Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Let’s Talk About Google Duplex!”.
All right boy: do we have some artificial intelligence to talk about today, hey what is up guys mkbhd here and yesterday was the day one 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 will 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 that we got one of the most interesting new announcements it 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 p would be called. We still don’t know, but they shared a behavior in there 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 it’s 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 gets you a reservation for that Hair appointment at around noon: this is what it sounds like so happening out. There hi i’m calling to book a women’s haircut for our clients, um, i’m looking for something on may 3rd store. Give me one second! Or what time are you looking for around at 12 p.m? We do not have a 12 pm available. The closest we have to that is a 1 15.. Do you have anything between 10 am and uh 12 pm, 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.
Am 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. Okay, great thanks great. Have a great day bye, what did i just did? That was actually amazing? Did google assistant just pass the turing test? Did that just i think 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 um, i’m looking for something on may 3rd, it’s so human, it’s so human, especially the way it responds to those questions like i mean.
I guess that lady could have 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 um i’d like to reserve a table for wednesday v7. 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 to reserve a table for wednesday v7 they’re using that um that little pause specifically to mimic a human like That google programmed it, they told it to to make those sounds to convince the person that they’re talking to to believe that they’re speaking on the phone with a human and the rest of that call went great too.
It has some more challenging things. It was dealing with an accent, some unusual questions they had to respond to, but it nailed it for seven people um it’s for four people, four people when today wednesday at 6 pm. Oh actually, we literally for like upper like five people for four people. You can come.
How long is the weight usually to uh, be seated when tomorrow or weekday or for next wednesday, uh, the seven? Oh? No, it’s not too busy you. You can count for four people. Okay! Oh i gotcha thanks! Oh my gosh. I like that guy’s reaction to 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 below the 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., like we’ve, all gotten those those robocalls that are obviously fake, right, they’re like hi, i’m i’m karen want to go on a cruise like you ask it one question, and it immediately falls apart, like this seems like it. 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 when 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 what 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 ta tell them. You got ta 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 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 gon na they’re, probably gon na hang up they’re, not gon na wan na 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 our end that you know all the the ums and the pauses and 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 to just make a hair appointment for me on monday. I don’t really have the time to call i’m gon na go get on the train to work just make that appointment for me, and now it’s gon na start doing that. But then next the goal post is gon na, 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 hitting 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 and excellent and useful in this box.
But you got to keep it in that box. But 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 going to 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, when 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 fooled and then it then it 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 gon na go with these these robot assistants in our lives? Google duplex really triggering 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, .