Google Leading Us To The Future

The conversation seems mundane. At least, at first.

In a building called the Partnerplex on Google's sprawling campus in Mountain View, California, I've been invited to hear a 51-second phone recording of someone making a dinner reservation.

Person 1: Good evening.
Person 2: Hello?
Person 1: Hello.
Person 2: Hi, um, I'd like to reserve a table for Friday the third.
Person 1: OK, hold on one moment.
Person 2: Mm hmm.
Person 1: OK… hold on one second.
Person 2: Mm hmm.
Person 1: So Friday, November third. How many people?
Person 2: For... two people.
Person 1: Two people?
Person 2: Yeah.

As I listen to what sounds like a man and a woman talking, Google's top executives for Assistant, the search giant's digital helper, watch closely to gauge my reaction. They're showing off the Assistant's new tricks a few days before Google I/O, the company's annual developer conference that starts Tuesday.

Turns out this particular trick is pretty wild.

That's because Person 2, the one who sounds like a man, isn't a person at all. It's the Google Assistant. And it (or "he"? That's its own debate) doesn't sound at all like the semi robotic disembodied voice you usually hear out of a Google Home smart speaker when it's giving you updates on the weather or telling you how long it'll take you to commute to work.

This could be the next evolution of the Assistant, Google's rival to Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri and Microsoft's Cortana. It sounds remarkably -- maybe even eerily -- human, pausing before responding to questions and using verbal ticks, like "um" and "uh." It says "mm hmm" as if it's nodding in agreement. It elongates certain words as though it's buying time to think of an answer, even though its responses are instantaneously programmed by algorithms.

With this new speaking ability, Google Assistant gets that much closer to hitting a milestone in the evolution of computing: passing the Turing test. Proposed by English computer scientist Alan Turing in 1950, it's a way of potentially evaluating a machine's ability to demonstrate intelligent behavior. To pass the Turing test, a computer's natural language responses would have to sound just like a human's.

Built with technology Google calls "Duplex" -- and developed by engineers and product designers in Tel Aviv, New York and Mountain View -- the AI sounds as though the future of voice assistants has arrived.

Well, almost arrived.

The demo is part of what Google calls an "experiment" it plans to launch this summer. With Duplex, a "small" number of people will be able to book restaurant reservations and hair appointments and to check holiday hours, stuff you'd normally do over the phone. All of that back and forth happens on the back end -- between Google Assistant and, say, the restaurant. You won't even hear the voice chat taking place. It'll come from an unspecified phone number, not your own.

Google is coy about the size of the rollout but says it'll be limited -- all the company will say is it won't be available to everyone using Assistant today. Nick Fox, vice president of product and design for Google Assistant and Search, and Yossi Matias, Google's vice president of engineering, say the search giant wants to "proceed with caution" because it's such a new technology.

Google also won't say if its goal is to bring this natural-sounding Assistant to more products -- like hearing it come out of your Google Home.

Here's how the reservation feature works: Say you want to book a haircut appointment. Just ask the Assistant from your Google Home, or text it from your Android phone or iPhone app, telling it where and when. If you want something at noon on Sunday, the Assistant will ask you for backup options just in case that time slot isn't available -- it knows that getting a range between, say, noon and 2 p.m. may be the smarter way to go.

If the business uses an automated online booking service like OpenTable, the Assistant will default to using that system for the appointment. But if the business doesn't take automated reservations that way -- and many small businesses don't -- Google's helper will make the call for you. The Assistant will text you back confirming your appointment and add it to your calendar.

In a different recorded conversation, I hear two female voices setting up a hair appointment. One is the Duplex technology. "She" sounds naturally human. She even does that thing with her voice that annoys some people, where her inflection goes up at the end of a sentence, even when not answering a question.

"We think of it as, 'What's a perfect assistant?'" says Fox, a 15-year Google veteran. "When I want an assistant with me, it's there. It's always ready to help. I don't worry about 'Can my assistant do it or not'? My assistant can do anything I want it to do."

Fox, who's spent most of his time at Google working on search ads, is now in charge of product for one of Google's landmark projects. It's been almost exactly two years since Google announced the Assistant at I/O 2016. The Assistant is the essence of Google, set free from the search box on the company's iconic, sparse homepage.

The goal for Pichai and his team is to have Google's artificial intelligence work alongside you as you go about your day: With the Assistant today, you can get morning news headlines from your Google Home, point your phone's camera at a flower to discover what species it is or turn up your thermostat so the house is a comfortable temperature when you get home.

But if Google's experiment becomes reality, the Assistant will truly be your digital assistant. "Think of it as building your own individual Google," Pichai told us two years ago.