6 ms·

That is unethical, the human on the other side should be made aware that he's talking to a machine instead of a human.

Someone1234 8y ago
Can you explain your views on the ethics? I think it is a little creepy, but ethically? You're conducting the same activity in the same way you would have done yourself, but now more conveniently. The recipient still has the same experience either way. My biggest concern about this is that it could be used at scale for "evil" (e.g. junk calls).
- ksk 8y ago
  I don't know if its completely unethical, but I do think its a little dehumanizing to deny someone human interaction, when using means that only humans can employ. i.e. If it sent a clearly marked automated email its one thing, but imagine having this contraption call your mom to wish her on her birthday...
  - bertil 8y ago
    I don’t think that Google has plans to train that system on individual’s voice. I’m not sure what the scale for doing that reliably would be.
- michaelt 8y ago
  1. Making automated, unsolicited robocalls is unethical. 2. This is an automated, unsolicited robocall.
  - wyldfire 8y ago
    Why do you describe the calls as "unsolicited"?
    - mywittyname 8y ago
      Exactly. Calling a business for the purposes of buying their product is the definition of solicited. That's literally the reason they have phones.
    - michaelt 8y ago
      Because the restaurant did not explicitly opt in to receiving robocalls?
  - kristianc 8y ago
    > 1. Making automated, unsolicited robocalls is unethical. I'd say that any restaurant or salon that treats a customer booking a table or an appointment as 'unsolicited' might not stay in business for very long.
    - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
      I can see it going the other way: Robo-booking being used by people who simple put an entry in their own diary - the robot doing the booking and interaction. The human potential client has used minimal resources and because of the ease of use and lack of interaction will not perceive a cost in the making of the booking. I anticipate they'll change, cancel, noshow at a far higher rate than in-person bookers. Bookings made might then both block other customers and potentially increase the cost to the supplier of administrating the booking [particularly with a micro-business where the supplier end is an actual person].
      - kristianc 8y ago
        There's not a great deal more friction involved in making a booking via OpenTable (no financial cost, no deposit etc).
  - fixermark 8y ago
    The law and philosophy around automated, unsolicited robocalls is related to telemarketing. It's telemarketing practice that people became so frustrated with that the Do Not Call List was enacted. This, in contrast, is automated deal-making, targeting phone calls at businesses that want to close a deal. The context is entirely different.
    - badosu 8y ago
      Perhaps a case for robots.txt for phones? Of course malicious behaviour will not comply, but would at least filter the mainstream products.
- kristianc 8y ago
  My bigger concern would be social engineering attacks. Once you have something that can reliably imitate a human, the potential to do social engineering at scale really takes off.
d0lph 8y ago
Why is it unethical?
- chappi42 8y ago
  Because the person in the salon or restaurant shouldn't be forced to talk to a bloody computer instead of a human which shows some emotions.
  - slow_donkey 8y ago
    How much emotion should I be showing when making an appointment. I could see your point for familiar shops like a frequented salon or something.
  - stronglikedan 8y ago
    Is it unethical for me to make a reservation using a completely deadpan, monotone voice?
    - chappi42 8y ago
      The deadpan voice would fall back on you, a computer won't care. But I agree with what I suppose you want to point out, that ethics is not the relevant criterium.
      - d0lph 8y ago
        The ethics of it is the interesting part though, if there's a reason we should not do something it should be discussed.
        chappi42 8y ago
        For me, "ethics" is a too strong word for this discussion.
        d0lph 8y ago
Klathmon 8y ago
I disagree about the ethics of this. This is no different than having your (human) assistant make an appointment for you. I'm assuming that if the machine can't determine what to do next, a simple "I'm sorry I'll need to call you back" and notifying the user that they need to call manually is all that will be needed, much like how a (human) assistant that is faced with a question they can't answer alone will need to excuse themselves and call back at a later time with that information. Now obviously if this ends up wasting a significant amount of time for the business for no gain, I could see an argument about ethics, but making the receiving end aware it's a machine won't solve that problem. Also, I think making the "user" aware that they are talking to a machine might reduce it's capability significantly. As long as the person on the other end thinks it's human, it seems like it can do a pretty good job. Once the other side knows it's a robot, they will dumb themselves down to how they expect they should talk to a robot, which means they won't say things like "Is 10AM okay?" or "what kind of service do you want done?".
- rayiner 8y ago
  > I disagree about the ethics of this. This is no different than having your (human) assistant make an appointment for you. Except your assistant is a human, and this is not. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I get extremely upset when I'm called by a robot. (If it's important enough to call me, it's important enough for a human to call me.)
  - fixermark 8y ago
    Is it possible the frustration is not because the voice on the other end of the line isn't human, but instead because past attempts at automated phone interaction sucked?
    - tptacek 8y ago
      It's a claim on his time that isn't accompanied by the show of good faith of a comparable claim on their time. If we were as cavalier about capturing someone's attention on the phone as we are about sending them emails, we'd have to stop taking phone calls from all unknown numbers full stop.
pishpash 8y ago
It's as ethical as companies unleashing chatbots and voice-synthesized phone "customer support" gatekeepers on us. Although, I would prefer to have conglomerates taste their own medicine rather than local shops.
- ryandrake 8y ago
  Good point. This could potentially let consumers fight back against phone trees and brainless tier 1 support. If I need my cable internet fixed, Id be willing to spend good money to hire one of these bots if it could: 1. Call Comcast 2. Navigate the initial “go away” phone tree 3. Wait on hold for 30 minutes 4. Negotiate with the human tier 1 support drone until they escalate 5. Finally call me back and connect me when it successfully locates an actual T2 support person who can fix my problem
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    A bot to get your Comcast bill lowered already exists: https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/17/13656264/comcast-bill-negotiator-bot-argue-money-customer-service https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/17/13656264/comcast-bill-ne... I assume the same is possible for navigating Tier 1 support, though you are really setting a bar for describing people as subhuman at this point. I'm concerned.
- fixermark 8y ago
  I'd argue it's significantly more ethical. There's a world of difference between telemarketing and closing a deal with a business that has an express interest in closing a deal because they want your money.
hasd9709 8y ago
Possibly illegal (?) if the conversation happens in a jurisdiction which requires both parties need to consent to be recorded.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
iamrohitbanga 8y ago
May be the salon, restaurant also have a bot talking to Google assistant.
- fooker 8y ago
  The ultimate inefficient API.
- bravo22 8y ago
  And then one day instead of those bots talking through natural language we can have them talking to each other by modulating and demodulating the sounds to create ones and zeros. Maybe even call them MO-DEM bots. And then one day we can make those modems faster and faster, and have those bots communicate using a standard protocol ;)
- kbenson 8y ago
  Amount of compute power wasted for an AI bot to AI bot voice conversation to make a reservations somewhere boggles my mind.
  - fixermark 8y ago
    ... agreed, only it doesn't boggle my mind as much as the fact that human beings get employed full-time to sit near a phone and do this entirely-automatable task every day.
- bertil 8y ago
  That’s unlikely. If they had claimed their business and had an active Google Maps account, the request would come to their email for now, and Google will probably develop an integration to their Point-of-Sale software, or surface their OpenTable link.
mindslight 8y ago
And yet this is what every large company has been doing for the last decade plus via call centers etc, Chinese-room style! In fact, while I don't look forward to whatever collateral damage this unleashes on local businesses, I do relish the obvious application of this technology to dealing with the ever-sprawling "customer service". How fraudy do companies want to make their cancellation scripts when it results in only their own resources being wasted?
erdo 8y ago
It easily could be used unethically. How about hard to get reservations that become available at a certain time or the only way to get one is to keep trying (a real human wouldn't stand a chance against a Google robo-call). Or being used by a restaurant competitor to keep the phone lines busy with endless reservations and cancellations. Nothing you can't do with a motivated human of course, but the cost and ease of use makes a difference I think.
- bertil 8y ago
  It seems a very obvious pattern that Google would be able to detect.
  - ForHackernews 8y ago
    And you think Google will be the only ones using this technology for the foreseeable future?
    - bertil 8y ago
      Honestly, handling a realistic voice is incredibly hard; being able to parse context, including from structured, partial information, even more so. I don’t know if the progress in training processors, LSTM structure in the next year, but I doubt many companies will have enough conversations to train their models -- other than the operator of, say, Google Voice. I am willing to believe that any company who can offer that service as a service will know that they need to monitor for abuse, and have a very sophisticated team to catch those. That might include Apple, Amazon, Baidu (who probably won’t launch it in English). Facebook wasn’t able to see something like that working and they abandoned M four months ago.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
cwg999 8y ago
It's unethical I'm forced to filter junk mail from my important mail, but here we are.
nikolay 8y ago
It's illegal, too - in at least 12 states, you cannot record people without their explicit permission. Impersonation could be a legal issue as well.
- fixermark 8y ago
  Who is getting recorded?
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    Did you see the IO keynote where they played the recorded call? And said other calls are being recorded?
    - fixermark 8y ago
      I assumed those were recorded with consent (or in jurisdictions where unilateral recording is legal). Unilateral recording is old law; I wouldn't de-facto assume Google is just blowing past that without some much stronger evidence.
      - toomuchtodo 8y ago
        Twelve states in the US are two party consent states (both participants must consent), including California. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_recording_laws https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_recording_laws https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/penal-code/pen-sect-632.html https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/penal-code/pen-sect-632.html
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    For this to work at all there is at least transitory recording of voice on the call, but it's not necessarily all that different than what had to happen when a computer is part of the community in channel of a call, which is common now with IP telephony. If they aren't doing more and retaining recordings made without consent, I think it quite unlikely this falls afoul of the recording consent laws. If they do record more than transitorily without the other party’s consent in those jurisdictions, that’s illegal but it's also fairly simple to address.

