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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

#291

Post by tigershark »

Pfhreak wrote: post #176

A few observations: * In the example where Google asked about holiday hours -- they can now automate gathering information about businesses in bulk without having to rely on any APIs or user supplied info. Interesting thought experiment is Google validating their reviews/business listings by actually calling businesses and speaking to a real human. * This is going to be fantastic for accessibility. Maybe I struggle t…

I’m not sure what is a 4 star restaurant given that the Micheline guide gives maximum 3 stars, but pretty much all starred restaurants want a deposit when reserving. If seriously there was someone dumb enough to do something like this, booking and cancelling continuously restaurants, then probably everyone would require a deposit when reserving and the deposit would be much bigger than today.

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

#292

Post by PascLeRasc »

empath75 wrote: post #147
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…

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.

Please go and convince the mom and pop hardware store or bakery in your town to use an API instead of answering the phone.

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

#293

Post by DannyBee »

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…

You also seem to completely miss that outside of silicon valley, large portions of the population actually want to interact with things by phone.

That's changing for sure, but the demand for phone based services is still very high.

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

#295

Post by avip »

stefan_ wrote: post #227
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

So just put it in the hearable spectrum. Phones already make all kinds of sounds that no one under the age of 35 has any clue what they mean or why they are needed, and frankly they aren't.

Perfect use case for the endangered fax answering sound.

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

#296

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#297

Post by eric_h »

booleandilemma wrote: post #265
floatrock wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The end game is clearly to use an api, not this. My understanding is API integration is what wechat is in china -- every hair salon and equivalent-of-corner-pizza shop has some wechat integration, payment and all. Voice bots like this will have the advantage of ubiquity. At least a couple years ago before every resteraunt had 5 tablets for all their seamless/grubhub/chowhound/whatever apps, pretty much the only rea…

My understanding is API integration is what wechat is in china -- every hair salon and equivalent-of-corner-pizza shop has some wechat integration, payment and all. Meanwhile in NYC, good luck getting the bodega on the corner to even take your debit card.

Eh? The vast majority of bodegas in NYC take credit cards. Many have minimums, or charge a fee if you don't hit the minimum. But I've not been to a bodega in the last ~5 years that didn't accept credit cards in one form or another. > 5 years ago, sure, but now pretty much everyone's got them (even in the rougher neighborhoods).

If they don't accept cards, they almost always have an ATM.

My complaint in NYC is the uptick of "cashless" places, that don't accept legal US tender. I like using cash, I don't want it to go away.

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

#298

Post by eldavido »

I've been building something similar to this for a while called Interval - it's a plain booking engine for small businesses. Obviously nowhere near as good of speech recognition, but it's also not tied to Google, or their baggage. Works over SMS or fbm.

https://www.interval.org/

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

#299

Post by erdo »

My Google calendar has an occasional duplicates problem, I'm not so sure that Google won't one day make 3 identical restaurant reservations for me by mistake.

Hoping that once they've solved robot calls, they'll probably have a go at some of the harder things like synchronization ;)

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

#300

Post by ghayes »

jfaucett wrote: post #15
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…

> as an intentional deficiency is an interesting design decision. well, in semantics/pragmatics these discourse particles are often not deficiencies at all. They are signals with practical semantic purpose. "hmms" and "uhs" can signal attentiveness, turn-taking (turn holding, turn yielding, etc), agreement - just to name a few. For any machine system to be able to pass as human, it will have to be able to control the…

I really enjoyed the machine's "uhs" and "uhms" in the demo speech. However, I felt the "uh-huh"s sounded forced. It's funny how these subtleties are very important in human conversation.
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