Gadgetory

we have some artificial intelligence to talk about today hey what is up guys I'm Kip EHD here and yesterday was the day 1 keynote the main keynote of Google i/o 2018 and they always go hard with software there and this year was no exception so we got all kinds of great announcements new android p features especially the interesting new gesture navigation which would be interesting to play around with pretty shortly new Google News stuff new Google Maps features Android dashboard all this great stuff and in the middle of all of that we got one of the most interesting new announcements went by it was kind of early if you tuned in late you might have missed it maybe you were just tuning in to find out what Android pee would be called so don't know but they sure to behavior and they're called Google duplex and it's a behavior inside of Google assistant that they're still working on it's a long way from being finished or from us ever using it so maybe a couple years from that but that's what it's called so you know how they're always adding new new features to Google assistant to make your life easier you know new reminders new routines new predictive things new things it does to help you out google duplex will make it so that you never have to call a service business ever again so let's say I want to get a haircut next Monday at around noon and this is at a place that doesn't do online reservations so you have to call in to make your reservation and you're not really into that so what you want to do is ask Google assistant hey assistant make an appointment for my haircut next Monday around noon and it will actually call that hair salon pretend to be a human talk to the person that picks up and get you a reservation for that hair appointment at around noon is what it sounds like the woman's haircut to our clients I'm looking for something on May 3rd so I give me one second mm-hmm for what time are you looking for a loan at 12 p.m. we do not have a quality 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 okay we have a 10 o'clock 10:00 a.m. is fine okay what's your first name the first name is Lisa I'll take perfect so I will see you leave at 10 o'clock on May 3rd okay please Thanks great Mother's Day did I just did that was actually amazing did Google assistant just pass the Turing test did that just I think it it literally just did that was a that was a real conversation with a real person at a real salon that is both amazing and kind of terrifying it also makes Siri look really bad it had all the right inflections and pauses and just the intonation the way it talks was very convincing like I don't know if I was on the other end of that phone and I got that phone call I don't know that I would think that that was a robot if I wasn't told ahead of time I pretty sure I would have been convinced that's a human I'm looking for something I'm a bird it's so human it's so human especially the way it responds to those questions like I mean I guess that lady could asked anything but it's very tunneled in on making that appointment and it was just uncanny they did another demo on stage as well hi I'm Wendy okay wait pause right there that um in that sentence that little pause the um it didn't have to do that um but it did hi um I'd like people for when they they're using that um that little pause specifically to mimic a human like that google program that they told it to to make those sounds to convince the person that they are talking to to believe that they're speaking on the phone with a human and the rest of that call on great too it has some more challenging things it was dealing with an accent some unusual questions that had to respond to but it nailed it it's for four people Oh actually we up were like a five people four people before you can come how long is the way usually to be seated well when tomorrow for next Wednesday the 7th oh no it's not too busy you can cover for people okay oh I got you bang my god I like that guy's reaction too at the end he's like I don't know if I just witnessed the scariest or most amazing thing that I've ever seen so there's that on stage and there's also a bunch more examples in a blog post that Google's posted I'll drop a link with like button where there's a bunch more scenarios of things that they've gotten it to successfully navigate through in this human conversation so that just brings me back to how I feel about it a whole day later and really from what I've seen there's there's two main sides to this number one is the incredible technical achievement of Google with the machine learning and the artificial intelligence and the natural language processing and all of that this is the culmination of all of their years of listening to our voices to make duplex this good it really is something special in 2018 look we've all gotten those those robo calls that are obviously fake right they're like hi I'm I'm Karen want to go on a cruise like you asked it one question and it immediately falls apart like this seems like it'll legitimately make people's lives easier but then the whole other side of it and it's actually bigger than I initially was thinking is should we be worried about this so I've seen a lot of reactions to this lately on Twitter especially and in some videos of people saying this is a terrible idea like this is why would Google do this tricking somebody into thinking they're talking to a human one they're not that is deeply concerning and I understand a lot of it even though I'm mostly on the side of this particular feature being particularly helpful but like if I worked in service I think I would still want to know if when I'm not speaking to a human you know I mean like I don't have any logical reason why it doesn't even really matter on my end but it just the question is does Google have an obligation to let that person know that they're not speaking to a human didn't have any like that stylist clearly didn't know that they were speaking to a robot I think a lot of people say yes you got to tell him you got to immediately let them know that it's a robot but on the other hand if you're if you're coming from Google's point of view you have to mimic a human as closely as possible to make it work if you want to actually get the person on the oume call to pick up and respond to you and book that appointment they're listening to humans all day they're talking to people on the phone if they get a call that just says hi I'm a Google assistant like they're not gonna they're probably gonna hang up they're not want to answer that so you actually have to blend in and make it as seamless as possible for Google to do their job and the assistant to actually assist you it's just weird from RN that you know all the thumbs and the paws isn't sounding so human-like when it's not is just uncanny so I know it's not it's not full open-ended ai it's not that creepy like pseudo human robo status like it hasn't gotten quite there yet it has a very specific goal that it has to tunnel in on but I guess it's interesting that basically you can see these goal posts getting wider like back in the day we used to just say look I just want the assistant to tell me what the weather is tomorrow and just be like as human as possible so you'd say hey Google do I need a jacket tomorrow you get your answer now the goal post is look I want the assistant you just make a hair appointment for me on Monday I don't really have the time to call I'm gonna go get on the train to work just make that appointment for me and now it's gonna start doing that but then next the goal post is gonna be what like I wanted to edit my YouTube videos for me I wanted to run a company I wanted to drive me to work how far does it go I guess that's really my question at the end of this how far does it go I had this conversation briefly with Neil deGrasse Tyson actually in a video I'll link that below it's pretty sweet I would love to have this conversation with Elon Musk he talks about this kind of stuff all the time hey me up Elon but for real it's like one of those AI versus machine learning things where it kind of starts in a box and it's really convincing an excellent and useful in this box but you got to keep it in that box so my final thoughts on Google duplex are this I don't know if people care that they're talking to a robot I think there's gonna be people on both sides of the spectrum but I feel like it wouldn't be that bad if you know right off the bat you're talking to a robot like when I want I trigger the assistant on my phone or on Siri or on Alexa or any of those and it responds like a human I know it's a robot still like it can be as seamless and human-like as possible in the voice and the dictation but it's because I'm triggering it myself in my phone I know it's a robot but when you get a phone call and you answer the phone call that gets weird because you think you're answering and talking to a human and then you might like find out during that that you're actually talking to a robot and then you were old and then it denna feels weird then it feels creepy so that brings us to number two which is just how far does it go I always wonder what are we willing to do with robots that's a weird question but really how far are we gonna go with these these robot assistants in our lives Google duplex really trigger in the intense questions out here I'll hang out in the comments section below it's open-ended feel free to let me know what you guys think but until the next one thanks for watching talk to you later peace