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

Post by jorblumesea » Wed, May 09, 2018, 3:13 AM UTC

WalterSear wrote: post #439

discordance wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do feel for them, but at the same time we have these unintentional designs and systems that cause a lot of suffering all over the place. For example, I was kept on hold for 2 hours the other day to try and sort out being double charged on my bankcard. If this sort of service can handle hold, then i'm in.

I'm sure this system can and will be used to handle you on hold. ;) Be prepared for obfuscating phone trees that can talk back.

Post by zshprompt » Wed, May 09, 2018, 3:14 AM UTC

pbw wrote: post #411

This is really horrifying to me. My heart goes out to the working-class retail people who are going to have to spend their days chatting with the AI assistants of upper middle class people too busy to call themselves. If the shop owner gets a duplex system to field the calls, then the two robots can subtly signal to the other they aren't actually human, and then start shrieking like a 9600 baud modem to finish the di…

Post by mb_72 » Wed, May 09, 2018, 3:17 AM UTC

justonepost wrote: post #172

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…

The problem is that computers will now be interacting with people and people will become unsure of whether they are taking to a computer or a person. It will create a bewildering world full of mistrust. I would argue that there should be a law proclaiming that computers must identify themselves.

Post by nfoz » Wed, May 09, 2018, 3:22 AM UTC

mrastro wrote: post #436

justonepost wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that computers will now be interacting with people and people will become unsure of whether they are taking to a computer or a person. It will create a bewildering world full of mistrust. I would argue that there should be a law proclaiming that computers must identify themselves.

If we accept your premise that bots become so close to humans that they are virtually indistinguishable, then at that point does it matter who the "person" on the other end of the line is? I'd argue it doesn't because the outcome would be the same.

Post by dannyw » Wed, May 09, 2018, 3:24 AM UTC

ChristianGeek wrote: post #403

adtac wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol imagine my phone talking with an automated customer service line. Two machines, talking to one another, not using any of the existing protocols. My phone would have a database of questions to ask, form it into an English sentence, run it through a text-to-speech, transmit this to the other phone. Their "phone" would run a speech-to-text, run NLP, match it with its own database, and do the whole thing again in the…

Potentially there would be a way for both sides to recognize that the other side is a machine and they could switch to binary communication.