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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

#91

Post by whytaka »

MPSimmons wrote: post #64
21 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or the more immediate wake-up call that this tech will be used in malicious phishing attacks against your grandparents This one is quite scary. "Grandma, I'm stuck in Malta and people are after me, send me immediately 500 through Western Union" Or you get called by your boss: "I need you to urgently send this payment or our production factory goes down".

> grandma "Alright sweetheart, just tell me what the emergency phrase is"

Oh, what was it... I'm sure I wrote it down in my Google Keep somewhere.

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

#92

Post by eric-hu »

thinkingemote wrote: post #19
vtantia wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not saying there is no risk. What I am saying is it is nearly impossible with the machine learning/deep learning technology we have now (AI simply isn't smart enough). The training data Google obtained could be from Google voice calls by people which is available for free in the US (I am not sure about this). What I am sure about is that the current AI will fail badly without the training data.

Imagine if all the data for training they had were public emails from mailing lists. We would instead be worried about how the AI would be turning us into insensitive trolls.

I wonder if 4chan could orchestrate another Tay/Twitrer training by setting up message machines and scripting enough calls.

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

#93

Post by eric-hu »

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?

If the only way we can reasonably be certain we're not talking to computers is with computers, that may be a problem. We know we can't even trust hardware to perform only and exactly what we want nowadays (specter).

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

#94

Post by evrydayhustling »

fixermark wrote: post #90
evrydayhustling wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Google was saying, "any Restaurant can sign up to be reachable by Assistant -- we have lots of customers that will be excited to call them", your analogies would apply and we wouldn't be discussing. In all of your cases, the restaurant opted into a form of reachability. Maybe we disagree about whether opening a phone line is opting into be called by a robot. I don't think almost any restaurant thinks of it that wa…

If you own a phone line, may I presume you're comfortable talking to a human assistant? If you are, why may I not presume you're comfortable talking to a robot assistant? If the experience of talking to the robot is noticeably degraded from the experience of talking to a human, that's a different question entirely---I'm assuming they're equivalent, maybe I should not. But if they are equivalent, what is the differenc…

> I'm assuming they're equivalent, maybe I should not.

For me, the core question is who gets to make that assumption, not whether it's correct or not. The people who are most impacted by uncertainty should have a choice about participating IMO.

But, one thing I'm realizing from other threads is that some people feel they have a similar level of uncertainty for human interaction, and are frustrated by the status quo of needing to interact with services. For me, that says this tech clearly has a place -- it just needs some effort to proactively establish etiquette around it's use.

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

#95

Post by chrisallenlane »

eric-hu wrote: post #92
thinkingemote wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if all the data for training they had were public emails from mailing lists. We would instead be worried about how the AI would be turning us into insensitive trolls.

I wonder if 4chan could orchestrate another Tay/Twitrer training by setting up message machines and scripting enough calls.

If they can, they probably will.

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

#96

Post by vtantia »

bittysdad wrote: post #23
wslh wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is a risk of the AI manipulating us... I always wonder (seriously, not joking) if some computer will pass the Turing test because we are getting dumber and adapting to the way apps understand us instead of the reverse. Personally, I double check when I send text or voice instructions to bots.

What if some already-aware computer continually realizes it's undergoing a Turing test and decides to play dumb because it knows the person behind the test will feed it even more data trying to get it there...

The way our current algorithms are designed, the computer only plays dumb if it's training data has dumb humans. It cannot think on its own

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

#97

Post by [deleted] »

lgleason wrote: post #34
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.

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