Just wait for the business to install Duplex on their end, and realize that we have just created the least efficient computer communication protocol ever.
Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
231–240 of 786 posts
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#232This is neat. I'm looking forward to the day where two phone AIs get stuck in some amusing conversation loop.
I wonder if this sort of technology will result in some sort of arms race / singularity where everyone, businesses and consumers alike, ends up needing to use phone AIs to stay sane.
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an end user, picking up the phone to hear a beep is not pleasant. I'm likely as not to immediately hang up, as I've come to associate beeps at the start of calls with scammers.
Hence the idea of doing it in a frequency humans can't hear.
Hence the:
> (since that's probably filtered anyway)
Phone lines are optimized for frequencies humans can hear, though I'm guessing you could get enough bandwidth out of the edges to convince the other side you're a machine without bothering a human too much.
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#234There are plenty of places in my town that don't have online ordering or booking...this would (potentially) help with that...but really, I'd rather there be more tech be built around enabling theses companies to "be online" such as an online ordering or booking system. When I find a hair cut place, why can't I just book an appointment right from the Google Maps search? I'd rather have that type of convenience instead…
I can imagine this being an extension to robots.txt - i.e. do I mind my business being robo-called, or would I rather send an API call to . This is an interesting point in AI technology.
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#235This is amazing, but one thing I don't really understand is this: earlier in the presentation, they demoed some new Google Assistant voices. All of them sound like standard computer-synthesized assistants. On the other hand, the synthesized Duplex voices sound indistinguishable from human speech to me, even without the "disfluencies" they include. If Google has gotten speech synthesis to this point, why isn't Assista…
I have a feeling it's because this is such a limited domain. During the demo it all sounded very realistic, except for some parts like the times. It would flow naturally then all of a sudden pause awkwardly and then say a time like "12 pm" in a weird way. I have a feeling they are getting it to sound so realistic because there's a fairly small amount of responses and questions it needs to work with, so they can eithe…
Hmm, or maybe its because you can run the synthesis on a much powerful computer? Certainly very impressive..
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#236The people losing their marbles over this being some kind of Turing Test passing distopian stuff are missing the point at how limited this domain is. People who answer phones to take bookings perform an extremely limited set of questions and responses, that’s why they can even be replaced by dumb voice response systems in many cases. In these cases, the human being answering the phone is themselves acting like a bot…
To save CPU/GPU/TPU there should be a high-frequency sound, as in people can’t hear, so the computers talking to each other and switch to a faster way to communicate. If this is included you also have way to detect if you are talking to a bot/duplex.
Yes, it would be nice if in parallel Google came up with open machine-friendly protocols for each of the use-cases Duplex supported, with a clear migration path away (e.x. businesses started publishing the endpoints and protocols they supported alongside their phone number so you could skip the call completely)
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your argument about calling it "noon" instead of "PM" is just illogical. I'd always use PM instead of noon -- whenever I'm trying to be specific about something (appointments and such). I understand the argument you're trying to make but that wasn't enough.
How is "PM" more specific than "noon"? Absent the context of this conversation, it's not immediately obvious to me whether 12 PM is midday or midnight, where as "noon" is unambiguous.
I think historically "noon" expresses less precision, although I suspect that's less true now that everyone always knows what time it is and has GPS in their pocket to help calculate arrival times.
20 years ago, had I said to someone "I'll be there at 12pm" it would have had a stronger implication of precision than "I'll be there at noon." I don't think it's true today.
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#238The people losing their marbles over this being some kind of Turing Test passing distopian stuff are missing the point at how limited this domain is. People who answer phones to take bookings perform an extremely limited set of questions and responses, that’s why they can even be replaced by dumb voice response systems in many cases. In these cases, the human being answering the phone is themselves acting like a bot…
"Duplex seems trained against this corpus. The end game would be for the business to run something like duplex on the other side, and you’d have duplex talking to duplex." So, you would just have an automated booking system API which is better handled by not placing calls as its form of communication. Right?
Opentable
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#239Google home's speech recognition can't even reliably turn my lights on and off every time, why would I trust it to book a restaurant reservation? I'd expect to tell it to book a 6pm table for 2 and wind up with an 8pm table for 10.
I'm with you. We've seen a demo, not a real product that people are using. I wish people would temper their expectations a bit. If product development has taught me anything, it's that it's easy to put together a demo to show how well a product can work in the golden path, but once you stray from it, it becomes incredibly difficult to solve all edge cases. With something like conversation, there are lots of edge cases that need to be handled. Once you have a missed edge case, the illusion of reliability falls apart.
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love how no matter how amazing something is, someone will eventually say it's trivial, even though it's taken the smartest people on earth decades to figure out how to do this. >The end game would be for the business to run something like duplex on the other side, and you’d have duplex talking to duplex. The end game is clearly to use an api, not this.
Where did I say it’s trivial? What I’m saying is, people ar anthropomorphizing and extrapolating what this system is doing far above what it is actually doing, and then using it to justify fears that Skynet’s around the corner. This system can’t pass the Turing test, it would be fooled probably by a simple question about itself or a subject outside the domain, like the kind of food you like. You’ve got people in this…
> We’ve arrived at full Luddism now where life saving and time saving technology in fields like health, transportation, and customer service will be inhibited by hyperbolic fearmongering.
The irony of this is too rich for you to find out in your own lifetime, but I'll thank you in the name of those able to notice it.