Google Duplex, Artificial Intelligence More Real Than Nature

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Google Duplex, Artificial Intelligence More Real Than Nature
Forbes
Forbes May 19, 2018
Google
Google presents Google Duplex, the new sensation in artificial intelligence | Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
Imagine having a smart conversation with a computer. Imagine that the computer does not need to repeat what you just said, or that you do not need to ask what you just asked for. Imagine that he answers with a voice that does not look like a robot. Well, let me introduce you to Google Duplex, which could be the most human computer.

Google I / O, the annual conference of Google developers, has just closed, and many articles tell us about the best moments of this meeting. One of them caught my attention. This was a report on how Google Duplex and Google Assistant can handle calls. The most fascinating thing is that it is not a reactive chatbot or an interactive voice system. In other words, this technology was not designed for a help desk, although it may do the trick. It is actually a proactive assistant who can make calls to, for example, book a table at the restaurant or make an appointment at the hairdresser. The assistant interacts with the person on the other end of the phone as if he were human. It can even emit confirmation sounds like "mmm-hmm" and can identify human voice patterns and adapt to the speed of the conversation.

It started when Google CEO Sundar Pichai demonstrated the technology with a recording of two phone conversations. You can listen to these conversations here, and I urge you to do so. They will surely leave you speechless. And they can even scare you a little.

For the first call, whose goal was to make an appointment in a hair salon, the receptionist of the show asks the client (Google assistant) to wait. The assistant responds with a "mmm-hmm", which causes applause and laughter in the room. There is no doubt that the hairdresser did not know she was dealing with artificial intelligence technology (but it is ethically interesting to wonder if the Google assistant should have appeared).

A little later in the same article, there is the recording of the second conversation during which the assistant wishes to make a reservation in the restaurant. Despite the awkward responses of the restaurant employee, the Google Assistant handles perfectly phone call.

Here is my opinion. We are entering an era where conversations with machines are reaching new heights of quality and reliability. There is a lot of room for improvement, but as we can see in the demonstration, the technology is improving and at a pace that would make Lewis Hamilton or Sébastien Loeb proud. Even 2001 Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick's film, in which we find H.A.L. 9000, which for me remains a benchmark in interactive voice technology, is not what we need in the very near future. In one or two years, companies like Google, IBM, Salesforce and other giants in the artificial intelligence sector will continue to try to give it a voice and make it more human.

However, I still think that artificial intelligence's capabilities will not allow it immediately to interact with humans in a more complex way. Even with such a plausible conversation, and the opportunity for computers to recognize the other person's feelings and mood, this technology is not ready to be used for anything other than simple, rudimentary interactions. Conversation with a chatbot is real, the voice conversation with an artificial intelligence follows suit and will not delay.

But when you look at the incredible progress of this technology, and the speed with which they arrived, I'm sure the capabilities for a more complex interaction are about to emerge. Are you ready to use this technology in your daily life? There is no doubt that this technology will be used by businesses. If you do not use a type of artificial intelligence yet, you should think about it. Today, this technology offers many ways to streamline your business processes.