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Google just unveiled their new artificial intelligence project at their annual Google I/O developer conference and it’s blowing people’s minds. Google CEO Sundar Pichai gave attendees a look at Google Duplex a new AI voice assistant that will be able to make phone calls and hold normal conversations on your behalf.
One of my least favorite tasks is having to call a doctor’s office to make an appointment or calla restaurant to make a reservation. I firmly believe that we should be able to do all of these tasks online but that’s not the case yet. That’s where this freakishly futuristic AI voice assistant comes into play:
The company announced Google Duplex in a blog post earlier today:
Today we announce Google Duplex, a new technology for conducting natural conversations to carry out “real world” tasks over the phone. The technology is directed towards completing specific tasks, such as scheduling certain types of appointments. For such tasks, the system makes the conversational experience as natural as possible, allowing people to speak normally, like they would to another person, without having to adapt to a machine.
One of the key research insights was to constrain Duplex to closed domains, which are narrow enough to explore extensively. Duplex can only carry out natural conversations after being deeply trained in such domains. It cannot carry out general conversations. (via)
As stoked as I am to start using this and never have to call a doctor’s office/restaurant again, I’m not exactly excited for this technology to get into the hands of robocallers who blow up my cell phone all day long with stupid ass offers about cruise ships and credit cards.