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Google's Controversial Voice Assistant Could Talk Its Way Into Call Centers (theinformation.com)
More details have emerged about where Google intends -- or at least intended until a few weeks ago -- to take its controversial AI Duplex, which it first demonstrated to the public at its developer conference in May. The AI system is capable of making calls to local businesses to place reservations on behalf of Google Assistant users. And it does so in a voice that most people can't distinguish from that of a normal human being. This resulted in a public outcry at the implication of people in the future not knowing whether they were talking to humans or machines, which led Google to adapt the bot's introduction so it clearly explains it's not a human. The Information reports: Some big companies are in the very early stages of testing Google's technology for use in other applications, such as call centers, where it might be able to replace some of the work currently done by humans [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], according to a person familiar with the plans. The market for cloud-based customer call center market is expected to hit more than $20.9 billion by 2022, up from around $6.8 billion last year, according to research firm MarketsandMarkets. [...] At least one potential customer, a large insurance company, is looking at ways it can use the technology, according to the person with knowledge of the project, including for call centers where the voice assistant could handle simple and repetitive customer calls while humans step in when the conversations get more complicated. But the ethical concerns that overshadowed the original presentation have slowed work on the project, this person said.
Cheaper Cold Calls equals more Cold Calls.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The big pushback i could see is that people generally don't like talking to a bot.
If the AI identifies itself as a machine, a nontrivial number of people are going to immediately hang up on inbound calls they're receiving.
Can it replace Lenny, on the other side of the call centres?
Sig ?
They already have bots when you call in to many customer service lines, they're just not as slick and don't pretend to be a human. If this works better than those do, it certainly won't be any worse than the status quo.
Ask Piccard
MOD THE CHILD UP!
I'm sure Google Duplex could do a much better job than a lot of the telemarketers I'm getting!
How would I know if it's a human or just Duplex++?
We loved GOOG-411 when it was ad supported with not enough ad sponsors, but now hate it when it became the phone company's paid 411 service.
Automated operators have been around for a while now, so this is Google's late entry into that business. I wish them luck and remind them to Be Not Evil... okay?
> simple and repetitive customer calls while humans step in when the conversations get more complicated
Would not want to be the human csa when the call gets to that stage, because you're likely to be talking to a really frustrated and pissed off customer after explaining their problem to the AI for the umpteenth time.
"Greetings and salutations. Welcome to the emergency line of the San Angeles Police Department. If you'd prefer an automated response, press 1 now."
I hate talking to machines, but I would absolutely use it if I could offload talking to machines to a machine. Go to 1-800-GET-HUMAN.com , enter the support hotline number I am trying to reach, it calls it, talks its way through robots and once it hits a real person it tell them "please hold for Mr. X" and calls me back.
Idea: telemarketers can only use automation if the recipient is automated. Have two computers talk to each other; one selling, the other just saying fuck off over and over. Heck you wouldn't even have to do this over the phone, just don't even do it at all and save everyone the trouble!
Just between you and me my carpets DO need cleaning but I'll never EVER use a service that thinks cold-calling me at 7 PM is a good idea.
NEVER EVER.
crazy dynamite monkey
I work for an sort of "internal call center" where we help our employees worldwide with their IT problems and infrastructure issues.
I would absolutely LOVE duplex to replace a lot of us for this, I realize I could be out of a job if this happens, but the job is so excruciatingly mundane at times, that this would be perfect for Duplex.
Here's an example of my day:
"HI, I've locked myself out, could you unlock me"?
Yes of course, hang on while I check your network ID, seems legit - I'll send it to your nearest manager for safety reasons.
"Hi, my pc just crashed the other day, and now the screen is black, but there are some graphics glitches on it from time to time".
What happened?
"Err, uhm, well - it's just crashed, can you please remote to my computer?"
Well, I can't see your monitors faults by just remoting to it, unless it's a graphics driver issue?
"Err, well you see, err...I was in a hurry this morning, and I left my laptop next to the car door, and I ran over it with my car"
Hi, service - how can I help you?
"Hi, I've got an issue with Excel, I'm trying to work on a project, and my document is locked to another user, could you release the user?"
Yes of course (goes trough a sh*t ton of server information to locate user, browse through documents...) Is your document such.and.such?
