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Google Assistant’s new features are futuristic, but frightening

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Sushant Talwar
Sushant TalwarMay 11, 2018 | 17:28

Google Assistant’s new features are futuristic, but frightening

This year's I/O 2018 was a bag full of surprises. During the keynote address, a number of key announcements were made that could have a major impact on the world of technology in the coming days. However, the most interesting of them were the artificial intelligence-backed enhancements to Google Assistant that arguably make it the most advanced voice-based personal assistant out there. 

The new set of features, which include six or more new voices, will see Google Assistant get the ability to have human-like conversations and even make appointments on a user’s behalf. Furthermore, in what looks to be an effort to distance itself from the ever increasing questions over the bankruptcy of ethics and morality in Silicon Valley, the tech giant is also promising to make its voice assistant more responsible than ever. 

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To this effect, it is adding to the assistant's code, lines that will help it improve the user's “digital well-being”. There is also a feature that the company explains will help teach "good manners". The “pretty please” feature which encourages children to say please when interacting with Google's voice bases assistant, tackles the concern that impressionable children are becoming impolite because they are talking to more digital assistants. 

While the latter is an interesting feature, it is features like "Duplex" that make the Google Assistant a thing straight out of an HG Wells novel.

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The most life-like AI yet

Though not on the same scale as the invention of the smartphone, Duplex is still arguably the most forward-looking, and possibly the most life-altering technological achievement in recent times. It may not be a leap of the level of quantum computing, but it is, in its own right a leap that could change how individuals and businesses function in the coming days. 

As Google explains in a blog post, “allowing people to interact with technology as naturally as they interact with each other has been a long-standing promise... Google Duplex takes a step in this direction, making interaction with technology via natural conversation a reality in specific scenarios.”

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Because of its potential of enabling life-like conversations between humans and machines, this technology which will be functional by the end of the year could have a profound impact on us all, and the proof of it was the recordings of simple phone calls that Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, played back during the first day of I/O 2018.

 

 

Among them was a call placed by the Assistant to a hair salon in which it sounded incredibly natural, and so human-like that the person on the other end, taking the appointment had no idea that he was talking to an AI and not a blood and bones human being. He also played another recording of a call made to a restaurant by the virtual assistant to reserve a table at a restaurant. 

Though the latter didn't go as smooth as the first call made to the hair salon, and little confusion prevailed, both calls showed off the possibilities that Duplex holds. With perfectly timed pauses, verbal ticks like "um", "uh" and a “mmhmmm” in the first call, the calls showed off how close to real life the new technology is. Some would even argue that the voice assistant performed even better than a real person as many of us find it a little difficult to make fluent conversations with strangers.  

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The natural interaction that the AI managed to have with the person at the end of the call showed not just how well the feature has been programmed but also goes to show how deeply it understands human behaviour, its reactions to certain situations and how even humans pace their conversations.

But should this leap in technology concern us? Well, it probably should.

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Why it's concerning

As a technology, Duplex brings together advancements in speech recognition, deep learning, and text-to-speech technology to create something that is futuristic, and extremely forward-looking. A technology that we would imagine only being talked about in an HG Wells novel or a Black Mirror episode. And that is where the problem lies. 

At a time when people around the world are contemplating how the reach of technologies inversely impact us, and data theft and even invasion of privacy have become part and parcel of our daily lives, its important to take a step back and assess the negative impact that technologies such as Duplex, and Google Assistant could have on us. 

Yes, there is no denying the benefits of such technologies, and the potential promise to push us towards a future filled with scientific innovation, but what also needs to be remembered is that these sophisticated technologies can very easily be used to carry out sophisticated scams on a large scale. 

Not like bots don't exist already, but services like Duplex will take the game a notch up. Our interactions with them for now are over text, thus mitigating the potential for misuse. Over a call, it will become a perfect nightmare for many small businesses, and individuals who will not be able to make informed decisions based on who they are conversing with on the other end. 

The technology at hand, thus also holds within its grasp the ability to trick people in ways that we never thought before. It could catch them at their most vulnerable and confidently smooth talk its way into digging out information that you may otherwise not disclose to a call centre operative. 

However, this is not to say that a technology like Duplex is evil and will bring about an AI apocalypse. Rather, the argument is that we need checks and balances. Checks and balances that we currently cannot guarantee. 

Last updated: May 11, 2018 | 17:50
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