Google Duplex service scares with its beautiful and correct speech, there are dissatisfied



    A few days ago, Google introduced several new products, which excited both the representatives of the telecommunications sector and ordinary people. One of them is the Google Duplex service; it is a weak form of AI that can call a barber shop instead of its user and record a person for a certain time.

    Duplex can be considered a kind of digital human assistant, and much more "human" than the same Siri or Cortana. The assistant cannot conduct normal dialogues, his work concerns only the appointment of a meeting or reception time. But the “speech” of the virtual assistant sounds very realistic. It is unlikely that any of us could distinguish it from the speech of an ordinary person. And just this similarity has frightened some information security specialists.

    It may seem a bit strange that the corporation decided to develop a service specifically for phones. After all, now almost all companies have the possibility of online booking. Why not teach an assistant to work online? It turned out that the service was primarily designed for the United States. And there, according to statistics provided by the corporation, about 60% of small companies do not offer the function of online booking, taking orders only by phone. Perhaps the company created Duplex only as a demonstration of its capabilities, who knows.

    But not everyone likes these features. I don’t like many ordinary people, cybersecurity experts and organizations that the other person doesn’t know who he is talking to. That is, the robot does not appear, and the conversation is so similar to a human one that you can be deceived.


    According to some experts, Silicon Valley began to produce ethically incorrect projects that can not be released to the public. And if, in the case of ordinary robotic voices, everything is more or less clear, they are unlikely to deceive anyone, forcing them to think of themselves as a person. That with Duplex is not so clear.

    Yes, in science fiction films, the voices of robots in most cases are not different from human ones, and the robots themselves are similar to humans. But in reality, not everyone is satisfied with this state of affairs. Stewart Brand, the author of several publications on technology, believes that the voices of robots should be a bit synthetic, so that a person can distinguish a live interlocutor from a digital one.

    Scott Huffman, Executive Director, Google Assistant,said the public reaction to the Duplex demonstration was mixed. Some people marveled at the technical excellence of the demos. Others were worried about the moral aspect of the project and the possible consequences of introducing the service (after it is ready) into the lives of people.


    Huffman himself believes that if the robot’s voice is given a “synthetic hue”, then the people to whom the system will dial will simply start to hang up - no one wants to deal with an incomprehensible robot. And the task before the developers was not to deceive people, but to give the robot the opportunity to fulfill the task - to help the user. The line here is thin, but it is quite possible to understand the motives of the developers.

    It is also worth noting here that the list of tasks that Duplex can perform is very narrow. Step to the right, step to the left - and the system will no longer understand what they are talking to. If you ask Duplex about something that does not concern the time of work or the menu, then it becomes immediately clear who is talking to - the service will simply not have answers. And by the way, the system from Google is not the only reservation service in restaurants. OpenTable is another such service from a third-party company. And no one worries that he is "pretending to be a man."

    Whatever it was, but most experts do not consider the service "dangerous." There may be some unexpected consequences of the introduction of Duplex and similar humanoid services, but they are unlikely to cause inconvenience to anyone. However, Google is a commercial company, which is extremely important customer feedback. And for this reason, Duplex is likely to be forced to present when it calls.

    Also popular now: