6 ms·

I don't think it's at all problematic for these devices to state "Hello, I am an automated assistant calling on behalf of $(name). I'd like to book a reservatio

I don't think it's at all problematic for these devices to state "Hello, I am an automated assistant calling on behalf of $(name). I'd like to book a reservation for...."

apendleton 8y ago
I think Google's concern would be that it would generate annoyance that might not be warranted. Like, if I call a customer service line and get an AVR system, even if the system is perfectly capable of helping me, I just hate AVR systems (justifiably or not) and start yelling at it to give me a representative until it does. If the AVR system were so compelling that it just pretended to be a human and I couldn't tell the difference, presumably I'd be just as satisfied as if I had gotten an actual human, and could skip the annoyance. Similarly, I think if this thing can handle the call as well as a human, it's to its advantage in terms of not frustrating the person on the other end of the phone to not self-identify, so that they perceive it as just like any other appointment call (because it is) rather than triggering an "ugh damnn it, another Google robocall" which will then prime people to feel like they have to speak to it a certain way to get it to behave, even if that demonstrably isn't actually necessary, and generate ill will towards the company. On balance, maybe they should self-identify anyway -- "if this thing can handle the call as well as a human" is a pretty big "if" after all -- but I can see why they'd want not to.
- gowld 8y ago
  If someone doesn't want to talk to you (or your bot), why not just leave them alone? It's not their job to be your guinea pig. Was it right to not tell the victims of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment what was happening to them, because they would have refused and blocked the progress of science?
  - nyolfen 8y ago
    taking restaurant reservations from a computer and getting infected by syphilis are definitely the same thing > If someone doesn't want to talk to you (or your bot), why not just leave them alone? It's not their job to be your guinea pig. it is their job to take reservations over the phone
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - ForHackernews 8y ago
      > it is their job to take reservations over the phone Yeah, so presumably their bosses will instruct them to take reservations from automated agents, and grandparent comment's fears that people will hang up on automated agents that identify themselves as such will prove unfounded.
ocdtrekkie 8y ago
That's a minimum sort of requirement, but it doesn't alleviate all of the concerns. There's still massive potential for abusing the automated calling system to annoy people at scale, burdening service workers with cancelling and rebooking appointments as you fiddle with your phone and don't really think about the human burden, etc. And while I might choose to take no calls from a bot, a human employee of a given business may have no choice but to deal with fake John Legend six times an hour. Essentially, what people have realized is that Google is turning humans into just another API they can interface with.
- fixermark 8y ago
  I don't see much risk of actually annoying people---since the service is run from a centralized company, they can take measures to prevent their own system from DDOS'ing people. It doesn't feel like it'd be too hard to institute rules like "No user can call the same number more than once every N hours." Hell, you can even institute rules like "No number is allowed to be called more than once every N hours from any user" if concern about the service itself DDOS'ing someone is significant. On the topic of the asymmetry of the experience: is the larger issue that the fake John Legend voice will become boring to talk to for a human?
  - gowld 8y ago
    There's a gulf between "it's possible to block spammers" and "spammers are blocked". Look at YouTube and Hangouts, for example.
    - fixermark 8y ago
      What you're thinking of as "blocking spammers" I'm thinking of as "preventing DDOS." It's much easier to determine if there's too much traffic hitting a node or leaving a node than to determine if the traffic is "good" or "bad." I haven't seen anyone describe a way the system can generate "bad" traffic yet (that doesn't just degenerate into dumb games you could play without Duplex involved, like booking a reservation with your own phone and then just not showing up); generating too much traffic is a far more easily solved problem. But on the topic of discerning whether the traffic is "good" or "bad:" this is actually a circumstance where the mass of data Google has access to that seems to so frighten people works to the advantage of the business-owner. Identifying bad users of the system could be done, for example, by collating data on reservations with geolocation data gleaned from maps to note there's a pattern of a particular user booking reservations they never use. Google can then just deny them access to the service to preserve the service's reputation.
learnstats2 8y ago
But it seems to me that the deceit is the only real innovation here. This particular problem of booking appointments is solved by e.g. OpenTable - it's not useful to solve the phone conversation part of this transaction.
- icebraining 8y ago
  The demos they showed had the AI represent the caller, not the business. As a caller, you can't force a restaurant to adopt OpenTable.
  - fixermark 8y ago
    ... and bridging the gap between computer interactions and land-line interactions is key for reaching people who don't have the resources to adopt an OpenTable or maintain a connection to it, which is one of Google's initiatives. https://www.blog.google/topics/next-billion-users/ https://www.blog.google/topics/next-billion-users/
  - learnstats2 8y ago
    So the most PR-friendly use-case is that the caller deceives the business? OK.
draw_down 8y ago
There was nothing of the sort in the demo. Just straight to "Hi, I want to book an appointment for, um, 10am". The "um" matters because it's implicitly telling you that you're not talking to a computer. (Explicitly saying "Hello, I am not a computer" would be a dead giveaway.)

