The Moral Complexities of Artificial Intelligence Raised by Google Assistant

BROADBAND BREAKFAST INSIGHT: I watched this video of Google CEO Sundar Pichai demonstrating Google Assistant, and I also was impressed. While I agree that there are some real social engineering issues raised by the assistant, I’m not sure that “disclosure” requirement called for by some of the technology’s critics really meet the mark. Is there a need for “disclosure” that one is riding in a driverless car?

Google has wild new technology that sounds like a real human on the phone, and people already have really strong opinions about it, from Business Insider

Google Duplex was the talk of Google I/O, the company’s annual developer conference that kicked off this week.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai unveiled the new product himself on Tuesday: Basically, you can ask Google Assistant to call a business on your behalf, and Google’s AI will schedule an appointment for you. Google demoed two phone calls on stage to give people a taste of what to expect.

For the most part, people focused on two aspects of Google Duplex:

1. How natural it sounded. Google Duplex uses Google’s new natural-sounding AI, which adds its own little air-fillers between words in the same way humans do, like “um,” and “uh.”
2. The fact the people on the phone didn’t seem to know they were talking to computer software. Pichai did mention during the presentation that Google is working hard to “get the user experience and the expectations right for both businesses and users,” but people think final product should include some kind of greeting so they’re aware they’re talking to Google Assistant and not an actual human being.

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Source: Google Duplex: People react to Google’s new tech that sounds human – Business Insider