The unveiling of the natural-sounding robo-assistant 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.

Google chief Sundar Pichai played a recording of the Google Assistant independently calling a hair salon and a restaurant to make bookings — interacting with staff who evidently didn’t realize they were dealing with artificial intelligence software, rather than a real customer.

Tell the Google Assistant to book a table for four at 6:00 pm, it tends to the phone call in a human-sounding voice complete with “speech disfluencies” such as “ums” and “uhs.”

“This is what people often do when they are gathering their thoughts,” Google engineers Yaniv Leviathan and Yossi Matias said in a Duplex blog post.

Google Assistant artificial intelligence enhanced with “Duplex” technology that let it engage like a real person on the phone was a surprise and, for some unsettling, star of the internet giant’s annual developers conference this week in its home town of Mountain View, California.

The digital assistant was also programmed to understand when to respond quickly, such as after someone says “hello,” versus pausing as a person might before answering complex questions.

Google pitched the enhanced assistant as a potential boon to busy people and small businesses which lack websites customers can use to make appointments.

“Our vision for our assistant is to help you get things done,” Pichai told the approximately 7,000 developers at the Google I/O conference, along with an online audience watching his streamed presentation on Tuesday.

Google will be testing the digital assistant improvement in the months ahead.

Realistic robocallers

The Duplex demonstration was quickly followed by debate over whether people answering phones should be told when they are speaking to human-sounding software and how the technology might be abused in the form of more convincing “robocalls” by marketers or political campaigns.

“Google Duplex is the most incredible, terrifying thing out of #IO18 so far,” tweeted Chris Messina, a product designer whose resume includes Google and bringing the idea of the hashtag to Twitter.

Google Duplex is an important development and signals an urgent need to figure out proper governance of machines that can fool people into thinking they are human, according to Kay Firth-Butterfield, head of the AI and machine learning project at the World Economic Forum’s Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

“These machines could call on behalf of political parties and make ever more convincing recommendations for voting,” Firth-Butterfield reasoned.

“Will children be able to use these agents and receive calls from them?”

Digital assistants making arrangements for people also raises the question of who is responsible for mistakes, such as a no-show or cancellation fee for an appointment set for the wrong time.

At a time of heightened concerns about online privacy, there were also worries expressed about what kind of data digital assistants might collect and who gets access to it.

“My sense is that humans in general don’t mind talking to machines so long as they know they are doing so,” read a post credited to Lauren Weinstein in a chat forum below the Duplex blog post.

An array of comments at Twitter contended there was an ethical breach to not letting people know they were conversing with software.

“If you’ve grown up watching ‘Star Trek TNG’ like me then you probably considered natural voice interactions with computers a thing of the future,” read a post by Andreas Schafer in the blog chat forum.

“Well, looks like the future is here.”

New Self-Serve Platform Puts Marketers in the Driver’s Seat

The announcement was made Adobe Experience Forum Thailand Wednesday when advancements showcased included Adobe’s new Advertising Cloud Creative and an expanded integration with Adobe Analytics Cloud.

Adobe’s new Advertising Cloud Creative is a self-serve platform that significantly expands Adobe’s Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) offering by giving marketers control over basic design elements—including advertising copy and assets used in display ads—to allow for the rapid rollout of new messaging and design without the painful and expensive steps of re-trafficking or starting the design process over from scratch, Adobe said in a press statement.

Creative assets that are designed in Adobe Creative Cloud will be automatically available in Advertising Cloud Creative, so marketers can take these assets, optimize/target their display advertising across ad sizes and make simple changes to their ads themselves without needing to go back to their agency or re-trafficking, the statement added.

Adobe Advertising Cloud also debuted deeper capabilities with Adobe Analytics Cloud. These additions will help make advertising a more connected experience, including seamless attribution measurement (the ability to link ads bought through Advertising Cloud to business outcomes like purchases, measured by Adobe Analytics) as well as the ability to leverage brand metrics in the demand-side platform (DSP) to inform media buying decisions, the statement said.

In addition, Advertising Cloud now includes features powered by Adobe Sensei, the company’s advanced AI and machine learning framework, to optimize the relevance and performance of search, display and video ads across all screens.

