This is Scientific Americans 60 Second Science. I'm Larry Greenmin.

How can I help you?

Hi, I'm calling to book a woman's haircut for our client.

I'm looking for something on May 3rd.

Sure, give me one second.

The person making the haircut appointment for her boss?

She's not a person.

Mm-hmm.

There's a trend rapidly developing in AI.

Have it do the things we don't want to do.

Self-driving cars get a lot of attention in this arena,

but Google recently demonstrated AI for more mundane tasks. Their system is called Google

duplex. It's a voice assistant designed to mimic the way humans speak to one

another. Sure, what time are you looking for around? At 12 p.m.

Amazon, Apple, and other tech companies also make voice assistance of course.

What's new with duplex is that I can carry on a conversation seemingly as a human being,

that is somewhat awkwardly.

And that's the point, of course, Google doesn't want duplex to sound like a machine.

In the hair salon example, the woman who answers the phone throws duplex a curveball.

At 12 p.m. We do not have a 12 p.m. available.

The closest we have to that is a 115.

There's a point in the exchange where duplex shows its true colors though.

...