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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

#561

Post by mxfh »

newsbinator wrote: post #532
mygo wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they could just encode the message in a way that’s inaudible to humans. So a simple “hello” contains a subliminal audio signature that basically is code for “I am a robot. Are you a robot? Feel free to beep bop”

Machine A extends the "hellooo" out to exactly 1.32 seconds, with a 1.32 second pause between that and the next word. Machine B responds with a greeting exactly 1.32 seconds long, with a 1.32 second pause after it. Machine A responds with a sentence in which the first word is exactly 1.32 seconds long. Machine B considers the handshake a success and proceeds in machine language.

Oh dear, polyglot to audio steganographic phone calls, the audible message doesnt even has to be the same then the one encoded in microgaps and envelope shifts and all kind of modulations.

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

#562

Post by blackbrokkoli »

bambax wrote: post #557

Google itself (Google Search) is extremely wary of being used by "bots" and uses string of captchas to screen them out. But search is just a machine. That Google would create bots to talk to real people is horrifying. This is only possible if Google doesn't in fact think of working people answering the phone, as really human. This is like doing war with drones instead of soldiers. This may sound over the top, but bea…

In middle age Europe, designated herolds came to the town centre and recited news and gossip - an equally time consuming contract for both sides.

The invention of the Newspaper eliminated that - wouldn't you say that this change was, while disruptive, for the better?

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

#563

Post by hkmurakami »

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 imagined both the booker and bookee using a call automater / reception automater to make the appointment in the future.

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

#564

Post by monkeydust »

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.

Agree api is the end goal and the wechat model is amazing.

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

#565

Post by dragonwriter »

Lorkki wrote: post #556
dragonwriter wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Healthcare uses faxes mostly because HIPAA rules particular to format and security of electronic communications don't apply to faxes; it's a compliance hack.

That sounds a bit too juicy to be true. Any citations?

I've literally been in the room when legal and compliance offices gave the advice on both the construction of the relevant regulations and industry practices on which a payer relied on in deciding to use a process that created paper documents then faxed them for certain purposes, but, no, there's nothing published I can link to as to that being the reason industry players make that decision.

I can, however, point you to the relevant section of HIPAA regulations on which it rests, the definition of “electronic media” at 45 CFR § 160.103, specifically this bit: “Certain transmissions, including of paper, via facsimile, and of voice, via telephone, are not considered to be transmissions via electronic media if the information being exchanged did not exist in electronic form immediately before the transmission.”

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

#566

Post by Cthulhu_ »

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…

> Most people working in hair salons or restaurants are very busy with customers and don’t want to handle these calls

And those will have online booking systems already - I don't see how this technology is still relevant nowadays. Maybe it was back in the 90's when the internet (and online booking) was a new thing, but now? I can't see there's a big market for this application.

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

#567

Post by eric-hu »

tmsldd wrote: post #552
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…

Well, that will be until the shop owners install AI assistants to reply customers calls, then we’ll have robots talking to robopts using human language, which would make the whole idea nonsense...

If the robots can interact with people who can't use a computer, then user accessibility could improve over the current situation. Like most technology, this has potential to improve the human condition for many or few. It depends on how people use it.

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

#568

Post by ben_w »

madrox wrote: post #399
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…

English, an API with over 1.5 billion clients in the wild

If it was that straightforward, we’d already have bots that pass the Turing Test.

Whatever natural language is, it’s not an API. Might have some overlap, but it’s different.

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

#569

Post by hjnilsson »

ksk wrote: post #235
Klathmon wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a feeling it's because this is such a limited domain. During the demo it all sounded very realistic, except for some parts like the times. It would flow naturally then all of a sudden pause awkwardly and then say a time like "12 pm" in a weird way. I have a feeling they are getting it to sound so realistic because there's a fairly small amount of responses and questions it needs to work with, so they can eithe…

Hmm, or maybe its because you can run the synthesis on a much powerful computer? Certainly very impressive..

It's possible all the questions are even prerecorded human voices. The corpus is probably less than a 1000 phrases.
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