“We are tearing down the walls between creative, data and media in a way only Adobe can make possible,” said V.R. Srivatsan, Managing Director, Adobe Southeast Asia. “Many marketers today still struggle to deliver relevant advertising messages to their customers. We’re making it easy for brands to deliver well-designed, personalized advertising to consumers who may currently ignore their ads.”

A model of Uber’s electric vertical take-off and landing vehicle concept (eVTOL) — a cross between a helicopter and a drone — was displayed at the second annual Uber Elevate Summit in Los Angeles.

“Our goal is to radically improve global mobility,” said Uber Aviation product chief Nikhil Goel.

Goel said the all-electric flyer can achieve speeds over 300 kilometers (200 miles) an hour with a range of 100 kilometers (60 miles) on a battery charge.

“We fly a lot so we can prove to the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) and the public that these aircraft are safe,” he said.

Uber has become a global force in transportation with its ridesharing service, but is also working on autonomous vehicles and other forms of transport.

Uber plans the first demonstration flights for Los Angeles in 2020 and commercialization of the flying taxis in 2023, saying these could be ordered on demand just like a ridesharing vehicle.

Eric Allison, who heads Uber’s Aviation programs, said the flying vehicles are part of an overall strategy allowing people to do without personal cars.

“The rational choice for transportation will be less and less to own and drive a car,” Allison said.

“We want to price it so low, it’ll be irrational to drive your car.”

The first flying taxis will be designed with a pilot, according to Allision, but over time can be developed as autonomous vehicles.

At the conference at the Skirball Center in Los Angeles, Uber showed films and models of a futuristic city with such vehicles, seemingly inspired by the film “Blade Runner.”

The concept includes “skyports” that would serve as hubs for the aerotaxis.

Several other companies along with Uber are trying to develop similar kinds of aerial devices.

Uber operations director Jeff Holen says the obstacles to the new transport mode are mostly around regulations of air space, adding, “The technology exists… we can solve this today.”

Kicking off the tech giant’s annual developers conference, Google chief executive Sundar Pichai argued that its AI-powered digital assistant had the potential to free people from everyday chores.

Pichai played a recording of the Google Assistant independently calling a hair salon and a restaurant to make bookings — interacting with staff who evidently didn’t realize they were dealing with artificial intelligence software, rather than a real customer.

Tell the Google Assistant to book a table for four at 6:00 pm, it tends to the phone call in a human-sounding voice complete with “ums” and “likes,” and sends you a message with the details.

“Our vision for our assistant is to help you get things done,” Pichai told the conference in Google’s hometown of Mountain View, California.

“It turns out that a big part of getting things done is making a phone call.”

Google will be testing the digital assistant improvement in the months ahead.

“Many of us feel tethered to our phones and worry about what we’ll miss if we’re not connected. We want to help people find the right balance and gain a sense of digital wellbeing,” Pichai said.

Getting things right

The conference opened with Silicon Valley facing a wave of criticism over issues such as private data protection, the spread of misinformation and the use of tech platforms for hate speech and violence, and with intense scrutiny of Facebook over the hijacking of data on millions of its users.

“It’s clear that technology can be a positive force and improve the quality of life for billions of people around the world.” Pichai said.

“But it’s equally clear that we can’t just be wide-eyed about what we create.”

He added that “we feel a deep sense of responsibility to get this right.”

Much of the focus was on Google Assistant, the artificial intelligence application competing against Amazon’s Alexa and others.

Google Assistant is being taught to better understand people and interact with them more naturally — and will be getting new voices, including one based on the voice of singer John Legend, as well as programming to improve conversation performance.

“Thanks to our progress in language understanding, you’ll soon be able to have a natural back-and-forth conversation with the Google Assistant without repeating ‘Hey Google’ for each follow-up request,” Pichai said.

More ‘shush’ time

In another effort to untether people from smartphone screens, a dashboard breaks down time spent on devices and how often they are unlocked.

Google also planned to add a “shush” mode to its Android mobile software, switching smartphones to a do-not-disturb mode when they are placed face down on a table.

YouTube watchers will be able to set a pop-up message to remind them to take breaks from viewing, according to Pichai.

“This is going to be a deep, ongoing effort across all our platforms,” Pichai said.

“To help you understand habits, focus on what matters, switch off and wind down.”

