An experimental service to have visits and places booked on the phone for you, through a voice assistant, was the most discussed novelty of Google I / O, the series of conferences organized every year by Google in San Francisco to show the projects on which is working. During the main event, a phone call was shown between the Google Assistant and the manager of a beauty salon, in which the artificial intelligence (AI) showed that it could manage a reservation by itself, imitating a human voice and typical hesitations. in such a conversation, including pauses and moans of assent. The presentation was a great success among attendees at the event, but in the hours following the system demonstrated by Google – which is called Duplex – was criticized by various experts involved in technology and the development of artificial intelligence.
The main criticism is linked to the fact that Google decided not to let Duplex reveal that it was an automatic system, while it was handling the phone call. Her synthetic voice was very natural and realistic, to the point of not making the person who answered her suspect anything. Many have therefore wondered whether it is ethically and morally acceptable for AI to work in this way in the future, imitating human beings in every aspect and without first qualifying as voice assistants living inside a smartphone or computer.
Google Assistant making calls pretending to be human not only without disclosing that it's a bot, but adding “ummm” and “aaah” to deceive the human on the other end with the room cheering it… horrifying. Silicon Valley is ethically lost, rudderless and has not learned a thing.
– zeynep tufekci (@zeynep) May 9, 2018
At the moment, the managers of Google themselves do not seem to have very clear ideas about Duplex, its potential uses and the risks it could bring with it. Yossi Mattias, one of the company's executives, said an AI of this type would “probably” qualify as such in the future before starting a phone conversation. A Google spokesperson told The Verge that certainly Duplex has a responsibility to inform his interlocutors, which was not even hinted at during the Google I / O presentation.
The problem is that if someone immediately hears on the phone that they are on the line with a robot, they think about a recorded call, one of many with commercial offers, and hang up without thinking too much. Especially in the early periods of diffusion of a new technology of this type, to get people used to it, some clues could be used including the use of a more metallic and less realistic voice, or a standard acoustic signal to be reproduced as soon as the call is answered, in so as to allow those who receive it to put themselves in the order of ideas to have to do with a virtual assistant.
The experimental demonstration by Google has also caused a lot of discussion because it took place at a time of great attention, and anxiety, towards the collection of large amounts of data and their reprocessing by technology companies. The increased computing capabilities of computers make it possible to analyze an unprecedented amount of information, often at the basis of building systems to make software learn and improve on its own, without further human intervention. Even if a real artificial intelligence is still far away, the prospect of being able to get there more easily than in the past raises many questions, both on the ethical and moral implications and on the lack of clear rules for everyone. In recent years, organizations and foundations have been born that try to encourage a conscious and responsible development of AI, which however do not seem to have sufficiently taken hold of large companies such as Google and Facebook, engaged in close competition in the sector.
Going back to Google, although Duplex's recording is quite impressive, there are some details that detract a little from the results achieved with this technology. Duplex is unable to converse on any subject, but only on a few certain topics and in areas where interactions with humans are more predictable. The process of booking a table in a restaurant by voice is not particularly complicated, if the human interlocutor does not add some unexpected requests. Duplex is however very skilled in overcoming the unexpected, hiding its shortcomings with classic solutions of voice assistants, such as repeating part of the sentence just heard to try to have it said with a different formulation, more understandable for its algorithms.
Despite the progress achieved, systems of this type are still very immature and it is therefore no coincidence that Google refers to Duplex as an “experiment”. For now, the voice assistant is able to book a table at the restaurant, make an appointment at the hairdresser and ask what days a business will be closed. However, Google says it has thought of the worst scenario: at least for now, in case Duplex gets too confusing, a human can intervene in the phone call and carry it out without any other unexpected events. Duplex will be tested on a small number of users during the summer and it is not clear if it will officially become a product, for example to be included in the features of Google Home, the device for interacting with the Google Assistant in your home.
Interviewed by Bloomberg, Scott Huffman, an executive of the division that deals with Google Assistant, said that for now the reactions to Duplex fall into two broad categories: surprise and admiration for the technical result achieved, concern about the possible consequences of the new technology. Huffman is not convinced that the solution can go through a more metallic and artificial rendering of the synthetic voice because: “People would probably hang up right away”. The proposal to show up earlier could be made standard with a phrase that is always the same, in order to get people used to it: “I'm a Google Assistant and I'm calling on behalf of my client”.
A Google spokesperson reiterated to the Post that the technology demonstrated to Google I / O is experimental and subject to changes and additions in its development phase:
We understand and appreciate the Google Duplex debate. As we have said from the beginning, transparency in technology is important. We are designing this functionality with integrated disclosure, and will ensure that the system is identified appropriately. The technology we presented at I / O is a preliminary demonstration and we hope to be able to integrate the feedback as we develop it.
