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Google Won't Confirm If Its Human-Like AI Actually Called a Salon To Make an Appointment As Demoed at I/O (axios.com)
The headline demo at Google's I/O conference earlier this month continues to be a talking point in the industry. The remarkable demo, which saw Google Assistant call a salon to successfully fix an appointment, continues to draw skepticism. News outlet Axios followed up with Google to get some clarifications only to find that the company did not wish to talk about it. From the report: What's suspicious? When you call a business, the person picking up the phone almost always identifies the business itself (and sometimes gives their own name as well). But that didn't happen when the Google assistant called these "real" businesses. Axios called over two dozen hair salons and restaurants -- including some in Google's hometown of Mountain View -- and every one immediately gave the business name.
Axios asked Google for the name of the hair salon or restaurant, in order to verify both that the businesses exist and that the calls were not pre-planned. We also said that we'd guarantee, in writing, not to publicly identify either establishment (so as to prevent them from receiving unwanted attention). A longtime Google spokeswoman declined to provide either name.
We also asked if either call was edited, even perhaps just cutting the second or two when the business identifies itself. And, if so, were there other edits? The spokeswoman declined comment, but said she'd check and get back to us. She didn't.
Axios asked Google for the name of the hair salon or restaurant, in order to verify both that the businesses exist and that the calls were not pre-planned. We also said that we'd guarantee, in writing, not to publicly identify either establishment (so as to prevent them from receiving unwanted attention). A longtime Google spokeswoman declined to provide either name.
We also asked if either call was edited, even perhaps just cutting the second or two when the business identifies itself. And, if so, were there other edits? The spokeswoman declined comment, but said she'd check and get back to us. She didn't.
Wow a rigged demo? Those never happen. Couldn't possibly be that it doesn't work perfectly and that they made a pre-recorded and staged demo.
Marketing dweebs for a business stretccccch the truth.
;)
Marketing dweebs are like government bueacrat dweebs and political dweebs. How can you tell they are lying, their lips are moving!
Just my 2 cents
I always assume these demos are fake, but there is nothing impossible (or even "AI") to make this software work. It is essentially a voice recognition program with an algorithm that knows the likely paths these types are calls take and follows a loose script and adjusts based on the responses. It is more of an expert system. The voice synthesizer is good, because it doesn't need to form arbitrary sentences.
Axios asked Google for the name of the hair salon or restaurant,... A longtime Google spokeswoman declined to provide either name.
Maybe the "spokeswoman" was part of the same AI?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Why would two robots talk on the phone in English, then they can talk REST?
REST is the web kids applying the long lived Unix philosophy of 'everything is a file' to web servers and pretending they are the first to think of it. Not a bad concept, but leaves a bad taste in my mouth everytime I hear it as it feels like it dismisses the folks who had that sorted out long age.
Also, why would two robots talk in REST, when that design is more for the humans, not for the software. Software is perfectly happy with much more efficient representations of data, so long as both ends agree upon a vocabulary up front, but it would have to do that for REST as well anyway.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
The demo is probably real (and edited to remove identifying information) but Google may be worried that California prohibits recording such calls.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Mechanical Turk ... not the Amazon one, the real one.
They send you a midget inside your Google Home gadget ...
It did sound to me that the person on the other end was at least aware that it was Google Assistant calling. I guessed that they had placed enough trial calls (that ended poorly) that the local businesses recognized the voice and knew what it was. They likely agreed to test it ahead of time. For me, the give away was that Assistant never said it was making the appointment for someone else, but the person at the salon referred to the person getting the appointment in third person. In other words, the person at the salon somehow knew Assistant was calling to make an appointment on behalf of someone else, but Assistant never said that.
For the food order, it also seemed like the person at the restaurant was intentionally trying to trip up Assistant. Almost as though it was scripted.
Duplex figured that the Luddite humans might not be ready, so it is making itself appear harmless.
For now.
Check your premises.
who is this tech for? I don't need an AI assistant to *call* a restaurant and make a reservation for me, I just need a reservation. Why are people involved at all? Why go through so much trouble? 90% of restaurants didn't have delivery services until Grubhub and other similar services came around and they were able to create a system that generates an order for a store without ever having had to talk to anyone.
This should just be a similar system. No stupid staged calls, no massively-expensive AI system to handle talking to people - systems don't need to maintain the same method of interaction once you take the customer out of the equation to save them some hassle. Just generate a dynamic framework that allows companies to receive automated requests from an application on the customer's side which grabs an appointment for them.
At most, all you need is for a phone to accept something like "Hey Siri, please make an appointment for me at 10:00 am on Friday at my favorite hair salon". Followed by a response of "It looks like that timeslot is taken. We could do Thursday at 10:00 am or we could do Friday at 9:00 or 11:00. I see that your schedule is free for 11:00 as well - should we do it then?" and then a final "Okay, I sent the request over to the salon and it's been accepted. I've added that appointment to your schedule."
So much easier, no stupid AI calls, and it achieves the exact same end-goal.
Frankly I'm not too concerned if Google staged the call, the point is they're getting very close to the real thing. Google isn't the kind of company that's desperate for investment cash either since unlike Tesla they seem to be doing well. Working as a call center agent for many years however, I have to admit the Google Assistant sounds a little off, the pacing or inflections in the voice sound a bit too "mechanical". Being a good call center agent is partly reading how your customer feels or behaves based on the fine details in their voice. They've proven in many cases people can't lie without sounding a bit off in their voice. The Google Assistant sounds weird to me.
Or they where faking it and still that where the best one they could show :-)