A year later, restaurants are still disturbed by Google Duplex

Myriah Q. has not stopped moving since I entered the bar. Her clients are sitting on the sidewalk and in the backyard, and she paces between the opposite ends of the room to cope with the rush hour. From time to time, she hops behind the counter to mix drinks, restart the music playlist or organize the menus. Suddenly, the phone rings – for the third time. Myriah examines the identity of the caller, ignores the call and resumes his dance.

"I do not have time to spam," she says. "I'm pretty busy as is."

But the call was not exactly spam. Twenty minutes ago, I had asked the bartender at Sweet Afton, an Irish pub in Astoria, NY, if she had ever heard of Google Duplex, an artificial intelligence that calls the restaurants on behalf of someone and uses a realistic human speech to make reservations. . When Myriah told me she did not do it, I asked if she was interested in trying it and she agreed. Yet when the calls arrived, she chose not to pick up.

"I deliberately ignored those calls because she said" Google, "she said, not realizing that the calls would seem to come directly from the company. "I work so fast that I do not pick up a person's name if I do not do it."

When the fourth call was sounded – as my Google assistant frantically tells me, he still tries to join Sweet Afton – Myriah finally wins. This time, she listens carefully without ever responding to the AI. "It was weird," she said hanging up. "I'm a little panicked."

Image: Google

Google Duplex was arguably one of Google's biggest announcements in 2018, but artificial intelligence took a back seat this week at the same I / O developer conference that introduced it all just a year. Google CEO Sundar Pichai simply noted that the technology had received "excellent feedback" rather than updating the improvements made to artificial intelligence since its official release. He then quickly announced that Duplex was coming to the Web. the borrowing of identity is necessary. Instead of the amazing vocal AI that aroused a mix of enthusiasm and ethical criticism, Duplex is now a sophisticated auto-fill tool that allows you to quickly navigate a web page and quickly book tickets from cinema and rental cars.

Much of Duplex's work is not really based on calls. When you make a restaurant reservation request with Google Assistant, it searches for job offers through third-party booking platforms such as OpenTable, Resy, or Yelp. If he is able, he will confirm the time with you and reserve it, or he will say that he is unable to complete the task if the requested hours are available. The duplex call feature only appears for restaurants that are not on these platforms and have chosen to receive calls from Google Assistant on their Google commerce page. Although Google is opting for business by default, it probably still represents a relatively small percentage of companies that have to deal with duplex calls on a regular basis, especially since the technology is still relatively new. And in cities where you would usually need a reservation, most restaurants are probably already using online booking services. (Google has not responded to The edge for a request to comment on the frequency with which duplex calls are made.)

Online reservation services can be expensive for some companies. The cheapest OpenTable plan starts at 25 cents per dinner for every reservation made, but it goes up to $ 249 per month plus $ 1 per seated dinner if the restaurant wants to be able to send SMS reservation reminders or update them according to waiting times. Resy and Yelp also start at $ 249 per month, up to $ 899 per month for integration with the restaurant's point-of-sale system, a dedicated account manager and even Apple Watch alerts for cases where the stock is low or the arrival of a VIP guest. . This type of investment is not always worthwhile for smaller, locally owned and managed restaurants, which rely heavily on pedestrian traffic and prefer to deal with walk-in clients.

"We are a neighborhood place so we want people to come and see us whenever they want," says Myriah.

But as she does not always wait for calls regarding bookings, she was a little taken aback when she heard Duplex's opening soliloquy. When I asked if Duplex had introduced itself as a robot and had warned that the call could be registered, Myriah replied that she could not remember exactly. The pub can be so noisy and busy that it "can not hear all the words that come out of people's mouths".

Bee Thanaraksalakul also did not have the free time to notice who – or rather what – was calling. Thanaraksalakul, a waitress who works in my parents' Thai restaurant in Queens, NY, did not see that the caller had declared Google Assistant during his call, and she did not remember if the appellant had stated that she was registered. . She noted, however, that she would never have guessed that she would go to an AI if I had not told her about Duplex. That's how the voice seemed realistic to him. "He even stammered a bit," she says.

At the call of Myriah, she says that the AI ​​looked like a young man. However, a few minutes after hung up, Duplex called back to confirm the name of the reservation, but this time his voice was different. "This one was Irish!", She said, pointing out that it was strange that artificial intelligence does not use the same voice to confirm the same reservation called a few moments ago.

Several other employees of the restaurant that I spoke to for this room agreed that the robot 's assistant had a remarkably human sound. Shawn Watford's Birmingham, Alabama server said that although he had not received Duplex's customer calls to the station himself, he had already tried to do so just to get an idea of ​​what what did artificial intelligence look like? "I was scared by the natural and human sound of the machine," he says. "It was so weird [that] when he called, I immediately hung up. "

Some employees were even skeptical about whether the voice on the other line was really a robot. Gabriel Murphy, owner and chef at Gogi's Restaurant in Jacksonville, Oregon, said he had tried artificial intelligence on his team as he watched the call in private. When he told them later that it was Duplex, the team did not really think about talking to an AI. "No staff member seemed to have a problem with that, [but] There was a lot of jokes about Skynet and machine handling, "says Murphy.

But Google machines do not seem to take over yet. While the United States continues to face an avalanche of spammed automated calls, it appears that many restaurant employees are inadvertently protecting Duplex by ignoring incoming calls that do not carry a person's name. Mark Seaman, director of the two-year-old Queens Bully restaurant, located in Forest Hills, NY, explains that he often tries to avoid calls from companies that seem to want to launch the restaurant on a product or service. "Most of our growth comes from our own efforts on social media and the parties we organize," says Seaman. "We always get calls from people trying to sell us something [we don’t need]. "

Although Google does not personally call companies to convince them to buy ads, it goes without saying that many restaurant employees would be reluctant to answer calls that list the company in its identity. As Google plans to extend Duplex beyond restaurants and to other on-demand services such as hair salons, it will need to do more to convince businesses that its automated calls, at least on the surface, are different. of those to which most Americans are accustomed.

When Duplex was first announced, one of my initial concerns was that technology would further widen the gap between the privileged and the poor and weaken the communication and empathy that a party might have toward the other. In recent years, I have seen how apps like Seamless and Uber have apparently given the right to their users, encouraging them to calm themselves while rarely having to deal with people who meet their needs. They resulted in ads highlighting odious requests from actual food delivery orders that people have hailed as "hilarious" and "clever." And the famous video of Travis Kalanick, then CEO of Uber, accusing a driver of his platform to ask why the prices of UberBlack have dropped.

A year later, the Duplex mode is still limited and, at least for the moment, has minimal impact on service workers, with the exception of their occasional panic, but there may be a by-product Involuntary AI replacing the man: politeness.

"It's easier to talk to [Duplex], Says Thanaraksalakul. English is her second language and she really works at the restaurant. So, when she repeats questions or misreads a person on the phone, the client is not always patient with her. This misunderstanding can sometimes lead to an unpleasant experience when the client comes in person, or even a poor online assessment, that speaking to the AI ​​can be an accidental respite.

Kindness is not always an expected interaction at work in the service industry and that's something that Myriah also appreciates for Google's calls. "It was a bit scary," she says, "but that was very polite."