Google AI blog:

Today we announce Google Duplex, a new technology for conducting natural conversations to carry out “real world” tasks over the phone. The technology is directed towards completing specific tasks, such as scheduling certain types of appointments. For such tasks, the system makes the conversational experience as natural as possible, allowing people to speak normally, like they would to another person, without having to adapt to a machine.

You can jump to that page and click on examples of Google Assistant using Google Duplex to make phone calls, interact with real-world people.

But the best thing to do is jump to this Verge page and watch the video of Google CEO Sundar Pichai actually running those demos. It’s incredible.

I’ve encountered two waves of thinking about this. On one hand, there’s the thinking that robots are coming for our jobs, that this technology will displace human assistants, human call centers, and that we’ll have an even larger wave of junk calls to deal with.

But on the positive side, consider this tweet:

People who have difficulty speaking, people who have difficulty hearing, people who get anxiety when speaking on the phone, people who are not native language speakers. All are going to have their lives significantly improved by AI-driven calling. https://t.co/QvYLkPBfpZ

— Steve Streza ? (he/they) (@SteveStreza) May 8, 2018

Well worth considering the good that can come from this technology.

Also worth noting that it is 26 days until WWDC.