I am dying to have an assistive chatbot that's able to ask me questions or argue in a friendly way, or take notes when I am in a creative mood. I don't really need AGI but have not been impressed with the task-based approach of existing assistants, because I don't want someone/something I can just order around; rather, I learn best by teaching others, and would like a chatbot that I can explain (relatively simple) things to.
LaMDA: Google's New Conversation Technology
111–120 of 157 posts
Re: LaMDA: Google's New Conversation Technology
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
I often interpreted this as a conservative interpersonal communicative approach. It is safer to talk about yourself than to ask questions from people because there risk of inadvertently saying something offensive. Sure, you will find people that are a bit more self absorbed and would just pong about themselves. But there are so many conversational constraints- asking “why” is aggressive, direct feedback is discourage…
I think if you find that engaging with people is such a minefield that's probably on you. It's not hard at all to have an engaging conversation with someone without accidentally offending them... People talk about themselves because conversations can be intimate - they're a two way street where both parties are sharing and relating.
I believe the OP. There's always a minefield when cultures collide. This is evident when someone from the US Midwest/Mountain West moves to SF for work. Just very different norms for how interactions are structured, and how good faith is communicated.
Because all involved parties basically look and sound the same, they judge one another according to their own local standards, instead of recognizing that they are actually interacting with a different culture.
Edit: for an additional existence proof of this midwest/coastal clash, see this comment which I had not yet read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27199709
Re: LaMDA: Google's New Conversation Technology
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disclosure: I work at Google too and my opinions are also my own. We are told internally that when we discuss Google related matters online that we should be cognizant of the what/where/how/why of our communication. Disclosing is—for me—both a reminder for myself and an attempt at a hedge against accidentally representing Google.
I never worked at Google and I probably never will. Still, if a boss tried to censor/alter my speech I do in my spare time using my own equipment and connectivity, I wouldn't like it.
This is literally every company in the entire world. How you talk about your own company is something you have to be mindful of because you are an agent of that company; the words you use and the way you react to things can tip investors off on how things are going internally. Do you think anyone wouldn't be mad at you if your company released a brand new product and you hopped onto Twitter to say it is complete garbage or something?
Re: LaMDA: Google's New Conversation Technology
#114I am dying to have an assistive chatbot that's able to ask me questions or argue in a friendly way, or take notes when I am in a creative mood. I don't really need AGI but have not been impressed with the task-based approach of existing assistants, because I don't want someone/something I can just order around; rather, I learn best by teaching others, and would like a chatbot that I can explain (relatively simple) th…
This is a really good idea. I would love something in the same vein that I could discuss an idea to and it would use the sum of all knowledge it can find on the Web to poke holes into it; essentially trying to sink the idea as hard as it can with whatever it can find. I really think this would make anyone a better creator.
Re: LaMDA: Google's New Conversation Technology
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
This anodyne name is likely because there was a small internal shitstorm over calling it Meena because some folks were tired of chat bots being given women’s names
As a woman I appreciate it. I get so tired of things we order around being named after women.
Very confusing to me as a man why we don't just tell the thing what it should be called and have it use that name wherever it appears on the device (e.g. "Hey David" instead of "Hey Siri.") I think Google Assistant is the only good assistant name, but saying "Hey, Google" feels weird when it's technically supposed to be some kind of pseudo-intelligence instead of the whole company.
Re: LaMDA: Google's New Conversation Technology
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
IME, Assistant did do a whole lot more than Siri or Alexa in the past. It had a similar set of features, but with Assistant I could speak casually and with Alexa/Siri it was necessary to learn specific trigger phrases. More recently I find that Alexa has caught up. And maybe Assistant has gotten worse. Not sure about Siri.
Can assistant make calls to book your haircut with a real person yet? That was hugely exciting at a google io demo about 3-4 years ago
I think you need a recent Pixel phone to use it, but last I heard yes it does actually work although as other posters have said it seems limited to the reservation booking model.
Re: LaMDA: Google's New Conversation Technology
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a woman I appreciate it. I get so tired of things we order around being named after women.
Very confusing to me as a man why we don't just tell the thing what it should be called and have it use that name wherever it appears on the device (e.g. "Hey David" instead of "Hey Siri.") I think Google Assistant is the only good assistant name, but saying "Hey, Google" feels weird when it's technically supposed to be some kind of pseudo-intelligence instead of the whole company.
I would assume it's related to limitations in the early wake word detection hardware and software which require pretraining of the weights, which were usually hard coded into the low power edge system.
Nothing would stop a modern system from training a new wakeword in a cloud system, if enough samples were available.
Re: LaMDA: Google's New Conversation Technology
#118So has Google published the weights so that I can run this myself offline?
Re: LaMDA: Google's New Conversation Technology
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think if you find that engaging with people is such a minefield that's probably on you. It's not hard at all to have an engaging conversation with someone without accidentally offending them... People talk about themselves because conversations can be intimate - they're a two way street where both parties are sharing and relating.
I believe the OP. There's always a minefield when cultures collide. This is evident when someone from the US Midwest/Mountain West moves to SF for work. Just very different norms for how interactions are structured, and how good faith is communicated. Because all involved parties basically look and sound the same, they judge one another according to their own local standards, instead of recognizing that they are actu…
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Re: LaMDA: Google's New Conversation Technology
#120Solving conversational intelligence is the same as solving general intelligence (AGI), so unless google has solved the latter I would expect any chatbot system to still be pretty annoying for any nuanced or real world conversation.
Not necessarily. GPT-3 for example can put out entire articles, even generate images or generate valid HTML, doesn't mean it has reached AGI, and while it's far from perfect, it can still have utility. As per the demo, I can imagine learning about a topic through conversations with an AI. It would still be regurgitating existing knowledge, but in a conversational back and forth way, which to some can have value.
Er, as much as I love fun/interesting software things, the quality of these products are terrible for any real world use.