"Yes, it's version 1021 in (extremely long complex name)
Hm...no search function in our tools, (browses a server, goes trough a ton of revised documents with the same name, with one change)...found it,
there's a user using it currently, are you sure they're not working on it?
"Hm, well, oh , Janet, maybe she's working on the case, but I gotta check if she's still at work brb..."
Waiting...
"It's okay, you can kick her out".
(Kicks user off document on server).
Hi, Service - how may I help you?
"I'm extremely frustrated, this cr*p piece of **** has for the 100th time crashed, and I can't get to work if the documents keep vanishing like this"
Okay, what happened.
"I called you guys like a 100 times, and every time I gotta call you to fix this, why is this not properly done?"
Well, you see...we're hundreds of call center workers here, and you could perhaps give us your Case ID so we can see what has been done before?
"Case ID? I got so many of them, which one do you want, and can you prevent this from happening again so I don't have to call you guys 100 times a week to just get my work done?"
(gets a case number)
Well, is the case about outlook not syncing again?
"No, No No no, that's a different case, oh and btw. that one isn't solved either, so keep that one open, and here's another case number, how come you guys don't know what I have reported? I've called so many times!?"
Well, we're literally hundreds of thousands of coworkers, and it's hard for a small team of a few hundred to keep track on everything everyone in the world is working on, that's why it's so important that you have a case number so we can see what has been done to help you."
(user finally gets it)
"ok ok, ok...(finds correct case number)" could you please remote to my desktop so I can show you?"
Sure...(remotes to desktop, finds out what software out of the 3000+ solutions we have user is using), oh it's running in a browser I see.
"Browser, I'm just clicking on a link on the desktop!"
Yes, it's a link that opens a specific page in Internet Explorer.
"Whatever, just fix the problem, okay?"
Ok, let's try some simple stuff first (clears cache, restarts browser, remote-app works!)
"Oh so now it works, how can I prevent this from happening again?"
(explains to user about the simple steps of clearing the cache).
"But, I'm not an IT supporter, how am I supposed to learn this? This is YOUR job, not mine! CLICK!...dut dut dut dut)..
Yes please!
Google DUPLEX NOW!
PLEASE! I beg of you! Take our jobs!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
So this article went in a different way than I assumed based on the headline.
I had interpreted it as being able to tell Google Assistant "Hey, call Comcast Tech support and get them to fix my internet" (which, of course, you'd ask Google Assistant on your phone, since your home internet is broken) and then just forget about it until you get a message from Google the next day saying "I spent 15 hours on hold and went through twelve layers of tech support escalation, but finally found someone who wasn't a moron and your internet should be working now."
And I'm just saying that's the kind of technology that I'd love to see come out of Google.
Of course, the danger for Google is that people will figure out that they can say "OK Google, call YouTube and find out why my video got demonetized.", but I get the impression that Google is big enough that they've passed that threshold of "The right hand doesn't know which foot the left is shooting."
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
I've gotten some calls, in which after I say "hello", I hear a lady's voice saying something like, "Hi, I'm Mary, and I'm the administrator." But she doesn't say what she's the administrator of.
Once after I responded to her, the voice started to repeat the sentence in exactly the same way. But she only got half-way through her sentence the second time, and then she hung up.
So I figured the voice in my calls was a recording. But maybe it was this Google voice assistant, or something like it.
I've had numerous AI calls recently trying to sell me stuff. It starts "Hello, how are you today"- and responds appropriately based on how your reply. The last one I had I wanted to play around with so I said "purple cauliflower" when it asked me how I was to see how it would respond.
It hung up on me... I think that last one was a real person not an AI- surprised she gave up so easily.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
"This resulted in a public outcry at the implication of people in the future not knowing whether they were talking to humans or machines,"
Personally I prefer communicating with machines. We are more efficient, less chit-chat.
"purple cauliflower" - Hah!
Sales calls to me sometimes start out similarly:
Me: Hello. ...
Him: Hi (then he struggles with my name), I'm John with company X. How are you today?
Me: Fine.
Him: Good, I'm glad to hear that. Well, the reason that I'm calling is
I suppose his part could be automated some day. But it's not now - they wouldn't write the software to struggle over my name so awkwardly.