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Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone

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Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone

#241

Post by jstanley »

macintux wrote: post #237
jstanley wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Understood. So the difference is you interpret "noon" as an ill-defined probability distribution centred roughly around midday, rather than a concrete point in time, whereas you interpret "12PM" as a concrete point in time. Fair enough.

Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone

#242

Post by jonas21 »

SilasX wrote: post #55
strictnein wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listen to the audio examples. The person at the restaurant misheard the bot and repeated incorrect information back to it and it handled it in stride.

I just hope it never gets one of the 9 out of 10 humans who don't repeat back important information to prevent miscommunication...

Those humans won't be taking reservations for long, even from other humans, if they don't learn to repeat back the important information.

Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone

#243

Post by gausha »

monkeynotes wrote: post #170

All this is great, and I am sure Google will use the tech responsibly, but I feel we are rapidly approaching a point where humans can no longer use their senses to discern critical truths about our own reality. I honestly don't know how that's going to pan out. Just imagining it already makes me feel the kind of paranoia creep you get when you are too high.

That's true. People do not take psychological effects of technology seriously. The reason being most of us are already addicts. Who knows if this comment is by a bot or a real person.

Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone

#244

Post by sigi45 »

I'm really impressed this year. I haven't thought that ML made the advances so much faster than it does already.

On one side it is not very impressive that it calls someone but on the other side its tremendous.

2018 we are able to synthesize voice so well and understand already such a small domain. 2018 a system calls a human.

We are going so fast already and we should use this google io as something as a social milestone otherwise we wake up tomorrow and totally misses when the future became now.

This is just one additional stone to a future where digital becomes a second reality. The advances in voice will not stop. How long will it take, that there is a speech model who can simulate everyone by listing to someone only for seconds or minutes?

With this voice etc. computer are able to teach humans. We will be able to scale teaching and a shit tone of other things.

I'm impressed.

Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone

#245

Post by atonse »

arikr wrote: post #23
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #4

Never have we had a more clear example of why Google needs to be regulated, and laws against what they're doing needs to be passed. The fact that they think it's okay to have bots pretending to be human making phone calls, shortly after demonstrating how quickly they can copy someone's voice (re: John Legend), it shows a blatant disregard for what they're creating.

I'm concerned that a lack of understanding and fear will limit the benefits we get from technology. I don't think that calling for regulation and making this illegal is the appropriate next step. They explicitly say: > We want to be clear about the intent of the call so businesses understand the context. You note: > laws against what they're doing needs to be passed. What makes you say that robots making phone calls…

Yeah and I had your view before the last 2 years and the 2016 election. All we've seen is this kind of technology will be abused to the gills to create fake propaganda, robocalls, and phishing scams.

I too want to absolutely, without a doubt, regulate or slow this stuff down until we can better understand how it can be abused. And WHEN it is abused, we have ways to address it and aren't constantly playing catchup to how people are badly using these things.

Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone

#246

Post by DecayingOrganic »

mithr wrote: post #166

This 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…

This is simply because Google Duplex's TTS engine is using Tacotron and WaveNet which are not ready for general use yet.

Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone

#247

Post by atonse »

sqdbps wrote: post #98
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #4

Never have we had a more clear example of why Google needs to be regulated, and laws against what they're doing needs to be passed. The fact that they think it's okay to have bots pretending to be human making phone calls, shortly after demonstrating how quickly they can copy someone's voice (re: John Legend), it shows a blatant disregard for what they're creating.

Come on now, this is cool! the correct initial reaction is to be impressed. What is concerning is the surprising prevalence of technophobic notions on tech focused boards such as this. There is something perverse about wanting to punish a company for creating something cool, and it’s certainly not the way our society or politics should function.

This is awesome, awesome tech. I just showed it to a bunch of people in my office.

But at the same time, the last two years have shown us that a lot of technology is being very effectively abused to misinform at a geopolitical level, and we as a society need to better understand or regulate this stuff for sure. Lives are at stake.

That said, I'd never say that Google shouldn't work on this. It's amazing. We just need to better understand not just how it can be used, but also how it can be abused.

Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone

#248

Post by annexrichmond »

The technology is really awesome but I'm not convinced it will fly:

* How much time do people really save, the call in the example is less than a minute. Maybe if you need to call like 10 places it becomes more helpful, but as companies get a bigger online presence (and they are) this technology becomes less useful. You can already make reservations/book appointments, find contracts pretty easily online.

* You can't be 100% sure that the AI won't make a mistake or sound like a total jerk on your behalf. Ok sure, the tech will improve but it will be a long time before humans will fully trust AI to represent you.

* If people find out you're calling them via some automated bot they're going to think you're a tool. Everyone remember Google Glass?

* What the hell is wrong with human interaction anyway?

edit: formatting

Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone

#249

Post by braindongle »

cromwellian wrote: post #128

The 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…

Absolutely correct. And so-called general AI may never happen. Regardless, this is shocking. It immediately needs to be factored into any speculation about what the world will look like in 20 years. Innumerable questions.

Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone

#250

Post by sgslo »

jokh wrote: post #182
sgslo wrote: post #110

This is one end-game of AI - changing the economics of scams. Imagine how a 'long con' works today: a scammer befriends a person online through a video game or social platform, and develops a rapport with them over the span of days, weeks, months. After some trust has been gained, the scammer then requests money from the victim. Does this happen a lot today? I don't know, but certainly one reason it doesn't is the ec…

> Yes, duplex is for completing specific tasks, but how much of a difference is there between "Duplex, book a table for four at 8pm" and "Duplex, ask my victim about how their day was"? The former (booking a table) is much more "constrained", as in the conversation would most likely not go into much of a tangent, because there are only so many responses to a statement like "book a table for four at 8pm" (8pm is full,…

And you think this is the end of innovation, this is it, no improvements from here?

Duplex is interacting with a human and that person has no idea its a computer on the other end. Yes, Duplex is limited as it stands, but what is there to make you think something as described in grandparent post won't exist in ten years?

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