if they can fake it long enough to get some information, and don't let anyone know about it.
Essentially, the only value to Google is if they trick people into using it.
This is impressive speech synthesis, though from the short demo it's hard to judge whether it's new and better than existing ones I've heard. The harder part is the domain-specific knowledge for understanding, it will be interesting to see how they deal with that.
Personally, I don't find it scary. The voice sounds dumb, but who cares. I'll probably make fun of these kinds of assistants once they become mainstream. I'm worried that similar technology will be used for robocalls by someone else in the future. That's going to be annoying unless you're living in a country with reasonable robocall laws. Get your call blockers ready!
If it doesn't answer a direct question or otherwise evades it, assume it's a robot, and hang up. It has already demonstrated no interest an actually attempting to communicate with you, so there's no point in giving it any more time than if it had the obviously robotic voice that would likely make most people hang up right away.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Most robocalls are garbage, "would you like new aluminum siding?" (I live in an apartment.)
Some robocalls are useful, "this is the town, we have declared a snow emergency, you have to take you car off the street."
Or, "this is Doctor Smith's office, you have an appointment Wendesday morning at 9."
It's obvious that these are all robocalls, and some of them are welcome or at least tolerable.
Having informative and valid caller-ID information will be helpful.
If the calls are for information that people want, they should be ok. If they are garbage, then they will not be ok.
Usually some pretty stupid shit.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1...
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
Then they'll subtly modulate their opening words and recognize each other as bots and go modem sounds at each other for improved efficiency.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
- Hey Janelle, what's wrong with Wolfie? I can hear him barking. Is he Ok?
- Wolfie's fine, honey. Wolfie's just fine.
What I want to see is when robot call another... what do they say?
It would be a series of bleeps and bloops.
get called a 'drama queen' and 'hyperbolic' and other ad-homonym attacks by the 'real experts' in social psychology. You know, the guys who have no technical background and aren't allowed to perform these experiments because they were deemed unethical... they keep saying the tech doesn't work.
Meanwhile the internet war is getting really insane. You guys have the tools to check (mostly) but here's some screenshots I uploaded to imgur: https://imgur.com/gallery/I3vE...
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
Worrying is something PEOPLE do ... not circumstances.
... try and persuade me why I shouldn't like it either.
These people should stop blaming technology for their gripes.
If they don't like duplex OK
Please don't waste my time with weasel push-pieces that say, "Let's scrap this because someone is worried".
Bring in the telemarketers
Caution: Contents under pressure
It is a clever fake, that is all. Basically, this is Eliza with a much larger database. The databases allowing this type of "conversation" have been build during the last 30 years in slow, tedious work. Still, the potential is endless, as somewhat interactive SPAM can now reach everybody that has a phone. It seems we will eventually have to go to a whitelist system for phones or to a micropayment scheme. (Deposit me a dollar and I will accept your call, then I will decide whether to give it back. What, only deposited 10 cent? That I will just keep and ignore your call.)
That said, this technological advance was inevitable and its wide-scale abuse is inevitable too. Google is like the wizard's apprentice, making undesirable things happen much faster then they needed to happen.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
That is an interesting point, but I have to think a transient record of a persons voice would possibly not be considered a "recording", especially if it were broken out into abstract components as soon as received.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
> The unspoken goal: Keep users asking questions and sharing information with the company -- which can use that to collect more data to improve its answers and services.
The unspoken goal: Keep users and those who don't know they're interacting with Google asking questions and sharing information with the company -- which can be complied and sold to governments, private companies, and other persons regardless of the desire to remain private.
Say what you want about Siri, but Apple doesn't sell that information. I'll take a dumbed down AI with more privacy any day. My personal life is none of anyone's business regardless of whatever the license agreement says.
Sincerely, I would love to use this. It'd be perfect for calling my representatives when I'm unable to and constantly berating them for not having my best interests. Might be taken a little more seriously than emails too.
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
It is illegal all over the EU as well. So if "somebody" calls me with a prefix "this call may be recorded...", I just hang up. Incidentally, I also hang up if it is a dialer robot, i.e. the remote person does not identify itself, but the robot waits for me to say something. Creepy.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The issue of deception is only a part of the actually worrisome part about this technology. The real issue is that it creates an imbalance of effort, which is exactly what we have been fighting with spam emails. With either method, minimal effort on my part can cause another person to use up a significant chunk of their time. Google is displaying this technology in a situation where that would be considered acceptable, because the outcome is profitable for the person taking the appointment, but what if it wasn't? This technology could easily be used for both parasitic purposes such as sales calls, and outright hostile purposes such as tying up phone lines with seemingly benign callers. The fundamental issue is that when a human knows they are speaking to another human, they can assume that each has a similar opportunity cost for the time spent in the conversation. A machine has no such costs, and the transaction is inherently lopsided. I think this is what the push for identification stems from, the basic need for the two parties to be on (relatively) equal footing.
I read that the same way you did, then thought - what is what was horrifying to the writer of the summary, was the fact that people did not really like the new assistant? They could very well find the reaction horrifying... :-)
Of course that is not what the link was about so you are probably right, but I thought it could be an interesting twist.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I notice they don't say what happens if the call is to a wrong number. Does it still try to book a hair appointment/order a pizza/whatever?
The national non-emergency police line has a bot that asks in which region you'd like to contact the police. I'd call the cops on it for illegally recording my voice, but I can't get past it on the phone...
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I'm horrified by the lack of attention to grammar in Slashdot headlines. Some may find my reaction horrifying, but I'm fairly certain they are overreacting.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
How is this different than a dozen different automated processes we already use, other than it does things via voice rather than text?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I would like to pit Jolly Roger against Google...
http://jollyrogertelephone.com...
