Google Allo
The terrifying assistant that outsources human thinking
While watching the product demos of Google IO 2016 my interest was piqued by their new messaging app. Google have long been the masters of suggestion with autocomplete in search, “Did you mean” suggestions, preloading URLs and so on, but this one struck me as vastly different.
The suggestion engine in Allo has a feature that is so automated that, to me, it becomes really disturbing. One of these features that makes me think that the product team at Google only thought if they could do it, rather than if they should do it. It’s called “Smart Reply”, and was unveiled at a Google I/O 2016 where it was met with an enthusiastic round of applause. The quotes in this article are from Eric Kay during the keynote address.
“It let’s you express yourself in fun new ways”
Smart reply analyses pictures within a conversation, and offers suggestions of what you might want to say based on semantics. It claims that it will also learn over time, predicting what you say, presumably becoming a more accurate, you.
“What’s really cool here, is that we don’t just identify what’s in the image, Smart Reply actually creates a conversational response.”
Some of the examples given in the keynote include identifying a cute dog, a beautiful butterfly, and impressively the type of pasta in a photo of a clam linguine. Now I’m a lover of technology, especially when it does good. I am completely baffled as to why anyone would want to allow their device to respond for them in this way?
Would you let your colleague answer a question for you from your boss, or let your partner answer a question from a friend? Of course not, so why would you allow your phone to do it. Especially given that this is not a friend or loved one. This is a piece of technology driven by a multinational company.
The first feature I mentioned talked about about allowing “you to express yourself in fun, new ways”. Sure this is new, potentially fun, but in no way are you expressing yourself. Your part in the conversation is pressing a meaty digit onto a display to confirm what the device is “thinking”.
“You can say what you want without having to type a single word.”
Doesn’t this strike anyone else as a paradoxical statement? If you are not typing a single word, then surely you are not saying anything.
If you are interesting in talking more about topics like this, then join the Human Experience Meetup in Dublin and come to one of our events.
