The story goes like this: Time’s Michael Scherer recently received a call on his cell phone from a bright, enthusiastic woman who asked him if he was interested in hearing about a deal with his health insurance.
It’s a fairly standard script I’m sure we’re all familiar with when it comes to dealing with telemarketers.
After a few seconds of being on the phone, though, Scherer got the feeling that something was amiss. To see if his intuition was correct, he asked the telemarketer outright if she was a real person, or a computer-operated bot.
There was a short pause followed by a slight chuckle and then she said something Scherer was not expecting: that she was real.
Not convinced, Scherer pressed the issue, asking her a series of questions, which she failed over and over. These questions included “What vegetable is found in tomato soup?” to which she responded that she didn’t understand the question.
He then asked her day of the week it was yesterday, and she said that she had a bad connection.
Scherer spent nearly an hour on the phone with her, asking her numerous questions, and recording the conversation:
After getting down the call-back number, a couple of other Time reporters called the bot and recorded their conversations:
From Scherer’s Time article:
If you want, you can call her too. Her number is (484) 589-5611. This number, if you Google it, is the subject of much discussion online as other recipients of Samantha West calls complain on chat boards about the mysteriously persistent lady who keeps calling them. “A friendly sounded woman on the other end claimed I requested health insurance information,” writes one mark. “She doggedly refused to deviate from her script.”
After answering her questions, one Time reporter was transferred to an actual human who did not promptly end the call, as others had when asked about Samantha. Asked for the company's website, the real human on the other end of the line said it was premierhealthagency.com, the website of a Ft. Lauderdale company. “We're here to help. . . because we care,” is the company motto on its homepage. A Time reporter called the company directly, identified himself and said Time was doing a story about the robot who calls people on the company's behalf. “We don't use robot calls, sir,” said the person who answered the phone, before promptly hanging up the phone.
Now, before you pick up the phone to give Samantha a call for yourself, it should be noted that a day after the Time article was published, the phone number was updated to divert callers to a busy signal instead.
In addition, the website premeirhealthagency.com has since been taken offline.
Upon taking a listen to the recordings, though, it is surprising just how realistic the robot sounds. Its interaction with the human caller is very similar to Siri and Google Voice, but instead of helping the user out by providing them with the information they’ve requested, Samantha is trying to push information for the purpose of selling a service.
For better or worse, this story represents the significant improvements made in artificial intelligence. What do you think, though? Would you consider this to be a step forward for AI — that is, the use of an intelligent, automated system to sell and market services to humans — or a gross misuse of an otherwise advanced technology?
Story via: time.com
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