Gadgetory

this phone call blew my mind I want you to listen to it very very carefully it sounds like an ordinary call at first but trust me the twist at the end is worth it good evening hello hello hi I'd like to reserve a table for Friday the 3rd hold on one moment mm-hmm okay so Friday November 3rd how many people for two people two people yeah what time 5:00 p.m. okay and your name the first name is Daniel that's da and ie L okay you're all set okay great thanks see you next Friday okay thank you fight so did you pick up on anything unusual there because as it turns out the guy in that phone call is a robot specifically Google assistant specifically you can ask your Google assistant on your phone or you rule home to make a reservation for you and it can call and do it and that's what it sounds like holy smokes so think about the implications here there was hums and ahhs there were pauses in it it sounded natural back and forth you could tell it was a robot just a little bit because there was a little bit of formality to the phrasing where there might not have been otherwise but it sounded like a human that is so cool and it can do more than just make a reservation at a set time it can actually work with more complex tasks if you give it a range listen to the second phone call now happening healthier hi I'm calling to book a woman's haircut for our client I'm looking for something on May 3rd sure give me one couple mm-hmm so what time are you looking for around at 12:00 p.m. we do not have a 12 p.m. available the closest we have to that is a 1:15 do you have anything between 10:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. depending on what service she would like what service is she looking for just a woman's haircut for now ok we have a 10 o'clock 10:00 a.m. is fine okay what's her first name the first name is Lisa okay perfect so I will see Lisa at 10 o'clock on May 3rd ok great thanks great have a great day bye so again that was a robot how awesome is that it was able to adapt to a different time request it was able to remember what type of hair appointment you wanted I was able to do all of that just like it was your human secretary it's a leap right it's a moon shot and we have the same questions you do it's what happens when it hits an extension what happens if it can't recognize the voice of the person that's talking to you what if the person's particularly verbose are implicit in their language what happens if it gets put on hold so what we know is that at the start this thing is going to be made for simple tasks making a reservation making an appointment and anything more complex than that it's going to no it's not going to be able to do in other words it's gonna be self-aware and that's why it's gonna have this training center in place the robot is trying to make a call and unable to complete it it will get kicked to a call center for a human to finish up log the error and then hopefully complete back to you so I obviously think this thing is so dang cool but you have to take this plate of Awesomeness and let's add one scoop of creepy to the top and another seeping scoop of skepticism all we heard was that demo we didn't see a live demo there's still a lot of features they need to iron out it's really cool in theory and it is such a huge step over what assistants can do now and you heard it it sounds almost like an actual person so I'm hoping this is as good as we want it to be and I suppose we're gonna see for ourselves pretty soon goodbye