Check your premises.
At which point, who needs the human anymore?
Another data point hidden in the TFA:
"Google is taking advantage of its primary asset: data. It trained Duplex on a massive body of “anonymized phone conversations,” according to a release. Every scheduling task will have its own problems to solve when arranging a specific type of appointment, but all will be underpinned by Google’s massive volume of data from searches and recordings that will help the AI hold a conversation."
Yeah, that's your data and your phone calls they're talking about.
Check your premises.
If I was running a restaurant or business and this called on the phone, I'd ask to speak to a live human being, and if that's not possible I'd hang up. I'd instruct my employees to do the same: it's either a live human being making the appointment or reservation or you hang up on it. Could be a prank, could be a malfunction, could be a mistake, could be someone hacked someone's digital assistant, could be any number of things. Therefore you need verification from the actual person who wants the appointment or reservation, no exceptions; may as well not use it at all and just make the call yourself. After all, it really could be someone pranking or hacking you by activating your 'digital assistant' with commands in the ultrasound range, and that could come from many different sources.
If you're in panic mode because of Duplex instead of Alexa and all the other "A.I. assistants", your priorities are not in the right order.
#DeleteFacebook
I only hope these technologies treat us benignly when they combine and become self aware and don't destroy us like we've destroyed many species, and continue to, knowing that we're doing it.
Like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I remember when answering machines were first coming out (yes, I"m THAT old). People wigged the hell out about having to "talk to a machine". Now is there anyone anywhere who cares? No.
I don't see why this technology is being taken in the direction it is. Where you see a robocall bot, I see a valuable accessibility technology.
Think something like Stephen Hawking's robot voice synthesizer thing, but realistic sounding and trained to your speech patterns. That way you can control it with shortcuts instead of typing out every word you want to say, and it'll autopilot between the keywords or concepts you pick. This could be a huge boon to people who can't speak.
A similar technology could be also the next smartphone keyboard app. Write a few keywords and it turns it into a sentence.
I'm surprised people haven't thought of a simple solution here. Just have a computer pick up the phone. Hit 1 if you are human.
One of these days, they'll discover bleeding-edge technologies such as web forms and email, thus rendering the chatbots obsolete.
The person being called must be recorded to be analyzed. That is illegal without consent in most states
Most states are one-party-consent states. Google knows they're recording, so they have their consent.
Also, IANAL, but I don't believe ephemeral recordings (like an Echo sending the voice to AWS for analysis, which discards it as soon as it's processed) have been litigated yet. There's also devices currently used by deaf people which do speech-to-text and text-to-speech, so there may be something already in the recording laws to cover this kind of use. (It used to be a human relaying the conversation, but most of the time they don't need a human anymore).
Finally, I don't think the receptionist taking appointment calls has much of an expectation of privacy.
The fact that they don't want to use something obviously non-human because the person might hang up says it all.
They don't want to do that because there's a very large number of robocallers that call businesses, attempting to sell them stuff. If you make it too obvious that you're a computer, the person answering the phone will assume "robocall" and hang up. They're not going to hang up in revulsion from a caller that says "Hi, I'd like to make an appointment on Thursday" in an artificial-sounding voice.
They record your voice, over and over and over, mannerisms, the lot and can replicate you speaking perfectly?
Given their skills, their resources and if they had such recordings, I imagine they could emulate a person fairly easily, at least to a stranger.
Finally Google has a product they can sell as a service. A hard, no BS service instead of a bunch of apps.
Plenty of busy people will happily hire this to order food, make appointments, and gather basic data from clients for their business (if Google would guarantee the privacy of it somehow). "Where does it hurt?" "How much do you have in your 401k? Ok, what's the company match on your contributions?" This tech could legitimately disrupt a great deal of admin and professional "work" which should be automated anyway.
Plenty of professional offices, such as dentists and finance people, would LOVE this; maybe not older people, but younger people saavy in tech and their young clients would probably really enjoy this or at least have no problem with it. Why would they? We already see a lot of automated stuff, we know it should be done by a computer instead some bored, forgetful, imperfect human who doesn't want to be tied to a phone all day.
Plus, the headline is a massive fail. Horrifying? Really come on. It's uncanny and gives one pause, but when did slashdot start acting like it's 80 years old screaming "hey don't touch my computer you darn kids!"
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I find people getting scared about a robot uprising silly at this point. The mind is incredibly complex. The closest that can be done to reproducing it is limited in a lot of ways. I'm a lot more worried about a bug popping up in something like an airplane causing a crash then AI overlords. https://what-if.xkcd.com/5/ illustrates how silly the idea is. It's a lot more unlikely because a lot of the devices shown aren't connected to the internet. In the end my biggest worry would be society having problems because of how reliant we are on computers. Even then it would be fairly challenging completely compromise the whole internet just because of how much of a patchwork the internet is set up. Different hardware setups with different software versions. The simplest way of course is through tricking people but that wouldn't do it for everyone. Basically it would be possible but fairly challenging because of everything involved.
Because one is a massive consensus of climate scientists with observations and theories that explain things, and the other is assorted scientists afraid of something that might never exist and which they can't know any specifics of.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Isn't the whole idea of modern communications is that you use an app to make appointments?
That way you can specify exactly what you want done and when.
You can also specify that your calendar app remind you of the appointment if you want.
Classic case of a silly solution in search of a problem that doesn't exist.
Exactly.
This is a classic case of a silly solution to a non-existent problem.