It's Google's turn to ask the questions

At Google's annual developer conference this past week, CEO Sundar Pichai played a clip of what seemed to be a mundane human interaction: Someone calling to make an appointment with their hairdresser. The two voices negotiated the date and time, with the "assistant" providing the client's name for the reservation. Instead, Pichai said, it was Google's artificial intelligence making the call to the unwitting hair salon receptionist. The technology is called Google Duplex, a system that combines natural language processing and speech generation that allegedly allows Google to accomplish customer service tasks in a number of limited situations. Right now, the company is only testing the technology internally, focusing on booking reservations at restaurants and hair salons, as well as inquiring about holiday hours for businesses.