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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

#461

Post by nathan_f77 »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #404
ZainRiz wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, but if you think about it, what stops businesses from doing this today? It's the lack of a universal API. If a barber shop wants to make it possible for a 3rd party app to book appointments then they have to release some API. But that's not the end of it. The 3rd party app has to first discover their Api, someone has to understand it and write code to use it, and then deploy that code. This is a problem today be…

"Lol, but if you think about it, what stops businesses from doing this today?" Systems like that are much more expensive than paying a receptionist?

That doesn't sound right. I think you'd pay something like $99 per month for a SaaS product that manages bookings and provides an API. That's how much the average receptionist earns in one day ($12.25 per hour.)

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

#462

Post by tim333 »

mvkel wrote: post #264

Never thought the movie Her would come true in my lifetime. And here we are.

As a semi Kurzweil fan I've kind of been expecting his Turing test by 2029 prediction. Things seem pretty much on schedule, perhaps even a tad ahead. Though we'd some breakthroughs to move closer to strong AI. But the hardware is on track and there are an awful lot of top of class PhDs working on the stuff.

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

#463

Post by nfoz »

mauriciob wrote: post #397
xg15 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they indicate that they are aware of the problem - and instead of doing a straight-forward "hey, I'm a bot", their suggested strategies are "being clear about the intent of the call" and "experiment with the right approach over the coming months"? To me that quote sounds more like a polite way of saying they definitely won't reveal to callers that they are talking with a bot than them taking the concern seriously.…

People are prejudiced against talking to bots because of how bad they are currently. I despise calling services that have voice recognition, often times it's easier to have an options menu. If they can get a way of saying "I'm a bot" without people hanging up the calls, I'm all for it -- otherwise, "I'm calling for a client" or similar is the best for everyone involved (assuming everything works). Businesses also nee…

> People are prejudiced against talking to bots because of how bad they are currently

I'm prejudiced against talking to bots because they're bots. They don't have empathy, whereas from voice interaction I expect a human I can relate to and desire to help and be courteous with. It's a fundamentally different type of interaction and I will be annoyed anytime that one is confused for the other.

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

#464

Post by hyperpallium »

I found the first one (female AI, hairdresser) amazingly compelling, but the second (male AI, restaurant) sounded like The Good Doctor's autistic lead character, and to me, the callee sounded bemused at him.

Part of this is definitely that the girl voice sounds cute, and this partially disables my cognition.

But objectively, her approach is more tentative and polite, whereas the guy voice is more direct and assertive.

They might not want the guy voice to take on those feminine qualities, but it would make the interaction work better - so female AI's dominate.

The effect on the listener may also help - however, I'm not at all sure that other people (especially women) react as I do to the cute voice. They might even find the the Good Doctor male approach better - though I can't imagine that.

The trick of inserting "ums" is very helpful, but because they use the same sound-bite in the same way, it sounds mechanical after you've heard several examples. In the examples towards the end of the page, the odd latencies and (surprising) changes in volume were additionally offpitting.

After a few calls, recipients will recognize the patterns (esp if they use the same voice - can they varying voices convincingly?), and it might be better to have an honest reverse-menu system.

All that said, the first girl voice was great, and there will be progress.

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

#466

Post by hyperpallium »

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…

Don't worry, soon they won't have work. That horror awaits us all.

BTW AI's can also solve status problems: http://partiallyclips.com/comic/dome-house/

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

#467

Post by nathan_f77 »

tim333 wrote: post #446
seanp2k2 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In the second example they ask what's the line likely to be like on Wednesday. Show me one API that does that. English is richer than APIs.

Google does provide that information when you look up a restaurant, under "Popular times": https://imgur.com/a/ssdHxn3

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

#469

Post by [deleted] »

Tracist wrote: post #371
freyir wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. And looking even further into the future, we can imagine a day when the computers forgo natural speech and use a better-suited form of communication. Some kind of sequence of ones and zeros transmitted directly across the wire.

There are already apps/technologies that transmit information through audio at frequencies not audible to humans. It should be trivial to adapt this so that if two AI systems are interacting they can perform an "AI-handshake" in the audio at the start and then switch to a more efficient form of communication.

[deleted]

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

#470

Post by stewfortier »

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…

Have you ever worked in retail or the service industry? I think I'd rather chat with the AI :)
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