INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
A month and change after I/O, Google convenes a meeting of a few small groups of journalists at an upscale Thai restaurant in Manhattan
It an unusual locale for one of the world largest companies.
The tables are cleared out to make room for nine chairs, in three rows of
three, facing a large, brightly lit display
To the side, four Google employees sit behind a desk at a makeshift control center
The company is finally ready to offer a little more insight into Duplex, the most widely discussed — and controversial announcement during
a rapid-fire keynote.
It a 180-degree shift from that sun-drenched day at Mountain View Shoreline Ampitheatre
The cozy New York restaurant makes as much sense as any for such an event, as the company pulls back the curtain on the AI-based reservation
Thep Thai owner insists that such a service would be something of a godsend for the 100-plus reservations the restaurant fields on a daily
basis.
For Google, it was clearly time to offer some more transparency into both the purpose for such a system and the workings behind it
The brief demo presented by CEO Sundar Pichai raised far more questions than it answered
The think pieces began to flow, exploring the ethical ramifications for a system that appeared to be designed to fool a business into
believing they were talking to a fellow human being.
Duplex represents a rare early look into an ongoing project from a company notorious
for playing it close to the vest
As with self-driving cars, rigorous real-world testing is required to iron out all of the kinks in the system.
&While we&re not widely
launching this feature yet, we&re sharing more information about this technology to provide transparency and encourage feedback,& the
company writes in a blog post today
&It important that we get the experience right both for people and for businesses, and we&re taking a slow and measured approach as we
incorporate learnings and feedback from our tests.&
The nature of Google process was likely to get out some way or another, so announcing it
at I/O served the dual purpose of getting in front of that narrative and offering an early look at an ambitious project on one of the
company largest stages.
&What you&re going to hear is the Google Assistant scheduling an appointment at a real hair salon,& Pichai said to
tentative applause during the keynote:
Hi, I&m calling to book a women haircut for a client
Um, I&m looking for something on May 3
& Google Assistant
Sure, give me one second
& Google Assistant
It was here the audience laughed, unbelieving
Sure, the audience was in on the joke, but it was still hard to believe that what we were hearing was a purely automated version of Google
The &mm-hm& was icing on the cake — a subtle vocal tick included to further conversation, all while leaving the other party none the wiser
that she was speaking to a ‘bot.
Those vocal breaks, known as &speech disfluencies& in linguistics, are a normal and frequent part of
speech, and a key part of the secret sauce that makes Duplex such a remarkable product
Among other things, they&re a polite workaround for the
system.
https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/DMS03IIQXU3TY2FD6DLPLOMBBBJ2CH188143148.mp3If Duplex is confronted with an
uncertain response after requesting a reservation for a party of five, for example, it will reiterate with the slight variation, &um, for
five.& That, hopefully, will resolve potential confusion on the part of the receptionist, while including a subtle linguistic tick that
lends a further sense of reality to the conversation.
These elements are a very real part of the way Duplex works
I can confirm this, having stood in for the role of the receptionist during a demo at the Thai restaurant
As for the two demos played over the big screen at I/O, they were, in fact, real
Even more interestingly, the company says it informed the businesses after the calls were placed, seemingly to lend an extra level of
authenticity to the process.
Duplex was — and still is — very much a work in progress
Among other things, the system didn&t provide a disclosure in the early days, a fact that could potentially violate the &two-party consent&
required to record phone calls and conversations in states like Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New
Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Washington and Google own home base of California.
Going forward, the system will be confined to those states where
the laws make it feasible
That also applies to interstate calls, so long as both sides are covered
&We want to make sure it operates in a way that governed by whatever the laws are that are appropriate for that call,& Google Assistant VP,
Product and Design Nick Fox says.
While the disclosures weren&t there in the earliest stage, the company has said since the beginning that
The motivation, however, wasn&t due to feared legal repercussions, so much as common robot/human etiquette.
