Google AI Call

2018.06.09

Hey, so although this post is really late, I don’t really care. I saw this a while back and I thought it was awesome, but got side tracked with work and never wrote about it. So here I am late to the game. But in the event that you might not know what I’m referencing about, just keep reading. Haha.

The Phone Call
Last month Google released a demo of an AI attempting to make a hair appointment over the phone, with a real person. In the phone call the AI suggests a time, the person suggests another time, and then the AI finally accepts a time, person asks for a name, AI provides a name, both say goodbye and hang up. And honestly it does sound like a real person on the phone, which is both exciting and creepy, yet funny to me. Its exciting because you realize that AI has greatly advanced so far that it can now mimic humans and that’s no longer Scifi! Thats insane! But then its creepy because the woman on the phone has no idea shes talking to a robot, and so now you feel bad..and weird. But the concept is funny because phone calls are pointless and what is Google trying to accomplish here? Who even makes phone calls anymore? Everything is done online. You want groceries or household supplies, you can have them delivered. We live in that kind of world now, phones aren’t phones, they’re everything else. So google, I love you and all, but what are you getting at? lol.

Machine Learning
In the google article they mentioned they used Recurring Neural Networks (RNN), which is an algorithm that finds the optimal ordering of specific words depending on a response just received. This interesting to me because 1) I actually knew what they were talking about because I just learned it this past spring in my machine learning class, but 2) because they also used tensorflow, and tensorflow is an open source tool for implementing machine learning algorithms. And that is also a tool we used in class. So I definitely suggest you play around that if AI/machine learning peaks your interest. Go and Google all the things.

If not, dont worry, I very much intended to write on how to get started with tensorflow and keras and all the machine learning knowledge I can share. So stay tuned for that in a future blog post.

In conclusion, machine learning for the win for finding a solution to reduce even more human interaction in the real world and allowing us to progress our isolation in society. Too dark or too honest?


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