Google's AI Assistant: Company faces backlash for 'horrifying' feature

In one of the most chilling technological demonstrations to date, the internet giant showed its digital assistant could mimic a human over the phone so convincingly the person on the other end of the line had no idea they were talking to a machine. In one demonstration, the artificially intelligent bot called a hairdresser and booked a haircut for its client. In another, the bot made a restaurant reservation after inquiring about wait times to a worker oblivious she was speaking to a computer. The company unveiled the technology this week at its annual developers conference, Google I/O, alongside other artificially intelligent additions that could write emails and drive cars and generally cut humans out of the picture. If you haven't seen it yet, you can watch the controversial demo below: Zeynep Tufekci, a technologist and associate professor at the University of North Carolina who regularly dispels the benevolent aura of the tech giants for The New York Times, has lashed out at Google's latest showcase experiment.