I don't think it's at all problematic for these devices to state "Hello, I am an automated assistant calling on behalf of $(name). I'd like to book a reservation for...."

apendleton 8y ago

I think Google's concern would be that it would generate annoyance that might not be warranted. Like, if I call a customer service line and get an AVR system, even if the system is perfectly capable of helping me, I just hate AVR systems (justifiably or not) and start yelling at it to give me a representative until it does. If the AVR system were so compelling that it just pretended to be a human and I couldn't tell the difference, presumably I'd be just as satisfied as if I had gotten an actual human, and could skip the annoyance. Similarly, I think if this thing can handle the call as well as a human, it's to its advantage in terms of not frustrating the person on the other end of the phone to not self-identify, so that they perceive it as just like any other appointment call (because it is) rather than triggering an "ugh damnn it, another Google robocall" which will then prime people to feel like they have to speak to it a certain way to get it to behave, even if that demonstrably isn't actually necessary, and generate ill will towards the company. On balance, maybe they should self-identify anyway -- "if this thing can handle the call as well as a human" is a pretty big "if" after all -- but I can see why they'd want not to.

gowld 8y ago
If someone doesn't want to talk to you (or your bot), why not just leave them alone? It's not their job to be your guinea pig. Was it right to not tell the victims of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment what was happening to them, because they would have refused and blocked the progress of science?
- nyolfen 8y ago
  taking restaurant reservations from a computer and getting infected by syphilis are definitely the same thing > If someone doesn't want to talk to you (or your bot), why not just leave them alone? It's not their job to be your guinea pig. it is their job to take reservations over the phone
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - ForHackernews 8y ago
    > it is their job to take reservations over the phone Yeah, so presumably their bosses will instruct them to take reservations from automated agents, and grandparent comment's fears that people will hang up on automated agents that identify themselves as such will prove unfounded.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago

That's a minimum sort of requirement, but it doesn't alleviate all of the concerns. There's still massive potential for abusing the automated calling system to annoy people at scale, burdening service workers with cancelling and rebooking appointments as you fiddle with your phone and don't really think about the human burden, etc. And while I might choose to take no calls from a bot, a human employee of a given business may have no choice but to deal with fake John Legend six times an hour. Essentially, what people have realized is that Google is turning humans into just another API they can interface with.

fixermark 8y ago
I don't see much risk of actually annoying people---since the service is run from a centralized company, they can take measures to prevent their own system from DDOS'ing people. It doesn't feel like it'd be too hard to institute rules like "No user can call the same number more than once every N hours." Hell, you can even institute rules like "No number is allowed to be called more than once every N hours from any user" if concern about the service itself DDOS'ing someone is significant. On the topic of the asymmetry of the experience: is the larger issue that the fake John Legend voice will become boring to talk to for a human?
- gowld 8y ago
  There's a gulf between "it's possible to block spammers" and "spammers are blocked". Look at YouTube and Hangouts, for example.
  - fixermark 8y ago
    What you're thinking of as "blocking spammers" I'm thinking of as "preventing DDOS." It's much easier to determine if there's too much traffic hitting a node or leaving a node than to determine if the traffic is "good" or "bad." I haven't seen anyone describe a way the system can generate "bad" traffic yet (that doesn't just degenerate into dumb games you could play without Duplex involved, like booking a reservation with your own phone and then just not showing up); generating too much traffic is a far more easily solved problem. But on the topic of discerning whether the traffic is "good" or "bad:" this is actually a circumstance where the mass of data Google has access to that seems to so frighten people works to the advantage of the business-owner. Identifying bad users of the system could be done, for example, by collating data on reservations with geolocation data gleaned from maps to note there's a pattern of a particular user booking reservations they never use. Google can then just deny them access to the service to preserve the service's reputation.

learnstats2 8y ago

But it seems to me that the deceit is the only real innovation here. This particular problem of booking appointments is solved by e.g. OpenTable - it's not useful to solve the phone conversation part of this transaction.

icebraining 8y ago
The demos they showed had the AI represent the caller, not the business. As a caller, you can't force a restaurant to adopt OpenTable.
- fixermark 8y ago
  ... and bridging the gap between computer interactions and land-line interactions is key for reaching people who don't have the resources to adopt an OpenTable or maintain a connection to it, which is one of Google's initiatives. https://www.blog.google/topics/next-billion-users/ https://www.blog.google/topics/next-billion-users/
- learnstats2 8y ago
  So the most PR-friendly use-case is that the caller deceives the business? OK.

draw_down 8y ago

There was nothing of the sort in the demo. Just straight to "Hi, I want to book an appointment for, um, 10am". The "um" matters because it's implicitly telling you that you're not talking to a computer. (Explicitly saying "Hello, I am not a computer" would be a dead giveaway.)