The Humans Hiding Behind the Chatbots • Hacker News Board

Re: The Humans Hiding Behind the Chatbots

#11

Post by morgante » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 9:39 PM UTC

aresant wrote: post #4

I am actually shocked to learn that x.ai has human beings reading the emails. X.AI's marketing materials state it's "An AI personal assistant who schedules meetings for you." Their default tagline in every email sent says "x.ai – artificial intelligence that schedules meetings " You have to dig into their press kit to get any mention of human "Supervised Learning". My typical interaction with Amy has been a 3rd party…

Keep in mind that it's still in beta. User who are onboarded do get clearer disclosures.

Re: The Humans Hiding Behind the Chatbots

#12

Post by twinkletwinkle » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 9:57 PM UTC

morgante wrote: post #11

aresant wrote: post #4

I am actually shocked to learn that x.ai has human beings reading the emails. X.AI's marketing materials state it's "An AI personal assistant who schedules meetings for you." Their default tagline in every email sent says "x.ai – artificial intelligence that schedules meetings " You have to dig into their press kit to get any mention of human "Supervised Learning". My typical interaction with Amy has been a 3rd party…

Keep in mind that it's still in beta. User who are onboarded do get clearer disclosures.

Two parties to an email conversation. If one person is using "Amy" and adds her to the conversation, the other person may not fully understand the implications. Especially since their marketing tries hard to blur the lines.

Re: The Humans Hiding Behind the Chatbots

#13

Post by seibelj » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 10:02 PM UTC

The solution is so blindingly obvious: You are creating AI not to replace humans, but to assist humans. If your humans can manage 50 emails per hour, you judge the quality of improvements to the AI on how any more emails per hour they can handle. This is from improving the tools humans use to completely eliminating the human from the equation in certain cases. Then your customers need to rate the quality of the service to see if automatically handled emails had the side-effect of reducing quality, which then needs to be weighed against the cost savings.

Re: The Humans Hiding Behind the Chatbots

#14

Post by morgante » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 10:19 PM UTC

twinkletwinkle wrote: post #12

morgante wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that it's still in beta. User who are onboarded do get clearer disclosures.

Two parties to an email conversation. If one person is using "Amy" and adds her to the conversation, the other person may not fully understand the implications. Especially since their marketing tries hard to blur the lines.

To the outside party, Amy seems like a competent secretary. I'm not sure why they would assume "she" isn't.

Re: The Humans Hiding Behind the Chatbots

#15

Post by Animats » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 10:21 PM UTC

Aelinsaar wrote: post #3

Is there any indication that there is actually light at the end of this tunnel, and not just a lot more tunnel? How much of this is just smoke and mirrors for the sake of product development, and how much is just to bilk investors? I read the entire article, and I don't get the sense that the author is totally sure either.

The company with the $9/month price point has to reach near full automation or die. The company with the $200/month price point could be totally manual until the automated systems catch up.

Recommended viewing: "The Devil wears Prada", Andy's first day at Runway.

Re: The Humans Hiding Behind the Chatbots

#16

Post by AJ007 » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 10:32 PM UTC

aresant wrote: post #4

I am actually shocked to learn that x.ai has human beings reading the emails. X.AI's marketing materials state it's "An AI personal assistant who schedules meetings for you." Their default tagline in every email sent says "x.ai – artificial intelligence that schedules meetings " You have to dig into their press kit to get any mention of human "Supervised Learning". My typical interaction with Amy has been a 3rd party…

I wonder how many other "cloud" companies have stuff that users assume are one on one conversations or sharing, and aren't. Even something as simple as a dating site almost certainly involves employees reading private messages (a must because of scammers, spammers, and downright abusive users.)

Re: The Humans Hiding Behind the Chatbots

#17

Post by jedberg » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 10:42 PM UTC

aresant wrote: post #4

I am actually shocked to learn that x.ai has human beings reading the emails. X.AI's marketing materials state it's "An AI personal assistant who schedules meetings for you." Their default tagline in every email sent says "x.ai – artificial intelligence that schedules meetings " You have to dig into their press kit to get any mention of human "Supervised Learning". My typical interaction with Amy has been a 3rd party…

You should always assume that employees of a third party are reading your messages and always read the privacy policy.

Re: The Humans Hiding Behind the Chatbots

#18

Post by cloudjacker » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 10:48 PM UTC

aresant wrote: post #8

mathattack wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this typical of the "Fake it until you have product/market fit, then automate" ethos?

Pitch: "x.ai – artificial intelligence that schedules meetings" Reality: "A group of low-paid humans (that may-or-may not have been background checked) will read your emails to help you schedule meetings. They will probably not use this information in any way other than intended." Those feel like two different products that I would make fundamentally different decisions about.

> that may-or-may not have been background checked

thats funny, I'll pass the background check and still trade on the inside information, I'm short your house right now

Re: The Humans Hiding Behind the Chatbots

#19

Post by cb18 » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 10:58 PM UTC

cb18 wrote: post #10

I get that they are trying to use the human responses as a training set. But the scope of these general purpose concierge services mean that what they are going after is damn near Artificial General Intelligence. At least in terms of capability, after-all ordering a burrito and locating an antique skull is a pretty broad capability range. And at what point of accuracy are they aiming for for the systems to run on the…

I guess one answer to my question might be: They are trying to build an AGI.

But one would have to say that the relatively sparse training data consisting mostly of takeout orders, and the sweatshop like environment would be a strange way to go about attempting such a thing.

Re: The Humans Hiding Behind the Chatbots

#20

Post by galistoca » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 11:03 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #17

aresant wrote: post #4

I am actually shocked to learn that x.ai has human beings reading the emails. X.AI's marketing materials state it's "An AI personal assistant who schedules meetings for you." Their default tagline in every email sent says "x.ai – artificial intelligence that schedules meetings " You have to dig into their press kit to get any mention of human "Supervised Learning". My typical interaction with Amy has been a 3rd party…

You should always assume that employees of a third party are reading your messages and always read the privacy policy.

There's a huge difference between an employee monitoring the product to make sure things don't go wrong, and an employee paid to fill in for the main product. It's like a real-life mechanical turk.