Google的AI已经可以“冒充人”打电话订餐馆...还会用“嗯哼~”
谷歌I/O 2018开发者大会近日在美国加州举行。
大会上，Google展示了其人工智能助理「Google Assistant」的一项“黑科技”：假装真人给餐厅、理发店等各种消费场所打电话查询信息，安排行程(schedule appointments)，预定座位(make reservations)……
这简直解决了那些一和陌生人讲话就紧张害羞的人多年的困扰...
不信？戳视频看真相
模拟人打电话到理发店
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https://v.qq.com/txp/iframe/player.html?vid=h064861w5ou&width=500&height=375&auto=0
A phone call to a hairstylist.
根本就是真人！！
而且这AI还会嗯哼~(Mm-hmm)....
Google's robot assistant now makes eerily lifelike phone calls for you
Google's virtual assistant can now make phone calls on your behalf to schedule appointments, make reservations in restaurants and get holiday hours.
The robotic assistant uses a very natural speech pattern that includes hesitations and affirmations such as “er” and “mmm-hmm” so that it is extremely difficult to distinguish from an actual human phone call.
AI打电话几既会用犹豫的口气“呃....”，还会用“嗯哼~”这样的口头禅...，确实难以区分真人还是AI
The unsettling feature, which will be available to the public later this year, is enabled by a technology called Google Duplex, which can carry out “real world” tasks on the phone, without the other person realising they are talking to a machine. The assistant refers to the person's calendar to find a suitable time slot and then notifies the user when an appointment is scheduled.
当然，这一技术不仅局限于模拟人对话。在电话成功预定之后，Google Assistant会用通知提醒用户，并在日历上记录事件。
Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, demonstrated the capability on stage at the Shoreline Amphitheater during the company's annual developer conference, I/O[年度开发者大会]. He played a recording of Google Assistant calling and interacting with someone at a hair salon to make an appointment.
<再听一遍>
那一句Mm-hmm..也引发现场观众的大笑...
When the salon picks up the phone, a female computer-generated voice says she's calling to arrange a haircut for “a client” on 3 May. The salon employee says “give me one second”, to which the robot replies “mmm-hmm” – a response that triggered a wave of laughter in the 7,000-strong audience.
“What time are you looking for?” the salon employee asks. “At 12pm,” replies the robot. The salon doesn't have an opening then, so the robot suggests a window between 10am and 12pm, before confirming the booking and notifying its human master.
Pichai showed a second demo, one of “many examples where the call doesn't go as expected”, in which a male-sounding virtual assistant tries to reserve a table at a restaurant but is told that he doesn't need a booking if there are only four people in his party. The robot appears to navigate the confusing conversation with ease.
第二个demo展示的是打电话到餐厅预订座位
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https://v.qq.com/txp/iframe/player.html?vid=h064861w5ou&width=500&height=375&auto=0
有意思的是，通话中餐馆老板告知“4个人不用定位，可以直接来”时，原则上虚拟助手到这里就可以挂电话了，因为订位的任务已经完成。然而它没有挂掉，而是做出了一个堪称优秀的即兴追问：“通常等位时间有多久”。
From the onstage demonstrations, it seemed like a significant upgrade from the automated phone systems most people have interacted with. The natural interaction is enabled by advancements in automatic speech recognition, text-to-speech synthesis and an understanding of how humans pace their conversations.
Pichai said the tool was useful for the 60% of small businesses in the US that don't already have an online booking system. “We think AI can help,” he said.
The Duplex system can also call a company to ask about hours of operation during a holiday, and then make that information available online with Google, reducing the volume of similar calls a business might receive.
“Businesses can operate as they always have. There's no learning curve or changes to make to benefit from this technology,” the principal engineer, Yaniv Leviathan, and vice-president, engineering, Yossi Matias wrote in a blogpost about the technology.
During the demonstrations, the virtual assistant did not identify itself and instead appeared to deceive the human at the end of the line. However, in the blogpost, the company indicated that might change.
“It's important to us that users and businesses have a good experience with this service, and transparency is a key part of that. We want to be clear about the intent of the call so businesses understand the context. We'll be experimenting with the right approach over the coming months.”
来源：The Guardian