The Next Wave of AI : Google Duplex

Recently demo'ed at Google annual event is the new product named Google Duplex. Duplex takes the digital assistance a level ahead, by not using APIs or application flows to do day to day jobs but by actually making phone calls.

Whats more interesting is how close attention was given to human interaction, the ahan and hmms are just some of the stop gap's and linguistic fillers it uses to fool the humans on other side in believing they are speaking to real humans.


Here is the link to full demo

Full geeky points on Tech front, but what about ethics ? Is it fair for AI to fool humans in an interaction ?

Some of the things to worry about how easily this technology can be used to spam people with voice calls and unlike spam of emails this one would not be easier to catch. Funnily Google invested more in making in harder to catch duplex rather than voice interaction itself.

Start preparing you list of trick questions :)

Protected PDF Files, How to unprotect password protected pdf files.

Its that time of the year when you have to file your taxes. Most of the tax saving instruments/proofs in form of pdf unfortunately are password protected.


                                       


While there are ways of removing the passwords by uploading them to random sites, those can not be recommended without hesitation, specially since all these documents do contain private financial information.

You still do need to upload the unprotected documents to your organization portal to claim all tax benefits, so is there a simpler way out ?

Yes there is, just follow below easy steps.


1. Upload to Google Drive
2. Open the document, enter your password when prompted for.
3. Once document is open, click on print option.
4. From the print tab, either choose a local print software like Cutepdf or directly save the pdf to you local disk.

Top Technology 2017 Trends and Surprises

 2017 was quite an interesting year for software industry. Mobile Industry grew up by leaps and bounds, cheap data connectivity improved in developing countries, Net neutrality wars got played out keeping everyone on the edge, AI and Automation became the new standard way of handling things rather than conventional software practices and many more.

With so much stuff moving around, the year also saw some major Snafus and below is the list I thought of sharing with you folks.


1. Crazy App Permissions : As mobile apps mushroomed in abundance, every app needed every single permission under the sky. How it uses them often was left to best of user guess. Case in Point being from the provider of Android platform itself, Google. 

                            

Google started needing access to Body Sensor before allowing you to send an email. Yes you read it right. Users of Gmail Android application started getting pop up alerts asking them to give Gmail app permission to access installed body sensors data. 

                              

This was later categorized as a defect and was fixed eventually. It does tinkle ones imagination though why would they need body sensors data for emailing .. hmm lets move on to next one.

2. Twitter Troubles : Many users reported of randomly getting locked out from Twitter in 2017. The new Withheld feature was blamed for most of such accidental lockouts. Worst part was that the software defect which caused this not only considered the new tweets for locking out users but also the tweet history.                        

Even the US president Donald Trump was not spared from these accidental lockouts. Surprisingly he responded to it in a positive way,  Response on Twitter


                  


3. Unleashing of Home Assistants : 2017 was undoubtedly year of home assistants, a device which would wake up on command of a voice command, remind you calendar events, answer your questions, order stuff online for you etc. Where it got creepy was when various users started reporting that these devices instead of using passive listening strategy (based on specific key words like Okay Google) was working in a always active listening mode, Google storing everything you speak.
Although companies have been nimble in fixing these issues, the security and privacy concerns seem too huge for most of the users to adopt these technologies in market.



4. Google Docs : Here is where ML and AI started showing the impact, obviously this was one of the cases for false positives. Many users around Halloween were locked out due to violation of terms of service, basically implying they could not access the content they own. The reason was the new ML algorithm, which went through the documents uploaded, and specific key words triggered account lock down. This also triggered off privacy debate, literally confirming Google reads through all the documents users upload to google drive.


5. Facial Scans : The super easy and convenient IR based mechanisms promised you would not need to remember another password for life.


                                             



Your face would be your password, how cool is that. Obviously the questions are lingering around how secure these new authentication mechanisms are, specially when users managed to break Windows security with low resolution images on device owners. Bypassing Windows 10 security with printout                            



6. Facebook Security Lapse: The example served as another reminder on how new feature releases can expose backdoor exploits to existing features on a platform. The new polling feature on Facebook provided sufficient information (picture ids in this case) for any one to go ahead and freely delete these pictures from other accounts. Newly Discovered Facebook Bug Allowed Anyone To Delete Your Photos With A Poll


What's the most astonishing thing you noticed in 2017 ?