GOOGLE'S Duplex: Pretending to be human

摘要

Google's Duplex is a computer‐based system with natural language capabilities thatprovides a human sounding conversation as it performs a set of tasks, such as makingrestaurant reservations. This paper analyses Google's Duplex and some of the initialreaction to the system and its capabilities. The paper does a text analysis and finds thatthe system‐generated text creates standardized ratings that suggest the text isanalytical, authentic and possesses a generally positive tone. As would be expectedfor the applications for which it is being used, the text is heavily focused on the present.In addition, this analysis indicates that the text provides evidence of social processes,cognitive processes, tentativeness and affiliation. Further, this paper examines someof the characteristics of speech that Duplex uses to sound human. Those capabilitiesappear to allow the system pass the Turing test for some well‐structured tasks.However, this paper investigates some of the ethics of pretending to be human andsuggests that such impersonation is against evolving computer codes of ethics.