Google: AI will make everything for us

So that whole Turing test metric, wherein we gauge how human-like an AI system appears to be based on its ability to mimic our vocal affectations? At the 2018 I/O developers conference on Tuesday, Google utterly dismantled it. The company did so by having its AI-driven Assistant book a reservation. On the phone. With a live, unsuspecting human on the other end of the line. And it worked flawlessly.

During the on-stage demonstration, Google played calls to a number of businesses including a hair salon and a Chinese restaurant. At no point did either of the people on the other end of the line appear to suspect that the entity they were interacting with was a bot. And how could they when the Assistant would even throw in random “ums”, “ahhs” and other verbal fillers people use when they’re in the middle of a thought? According to the company, it’s already generated hundreds of similar interactions over the course of the technology’s development.

This robo-vocalization breakthrough comes as the result of Google’s Duplex AI system, which itself grew out of earlier Deep Learning projects such as WaveNet. As with Google’s other AI programs, like AlphaGo, Duplex is designed to perform a narrowly defined task but do it better than any human. In this case, that task is talking to people over the phone.

Duplex’s initial application, according to the company, will be in automated customer service centers. So rather than repeatedly shouting “operator” into your handset to get competent help the next time you call your bank, cable provider or power company, the digital agent will be able to assist you directly. “For such tasks, the system makes the conversational experience as natural as possible, allowing people to speak normally, like they would to another person, without having to adapt to a machine,” the release read.

But don’t expect to be able to ask the agent any random question that pops into your head. “Duplex can only carry out natural conversations after being deeply trained in such domains,” a Google release points out, “It cannot carry out general conversations.” Fingers crossed that the company trained Duplex to at least say “does not compute” in such situations.

Duplex wasn’t the only impressive AI feature announced at the conference. Google also announced a Smart Compose feature that can write emails for you, expanding on its “canned response”-style Smart Reply feature.

Google’s AI can even colorize black-and-white photos now using machine learning and advanced object recognition. Oh, and John Legend’s silky-smooth voice could be the one to book those hair appointments for you, instead of the boring default Assistant’s.

But Duplex definitely seems to be the most impressive – and, perhaps, the most useful. I, for one, can’t wait to outsource all of my phone calls to a robotic assistant.