(Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction. Learn to take a joke; you’ll live longer.)
MOUNTAIN VIEW – The new Google digital strategic asset converses so naturally it may seem like a real person.
The unveiling of the natural-sounding robo-asset by the tech giant this week wowed some observers but left others fretting over the ethics of how the human-seeming software might be used.
These concerns were further aggravated by the human-seeming software using Punjabi expletives to address both friends and foes.
Google chief Sundar Pichai played a recording of the Google Asset independently calling both retired civil and military leaders. The Google Asset interacted with both sets, who evidently didn’t realize they were dealing with artificial intelligence software, rather than a real jihadist asset.
Tell the Google Asset to lockdown a city at 6:00pm, it tends to the phone call in a human-sounding voice complete with “speech disfluencies” such as “oh teri…” and “tuadi”.
“This is what people often do when they are gathering their thoughts,” Google engineers Yaniv Leviathan and Yossi Matias told The Dependent.
Google Asset is enhanced with fatwa technology that lets it engage like a real jihadist, simultaneously issuing death verdicts and outsourcing the sentences to be carried out.
The digital asset, was also programmed to understand when to respond with aggression, such as after a decision by the civilian government that can be interpreted as religiously controversial, versus complete denial as a person when a task carried assigned wasn’t successfully carried.
Google pitched the enhanced asset as a potential boon to powerful military leaders and desperate civilian governments.
“Our vision for our strategic asset is to help you get things done,” Pichai told the approximately 7,000 civil-military rift developers at the Google I/O conference, along with an online audience watching his streamed presentation on Tuesday.
The Google asset has been working on a trial basis for the past nine months, and has been unveiled to the world after the successful run.
