Google’s Duplex AI Demo Just Passed the Turing Test

Yesterday, at I/O 2018, Google showed off a new digital assistant capability that’s meant to improve your life by making simple boring phone calls on your behalf. The new Google Duplex feature is designed to pretend to be human, with enough human-like functionality to schedule appointments or make similarly inane phone calls. According to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, the phone calls the company played were entirely real. You can make an argument, based on these audio clips, that Google actually passed the Turing Test.
As of right now, Duplex is intended to handle rote responses, like asking to speak to a representative, or simple, formulaic social interactions. Even so, the program’s demonstrated capability to deal with confusion (as on the second call), is still a significant step forward for these kinds of voice interactions. As artificial intelligence continues to improve, voice quality will improve and the AI will become better at answering more and more types of questions. We’re obviously still a long way from creating a conscious AI, but we’re getting better at the tasks our systems can handle — and faster than many would’ve thought possible.