Remember how impressed everyone was when Google introducd Duplex? How easy it was for anyone to be fooled they were listening to a conversation between two humans?
Well, according to The Information, Google might be looking into finding other applications for the very human sounding Duplex. At the moment, Google is looking into roles Duplex could be fit into which are normally occupied by humans.
The company is already in talks with a potential customer who might be interested in integrating Duplex into its business. The customer has not been named but we are apparently talking about a large insurance company who is interested in using Duplex for its call center unit and having it answer simple customer service calls.
It’s not hard to imagine the massive blow AI taking over jobs would be for us – consider just the fact that the Philippines has 1.2 million call-center workers alone. The effects would be devastating.
The good news is that most people do want to speak to a human operator, as revealed by a survey conducted in 2015 by The Conversation, where most people admitted they usually skip through the automated portion just so they can speak to an actual person.
Google did promise that the Duplex will let people know that they are in fact speaking to an AI, but that doesn’t mean people will be any eager to do so.
The Information also states that there have been some ethical concerns that have, for now, stalled the project.
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