I am not an AI doomer. Just like anything else, AI is a tool to be used. Humans remain the master, at least until AI can think for itself.
For now, there is one thing I want AI to do for me: make phone calls. For whatever reason, I never like making phones calls. Remember when you had to actually speak to someone on the phone to activate a credit card? Man am I glad we can just log into our bank accounts online for that. Call to schedule a doctor’s appointment? There’s an app for that now.
But of course there are some things you still have to pick up the phone for. Like calling 911, though I’m not here to suggest AI call 911 on my behalf. I’m talking about stuff like calling the parts department of a dealership to check on a backorder I placed months ago. Email probably could have sufficed, but I wanted an order update immediately.
Whoever invents an AI agent to make phone calls will get all my money. I can train it to imitate my voice by reading to it a few paragraphs. It doesn’t have to be a perfect facsimile: these calls are made to complete strangers. (I’m not using AI to call my friends!) So long as the AI can carry a conversation in a normal speech pattern. If it sounds more like Stephen Hawking (rest in peace), that’s probably not going to work.
Possible, right? I mean, AI can make a song with Drake on the track - without Drake the actual singer being involved at all. Voice imitation is already nailed. The Siri assistant on my iPhone talks back to me fairly naturally, so we know computers can do colloquial speech. I think the major hurdle is creating a fast enough generative loop between input from human voice - on the other side of the line - and output by the AI telephone agent.
All you Chinese AI software engineers getting paid half a million a year better get on that!
Under construction.