Live data from Hacker News

AI Clones Your Voice After Listening for 5 Seconds (2018)

google.github.io

251–260 of 338 posts

Re: AI Clones Your Voice After Listening for 5 Seconds (2018)

#251
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>business texting You mean Slack?

B2C - not team internal chats. It will have “jumped the shark” once there’s an SMS button on the business listing that Google Maps displays. Instead of the wonky/creepy Google demo which did speech to text and then analysis and then text to speech relayed over to the business, every business will just communicate directly with customers over text. It’s not that this isn’t already done (to some extent). And more so in…

You're way off on this one. A lot of those use cases don't work because texting is an asynchronous communication channel unless it's got some sort of automated system behind it. The reason you can't order takeout or make a reservation through text is because you come to an impasse if the person on the other end gets distracted and doesn't respond. The value in something like UberEats or OpenTable isn't in message passing, it's in state management. With UberEats if a restaurant closes suddenly or doesn't take your order within a timeout period, both you and the restaurant are notified and the state of your communication is updated, so there is no confusion. If you text or slack or whatever your order to a restaurant, and the person on the phone doesn't respond, you're fucked. How do you know whether it's safe to place an order somewhere else or not?

Sure, every restaurant could build their own automated system that texts you back and manages the communication, but that's never going to happen when there's already a managed, standardized service available.

Re: AI Clones Your Voice After Listening for 5 Seconds (2018)

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except no matter how good it is, it will only reinforce that it’s not real and that he’s gone. Perhaps that’s the therapy he needs to move on? Note: this is different from listening to recordings from the actual person. Having loved ones die is one of life’s universal terrible qualities.

I think it would be cathartic to talk to someone you trusted but who is now gone. There's been decision points over the last few years where I would love to have just said my thoughts out loud to my dad and just have him nod and ask a couple of open ended questions so I could get it out. No specific guidance needed, just his particular style of listening. Clearly losing someone and being able to deal with it is an im…

"I think it would be cathartic to talk to someone you trusted but who is now gone."

It would be cathartic, but in this case you wouldn't be talking to them but to a computer, who (at best) is pretending to be them.

I think it's kind of creepy, when you really think about it, and it reminds me of the aversion the creator of Eliza had to his creation when he found out that people were spilling their guts out to it and treating it as a real person.

Which isn't to say that it can't be helpful to talk to something that's not a real person (and especially not a formerly living person you once knew) can't be healing. But if people get confused by these machines in to thinking the machines are actually people close to them that died and are now living again, that will make them vulnerable to some really serious manipulation and delusion.

Re: AI Clones Your Voice After Listening for 5 Seconds (2018)

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an outlandishly optimistic take on the possibilities.....as the internet and media is flooded with increasingly convincing but false representations of reality, a widespread habit of greater skepticism of "the facts" starts to spread throughout society, leading people to alter the speed at which they form new opinions on various issues (possibly degrading confidence in preexisting opinions), and the manner in…

I doubt that. I think that as we have to have more skepticism of 'facts' we'll see more and wider splintering of viewpoint based on preferred communication/news agency. If you KNOW Fox News won't lie to you, just go there, and only there. Everything else is a lie. If you KNOW NPR won't lie to you, just go there, but only go there. Everything else is a lie. I think it will only make things worse, because that's the si…

I imagine, but I feel like there's a point of absurdity where people just aren't buying it anymore. The whole Epstein thing sure seemed to get a lot of coverage and outright bi-partisan mocking just as one example. /r/politics and the "organic" front page of reddit aside, it seems to me the number of people waking up to the possibility that the whole thing is an utter and complete farce is growing.

> Society is like water, it always seeks the lowest point.

Let's not forget these things are analogies, not laws. A trend remains in place until it doesn't.

Re: AI Clones Your Voice After Listening for 5 Seconds (2018)

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People had the exact same concerns when digital image manipulation software became popular, including the "we will never be able to trust an image again" question. To answer your question, I think the biggest step we took in adapting to the ever-present risk that an image may have been manipulated is acknowledging that it's possible. As soon as people knew that something could be faked, they realized that having a pu…

Luckily now people don't ever believe photographs as sole evidence in the court of public opinion, and always corroborate that evidence. Wait. No. I had that backward. How long has photo manipulation been around? And people still fall for it every minute of every day. I have zero faith these tech developments will lead to anything good, or that we'll even learn how to deal with them effectively.

These tech developments will happen regardless of you stance on their morality. Either adapt like everyone else or stay behind. Your choice.

Re: AI Clones Your Voice After Listening for 5 Seconds (2018)

#255
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

B2C - not team internal chats. It will have “jumped the shark” once there’s an SMS button on the business listing that Google Maps displays. Instead of the wonky/creepy Google demo which did speech to text and then analysis and then text to speech relayed over to the business, every business will just communicate directly with customers over text. It’s not that this isn’t already done (to some extent). And more so in…

You're way off on this one. A lot of those use cases don't work because texting is an asynchronous communication channel unless it's got some sort of automated system behind it. The reason you can't order takeout or make a reservation through text is because you come to an impasse if the person on the other end gets distracted and doesn't respond. The value in something like UberEats or OpenTable isn't in message pas…

You might think that, but when I was in Brazil, ordering food by WhatsApp was commonplace. The restaurants would, generally speaking, answer very quickly. Some would send you the daily menu every morning.

Re: AI Clones Your Voice After Listening for 5 Seconds (2018)

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Houston. I recently read a Houston Chronicle article describing very similar scenario. I don't have the exact link (it was from 2019), but here's one from 2013 [0]. Combined with the inability to verify the actual phone number displayed on caller ID has led me to tell all of my family to not ever accept a phone call from a number they don't recognize. There's literally zero trust in our phone system upon wh…

Given caller ID spoofing, they really shouldn't even accept calls from numbers they do recognize... especially with tech like this. Let it go to voice mail then return the call afterwards.

to someone that will likewise not answer any calls!

Re: AI Clones Your Voice After Listening for 5 Seconds (2018)

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you even prepare for something like that... Do we need to assign identifying keywords to each other when we leave home so we know we are really ourselves? Like a vocal pgp?

I told my wife that if I ever mention while on a phone call, she should know that I am in trouble an unable to speak freely. Sound like we'll all need more things like this eventually :(

how do you pronounce the symbols? i mean, 'redacted' is already a pretty strange thing to say by itself.

Re: AI Clones Your Voice After Listening for 5 Seconds (2018)

#259

Now we can have audiobooks read by anyone we like! They can direct us to our destination! They can speak at our funeral, being long dead themselves (as long as there is sufficient training material recorded). The future is awesome.

Imagine when they can also generate the visuals of the book to show you the book as an auto generated video

Re: AI Clones Your Voice After Listening for 5 Seconds (2018)

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I told my wife that if I ever mention while on a phone call, she should know that I am in trouble an unable to speak freely. Sound like we'll all need more things like this eventually :(

how do you pronounce the symbols? i mean, 'redacted' is already a pretty strange thing to say by itself.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN