The fact that they think it's okay to have bots pretending to be human making phone calls, shortly after demonstrating how quickly they can copy someone's voice (re: John Legend), it shows a blatant disregard for what they're creating.
They explicitly say:
> We want to be clear about the intent of the call so businesses understand the context.
You note:
> laws against what they're doing needs to be passed.
What makes you say that robots making phone calls should be illegal? This seems an odd position to have. Do you also believe that it should be illegal for robots to clean floors? Or for your machine learning spam filter to process and filter your emails?
If I sound a little frustrated, I am. I'm scared that the future where technology allows us to do more with less will be blunted due to calls for making robot tasks illegal. I'd love if you'd help me understand what makes you take your position - I'm sure it's logical, and it's just a matter of me being able to understand your perspective. Can you help me understand?
We need to be able to trust our communication, and we're moving away from that at light speed. Where a company whose entire business model is to subtly influence you in the directions profitable to them is the middleman in all of our communications.
I am terrified of this. I am not sure I've ever seen a presentation that terrified me more that wasn't out of a science fiction movie.
Would you have the same fears if Apple were able to (through some ridiculous miracle) achieve the same thing?
I'm not sure what you're arguing for - that you wish companies weren't driving technological advancement? That Google specifically shouldn't?
Also, it's very, very conceivable that there are people for whom this technology DOES work for. The mute, for example. I'm not sure it's appropriate to speak for all of "us".
I too want to absolutely, without a doubt, regulate or slow this stuff down until we can better understand how it can be abused. And WHEN it is abused, we have ways to address it and aren't constantly playing catchup to how people are badly using these things.
"Are you a bot?" "Yes, I am Google Duplex v1.2. This call is being recorded; you can see our privacy policy and terms of service at http://google.com/duplex."
If I were to start receiving Duplex calls, and could detect it, I would report each one to the FTC.
People will be forced to "discover" that they've been lied to, when the bot is caught in a loop and they're going through emotional distress thinking the "person" on the other end is having some sort of mental breakdown.
That said, "identify on challenge" is something that Google might be more likely to adopt rather than "identify on call pickup". The latter being something they might spend more lobbyist dollars to oppose.
But what you've said is certainly (or should be) a real concern.
We’ve arrived at full Luddism now where life saving and time saving technology in fields like health, transportation, and customer service will be inhibited by hyperbolic fearmongering.
Are you going to pass laws against realistic sounding synthetic voices? Against computers that understand queries “too well”? Against self driving vehicles that drive better and safer than people? All on theoretical harm that actually hasn’t taken place because you’ve watched too many dystopian Netflix sci-fi episodes?
I don’t know what’s more dangerous, the real Skynet, or people who might harm millions by voting for political policies that inhibit real improvements that could be made to help them.
At least, if you want to talk AI being used for harmful things we could discuss feed optimization that parasitizes people’s attention spans and keeps them glued or wasting money on pulling more slot machine levers. Technology that wastes people’s time and money as opposed to things that make people more efficient.
Of course, I don't really see why there needs to be an attempt to pass as human at all. It would be fine with me if they just reinvented the phone tree with a better ux. Especially since it's billed as a business-facing call.
Voice copying is nothing new, many methods exists so I don't see how Google doing this is somehow bad. It's uncanny to say the least, but laws against tech progress? Come on :)
Did you think that advancing AI will be not creepy especially when it's good?
What is concerning is the surprising prevalence of technophobic notions on tech focused boards such as this.
There is something perverse about wanting to punish a company for creating something cool, and it’s certainly not the way our society or politics should function.
But at the same time, the last two years have shown us that a lot of technology is being very effectively abused to misinform at a geopolitical level, and we as a society need to better understand or regulate this stuff for sure. Lives are at stake.
That said, I'd never say that Google shouldn't work on this. It's amazing. We just need to better understand not just how it can be used, but also how it can be abused.
But it's also "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should."
They shouldn't've.
If a real problem of deep-fakes in phone conversations emerges, people will just raise the bar of authentication in phone communications. There's nothing magical about telephone that makes it exempt from the general need to protect against social engineering.
One issue though, unless we hurry up and make this WoT decentralized and with open protocols, well, we will get it from FB and the likes.
Furthermore, if a robocall is permitted to be made to an unsolicited destination, a robocaller must clearly identify itself, presumably starting a declaration that it is a bot/automated agent from a given company on behalf of another company or individual.
And if the call is recorded in any way, shape, or form, the terms of service would need to be presented to the callee, giving them the chance to accept or deny said terms. (Note that if the example calls at I/O were not staged, and real calls, I suspect the recording of them would be illegal in many jurisdictions, including California.)
Existing robocall law (including the National Do Not Call registry in the US) is focused around telemarketing. This isn't a telemarketing system; it's an automated assistant. I don't see the utility of applying the existing law to the new use case, as the goals are different (people at home don't want to be interrupted to be advertised at; businesses do want to negotiate business transactions).
> Furthermore, if a robocall is permitted to be made to an unsolicited destination, a robocaller must clearly identify itself, presumably starting a declaration that it is a bot/automated agent from a given company on behalf of another company or individual.
Why? If I have an assistant who makes an unsolicited call to a destination, they don't need to formally state they're acting on my behalf. What about automating the assistant's job makes it special?
I agree with you on the third point (I'm assuming Google has its bases covered there, because unilaterally recording a conversation is old and settled law).
The issue is that the intermediary is a Google corporate entity, theoretically acting on the user's behalf, but at the end of the day, acting on Google's behalf. Consider that Google's bots may do things in Google's best interests, not the best interests of the party on either side of the transaction.
As we already have assistants who transmit our desires by proxy, I don't see much difference between a human and an automated script in that context---certainly not enough difference to justify the need for special-purpose law to clarify the nature of my assistant (and definitely not enough difference to justify shutting down the technology with only vague risk and no instances of social problems introduced by the tech).
Interesting implications there for how Google will measure / improve the effectiveness of Duplex. Where is the line drawn between recording a call and recording data derived from a call? e.g. clearly recording the call unilaterally is illegal. Presumably just storing a hash of the audio data would be legal, but also useless. Is there some middle ground that is legal, but also useful?