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Google's 'Duplex' System Will Identify Itself When Talking To People, Says Google (businessinsider.com)
Google's "Duplex" AI system was the most talked about product at Google I/O because it called into question the ethics of an AI that cannot easily be distinguished from a real person's voice. The service lets its voice-based digital assistant make phone calls and write emails for you, causing many to ask if the system should come with some sort of warning to let the other person on the line know they are talking to a computer. According to Business Insider, "a Google spokesperson confirmed [...] that the creators of Duplex will 'make sure the system is appropriately identified' and that they are 'designing this feature with disclosure built-in.'" From the report: Here's the full statement from Google: "We understand and value the discussion around Google Duplex -- as we've said from the beginning, transparency in the technology is important. We are designing this feature with disclosure built-in, and we'll make sure the system is appropriately identified. What we showed at I/O was an early technology demo, and we look forward to incorporating feedback as we develop this into a product."
Google CEO Sundar Pichai preemptively addressed ethics concerns in a blog post that corresponded with the announcement earlier this week, saying: "It's clear that technology can be a positive force and improve the quality of life for billions of people around the world. But it's equally clear that we can't just be wide-eyed about what we create. There are very real and important questions being raised about the impact of technology and the role it will play in our lives. We know the path ahead needs to be navigated carefully and deliberately -- and we feel a deep sense of responsibility to get this right." In addition, several Google insiders have told Business Insider that the software is still in the works, and the final version may not be as realistic (or as impressive) as the demonstration.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai preemptively addressed ethics concerns in a blog post that corresponded with the announcement earlier this week, saying: "It's clear that technology can be a positive force and improve the quality of life for billions of people around the world. But it's equally clear that we can't just be wide-eyed about what we create. There are very real and important questions being raised about the impact of technology and the role it will play in our lives. We know the path ahead needs to be navigated carefully and deliberately -- and we feel a deep sense of responsibility to get this right." In addition, several Google insiders have told Business Insider that the software is still in the works, and the final version may not be as realistic (or as impressive) as the demonstration.
Just like anyone would do when called by a robo-caller.
I was looking forward to having a bit of fun trying to identify robocaller vs a real human being.
As in, in the middle of the conversation, drop something completely unexpected like "What is the answer to life, the universe and everything plus one?"
A human would give the correct answer - or at least go "Uuh? What's that got to do with anything?" A robocaller would politely say "I'm sorry Sir, I'm not sure I understand your question...", indicating to me that it's time to hang up because I don't want to interact with Google's dystopia.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
If you don't like to be robocalled, don't robocall others.
can't wait to have my inbox swamped with recommendations from my peers.....
Maybe stop worrying about the ethics and just get on with getting rid of all the call centre operators and personal assistant roles. The sooner we throw people out of work from meaningless jobs, the sooner we can ditch insanity like trickle down economics and get back to fixing the way our civilisation works.
It's awesome that in the future 90% of phone calls will be be
Robot voice: This call is from Google Assistant.
Human voice: Yeah, um, Hi $valued_cutomer, I'd like to, um, tell you about our new next-um-generation product. When would be a good time to, um, schedule a demo?
Me: Oh bugger off
Human voice: uh-huh
Human voice: So Tuesday next week?
Somehow, I don't think those making complaints about this work phones in retail businesses. The demo was vastly more articulate and had better manners than most human callers to businesses. For those users with heavy accents or ESL users, this would be a nice accessibility feature.
I can see this being useful anywhere an executive used to use a secretary in the old days. For example, the meeting organization functions in calendar programs are rarely used. This could move them to a useful level where the assistant calls the parties involved and negotiates what might work. It could even make the calls simultaneously though a worst schedule first approach might work better.
In some use cases such as verifying store hours, it is going to reduce the numbers of calls the store has to handle. My wife was working in a store on Easter and said that the already overworked staff was answering the phone almost continuously all day to say the store was open. On New Year's Day this year, I called a store to ask that same question. They picked up the phone, said "we're open" without waiting for me to talk, and hung up.
As to it violating "recording" laws, we obviously need to rewrite them. It is ridiculous to require that a person be paid to make these calls. Would a transcription device for a deaf person be considered a "recording device" under these same laws? What happens when we start getting cyber implants to help us remember things?
