I'm honestly a little confused as to why so many people think this is inherently ethically dubious. Having the discussion about it is fine, and at every step we should examine what our technologies might be able to do negatively, but why is this inherently ethically bad? The responses to this I've typically seen are just "because it's not a real person," but my answer to that is always "and?"
It seems to me that the only places where ethics will come into this is in the content of the call: if the AI says something scammy, then sure, that's bad, but surely that's an issue with what's being said, not who or what is saying it?
None of the examples I've seen so far have been unique to AI; they've all been examples of abuses that happen now, so it seems -- at least inasmuch as Google Duplex is concerned -- like a whole lot of nothing, ethically speaking.
Where exactly is the immoral deception coming into play? Duplex may not have announced itself as a bot, but it never announced itself as a human either.
If Google has to have Duplex announce its bot status, should we also have to announce our human status? Otherwise it might be immoral deceptive to allow someone to think we might be a bot.
Does it really matter if your talking to a human or a bot? Especially in the use case of scheduling an appointment. IMHO, if I were answering that call, I personally would prefer talking to Duplex than a real person. The call would be more succinct and to the point. Duplex would have access to the user's calendar to know when an appointment could and could not work instantly
Or, even if you were to dismiss that specific comparison as being silly because there's never been a need to identifying as human before, there are so many others you can make:
If you're a man with a high-pitched voice, you aren't expected to identify as a woman;
If you're a woman with a deep voice, you aren't expected to identify as a man;
You're not expected to state whether the accent you're speaking with is actually your own.
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I'm honestly a little confused as to why so many people think this is inherently ethically dubious. Having the discussion about it is fine, and at every step we should examine what our technologies might be able to do negatively, but why is this inherently ethically bad? The responses to this I've typically seen are just "because it's not a real person," but my answer to that is always "and?"
It seems to me that the only places where ethics will come into this is in the content of the call: if the AI says something scammy, then sure, that's bad, but surely that's an issue with what's being said, not who or what is saying it?
None of the examples I've seen so far have been unique to AI; they've all been examples of abuses that happen now, so it seems -- at least inasmuch as Google Duplex is concerned -- like a whole lot of nothing, ethically speaking.
I share similar thoughts.
When a human calls a human, no one declares to the other their 'humanness'.
I like the thought shared in this comment by JG: 9to5google.com/2018/05/10/google-d...
Or, even if you were to dismiss that specific comparison as being silly because there's never been a need to identifying as human before, there are so many others you can make:
If you're a man with a high-pitched voice, you aren't expected to identify as a woman;
If you're a woman with a deep voice, you aren't expected to identify as a man;
You're not expected to state whether the accent you're speaking with is actually your own.