[utopcell]

I disagree with you. The company has identity. Would I had misrepresented you if I had said that we are the best search engine in the world ?

I tried to give a balanced viewpoint so that I don't project more than what has been accomplished, but I feel personally offended when I read we are faking demos, and I instinctively desire to defend to the best of my abilities and without revealing non-disclosed information.

I'm looking past your ``poor taste'' editorialism and I apologize if you feel that I offended you or singled you, or a part of the company, out.

[takeitto]

It is just not a good idea to authenticate yourself as a Googler in these sorts of discussions. If there is doubt in the media about a tech from Google, Google's PR department is more than capable to handle that in due time.

I think part of this guideline applies, and following it should avoid disclosure, embarrassment, or being forced to speak on the defensive of an entire company (not a job that most developers are automatically good at).

> You probably know that our policy is to be extremely careful about disclosing confidential proprietary information. Consistent with that, you should also ensure your outside communications (including online and social media posts) do not disclose confidential proprietary information or represent (or otherwise give the impression) that you are speaking on behalf of Google unless you’re authorized to do so by the company. The same applies to communications with the press. Finally, check with your manager and Corporate Communications before accepting any public speaking engagement on behalf of the company. In general, before making any external communication or disclosure, you should consult our Employee Communications Policy and our Communications and Disclosure Policy.

While a compiler may block you from writing faulty code, the media will just take your faults, and then present them as truths coming from upper management.

[derangedHorse]

He broke no policy here. He made the claim that it was real (the same as Google's public stance as evidenced by Pichai's statements at Google IO) and that he's seen the code (if you've seen enough publicly available Google talks you'd know all code is public for whoever wants to view it internally).

[takeitto]

I'm not saying he broke any policy. People will simply misrepresent - or take advantage of - his just well-intended representation.

Just take out of context or read the following with a different job role and see why these guidelines make sense:

> we are Google ... These kind of systems need 99% precision ... I feel it was full of tiny imperfections ... Internally, the criticism is brutal ... It seems that I am "attacked" primarily by fellow googlers ... There are a dozen variations of this question already for TGIF ... the team wanted to fake a demo, they could had done that years ago ... a team at Google could fake something at this scale and have the face of the company back it at our most high-profile event of the year ... Would volkswagen be able to do what they did ... I've been told that there were cases were the human would react by saying "no, you are not a robot, you are human!" when they were told that the caller was a bot

[utopcell]

You make a fair point.

[utopcell]

Nobody forced me to defend the company, that should be obvious, plus I'm sure I'm within policy here.

It seems that I am "attacked" primarily by fellow googlers, which speaks to my point: If this demo was fake, it would have been rightfully torn appart internally.

By the way, did you just copy-paste our internal policy on a public forum ?

[takeitto]

I am not a Googler, and these guidelines are available here: https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html (since they also apply to investors and external contractors who may not have access to internal policies).

I am not trying to imply you are against the policy, just that it isn't a good idea to make yourself an accessible target in a "witch hunt".

The media is clearly trying to kick up some shit. They know Duplex is hot, and so they try to find another angle/drama/controversy to continue the clicks-cycle. If they had anything of substance, then plenty of AI researchers would be lining up to be cited, warning against AI-hype and winters. The article would be called: "Google faked its Big A.I. Demo!". Now they are still on the prowl for anyone that will dignify them with a soundbite, be that on social media.

Notice how few Facebookers stepped up here on Hackernews, when Facebook was the target of a negative news cycle. There is just no winning, just a lesser of two evils: Take a temporary hit to your pride, or let the media and fellow Hackernews posters take everything you say as an official company statement, attacking you and your colleagues while you weren't even directly involved in the project and can do little to alleviate any concerns or lies.

My 2 cents: The demo was not faked. But of course the samples were cherry-picked to make for a good demo. Also, a large part of the negative coverage stems from irrational fear or misunderstanding of AI, futurism potential, and the first uncanny valley for natural conversation.

[exodust]

> a large part of the negative coverage stems from irrational fear or misunderstanding of AI...

Irrational? No. At the heart of this demo is deception. After the deception comes "impressive tech" and all the rest.

Booking hair appointments is one thing, but we all know these systems will be babysitting our children, teaching them new things, and responding to their verbal prompts.

Emotional development in children is crucial for psychological health. FAKE synthetic emotion is not healthy, it's not cool.

Having "Googlers" at the top of the ethics pyramid for AI systems in our homes, is worth a healthy dose of fear and loathing. "We are Google. We don't need to fake demos [of our fake human voice]" is precisely why Google shouldn't be dictating the terms of AI standards around ethical concerns and communication disclosures.

This is about more than hair appointment bookings.

[takeitto]

The article and comments you are responding to is about the demo being poorly faked.

You seem to conflate this with another issue with the demo: It was so good that it seemed real, and you deem this to be deception/deceptive.

While I may share some of your concerns, I can't help but compare it to the rants against video games: unhealthy, fake social interaction. Often used by politicians without any scientific backing of their claims.

I do understand the current attraction from the general public to the unsurprising AI research going on at top labs. You don't need any relation to the field to muse about killer robot singularities and 2000 year old ethics philosophy, and no one will brand you a fool like they did to the people warning about earth-eating black holes at CERN.

[exodust]

No, I was responding to your comment, and your comment only, which is why I quoted you. I'm not conflating anything. Your tangent about "irrational fear" is what I was responding to, there's nothing more I can add to make that clearer.

You mention video games. In a video game, the interactions via voice chat, or text chat are person to person. I am not aware of any politicians calling that "fake". It's not related though, as online multiplayer gaming is a sub-set of a specific type of digital activity, whereas AI and bots and voice recognition is all-pervasive. It will be everywhere, and deserves scrutiny because you won't need to be a "gamer" to be exposed to this technology. IMHO it's vital we continuously examine the ethical concerns.

[shanghaiaway]

Google is far from the best search engine so you would be completely wrong. You're awful at search in Chinese and Russian. A complete joke even.

[your-nanny]

If you were personally involved then put your name on it and state in what capacity

[utopcell]

That's kind of aggressive. I was not / am not either directly or indirectly involved with this work.

[your-nanny]

You spoke as if you were.