I'd rather the law move towards treating assistants as personal extensions and giving them all the rights and protections of the person they are extending at the moment.
Hi, yes, my name is Bobby DropTables and... hello? hello?
rewriting history since 2109
My concern with these type of human imitation is not on the personal assistant side but on the robocall sales side. Telemarketers already have some rudimentary human type robocalls trying to fool you, if and when they get their hands on these bots answering any unknown call will turn to hell.
~~~Please pass the salt, I hate unsalted MD5s
Soon, we will all have bots for our voice calls, just like we have IRC bots and email bots to reply to normal communications.
We'll be able to ask for things like "purchase Keen walking shoes for less than $50 from my favorite places in the next 6 months" and the bot will keep looking for those shoes, in our size, with color preferences, on the 4 online shopping places we frequent until it finds them. Then either it will automatically order then or ask for confirmation for the order, have it shipped using our fuzzy shipping instructions (never overnight unless free, never longer than 7 days, never pay more than $7 for shipping). And we'll get the shoes we want in a few weeks-months without thinking about it again. Done and handled, unlike what happens today.
The real time saver will be for home service appointments. Fuzzy when/where meetings with our preferences. I prefer to be the first appointment of the day, so that preference would be conveyed. First appointments don't get backed up due to poor scheduling. Having a handyman at the house at 8am means never wondering which 4-hour window they will actually show up during.
This is a good thing.
I mean so far all the "outrage" seems to be one blogger saying that she has heard people say this. She didn't do any kind of real research, just supposedly is summarizing the comments she received from others. First of all, this blogger is known for just poking at Google in general for headlines. Second, she could be just lying or inflating the complaints. Finally, even if she did receive "a lot" of complaints, well this is exactly the sort of thing where a few malcontents may go out of their way to respond but the vast majority of people simply don't care enough to post a comment.
I'll add that a lot of comparisons/slippery slope assertions are being made as this concept might be used by telemarketers for nefarious purposes. Well those people aren't going to be worried about ethics, they're already far off the ethical reservation.
Imagine how much people would upsell for these?
"yes you can have your binding reservation.. thres gouch fee of oucchh threefifty for the reservation, you can have the best table of the place, okay?"
the thing is, that you're putting an automated machine to make agreements/arrangements on your behalf. either way it's going to go sour at some point. it's hard to find even humans capable of the task - and if you can't make agreements on such a call, it's useless since that was the whole point of the call.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The automatic call could generate a particular tone, clearly recognizable. Like this: http://cdn2.goughlui.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/V17-14400bps-nonECM.wav. Bonus point if the called system is a computer it could switch to a digital mode and eventually ask for an encoded image representing the request. If a person answers the call it could also manually activate the image printer. Win!
Voice response phone systems tend to be designed to have parity with their line counterparts. Since I'm well versed in how a computer works, I now mute my mic until I get a human because the voice system always does worse than I can do on my own and I really need a person. If I received a call from a bot, it would be over as soon as I knew it was a not. I know making a phone call sucks and we've pretty much ditched it as humans but if it's not worth your time to actually talk to a person, then it's not worth my time to sit on the phone.
i.e. , this doesn't actually exist. More speculative and dubiously useful nonsense.
You are suffiently ignorant to run a restaurant without online order and reservation system in 2018. But Google is supplying these for you for free rather than customers just going elsewhere with UberEats or OpenTable. Rather than grumbling about having to talk to a robot to get paid, get a hint and give customers a way to do business with you without having to spend 20 minutes on hold and then listen to your thick accent.
As evidenced by Google's refusal to do business with payday loan and bail bondsmen.
Or evidenced by Google's conveniently leaving out the ability for Google home to answer "Who is Jesus Christ?"
Which is all personally fine by me because if Google refuses to do business with certain segments of the population there certainly will be others who will.....
Caution: Contents under pressure
Unlike Google Glass, which took 2 years to die, this will die in 2 months.
It's called accelerationism ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism )
For further training and without permission of the person called? To some extent the software has to know what the content of the call was also, which could also be stored, and sold and accessed by businesses and law enforcement.