Google itself (Google Search) is extremely wary of being used by "bots" and uses string of captchas to screen them out. But search is just a machine.
That Google would create bots to talk to real people is horrifying. This is only possible if Google doesn't in fact think of working people answering the phone, as really human.
This is like doing war with drones instead of soldiers. This may sound over the top, but bear with me.
The implicit contract in war is that soldiers are legally authorized to kill because they are risking their own life. Killing people at a distance without risking anyone's life on the side of the shooters, breaks that "contract", is fundamentally unfair and fuels terrorism, because terrorism is the only possible answer.
Making a telephone call rests on the same convention: you are allowed to make someone spend time on the phone with you, because you're spending your own time.
But if one side is a robot that has no costs, then the relationship loses balance and becomes unsustainable (and this is the reason why Google bans bots on its own servers). This is one more step breaking society, again.
The only answer is to either stop accepting phone reservations, or put captchas on the other side.
> The implicit contract in war is that soldiers are legally authorized to kill because they are risking their own life. Killing people at a distance without risking anyone's life on the side of the shooters, breaks that "contract", is fundamentally unfair and fuels terrorism, because terrorism is the only possible answer.
I don't think there's any sort of human risk contract like that in war. Wars fought entirely between human armies still produce spite on opposing sides.
Going back to your point about calls, humans and machines call me to ask for polling information, telemarketing, etcetera. I'm not okay with them wasting my time, whether they're human or machine. However, I'll tolerate it below a threshold as part of the costs of having a communication channel. Beyond that threshold I would consider alternate measures like changing my phone number, getting rid of my phone, or paying for a screening machine or service.
Newspapers (and listening to heralds) are inherrently pull-based - I choose to engage with them. Robocalls and spam are push-based - you force yourself on me, wasting my time.
This kind and volume of automation pervades written digital communication now, and has already been creeping into voice communication (scam calls and robodials).
Google bans botting against its own services, but can realistically only ban the botting it can detect. If you can detect NN voice botting, you can ban it for your own communications as well.
And if the technology to detect or tooling to effectively filter that doesn’t exist? Sounds like a great business opportunity.
I don't think you'll get far with analogies to bots killing people. Maybe there is a narrative for automation leading to direct harm to humans, but Google Duplex is not currently close enough to that.
Instead, I would change your analogies to real bot/human problems today, such as phone bots scamming individuals for millions[1], or an older problem – email spam.
Basically any platform with a large imbalance in the effort (time/money/labor) spent by two sides (scammer/scammed in my example above) can be abused. But it can also be used for very good things. So we can't make blanket statements about these things.
Captchas and other bot filters are built to balance out the effort ratio so that abuse becomes more costly, and I'm sure if either Google or other companies abuse robocalls, people will have to respond with similar measures. But it's not a new problem, and if Google plays their cards right they may actually reduce the volume of calls that don't lead to business, while maintaining or increasing the volume of calls that do lead to business.
> Making a telephone call rests on the same convention: you are allowed to make someone spend time on the phone with you, because you're spending your own time.
I personally, absolutely do not think of it that way.
Whenever I get called by a call center, I always immediately say "not interested" and drop the call. It's rude, but I think these companies are not entitled to my time.
Because of that I think the problem is already there. This is certainly another step in the wrong direction, but thousands of workers in thousands of callcenters are basically already a human botnet.
That Google would create bots to talk to real people is horrifying. This is only possible if Google doesn't in fact think of working people answering the phone, as really human.
This is like doing war with drones instead of soldiers. This may sound over the top, but bear with me.
The implicit contract in war is that soldiers are legally authorized to kill because they are risking their own life. Killing people at a distance without risking anyone's life on the side of the shooters, breaks that "contract", is fundamentally unfair and fuels terrorism, because terrorism is the only possible answer.
Making a telephone call rests on the same convention: you are allowed to make someone spend time on the phone with you, because you're spending your own time.
But if one side is a robot that has no costs, then the relationship loses balance and becomes unsustainable (and this is the reason why Google bans bots on its own servers). This is one more step breaking society, again.
The only answer is to either stop accepting phone reservations, or put captchas on the other side.