Google is seeking to make services more personal, relevant and intimate from maps to email, Gartner analyst Brian Blau told AFP after the keynote presentation.

“The are taking a very human approach to technology, and convincing you people can continue to rely on Google,” Blau said.

“We have seen, as a central theme, trust.”

LG Electronics is focusing on a low price strategy for the company’s latest flagship G7 ThinQ model, while promising better quality, according to its mobile chief at a press conference in Seoul on Thursday.

“Our major focus is to provide better quality phones at lower prices,” said Hwang Jeong-hwan, vice president and head of the mobile communications business, after unveiling the G7 ThinQ.

The new smartphone features artificial intelligence functions aimed at convenience, the “brightest” display and enhanced audio technologies. It will go on sale later this month in Korea, the United States, Europe and Latin America. Its price has not been confirmed yet.

“We are trying to come up with reasonable prices by considering many market factors,” Hwang said. “Although we are continuing to post deficits, we are not intending to reap margins from the new product.”

The G7 ThinQ is the first product led by Hwang since he was promoted to the head position late last year. He seeks to turn around the struggling smartphone business with the new model.

To a question of LG’s plan to launch the new phone in the Chinese market, Hwang said he is carefully preparing to re-enter the market.

“We want to use Hong Kong as a stepping stone for us to enter the Chinese market again,” he said. “Korea’s sales office will cover Hong Kong and China markets from this year (to raise sales there).”

Over 60 cameras nationwide are believed to have been illegally accessed so far, and in most cases a message that reads “I’m Hacked. bye2” has been left on their screens apparently by the hacker, they said.

While it remains unclear why Canon cameras have been targeted, the city of Yachiyo in Chiba Prefecture and the city of Ageo in Saitama Prefecture, which lost control of the cameras for monitoring the levels of their waterways, said they had failed to reset the cameras’ default passwords.

Fearing more cameras could be hacked, Canon is urging users to change their passwords on its website. The company said it cannot comment on individual cases.

Security cameras connected to the internet allow remote monitoring using computers, smartphones and other devices and are considered a classic example of the Internet of Things, or IoT.

But experts say a hacker can use such cameras as a gateway to attack the computer systems of governments and companies.

“The cases indicate IoT has many security issues,” said an information security expert who goes by the alias of piyokango, adding, “It is important that you make sure to change the default passwords.”

Hackings were also reported at other locations including a fish market in Hiroshima, a care facility for the disabled in Kobe, and a Naha branch of a company based in Saitama Prefecture.

The city of Yachiyo noticed the problem on April 24 and also found that the password for the camera had been altered. The city cut off the camera from its network and reported it to police, it said.

The city of Ageo realized the hacking two days later.

“We had not predicted this kind of situation,” said an Ageo city official.

The telecom equipment and handset maker said in a filing Sunday that it has submitted a request to the US commerce department for a stay of the export ban, along with supplemental information.

The ban prohibits US companies from selling crucial hardware and software components to the company, with one Chinese investment bank estimating ZTE had only one or two months supply of those items on hand.

Trading in ZTE shares in Hong Kong and Shenzhen has been halted since the US announcement last month.

The tough sanctions come as the battle over technology takes centre stage in a US spat with China over trade and industrial policy.

Washington’s control of the company’s fate has stirred ire and angst in China and reinforced for Beijing the need to control all parts of the technological supply chain.

Chinese officials asked a high-level US delegation to reconsider the ban during trade talks in Beijing last week.

China made “solemn representations with the US” — an official diplomatic protest — during the negotiations and secured a pledge from the trade team to relay the concerns to US President Donald Trump, China’s commerce ministry said in a statement Friday.

As the country continues to shoot for Thailand 4.0, talk of the digital gap is intensifying. Not only do we need a strong ecosystem for cutting-edge start-ups by ex-Googlers and MIT graduates, we also need to think of how digitalisation can reach our farmers and motorcycle drivers.

As 90 per cent of Thais access the Internet through their mobile phones, telecommunications companies are at the heart of this digital gap issue. But our pre-paid customers, who pay for their mobile phone usage as they go, are traditionally considered as being digital laggards compared to their post-paid counterparts. They are associated with lower incomes and lower digital competence.

There is an increasing amount of data that says otherwise.