&The Google Duplex technology is
built to sound natural, to make the conversation experience comfortable,& the company wrote in a blog post tied to the announcement
&It important to us that users and businesses have a good experience with this service, and transparency is a key part of that
We want to be clear about the intent of the call so businesses understand the context
We&ll be experimenting with the right approach over the coming
months.&
https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/KOK4HAMTAPH5Z96154F6GKUM74A3Z1576269077.mp3Pressed by the media about what form
such &transparency& would ultimately take, a spokesperson for the company added later, &We understand and value the discussion around Google
Duplex — as we&ve said from the beginning, transparency in the technology is important
We are designing this feature with disclosure built-in, and we&ll make sure the system is appropriately identified
What we showed at I/O was an early technology demo, and we look forward to incorporating feedback as we develop this into a product.&
In its
current form, that plays out thusly:
Hi, I&m the Google Assistant calling to make a reservation for a client
This automated call will be recorded.
Duplex doesn&t let on the fact that it an AI — but if you have some familiarity with Google
Assistant, you can probably put that part together yourself
It does, however, let you know that the call is being recorded
Google records these conversations for both voice to text processing and quality assurance purpose, so the company can continue to revise
and refine the system.
In my test call, I attempt to get Google Assistant to repeat that bit — it easy enough to not hear that opening
line, particularly when you&ve got the phone up to your ear inside a crowded restaurant
But the AI just barrels on with the reservation
If you miss the disclosure, you&re out of luck — for now, at least
At present, the only way to opt out of being recorded is to just hang up the phone — not the best way to get repeat visitors.
&We do
have a mechanism that will say ‘okay, I won&t record you,& &Google Assistant VP Engineering Scott Huffman explains
&I think we&re still figuring out what the right thing to do there
Is the right thing bow out To basically throw away the recording&
Like just about everyone else getting a demo that day, I try my best to
Assistant asks for a booking at 6PM
I tell it we&re not open until 11 — this is Manhattan, after all, the best/most exclusive places keep the most insane hours, right
Assistant politely ends the call — or &bows out,& as Google puts it.
The Holy Grail here is attempting to Turing test the shit out of
If you succeed, one of Google human operators will take the controls and land the plane
These human operators are an integral part of testing for Duplex, and Google says it plans to keep them around in some form going forward,
to assure that things never get too out of control
How large a group that will ultimately take remains to be seen.
No one in our small group succeeds in invoking a real-life human during our
brief chats, though we learn some important insights into the systems limitations
For instance, asked to &repeat the last four numbers,& it restates the phone number in its entirety
It not a flaw, exactly, but it does show a simple place where the system is pushed to its limitations with regard to the understanding of
the the subtle nuances of human conversation.
Asked for the user email address, on the other hand, the system simply says it doesn&t have
the permission of its &client& to disclose such information, maintaining the whole &assistant& relationship
Google says that, in testing, the system has also gotten tripped up encountering another machine by way of a phone tree
Listening closely because our menu options have changed doesn&t appear to compute just yet.
At present, Google says Duplex is able to
complete four out of five fully automated tasks, according to the company
Eighty-percent is pretty good, but Google is pushing to make things better
&We want to make sure that we&re not wasting the business time,& Fox says
&We want to make sure throughout everything we do here, that this is good experience for the business and that they&re not getting
frustrated talking to an assistant while they&re trying to run their business.&
As announced at I/O, more testing will commence this summer
Over the &coming weeks,& the next round will find Assistant inquiring about business hours
And in the next few months, it will expand to restaurant reservations and hair salon appointments
Unlike those I/O demos, these will occur with &a limited set of trusted testers and select businesses,& who will be in on it.
Companies thus
far seem eager to get on-board
As Google notes, according to a customer survey it conducted back in April, &60 percent of small businesses who rely on customer bookings do
not have an online booking system set up.&
For users who simply don&t want to pick up the phone, Duplex provides a compelling alternative
For those businesses, it means adding more potential customers
Those who&d rather not get on-board for any number of reasons, on the other hand, will be able to opt out through their Google Business
listings (assuming they have one).
The box reads:
Let customers use the Google Assistant to book with you
Also, quickly update your listings by getting occasional calls to confirm your detail.
The system has come a long way since it began life
as ajury-rigged demo with an office phone placed gingerly atop a MacBook
Duplex operates through a complex combination of speech to text, text to speech and Google own WaveNetaudio processing deep neural network
The early demos weren&t live as some speculated, but they were, in fact, real — and things are only getting more impressive from
there.
Like it or not, Duplex is coming soon
And the only way to stop it is to hang up the phone.
