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No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

tomshardware.com

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Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#101

Post by lozenge »

kolpa wrote: post #76
Freak_NL wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually setting up a software environment that connects two participants in the same simulation, and have it run without any bugs is usually way beyond the capabilities of the psychology students running the experiment. Not to mention the bother of coordinating the different teamed up participants (“Did you click start? The other participant is waiting for you to click sta— oh no it timed out. Hang on I'll restart t…

Surely you could solve this problem quite simply by having both participants and the experimenter join a group chat using COTS software+accounts (Skype, Hangouts, Whatsapp...) pre-installed on the machines?

You would normally want to limit their input to a few form fields so the data can be analysed, rather than letting them have a conversation. Look at the ultimatum game for example.

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#102

Post by emodendroket »

kolpa wrote: post #84
emodendroket wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but I remember this one, where a court determined "give me a lawyer dog" meant "give me a lawyer-dog" rather than "give me a lawyer, dog" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2017/11/02...

That article is almost certainly wrong, or at least misleading. The question at hand was whether this statement was a direct request for a counsel, or just chatter. "This is how I feel, if y’all think I did it, I know that I didn’t do it so why don’t you just give me a lawyer dog ’cause this is not what’s up.” The court decided " (agreeing with the lower courts’ conclusion that the 1 2 statement “[m]aybe I should tal…

I don't understand your objection. As you've quoted, from that decision, the judgment refers to an "ambiguous and equivocal reference to a 'lawyer dog,'" which pretty plainly suggests that the judge has deemed "lawyer-dog" a lexical unit rather than interpreting "dog" as a sobriquet. At best you could say it was only part of his reasoning; either way, in my mind, it goes beyond cultural bias to be a patently absurd reading.

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#103

Post by randomsearch »

Things this technology will not be good at:

- making reservations etc on your behalf

Things this technology will be good at:

- automatically calling lots of businesses and individuals to extract data from them: from opening hours to voting preferences, scam calls to political campaigning with personalised campaign messages, large-scale cold call automated advertising, crowd sourcing information, surveys, and the most profitable - replacing call centres and firing staff.

I assume Google are well aware of this...

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#104

Post by craftyguy »

randomsearch wrote: post #103

Things this technology will not be good at: - making reservations etc on your behalf Things this technology will be good at: - automatically calling lots of businesses and individuals to extract data from them: from opening hours to voting preferences, scam calls to political campaigning with personalised campaign messages, large-scale cold call automated advertising, crowd sourcing information, surveys, and the most…

This technology is literally a phone scammer's/spammer's wet dream.

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#105

Post by AnimalMuppet »

kolpa wrote: post #89
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're talking to me , I get to choose whether you communicate with me. If I don't like how you communicate, I'm more likely to decide that you don't get to communicate at all.

OK, but that's an awful way to run a business, turning a way polite customers just because they don't vocalize for you.

If I'm a business, and you're calling me, and you have a machine talking for you, sure, I'll talk to the machine if it gets me business. If I'm calling out from the business, though, and some customers don't like it, that can cost me business.

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#106

Post by 51Cards »

What I don't see many people commenting on is how this benefits small business. My barber, my Dr., my mechanic, my favorite restaurants, etc. are all small "shops". They don't have online booking nor do they want it. They answer phones and this allows clients to interact easier with them and it requires Zero investment for the small business. This is technology adapting to a communication hole IMO and I think it's quite a positive thing.

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#107

Post by pgodzin »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #99
pgodzin wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect they didn't - Google's notion is a human-like conversation with a real person to accomplish a simple goal on the user's behalf. Comcast's notion is to make it as hard as possible for a user to accomplish their goal (cancelling, switching, complaining).

This is an unfortunate trend I continue to see: Where a company with a positive reputation, say Google, is given the most altruistic read on what their decision is for, and a company with a negative reputation, like Comcast, is assumed to be evil. Many people's issues are, in fact, solved by the Comcast automated system. Generally if you call in to report an outage, and it knows that there's an outage associated with…

And certainly that's not the "feature" of Comcast support you were referring to when you directed me there. Most people's negative notions of Comcast and their support is well-deserved.

Until Google makes Duplex an "exasperating" experience I have no issues giving them the benefit of the doubt. The way it was presented, there is nothing exasperating about it - assuming it is ready to be released it'll be the equivalent of a common, simple human conversation now (maybe with fewer angry callers), and plenty of small business will love having more reservations made

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#108

Post by throwaway84742 »

Zanni wrote: post #5

I like to be clear on whether I'm interacting with a human or a bot because different social conventions apply. If you're human, I'll treat you like one, and that means giving you some consideration at the expense of expediency. If you're a bot, let's just cut to the fucking chase. So a bot that acts like a human (with hems and haws) is just wasting my time. Ditto a human being that has been reduced to a bot by follo…

I think there’s an aspect to this that you did not bring up. Systems like this can be fragile. There’s no way for a human to bail in a socially acceptable manner if conversation ends up in a dead end.

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#109

Post by BrandonM »

cromwellian wrote: post #6

The art of letter writing has been declining for a century. Most people don't even use email for most daily communication, but instant messaging. And it seems a lot of instant messaging boils down to pictures, emoji, memes, and short responses ("I'll be there at XXX") The ship has really already sailed on longform communication, perhaps out of laziness or cost/benefit. Part of what we're seeing with the automation go…

> The ship has really already sailed on longform communication, perhaps out of laziness or cost/benefit.

The 3rd most popular podcast¹ regularly lasts 3+ hours. It's typically a conversation between Joe Rogan and a single guest.

¹ The Joe Rogan Experience, according to http://www.podbay.fm/browse/top

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#110

Post by vertexFarm »

cromwellian wrote: post #6

The art of letter writing has been declining for a century. Most people don't even use email for most daily communication, but instant messaging. And it seems a lot of instant messaging boils down to pictures, emoji, memes, and short responses ("I'll be there at XXX") The ship has really already sailed on longform communication, perhaps out of laziness or cost/benefit. Part of what we're seeing with the automation go…

I know lots of people will roll their eyes at the old man who complains and shakes his cane about the decline of long-form communication and the thoughtfulness of written correspondence. But I don't care if they think I'm paranoid and silly. I think it's a damn shame to replace common literacy and writing with tweets and autocomplete that eventually just takes over for you entirely.

Here's the thing about these little conveniences and timesavers they're building. I think it's a sliding scale. Now we think it's inconvenient to call and put in a reservation or write an email to somebody. They'll fix that. Then we'll think the next most onerous thing is inconvenient. The truth is, we have extremely cush lives right now as it is. We're not going to use this to save time and do better things, become better people. We're going to use it to lazily shrink from society and become even more obsessed with electronic trivialities. Just like me writing this bitter comment right now. It's the continuation of an obvious trend.

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