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Wednesday, February 10, 2016

They Are Trying To Make Us Think The Machines Are Human

This is Steven Petrick posting.

Well, I got one of the new "robo calls."

This one is designed to mimic an actual human as the caller.

The phone rings, you pick it up and a cheery female voice (after registering that a male voice has answered, which takes a second or two, i.e., a noticeable delay) says "Hi! Is the lady of the house in?"

When you respond "This is a business." there is again a noticeable delay while the computer is checking its list of responses, then the cheery female voice says "Oh. I am sorry, I did not know this was a business. We will update our records. Bye."

The thing is (besides the very noticeable beats between statements) that when I answered the phone I stated that this was "Amarillo Design Bureau," but the program is not set to catch that. Instead, as noted, there were a few beats of delay while the program noted the male voice and chose the cheery female voice to respond.

They are getting better, but you can still detect the difference between a real person and a machine.

But as in the Movie "Eyeborgs" we may come to a day when the President of the United States is a machine, and none of us will be the wiser.