Google exec explains why its phone-calling AI won't be evil

For the 7,000 people in the audience for Google's (GOOG, GOOGL) I/O keynote last week, the Google Duplex demo was a mind-fryer. CEO Sundar Pichai had said to his phone, "OK Google, book me a haircut appointment on Tuesday between 10 a.m. and noon." And then, silently and invisibly (to him), Google Assistant had made a phone call to a human receptionist at the salon and had held a conversation, flawlessly impersonating an actual person, complete with "umms" and "ahhs." The receptionist never knew she'd been talking to AI. "That the many in Google did not erupt in utter panic and disgust at the first suggestion of this is incredible to me," tweeted Zeynep Tufekci, a University of North Carolina professor. "This is horrible and so obviously wrong. And on "CBS This Morning," Salesforce (CRM) CEO Marc Benioff spoke about it in the context of his call for a new, national privacy law. "That was the most amazing AI technology I've seen.