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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

#281

Post by seanp2k2 »

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…

That end game seems very wasteful and Rube Goldbergian. Why use an 1800s technology as the transport layer when salons, yoga studios, and more already use things like MindBody, which already has an appointments API? I’d honestly be way more interested if this integrated with MindBody, OpenTable, DMV websites, car dealer appointment systems, medical office scheduling systems — all of which already have APIs or at least web pages. But then, saying that you wrote and will maintain some WWW mechanize stuff that posts forms is way less marketable to the general population who see this as magic.

Also, they’ll discontinue it after a year once it gets enough negative press about how it doesn’t work well and loses business for businesses.

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

#283

Post by tabs_masterrace »

tlrobinson wrote: post #191
Svenskunganka wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't most carriers heavily "compress" the sound, removing all sounds/frequencies that a human can't hear, etc? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2A8q3XIhu0

Yes, but it could be very subtle and low bandwidth at first, and once both sides were convinced the other was a machine switch to a full speed screeching 56k modem [1]. Or just communicate "hey actually connect to this HTTP/XMPP/whatever address on the internet and we'll continue this from there" 1. Probably a bit slower, I've heard modern VoIP lines don't work well with traditional modems?

Damn that sounds even more dystopian, can you imaging it

"Hello how can I help you? - Hi, beep, I like to reserve a table? - Ok, beep, beep, on second - Mhm-mm beep, beep, sceech, 011000101010...."

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

#284

Post by drexlspivey »

jeremiahwv wrote: post #56

And then the salon and the restaurant start using Duplex as well, and all phone conversations become Google talking to Google. How bout: "Hey Duplex, call this support number and get a top level human manager on the line please." Then we get a HN article: "Duplex is fighting Alexa!"

Google voice API, like a real API but much slower.

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

#285

Post by pscsbs »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #281
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…

That end game seems very wasteful and Rube Goldbergian. Why use an 1800s technology as the transport layer when salons, yoga studios, and more already use things like MindBody, which already has an appointments API? I’d honestly be way more interested if this integrated with MindBody, OpenTable, DMV websites, car dealer appointment systems, medical office scheduling systems — all of which already have APIs or at leas…

Likely it'll be a transition technology for businesses still using phone appointments as their primary API, and eventually it'll ease the path for more direct integration.

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

#286

Post by ocdtrekkie »

atonse wrote: post #247
sqdbps wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's awesome tech, sure.

But it's also "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should."

They shouldn't've.

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

#287

Post by aplusbi »

annexrichmond wrote: post #248

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…

I have a deaf friend who would love this feature. Sure, a lot of stuff like this can be handled online now, but not 100%. Sometimes you really need to make a phone call, and for some people that's difficult.

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

#288

Post by StavrosK »

ecwilson wrote: post #279

There's a great Black Mirror episode in here somewhere. Imagine five years from now, this tech and Google's Smart Reply ( https://blog.google/products/gmail/save-time-with-smart-repl... ) have evolved to the point where they can basically write entire email responses or have whole conversations without your input. You could develop elaborate friendships where both parties are just having their AIs converse and aren't…

There was a (bad) book written about this, basically how Gmail's AI took over the world by sending email on behalf of people.

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

#289

Post by TomV1971 »

minimaxir wrote: post #2

> The system also sounds more natural thanks to the incorporation of speech disfluencies (e.g. “hmm”s and “uh”s). These are added when combining widely differing sound units in the concatenative TTS or adding synthetic waits, which allows the system to signal in a natural way that it is still processing. (This is what people often do when they are gathering their thoughts.) In user studies, we found that conversation…

Reminds me of comfort noise in the telephone system.

Even though the system encodes silences noise free (so improve compression), it deliberately inserts noise because otherwise people think the line is dead.

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

#290

Post by PascLeRasc »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #281
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…

That end game seems very wasteful and Rube Goldbergian. Why use an 1800s technology as the transport layer when salons, yoga studios, and more already use things like MindBody, which already has an appointments API? I’d honestly be way more interested if this integrated with MindBody, OpenTable, DMV websites, car dealer appointment systems, medical office scheduling systems — all of which already have APIs or at leas…

Because businesses can offer Duplex for customers to call and speak to after hours if they still want to keep a human phone assistant. It's modular, not Rube Goldbergian.
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