Can you explain your views on the ethics? I think it is a little creepy, but ethically? You're conducting the same activity in the same way you would have done yourself, but now more conveniently. The recipient still has the same experience either way. My biggest concern about this is that it could be used at scale for "evil" (e.g. junk calls).

ksk 8y ago
I don't know if its completely unethical, but I do think its a little dehumanizing to deny someone human interaction, when using means that only humans can employ. i.e. If it sent a clearly marked automated email its one thing, but imagine having this contraption call your mom to wish her on her birthday...
- bertil 8y ago
  I don’t think that Google has plans to train that system on individual’s voice. I’m not sure what the scale for doing that reliably would be.
michaelt 8y ago
1. Making automated, unsolicited robocalls is unethical. 2. This is an automated, unsolicited robocall.
- wyldfire 8y ago
  Why do you describe the calls as "unsolicited"?
  - mywittyname 8y ago
    Exactly. Calling a business for the purposes of buying their product is the definition of solicited. That's literally the reason they have phones.
  - michaelt 8y ago
    Because the restaurant did not explicitly opt in to receiving robocalls?
- kristianc 8y ago
  > 1. Making automated, unsolicited robocalls is unethical. I'd say that any restaurant or salon that treats a customer booking a table or an appointment as 'unsolicited' might not stay in business for very long.
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    I can see it going the other way: Robo-booking being used by people who simple put an entry in their own diary - the robot doing the booking and interaction. The human potential client has used minimal resources and because of the ease of use and lack of interaction will not perceive a cost in the making of the booking. I anticipate they'll change, cancel, noshow at a far higher rate than in-person bookers. Bookings made might then both block other customers and potentially increase the cost to the supplier of administrating the booking [particularly with a micro-business where the supplier end is an actual person].
    - kristianc 8y ago
      There's not a great deal more friction involved in making a booking via OpenTable (no financial cost, no deposit etc).
- fixermark 8y ago
  The law and philosophy around automated, unsolicited robocalls is related to telemarketing. It's telemarketing practice that people became so frustrated with that the Do Not Call List was enacted. This, in contrast, is automated deal-making, targeting phone calls at businesses that want to close a deal. The context is entirely different.
  - badosu 8y ago
    Perhaps a case for robots.txt for phones? Of course malicious behaviour will not comply, but would at least filter the mainstream products.
kristianc 8y ago
My bigger concern would be social engineering attacks. Once you have something that can reliably imitate a human, the potential to do social engineering at scale really takes off.

