Google Duplex will call salons, restaurants, and pretend to be human for you
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Next, google Snap! A robot that snaps its fingers at service people to get their attention...
edit: Google Glass has it's uses. The problem was that Google marketed it to consumers instead of businesses.
I wore it for about a year, I still think it was way better at notifications and stuff than the current smartwatch trend. But the main problem was the company making it and it's insistence on first party control. It didn't become possible to get non-Gmail email notifications on it until near the end of it's life.
You just got called by an AI trying to make a reservation for someone. Do you:
a) Let it book the reservation, and take the customer's money when they show up.
b) Hang up on the AI, potentially losing a sale. "Sorry, I tried making a reservation but they hung up on me."
Point being: stranger things have happened.
It's been 15+ years since I've worked in the service industry, but from what I remember of it, I think I'd prefer to take reservations & catering orders from a Google Assistant.
I avoid calling customer service because it forces me to work with a machine.
For micro businesses this can be a substantial administrative cost. A paper diary is still the best solution for some IMO.
M’s key uses cases are probably going to prove essential here: aside from the usual flowers-for-my-wife-on-our-anniversary and other difficult-flights-to-book, basically busy executive stuffs, the massive potential was to deal with painful cancellation processes for your ISP, bank, gym, etc. If Google (or a developper using this API) can handle the intentionally convoluted interactions that those imply, this could be very powerful and make using Assistant the best way to handle some painful cases. Imagine applying for a loan, refinancing, switching to a better phone contract whenever there is a good offer: this technology could advise people to move between services with significant usability moats much faster, and greatly improve competition and our experience.
I think it is a little creepy, but ethically? You're conducting the same activity in the same way you would have done yourself, but now more conveniently. The recipient still has the same experience either way.
My biggest concern about this is that it could be used at scale for "evil" (e.g. junk calls).
2. This is an automated, unsolicited robocall.
That's literally the reason they have phones.
I'd say that any restaurant or salon that treats a customer booking a table or an appointment as 'unsolicited' might not stay in business for very long.
Robo-booking being used by people who simple put an entry in their own diary - the robot doing the booking and interaction. The human potential client has used minimal resources and because of the ease of use and lack of interaction will not perceive a cost in the making of the booking. I anticipate they'll change, cancel, noshow at a far higher rate than in-person bookers.
Bookings made might then both block other customers and potentially increase the cost to the supplier of administrating the booking [particularly with a micro-business where the supplier end is an actual person].
This, in contrast, is automated deal-making, targeting phone calls at businesses that want to close a deal. The context is entirely different.
Of course malicious behaviour will not comply, but would at least filter the mainstream products.
What about foreigners on holiday, could their ask for a reservation in one language to Google Assistant and have it handled properly?
I'm assuming that if the machine can't determine what to do next, a simple "I'm sorry I'll need to call you back" and notifying the user that they need to call manually is all that will be needed, much like how a (human) assistant that is faced with a question they can't answer alone will need to excuse themselves and call back at a later time with that information.
Now obviously if this ends up wasting a significant amount of time for the business for no gain, I could see an argument about ethics, but making the receiving end aware it's a machine won't solve that problem.
Also, I think making the "user" aware that they are talking to a machine might reduce it's capability significantly. As long as the person on the other end thinks it's human, it seems like it can do a pretty good job. Once the other side knows it's a robot, they will dumb themselves down to how they expect they should talk to a robot, which means they won't say things like "Is 10AM okay?" or "what kind of service do you want done?".
Except your assistant is a human, and this is not. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I get extremely upset when I'm called by a robot. (If it's important enough to call me, it's important enough for a human to call me.)
I'm possibly not picking up on that signal since in my personal life, I've stopped taking phone calls from all unknown numbers, full stop.
I agree with you in the latter case, but the former seems like a win win assuming this system can deliver on what they are showing off here.
1. Call Comcast
2. Navigate the initial “go away” phone tree
3. Wait on hold for 30 minutes
4. Negotiate with the human tier 1 support drone until they escalate
5. Finally call me back and connect me when it successfully locates an actual T2 support person who can fix my problem
I assume the same is possible for navigating Tier 1 support, though you are really setting a bar for describing people as subhuman at this point. I'm concerned.
In fact, while I don't look forward to whatever collateral damage this unleashes on local businesses, I do relish the obvious application of this technology to dealing with the ever-sprawling "customer service". How fraudy do companies want to make their cancellation scripts when it results in only their own resources being wasted?
Or being used by a restaurant competitor to keep the phone lines busy with endless reservations and cancellations. Nothing you can't do with a motivated human of course, but the cost and ease of use makes a difference I think.
I am willing to believe that any company who can offer that service as a service will know that they need to monitor for abuse, and have a very sophisticated team to catch those. That might include Apple, Amazon, Baidu (who probably won’t launch it in English). Facebook wasn’t able to see something like that working and they abandoned M four months ago.
Unilateral recording is old law; I wouldn't de-facto assume Google is just blowing past that without some much stronger evidence.
If they do record more than transitorily without the other party’s consent in those jurisdictions, that’s illegal but it's also fairly simple to address.
Don't do business in those restrictive jurisdictions?
Corrected title: Google Duplex will call salons, restaurants for you, and pretend to be human.