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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

#641

Post by TeMPOraL »

blackbrokkoli wrote: post #562
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?

Newspapers (and listening to heralds) are inherrently pull-based - I choose to engage with them. Robocalls and spam are push-based - you force yourself on me, wasting my time.

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

#642

Post by TeMPOraL »

jdietrich wrote: post #84
gowld wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have learned that the spinner is non-progress, though. The progress bar still has some life in it, except that those are often fake, not measuring progress.

OS-level cursor spinners like the mac pinwheel have lost credibility, because they don't reliably indicate whether the system is temporarily unresponsive or needs to be restarted. Modern multitasking OSes have a wide range of situations in which they can become mostly unresponsive without actually crashing. Spinners on the application or UI element level are more credible, but generally worse than a progress bar. The…

> Spinners on the application or UI element level are more credible, but generally worse than a progress bar. They're still very useful as a comfort indicator for short delays.

Strongly disagree. A spinner on the web UI element that lasts longer than ~1 second indicates for me that the site's JavaScript broke again, and it's time to reload or wait for the devs to notice and fix it.

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

#643

Post by TeMPOraL »

jdietrich wrote: post #36
luckydata wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a new thing. A famous tax preparation software introduced a "compute" screen that took a few seconds to make people more comfortable with the results even if the computation itself is instantaneous.

It's really just an audio version of a loading bar or spinner - users get really uncomfortable if the UI becomes unresponsive for even a few hundred milliseconds, but they'll wait for several seconds if it looks like something is happening. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_noise

In true market economy fashion, the comfort noise is also a perfect advertising opportunity.

For instance, I frequently deal with ATM machines that display "please wait" screens between every operation. Those screens last usually between 1 and 3 seconds, and it's obviously because the operations take that long, and totally not because they also display a half-screen or full-screen ad...

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

#644

Post by mattmcknight »

Paul-ish wrote: post #190
Pfhreak wrote: post #176

A few observations: * In the example where Google asked about holiday hours -- they can now automate gathering information about businesses in bulk without having to rely on any APIs or user supplied info. Interesting thought experiment is Google validating their reviews/business listings by actually calling businesses and speaking to a real human. * This is going to be fantastic for accessibility. Maybe I struggle t…

> Google can scale out your requests, one to N. For example, 'Make me a reservation at a 4 star restaurant next Friday.' Google can immediately initiate calls against 15 restaurants and let you pick from the successes, then automatically cancel the reservations for the places you did not choose. This sounds like a nightmare for businesses. This time commitment asymmetry will be the issue with these systems. Like emai…

In the olden times, I used to look up a business in the phone book and call them to see what their hours were. At some places, every call was picked up by a recorded message that stated what their hours were.

Today, it is much easier to just put in your preferred time and rating into Open Table and see what's available.

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

#645

Post by TeMPOraL »

halflings wrote: post #534
ecwilson wrote: post #279

There's a great Black Mirror episode in here somewhere. Imagine five years from now, this tech and Google's Smart Reply ( https://blog.google/products/gmail/save-time-with-smart-repl... ) have evolved to the point where they can basically write entire email responses or have whole conversations without your input. You could develop elaborate friendships where both parties are just having their AIs converse and aren't…

> Imagine five years from now, this tech and Google's Smart Reply have evolved to the point where they can basically write entire email responses or have whole conversations without your input. Ahum. Did you watch the keynote? "An extension of Gmail’s Smart Reply feature, Smart Compose will suggest complete sentences within the body of an email as you are writing." [0] [0] https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/8/17331960/g…

That's just one step to the story in Avogadro Corp.

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

#646

Post by i386 »

douglaswlance wrote: post #636
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.

The issue here is interfacing with ancient telephone systems. If the two bots were to slip in some subliminal beeps and boops to recognize each other; then they could change their speech to very quick binary communication.

You mean AT codes.. sounds familiar

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

#647

Post by TeMPOraL »

StavrosK wrote: post #288
ecwilson wrote: post #279

There's a great Black Mirror episode in here somewhere. Imagine five years from now, this tech and Google's Smart Reply ( https://blog.google/products/gmail/save-time-with-smart-repl... ) have evolved to the point where they can basically write entire email responses or have whole conversations without your input. You could develop elaborate friendships where both parties are just having their AIs converse and aren't…

There was a (bad) book written about this, basically how Gmail's AI took over the world by sending email on behalf of people.

It was Avogadro Corp. and I didn't find it bad. So to counter your opinion, I give my recommendation here as a light sci-fi with plenty of mocking of Google and Apple included, and AI that - unlike in most stories - makes sense.

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

#648

Post by gepeto42 »

Yes, it would be better if those businesses had systems/APIs for those transactions to be done, but we still live in a world where scanning a sheet of paper that was printed and mailed to you with a phone often reduces friction on the action of moving money between two accounts.

That being said, as someone who has used "assistant as a service" stuff before, I wonder how well this will work or how limited it will have to be, and not just because of the AI itself.

Even with humans on both sides, it's amazing how hard it can be to get an answer let alone a request fulfilled in a single phone call.

Questions about table placement, food allergies or other restrictions could come up, which I wouldn't want going to an operator. I'd rather be told in advance that it is calling the restaurant and have it send me questions in real-time with suggested answer buttons until it learns enough about me not to need them.

In other cases, just having it call and stay on hold for me would be useful. "Ok Google, call my mobile operator so I can talk to someone at around 10am" and having it use data it already has from other calls to place the call at around 9:45 and patch me in at the right time would be useful.

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

#649

Post by throwawayjava »

Klathmon wrote: post #196
Paul-ish wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google can scale out your requests, one to N. For example, 'Make me a reservation at a 4 star restaurant next Friday.' Google can immediately initiate calls against 15 restaurants and let you pick from the successes, then automatically cancel the reservations for the places you did not choose. This sounds like a nightmare for businesses. This time commitment asymmetry will be the issue with these systems. Like emai…

>This sounds like a nightmare for businesses. They pointed out during the presentation that the system could call once to a business and get the hours, then allow hundreds or thousands of users to see that without bothering the business again. Assuming it works, it could save a significant amount of time for some places. >If people use it to flake a lot, I could see businesses just not responding to the assistant. Th…

>>If people use it to flake a lot, I could see businesses just not responding to the assistant.

>Then it sounds like incentives are aligned here. Google needs to not allow users to abuse this ability so that businesses will trust and not block them.

But then they can't take bookings through google assistant, which is going to lose non-trvial amounts of business.

Seems far more likely that they'd pay Google to automatically handle duplex calls for them.

The worse this technology turns out for businesses, the more pressure there is to pay google money.

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

#650

Post by chickenfries »

akskos wrote: post #588
state_less wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

My god no one in this thread has a clue about the complexities of natural language. English is not a protocol like HTTP, it's a natural language.
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