d0lph 8y ago

Why is it unethical?

chappi42 8y ago
Because the person in the salon or restaurant shouldn't be forced to talk to a bloody computer instead of a human which shows some emotions.
- slow_donkey 8y ago
  How much emotion should I be showing when making an appointment. I could see your point for familiar shops like a frequented salon or something.
- stronglikedan 8y ago
  Is it unethical for me to make a reservation using a completely deadpan, monotone voice?
  - chappi42 8y ago
    The deadpan voice would fall back on you, a computer won't care. But I agree with what I suppose you want to point out, that ethics is not the relevant criterium.
    - d0lph 8y ago
      The ethics of it is the interesting part though, if there's a reason we should not do something it should be discussed.
      - chappi42 8y ago
        For me, "ethics" is a too strong word for this discussion.
        d0lph 8y ago

Klathmon 8y ago

I disagree about the ethics of this. This is no different than having your (human) assistant make an appointment for you. I'm assuming that if the machine can't determine what to do next, a simple "I'm sorry I'll need to call you back" and notifying the user that they need to call manually is all that will be needed, much like how a (human) assistant that is faced with a question they can't answer alone will need to excuse themselves and call back at a later time with that information. Now obviously if this ends up wasting a significant amount of time for the business for no gain, I could see an argument about ethics, but making the receiving end aware it's a machine won't solve that problem. Also, I think making the "user" aware that they are talking to a machine might reduce it's capability significantly. As long as the person on the other end thinks it's human, it seems like it can do a pretty good job. Once the other side knows it's a robot, they will dumb themselves down to how they expect they should talk to a robot, which means they won't say things like "Is 10AM okay?" or "what kind of service do you want done?".

rayiner 8y ago
> I disagree about the ethics of this. This is no different than having your (human) assistant make an appointment for you. Except your assistant is a human, and this is not. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I get extremely upset when I'm called by a robot. (If it's important enough to call me, it's important enough for a human to call me.)
- fixermark 8y ago
  Is it possible the frustration is not because the voice on the other end of the line isn't human, but instead because past attempts at automated phone interaction sucked?
  - tptacek 8y ago
    It's a claim on his time that isn't accompanied by the show of good faith of a comparable claim on their time. If we were as cavalier about capturing someone's attention on the phone as we are about sending them emails, we'd have to stop taking phone calls from all unknown numbers full stop.

pishpash 8y ago

It's as ethical as companies unleashing chatbots and voice-synthesized phone "customer support" gatekeepers on us. Although, I would prefer to have conglomerates taste their own medicine rather than local shops.

ryandrake 8y ago
Good point. This could potentially let consumers fight back against phone trees and brainless tier 1 support. If I need my cable internet fixed, Id be willing to spend good money to hire one of these bots if it could: 1. Call Comcast 2. Navigate the initial “go away” phone tree 3. Wait on hold for 30 minutes 4. Negotiate with the human tier 1 support drone until they escalate 5. Finally call me back and connect me when it successfully locates an actual T2 support person who can fix my problem
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  A bot to get your Comcast bill lowered already exists: https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/17/13656264/comcast-bill-negotiator-bot-argue-money-customer-service https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/17/13656264/comcast-bill-ne... I assume the same is possible for navigating Tier 1 support, though you are really setting a bar for describing people as subhuman at this point. I'm concerned.
fixermark 8y ago
I'd argue it's significantly more ethical. There's a world of difference between telemarketing and closing a deal with a business that has an express interest in closing a deal because they want your money.

