This is a masterpiece of framing by Google. Am I the only one who does not believe for a second that this technique will be mostly used to do calls for consumers, but to call WITH consumers? We will get back to asking hotlines strange questions to break the algorithm and reach an actual human.
Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
541–550 of 786 posts
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#542How is it that the current implementation of Google Assistant can't even add stuff to my calendar in a natural way? I just tried the following: "OK Google, add an event to my work calendar for a meeting at Starbucks tomorrow morning at 11:30". What was expected: Title: "Meeting" Calendar: "Work" Location: "Starbucks" Date: Tomorrow Time: 11:30am (Bonus points for associating an actual location, but possible ambiguity…
This is a great point. The current Google Now and Google Assistant voice controls don't really work half the time, let alone 95% of the time.
I really hope all this speech AI really comes good, I really do. But at the moment it still is flaky for me.
I really want to use Google Assistant to take instructions and reminders for me. I can't wait until it can smoothly send messages and emails and add calendar entries.
Good luck Google.
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#543Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Duplex seems trained against this corpus. 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." So, you would just have an automated booking system API which is better handled by not placing calls as its form of communication. Right?
Yes! This is an API that requires no computer on the user's end and is portable across different implementations from different companies. It's not ideal. Actual standardized APIs are better. But, uh, have you ever worked with industry standard APIs? I have, and standardized is not how I would describe them.
I still think there's a need for standardized APIs in this situation. At some point, the context constraints mentioned in the blog post have to get translated into some action with parameters. I'm guessing that action will be API calls to other Google products behind the Duplex Google Assistant UX.
"Ok Google, can you reschedule my Dr. Appointment this Friday for next week? I have a conflict." -> calls the Dr and reschedules -> adapts result to rebooking action with partners (ie, an api call to your Google calendar) -> applies action and responds to you.
There is still quite a bit missing from this to be a useful AI product. It's getting really close though. I can't wait until this makes it into Google Assistant and it can call a restaurant to ask about gluten free options while I'm driving.
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#544Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Duplex seems trained against this corpus. 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." So, you would just have an automated booking system API which is better handled by not placing calls as its form of communication. Right?
It's not just about the user. There's no open, universally agreed upon booking system API...except for human voice. This is creating a natural-language based booking API that any system or business can tap into
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Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#545This 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…
That would be cool. Time to unearth that old Cap'n Crunch cereal whistle to test whether we are truly talking with another human.
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#546Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me, the money quote is: > Duplex can only carry out natural conversations after being deeply trained in such domains. The question becomes - How many people will really have the time and money to actually collect data to allow Duplex to take over. It might be true for large call centers but difficult at individual level.
Every call center in the world is now looking to sell their recordings.
Curious, where can someone buy these recordings?
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#547Next what, phone interviews with Duplex ?
Interviews are dreaded by most of the engineers. What are the chances that Google might be testing this in the wild. Given the number of applications they receive.
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#548Earlier quoted context omitted.
What makes you think this won't be used by people of all classes? And did you hear the recordings? The AI is better at conversation than the humans it had to deal with. I would gladly use this to avoid talking to people who can't parse a plain sentence without rounds of repetition and clarification.
AI tools, including Google's Duplex, will benefit the bottom ~90% of the planet radically more than it will benefit the wealthy. That has been true of nearly all technology from the past few hundred years at least. The wealthy will largely continue employing humans to do tasks for them, because they can. It will be just another form of luxury / status. An AI assistant will be considered beneath their class. The techn…
I don't think so. 48% of people have access to the internet, 41% in developing countries. All these people won't be able to benefit from this at all. That doesn't even count the ones that have dialup or comparable speeds (like on Cuba) where transferring anything beyond a couple hundred kilobyte is unbearable.
The wealthy will employ AI the moment it can do the same tasks as a human, unlike humans the AI is cheap, doesn't take time of work, always available, never tired or grumpy, etc. The maintenance work of having an AI worker vs a human worker is just way lower.
The moment a corporation like McDonalds can replace the entire staff with robots without having a dip in efficiency they will do that. 24/7 operation would be linearly more costly to 9-5 weekday operation.
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#549So that’s what “this call may be used for training purposes” means!
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#550> transparency is a key part of that
Transparency would mean starting the call by saying "I'm a bot from Google".