Gadgetory

artificial intelligence was at the core of Google's announcements at their Developers Conference a I'm making calls powering Android and Google Maps photos Gmail and even at the doctor's office as some of this borders on sci-fi others border on creepy we're going to go through the risks and benefits of google's AI future what you're going to hear is the google assistant actually calling a real salon to schedule the appointment for you I'm looking for something on May 3rd ok so I can get behind a technology that saves me from having to call the hair salon but I'm pretty skeptical about this one because we didn't see any live demos as it was all pre-recorded there's the number of ways this could go wrong because at the end of the day you are talking to a human so she can't be pre-programmed to answer every single question and I don't know if I'm gonna end up with something completely different than what I originally set out to get from this call yeah I could see your concerns with that but I would think when Google is going to implement this for real-life usage they would probably figure out who is being called with this robot that's powered by duplex because if they're calling private numbers that would seem a little creepy especially if they don't tell you hey I'm a robot or I'm working through Google assistant perhaps it's gonna be more business-focused this is all speculation by my part but then again I don't think Google is going to just introduce something like this without thinking it all the way through we use machine learning to start suggesting phrases for you as you type all you need to do is to hit tab and keep order completing I like smart compose because anytime I don't have to do the thinking and replying in an email I'll actually properly write a response otherwise like what is this person talking about what is the nut of this maybe it'll work as well as smart replies ok but what about the smart compose fails it's like the autocomplete fails on your text messages I already have enough of those and I write in two languages and so that even makes for even more autocomplete fails so I can imagine the gibberish that I'm gonna be writing an email and potentially because it's a more office setting to my boss so I am a little bit apprehensive about the Gmail smart compose would Android P we're going to beyond simply predicting the next act to launch to predicting the next action you want to take we call this feature after actions so let's take a look at how it works at the top of the launcher you can see two actions one to call my sister Fiona and another for my evening run so what's happening here is that the actions are being predicted based on my usage patterns the phone is adapting to me and trying to help me get to my next task more quickly you don't with the app action sign I like it because I get to think less what's coming up next what I have to do next because I will forget from one second to the next Android knows and that's a load off my shoulders yeah but then I want to I want to have free will what if what if you suggest something but I didn't want to do but all of a sudden I want to do it because it suggested it's the power of suggestion and I don't want to be a part of it I want to have ultimate responsibility of where I'm going next and I don't want anybody to know me better than I know myself it's creepy but you don't have to follow everything it says you know you can just say no and then it will learn how you are now but then it already put it in my brain is I think that'll be fine another area where AI can help is to actually help doctors predict medical events turns our doctors have a lot of difficult decisions to make and for them getting advanced notice say 24 to 48 hours before a patient is likely to get very sick that's a tremendous difference in the outcome okay this we can agree on we can definitely get behind a in medicine because it's not going to take people's jobs it's not going to replace doctors it's just gonna enhance the amount of information they have and they can assess in one sitting it was incredible to watch how much information they could just determine from your retina see my big thing several people my family are doctors to get overworked and if anything can lighten their load or make the decision making a little sharper I think that tool be welcomed really blew the easily so easy the photos under expose our AI systems offer a solution to fix the brightness right there or if you happen to have a very special memory something in black and white we can recreate that moment in color and make that moment even more real and special you can really get behind the new Google Photos it's got colorization options it's got smart fixes so you don't even need to tinker around the settings to find out how do I adjust this to make it better and then you can make your old photos in color and pdfs and at the end of the day you already gave all your information to Google Photos because if you're already using it they already know who everybody on your photo reel is so might as well yeah so I guess that's kind of like three-quarters up sure you open the camera and you start to see lens surface proactively all the information instantly and it even anchors that information to the things that you see definitely I think we can both agree on this one is I mean my one of my favorite features was the ability to search using visual search so for example I do this all the time where I see it an outfit that I like and I want to know where to buy it so all I would have to do is point the camera and I'd have all this information about where to find it same thing with the copy/paste of text in real life that's amazing the augmented reality concepts that can be applied with google lens seems so useful just being able to identify what exactly am I looking at it sounds like something that should've been solved by now but maybe it really is I really hope it works like the demos should our teams have been working really hard to combine the power of the camera the computer vision with Street View and maps to reimagine walking navigation so here's how it could look like in Google Maps let's take a look you open the camera all right this is really cool to be able to see the directions in your environment that takes me out of the screen right here and avoids me from running into the stuff running into people running into oncoming traffic and who doesn't want to follow the Fox I love when I'm visiting a new town I basically have to spin around to check where I am and like it's a dot moving I'm gonna move three steps this way oh the dot I'm going the wrong way with a are just look up and you can see where you're supposed to go I really love that idea game shader I have no sense of direction so ultimately it comes down to how much information you're willing to share to gain access to these pretty cool features some of these features won't be really customer hands for a while but others will be available in the coming weeks we're going to have to ask yourself these same questions so tell us what you think about these new features cool or creepy respond in the comments below