Are you a techno geek hungry for more wow moments?
Like the first time you logged onto the internet and discovered a new world at your fingertips.
Good news. Google just had a wow moment.
An artificial intelligent digital assistant was demonstrated by Google which made bookings for things such as haircuts and restaurant reservations – over the phone.
The talking assistant was indistinguishable from the staff member of the business it was talking to and who had no idea they were talking to a machine.
The assistant had great command of language, even muttering "Mmmm's" or some such space filler as Humans would do. This wasn't a script, it was thinking, of sorts.
Sure these demonstrations were cherry picked by Google to show off its new technology, set to roll out to your phone sometime soon.
No doubt for every successful experiment, there will be numerous where the assistant became confused. If that happens, says Google, the call will be kicked to a call centre for a real person to take over.
Users won't get to hear the calls their digital assistants make. We will simply instruct our assistants to make a booking and the assistant will come back with a message when the booking has been confirmed.
I would still much rather pick up the phone myself and talk to my mechanic about my car's service. Note I do not invoke the haircut example, for obvious reasons.
But think of the possibilities now that the technology has reached this level. Are call centres in trouble? In time, perhaps.
For now Siri, Alexa, Bixby and Google Assistant are still pretty limited. But the party tricks are adding up.
Having a proper conversation with our phones may not be that far off.
