I worry that this will make people have an AI make phone calls for them regularly when they wouldn't have in the past. At some point, the restaurants will need to have their own AI to respond to the call volume. You end up with 2 AIs attempting to have a conversation.
Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
121–130 of 786 posts
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#122Google home's speech recognition can't even reliably turn my lights on and off every time, why would I trust it to book a restaurant reservation? I'd expect to tell it to book a 6pm table for 2 and wind up with an 8pm table for 10.
I'm so very disappointed by google home. It feels like they left this project behind. It's infuriating how dumb this machine is, and how many times I have to repeat "ok google, hey google" for my old google home device that was working way better at the beginning. Google assistant on android also seems to work much better.
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#123This is awesome, But The algorithm of cause doesn't understand all contexts. What troubles me is that, in the first example, should we really give algorithm the freedom to propose a new date for an appointment? It reminds me one thing that particular bothers me with the Gmail's smart reply feature, where when given Monday or Wednesday as options, the suggested reply is, 'How about Tuesday', which does make the conver…
I'd expect you to be able to give Duplex the range of dates and times where you're available (or let it get the info from your Google Calendar).
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given the two technologies you've highlighted, what specific regulation would you recommend be added to prevent what bad behavior?
In the short/immediate term, it should probably be illegal to conduct a robocall without explicit opt-in of the destination caller. (Currently, if you get a non-telemarketed robocall, it is solicited, such as you scheduled an appointment and they are reminding you of it.) Furthermore, if a robocall is permitted to be made to an unsolicited destination, a robocaller must clearly identify itself, presumably starting a…
> In the short/immediate term, it should probably be illegal to conduct a robocall without explicit opt-in of the destination caller
Existing robocall law (including the National Do Not Call registry in the US) is focused around telemarketing. This isn't a telemarketing system; it's an automated assistant. I don't see the utility of applying the existing law to the new use case, as the goals are different (people at home don't want to be interrupted to be advertised at; businesses do want to negotiate business transactions).
> Furthermore, if a robocall is permitted to be made to an unsolicited destination, a robocaller must clearly identify itself, presumably starting a declaration that it is a bot/automated agent from a given company on behalf of another company or individual.
Why? If I have an assistant who makes an unsolicited call to a destination, they don't need to formally state they're acting on my behalf. What about automating the assistant's job makes it special?
I agree with you on the third point (I'm assuming Google has its bases covered there, because unilaterally recording a conversation is old and settled law).
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#125Never have we had a more clear example of why Google needs to be regulated, and laws against what they're doing needs to be passed. The fact that they think it's okay to have bots pretending to be human making phone calls, shortly after demonstrating how quickly they can copy someone's voice (re: John Legend), it shows a blatant disregard for what they're creating.
Is it illegal for my secretary or father to make an appointment for me?
[deleted]
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree, but the social pressure not to use it would be immense. Imagine the awkward moments where we start confronting people who call us and asking them if they're real.
It's already happening. I'm getting robo calls from some police donation fund that will slow down and restart speaking if you interrupt them (took me a few moments to realize it was a recording).
Charities and political organizations are excluded unfortunately from robocall regulation. Google, though, is not.
If I were to start receiving Duplex calls, and could detect it, I would report each one to the FTC.
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#127Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#128The people losing their marbles over this being some kind of Turing Test passing distopian stuff are missing the point at how limited this domain is.
People who answer phones to take bookings perform an extremely limited set of questions and responses, that’s why they can even be replaced by dumb voice response systems in many cases.
In these cases, the human being answering the phone is themselves acting like a bot following a repetitive script.
Duplex seems trained against this corpus. 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.
Most people working in hair salons or restaurants are very busy with customers and don’t want to handle these calls, so I think the reverse of this duplex system, a more natural voice booking system for small businesses would help the immensely free up their workers to focus on customers.
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#129So... theoretically I could operate an AI call center that would serve most languages? Well, as a first measure, anyway.
Re: Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone
#130> The system also sounds more natural thanks to the incorporation of speech disfluencies (e.g. “hmm”s and “uh”s). These are added when combining widely differing sound units in the concatenative TTS or adding synthetic waits, which allows the system to signal in a natural way that it is still processing. (This is what people often do when they are gathering their thoughts.) In user studies, we found that conversation…
Google maps has the most pleasant and human sounding voice approach I’ve encountered in any such system.
All other gps guidance voices sound incredibly crude and mechanical in comparison.