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Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
581–590 of 786 posts
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#582Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
but audio telephony equipment generally assumes the signal is in the human vocal range, right?
Correct. There are several levels at which this applies:
Phone hardware (microphones, speakers) are only calibrated to detect 'useful' frequencies for human speech.
The sampling rate used by audio codecs tend to cut off _before_ the human ear's limits e.g. at 8kHz or 16kHz. They aren't even trying to reproduce everything the ear can detect; just human speech to decent quality.
Codecs are optimized to make human speech inteligible. The person listening to you on the phone isn't receiving a complete waveform for the recorded frequency range. The signal has been compressed to reduce the bandwidth required, where the goal isn't e.g. lossless compression; it's decent quality speech after decompression.
It's completely possible to play tones alongside speech that we won't notice, but in the general case, not tones that the human ear can't detect.
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#583Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is simply because Google Duplex's TTS engine is using Tacotron and WaveNet which are not ready for general use yet .
WaveNet is already used in the Assistant and Google Translate at least. The new voices they announced are powered by WaveNet.
I think all WaveNet speech is still being generated server side instead of on the client hw? So there is a cost to associated to it.
If Google Duplex is a paid product, maybe it just enables running WaveNet on Google Cloud with larger models and higher quality settings .
Speech produced for Assistant doesn't make any money so the server side cost has to be minimised.
One day we'll have all this client side, on specialised ML chips on devices.
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#584Earlier 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…
How about something like "I'm an automated agent calling for a client" - correct, not misleading, but using terminology which isn't likely to be immediately disconnected _right now_.
Of course, if they screw it up, they'll burn that terminology too.
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#585Maybe I won’t have to overcome my fear of scheduling appointments after all.
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Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#586One positive thing about our dystopian future is that it will force us to meet up more in person, if only to confirm our friends are real.
Nah because with everyone using AR, Google Glass, and Snapchat spectacles, we won't even be able to trust what we're seeing isn't manipulated.
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#587In the case where the person on the other end isn't a native english speaker, (the calling a restaurant clip) why doesn't Google figure out what language they speak and speak it to them?
Do Scots count as native English speakers? What about the Irish? English has a very large number of accents and dialects that all count as 'English', but typically speech recognition software only works one variety.
Scots are definitely native english speakers, reluctant ones at that, but english nonetheless
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#588Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fortunately, Duplex's purpose is booking salon appointments, not to provide a conversation partner about statistical theory.
I was attempting to communicate to the parent and grandparent that transcribing/parsing english and communication are different. We both need to share the model being spoken of to transfer or communicate the knowledge.
yep, english is the protocol (like http) and the domain in question (for example booking an appointment) defines the (very loose) api
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#589Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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.)
Things that you appear to be missing from your post (but probably totally already know and are just not bothering to mention):
* Most businesses already have a receptionist.
* Most receptionists do not spend measurable fractions of their day answering phonecalls asking when the business is open.
* Taking bookings is really also not the majority of their day.
* Receptionists are capable of a bunch of things that your SaaS booking program is not. Like ordering catering and picking up office supplies.
* A SaaS booking program that is looked over by a human doesn't have to have AI-systems, because they just have I-systems. A human receptionist.
* The inevitable job-post catchall "Other duties as required."
* I had a receptionist bring me a beer once while I was waiting and I'm pretty sure none of your SaaS solutions will do that.
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#590Earlier quoted context omitted.
The working class people will be replaced by AI
The productivity gains from AI will make new jobs possible and will free up capital to be deployed in new economic creation. That is a cycle that has been essentially non-stop for the last 200-300 years (particularly aggressive and accelerating in that time frame). As populations decline and population growth stagnates, we won't have anywhere near enough people to fill the job openings in the future. The working clas…
>> AI
Arguable to some extent
>> new economic creation
This is a dependent variable
>> As populations decline and population growth stagnates
Another
I get it, this is the way its supposed to work, but we cannot just guarantee it.