{"id":63626,"date":"2018-05-22T09:20:47","date_gmt":"2018-05-22T13:20:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/?p=63626"},"modified":"2018-05-22T17:41:17","modified_gmt":"2018-05-22T21:41:17","slug":"googles-talk-to-books-duplex-other-ways-ai-is-making-its-way-into-our-lives-for-good-or-for-ill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/2018\/05\/22\/googles-talk-to-books-duplex-other-ways-ai-is-making-its-way-into-our-lives-for-good-or-for-ill\/","title":{"rendered":"Google’s “Talk to Books” & “Duplex”+ other ways AI is making its way into our lives (for good or for ill)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Google’s robot assistant now makes eerily lifelike phone calls for you<\/strong><\/a> — from theguardian.com by Olivia Solon
\nGoogle Duplex contacts hair salon and restaurant in demo, adding \u2018er\u2019 and \u2018mmm-hmm\u2019 so listeners think it\u2019s human<\/em><\/p>\n

Excerpt:<\/em><\/p>\n

Google\u2019s virtual assistant can now make phone calls on your behalf to schedule appointments, make reservations in restaurants and get holiday hours.<\/p>\n

The robotic assistant uses a very natural speech pattern that includes hesitations and affirmations such as \u201cer\u201d and \u201cmmm-hmm\u201d so that it is extremely difficult to distinguish from an actual human phone call.<\/p>\n

The unsettling feature, which will be available to the public later this year, is enabled by a technology called\u00a0Google\u00a0Duplex, which can carry out \u201creal world\u201d tasks on the phone, without the other person realising they are talking to a machine. The assistant refers to the person\u2019s calendar to find a suitable time slot and then notifies the user when an appointment is scheduled.<\/p>\n

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Google employees quit over the company\u2019s military AI project<\/strong><\/a> — from thenextweb.com by Tristan Greene<\/p>\n

Excerpt:<\/em><\/p>\n

About a dozen Google employees reportedly left the company over its insistence on developing AI for the US military through a program called Project Maven. Meanwhile 4,000 others signed a petition demanding the company stop.<\/p>\n

It looks like there\u2019s some internal confusion over whether the company\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t Be Evil\u201d motto covers making machine learning systems to aid warfare.<\/p>\n

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The link between big tech and defense work<\/strong><\/a> — from wired.com by\u00a0Nitasha Tiku<\/p>\n

Except:<\/p>\n

FOR MONTHS, A\u00a0<\/span>growing faction of Google employees has tried to force the company to drop out of a controversial military program called Project Maven. More than 4,000 employees, including\u00a0dozens of senior engineers<\/a>, have signed a petition asking Google to cancel the contract. Last week,\u00a0Gizmodo reported<\/a>\u00a0that a dozen employees resigned over the project. \u201cThere are a bunch more waiting for job offers (like me) before we do so,\u201d one engineer says. On Friday, employees communicating through an internal mailing list discussed refusing to interview job candidates in order to slow the project\u2019s progress.<\/p>\n

Other tech giants have recently secured high-profile contracts to build technology for defense, military, and intelligence agencies. In March, Amazon\u00a0expanded<\/a>\u00a0its newly launched “Secret Region”\u00a0cloud services<\/a>\u00a0supporting top-secret work for the Department of Defense. The same week that news broke of the Google resignations,\u00a0Bloomberg reported<\/a>\u00a0that Microsoft locked down a deal with intelligence agencies. But there\u2019s little sign of the same kind of rebellion among Amazon and Microsoft workers.<\/p>\n

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Amazon urged not to sell facial recognition tool to police<\/strong><\/a> — from wpxi.com by Gene Johnson<\/p>\n

Excerpt:<\/em><\/p>\n

Facebook SEATTLE (AP) – The American Civil Liberties Union and other privacy advocates are asking Amazon to stop marketing a powerful facial recognition tool to police, saying law enforcement agencies could use the technology to “easily build a system to automate the identification and tracking of anyone.”<\/p>\n

The tool, called Rekognition, is already being used by at least one agency – the Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon – to check photographs of unidentified suspects against a database of mug shots from the county jail, which is a common use of such technology around the country.<\/p>\n

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From DSC:<\/span><\/em>
\nGoogle’s C-Suite — as well as the C-Suites at Microsoft, Amazon, and other companies — needs to be very careful these days, as they could end up losing the support\/patronage of a lot of people — including more of their own employees. It’s not an easy task to know how best to build and use technologies in order to make the world a better place…to create a dream vs. a nightmare for our future. But just because we can build something, doesn’t mean we should.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Complete Guide to Conversational Commerce | Everything you need to know.<\/strong><\/a> — from chatbotsmagazine.com by Matt Schlicht<\/p>\n

Excerpt:<\/em><\/p>\n

What is conversational commerce? Why is it such a big opportunity? How does it work? What does the future look like? How can I get started? These are the questions I\u2019m going to answer for you right now.
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\nThe guide covers:<\/p>\n