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Google’s new conversational AI could eventually undermine our sense of identity

verdict.co.uk

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Re: Google’s new conversational AI could eventually undermine our sense of identity

#31

Post by leblancfg »

What struck me the most was the business decision from Google to have it make reservation calls, and not take them. Granted, the technical complexity between the two might be an order of magnitude, I don't know.

They are purposefully "giving" it to millions of customers and rolling out features with time, instead of holding out for more research and actually selling a phone assistant system to businesses. I think this speaks volumes in and of itself, and I would interpret it as a sign that competition might not be so far behind.

Or maybe I'm reading this wrong?

Re: Google’s new conversational AI could eventually undermine our sense of identity

#32

Post by hefeweizen »

gremlinsinc wrote: post #24
bsenftner wrote: post #22

"Impressive, but what happens if Google Assistant eventually learns how to masquerade as its owner?" This is the stunning level of anthropomorphic granting of super human abilities the common person places on our cute statistical trick we saying is "artificial intelligence". Naming this field AI was a poor choice. I am sick of the clown-authored-mentality of the articles being published about AI today.

Are you kidding me? It's not a cute statistical trick, it's a well-thought out mechanism to re-create in 1's and 0's how the human brain works and thinks, we're merely infants in what this will become, as we mind map the brain more - I'm sure the technology will pivot quite a bit, neural networks may be obsolete and something more powerful come along viz a viz quantum computing, but to say talking robots that can tot…

I think the GP is pointing out that people tend to overestimate how powerful these techniques are and that using the term AI might have something to do with that.

Not that it isn't impressive: it's just that we are pretty far off from anything resembling what "Artificial Intelligence" may come to embody (ignoring, for the moment, all fuzzy definitions of intelligence).

It's like building a paper airplane and worrying about the aging effects of space travel at light speed: maybe a good thought experiment but not that big a concern right now.

Re: Google’s new conversational AI could eventually undermine our sense of identity

#33

Post by wintorez »

bsenftner wrote: post #22

"Impressive, but what happens if Google Assistant eventually learns how to masquerade as its owner?" This is the stunning level of anthropomorphic granting of super human abilities the common person places on our cute statistical trick we saying is "artificial intelligence". Naming this field AI was a poor choice. I am sick of the clown-authored-mentality of the articles being published about AI today.

> "Naming this field AI was a poor choice."

Amen!

Re: Google’s new conversational AI could eventually undermine our sense of identity

#34

Post by lgleason »

vtantia wrote: post #3

I don't think there is a remote possibility of this happening in the near future (10-20 years). I work in one of the best deep learning research groups in the world. We were discussing this. And the first question one of my friends asked was- "so the Google assistant knows how to book appointments between 10 and 12pm". Meaning, if you change even a few conditions in the request which is not present in the training da…

Right now I have the assistant hooked up to my home automation and it has trouble getting that right... this conversational agent is more marketing and less actual substance. The truth is that Google makes most of it's revenue from search, everything else is to make it look like they have something else going on to boost the stock price... I was very underwhelmed by the keynote.

Re: Google’s new conversational AI could eventually undermine our sense of identity

#35

Post by lallysingh »

deltron3030 wrote: post #18
lallysingh wrote: post #2

Combined with https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/robotics/artificial-inte... (the fake Obama video tool) it's going to be tough to verify that you're talking to the real consenting person vs a machine. Identity theft is going to get a lot more interesting...

Can't "instances representing you online" be cryptographically signed in a way?

Cryptography is going to be one of the only defenses left.

Re: Google’s new conversational AI could eventually undermine our sense of identity

#36

Post by heckanoobs »

evrydayhustling wrote: post #26
bsenftner wrote: post #22

"Impressive, but what happens if Google Assistant eventually learns how to masquerade as its owner?" This is the stunning level of anthropomorphic granting of super human abilities the common person places on our cute statistical trick we saying is "artificial intelligence". Naming this field AI was a poor choice. I am sick of the clown-authored-mentality of the articles being published about AI today.

Yes, fear of turning on its owner is way overblown. What about the more immediate issue that it is designed to be turned against service workers, so that when it screws up it wastes their time instead of yours? Or the more immediate wake-up call that this tech will be used in malicious phishing attacks against your grandparents (not by Google, obv) in another year (or month)?

I'm surprised at how well Google's awful little autodialer has been received. None of us like when we call a number and are handled by an automated script on the other end. But we are immediately okay with deploying an automated script which does our bidding?

You need a Google Glass-level lack of social accuity to think siccing autodialers on barbers is okay

Re: Google’s new conversational AI could eventually undermine our sense of identity

#38

Post by Androider »

bsenftner wrote: post #22

"Impressive, but what happens if Google Assistant eventually learns how to masquerade as its owner?" This is the stunning level of anthropomorphic granting of super human abilities the common person places on our cute statistical trick we saying is "artificial intelligence". Naming this field AI was a poor choice. I am sick of the clown-authored-mentality of the articles being published about AI today.

It doesn't have to pass the Turing test to masquerade as you.

The John Legend voice for Google Assistant was apparently made without hours of recordings. Companies like https://lyrebird.ai/ do a basic job of copying your voice with about a minute worth of samples (more obviously helps).

I think it's entirely inevitable that at some point you will be able to customize the Google Assistant to use your own voice thanks to WaveNet and it's successors. Instead of the recognizable assistant making calls, every assistant will be different.

Re: Google’s new conversational AI could eventually undermine our sense of identity

#39

Post by aje403 »

bsenftner wrote: post #22

"Impressive, but what happens if Google Assistant eventually learns how to masquerade as its owner?" This is the stunning level of anthropomorphic granting of super human abilities the common person places on our cute statistical trick we saying is "artificial intelligence". Naming this field AI was a poor choice. I am sick of the clown-authored-mentality of the articles being published about AI today.

A good thing bear in mind is that, as technology continues to develop, human stupidity will remain constant. The moron speculating on witchcraft 300 years ago has now defyingly managed to get a text editor open on the internet and is now pontificating about some buzzwords they've heard of.

Re: Google’s new conversational AI could eventually undermine our sense of identity

#40

Post by fixermark »

"Google’s new conversational AI could eventually undermine our sense of identity" (... for those of us who have their sense of identity entirely wrapped up in how well they can wrangle a business transaction over the phone, I assume).
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