hasd9709 8y ago

Possibly illegal (?) if the conversation happens in a jurisdiction which requires both parties need to consent to be recorded.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

iamrohitbanga 8y ago

May be the salon, restaurant also have a bot talking to Google assistant.

fooker 8y ago
The ultimate inefficient API.
bravo22 8y ago
And then one day instead of those bots talking through natural language we can have them talking to each other by modulating and demodulating the sounds to create ones and zeros. Maybe even call them MO-DEM bots. And then one day we can make those modems faster and faster, and have those bots communicate using a standard protocol ;)
kbenson 8y ago
Amount of compute power wasted for an AI bot to AI bot voice conversation to make a reservations somewhere boggles my mind.
- fixermark 8y ago
  ... agreed, only it doesn't boggle my mind as much as the fact that human beings get employed full-time to sit near a phone and do this entirely-automatable task every day.
bertil 8y ago
That’s unlikely. If they had claimed their business and had an active Google Maps account, the request would come to their email for now, and Google will probably develop an integration to their Point-of-Sale software, or surface their OpenTable link.

mindslight 8y ago

And yet this is what every large company has been doing for the last decade plus via call centers etc, Chinese-room style! In fact, while I don't look forward to whatever collateral damage this unleashes on local businesses, I do relish the obvious application of this technology to dealing with the ever-sprawling "customer service". How fraudy do companies want to make their cancellation scripts when it results in only their own resources being wasted?

erdo 8y ago

It easily could be used unethically. How about hard to get reservations that become available at a certain time or the only way to get one is to keep trying (a real human wouldn't stand a chance against a Google robo-call). Or being used by a restaurant competitor to keep the phone lines busy with endless reservations and cancellations. Nothing you can't do with a motivated human of course, but the cost and ease of use makes a difference I think.

bertil 8y ago
It seems a very obvious pattern that Google would be able to detect.
- ForHackernews 8y ago
  And you think Google will be the only ones using this technology for the foreseeable future?
  - bertil 8y ago
    Honestly, handling a realistic voice is incredibly hard; being able to parse context, including from structured, partial information, even more so. I don’t know if the progress in training processors, LSTM structure in the next year, but I doubt many companies will have enough conversations to train their models -- other than the operator of, say, Google Voice. I am willing to believe that any company who can offer that service as a service will know that they need to monitor for abuse, and have a very sophisticated team to catch those. That might include Apple, Amazon, Baidu (who probably won’t launch it in English). Facebook wasn’t able to see something like that working and they abandoned M four months ago.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

cwg999 8y ago

It's unethical I'm forced to filter junk mail from my important mail, but here we are.

nikolay 8y ago

It's illegal, too - in at least 12 states, you cannot record people without their explicit permission. Impersonation could be a legal issue as well.

fixermark 8y ago
Who is getting recorded?
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  Did you see the IO keynote where they played the recorded call? And said other calls are being recorded?
  - fixermark 8y ago
    I assumed those were recorded with consent (or in jurisdictions where unilateral recording is legal). Unilateral recording is old law; I wouldn't de-facto assume Google is just blowing past that without some much stronger evidence.
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      Twelve states in the US are two party consent states (both participants must consent), including California. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_recording_laws https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_recording_laws https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/penal-code/pen-sect-632.html https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/penal-code/pen-sect-632.html
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  For this to work at all there is at least transitory recording of voice on the call, but it's not necessarily all that different than what had to happen when a computer is part of the community in channel of a call, which is common now with IP telephony. If they aren't doing more and retaining recordings made without consent, I think it quite unlikely this falls afoul of the recording consent laws. If they do record more than transitorily without the other party’s consent in those jurisdictions, that’s illegal but it's also fairly simple to address.