Between March 2017 and March 2018, the average data consumption by DTAC’s pre-paid customers skyrocketed from 5.8 to 9 gigabytes per month. To put that in perspective, the average monthly mobile data usage in Europe reached 2.4GB per SIM card by the end of 2017, according to figures from GlobalData. Germany was below 1GB!

This has completely reshaped Thailand’s media landscape. Workpoint Digital TV now simulcasts across TV, YouTube, and social media. The result? A clip from “The Mask Singer” topped YouTube’s global trending videos in 2017. That’s right: Thailand, with a population of 69 million, topped a global ranking where it competed with content in languages like English (360 million speakers) or Spanish (400 million).

YouTube’s dominance in Thailand didn’t happen simply thanks to home and office computers or mobile users stuck in traffic. DTAC recently compiled some data on hit TV series “Love Destiny” (“BuppeSanNivas” in Thai). Aggregated data showed a majority of viewers were

connected to a single base-station during the entirety of the show, indicating they were most likely watching the show at home. Nor is this a phenomenon limited to major cities. The show’s growth was strongest in remote provinces.

My point is that everyone, pre-paid customers included, is now a heavy data user, employing their phone both at home and on the go. And to better serve those customers, banking, retail and telecommunications companies need to do a better job of meeting them where they are – which is on their phones.

DTAC conducted surveys and interviews to prototype a completely redesigned app for our pre-paid customers. What they told us is that they expect the same level of detail in managing their spending as they have in a banking app. They want to see every transaction, not just how much their wallet currently holds.

Using an iterative and highly-collaborative workflow (what’s known as “the agile method”), we were able to quickly roll out these changes to our pre-paid app. It is now available on iOS and Android. While it’s still early days, feedback has already been very positive. More importantly, it marks a shift in how we serve our 17 million pre-paid customers. They are already digital. It’s now on us to give them the tools to live the digital lifestyle they wish for.

Nuttee Sakkullapat is a vice president and head of the app and digitalisation department at DTAC.

The social media site said it found no sign that hackers accessed the exposed data, but advised users to change their passwords to be safe.

Twitter practice is to store passwords encrypted, or “hashed,” so they are masked to even people inside the company, Twitter chief technology officer Parag Agrawal explained in a blog post.

“Due to a bug, passwords were written to an internal log before completing the hashing process,” he said.

“We found this error ourselves, removed the passwords, and are implementing plans to prevent this bug from happening again.”

The San Francisco-based internet company did not specify how many passwords were exposed or how long the glitch made data vulnerable to snooping.

“Out of an abundance of caution, we ask that you consider changing your password on all services where you’ve used this password,” Agrawal told users.

“We are very sorry this happened,” he said.

The stumble comes as the sector faces intense scrutiny over the protection of personal data online, in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal which saw information from tens of millions of Facebook users hijacked and misused.

Twitter shares ebbed about a percent to $30.36 in after-market trades that followed word of the password mishap.

Better to change

Going public with a security slip and getting users to take precautions is preferable to remaining mum and hoping no data was taken, according to independent technology industry analyst Rob Enderle.

“When in doubt, it is better to have people change passwords than to be wrong,” Enderle said.

“With security, it is always better to err on the side of caution.”

The analyst thought it unlikely people would abandon Twitter simply for being asked to change passwords.

“Openly admitting our mistakes quickly, learning, and moving on,” Twitter co-founder and chief executive Jack Dorsey said in a tweet that including a link to Agrawal’s blog post.

“I love my teammates.”

Out of the red

Twitter last week reported its second consecutive quarterly profit, boosting the outlook for the platform after years in the red.

The social network earned $61 million in the first three months of the year, helped by strong growth in advertising revenue and modest gains in users.

First quarter revenues rose 21 percent from a year ago to $665 million, and the key metric of monthly active users increased by six million from late last year to 336 million.

Dorsey said while discussing earnings that recent changes made to the service have helped “engagement,” a measure of how often people turn to the social network and how long they stay.

While Twitter has built a solid core base of celebrities, politicians and journalists, it has failed to match the broader appeal of Facebook and other social platforms, hurting its ability to bring in ad revenues.

The network has stepped up efforts to boost its user base and engagement, adding streaming video partnerships, doubling the character limit on tweets to 280 and making it easier to create “tweetstorms” by stringing messaging together.