In Google’s 2018 I/O developer conference, Google Assistant’s new “Duplex” technology has become a major focus. This new “Duplex” technology not only can imitate our voices (human voices) to make appointments for places such as restaurants and salons, it also can imitate the talking habits that we apply when we speak; even the person who picks up the phone won’t realize that he/she is not speaking to a human. Certainly, this technology is admiring and exciting. However, at the same time, should humans be concerned about being substituted by artificial intelligence eventually?
Google Assistant was initially debuted in the 2016’s I/O developer conference. It only took two years to enable virtual assistants to be able to make natural and continuous dialogues. The voice tones of these virtual assistants sound so vivid and fascinating that even humans can’t distinguish the difference between AI and the human voice. Unlike Siri and Alexa, this new technology “Duplex” sounds way more human. For computers, it is quite difficult to sound just like humans because computers are used to receiving precise instructions. Also, humans are often inaccurate when they are speaking, which makes it even more difficult. For instance, when we are speaking, we often mixed our conversations with many auxiliary and nonsense words. Before ending a sentence, we tend to suddenly divert the content of the entire sentence. Moreover, we tend to eliminate some words when speaking and pause when we feel like pausing the conversation.
“Yeah…”, “umm…”, “well…”, “like….”; these are the most common auxiliary words we use when we talk. They are used to provide a soothing effect between expressions. The following video shows the “Duplex” call demo for making salon appointments. By listening to this demo, we can hear that “Duplex” added “umm…” in her sentence naturally and cleverly.
The next video shows the “Duplex” call demo for making restaurant reservations. In the second demonstration, we can hear that “Duplex” initially asked for reserving tables but then was told that no reservations are needed since the restaurant is not busy at that time. “Duplex” not only instantly understands the “no reservations are needed” situation but also knows how to ask “how long is the wait usually to be seated”. By listening to the two demos, we can see that those who pick up the phone did not notice that they are not talking to humans.
Certainly, “Duplex” has amazingly changed the interaction between machines and humans. But some problems also follow when such technology emerges. First of all, does “Duplex” has the obligation to inform humans that they are actually talking to Artificial Intelligence? This is a dilemma. Imagine one picked up the phone and heard: “hey I am a robot!”. This will definitely freak people out and hung up immediately. In addition, no matter how trivial a conversation is, it ultimately has some social value in it. If we can’t tell whether the other side of the phone is a real person or AI, wouldn’t it enable people to become suspicious and weaken their trust in what they see and hear? Lastly, what if the emergence of this technology becomes a hierarchical privilege that allows those who possess this technology to let “Duplex” deal with dull and boring conversations for humans when they are sick of these kinds of conversations? Is the advent of AI going to create distances between humans? This might be a question that is worth pondering.
Sources:
https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/05/duplex-ai-system-for-natural-conversation.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47xJkeG9BZI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjS_nXzwbN8
I personally think “Duplex” is a significant innovation in the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI). From the 2 videos above, I learned that Duplex is able to talk like a human. Its voice is so real and lively that the person who talk to it does not even know he/she is talking to a robot. Therefore, I think Duplex can be integrated into an IoT system. For example, I write all the things I need to do in my phone’s schedule. Then, my phone will check the schedules to see which one require reservations in advance. My phone will send signals to Duplex, and Duplex will make reservations for me like it did in the videos above. If I delete a schedule after the reservation is made, my phone will send another signal to Duplex to cancel the reservation. If the reservation cannot be cancelled, Duplex will send signal back to my phone and notice me. By integrating Duplex into the IoT system, it can not only save me plenty amount of time, but also prevent accidents such as forget making reservation happen.
Besides, Duplex may replaces some jobs such as telephone customer services in the future. Now we know for sure that Duplex can handle simple tasks on the telephone such as making reservations. I think it’s highly possible that Duplex will be able to answer simple customer questions on the telephone in the future. By using Duplex to answer simple phone calls which do not require much expertise, a company can significantly reduce its costs and thus achieve greater efficiency.
In my opinion, Duplex not only used the natural smooth voice to communicate with the human on the other end of the phone, but the other party did not realize that the call was actually an “AI”, and in the second recording it successfully handled the unexpected. Development status outside. Many merchants do not have their own online booking system and still use online booking. Duplex can help them make it easy for users to make reservations through Google Assistant without changing their daily behavior or training their staff. Duplex also reduces the need for users to place pigeons, automatically reminds users of bookings on their phones, and helps users easily cancel or reschedule their time.
In some cases, the user will call the merchant to inquire about the business hours, such as the business hours during the holidays, which are generally not visible on the online information page of the store. Duplex can make this information public through Google services after calling, eliminating the need for other users to call the same phone, ask the same questions, and save the merchants manpower. At the same time, the merchants themselves are doing business as usual, and this new technology does not require them to learn any skills or make any changes to enjoy the convenience.