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Crossing the uncanny valley of conversational voice

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Re: Crossing the uncanny valley of conversational voice

#201

Post by mentalgear »

spoaceman7777 wrote: post #152
mentalgear wrote: post #108

While impressive, the paramount question stands: Why do we even need "emotional" voices? All that emotionality adds is that you get the illusion of a friend - a friend that can't help you in any way in the real world and who's confidentiality is as strong as the privacy policies & data security of the company running it - which often ultimately trends towards 0. Smart Neutral Voice Assistants could be a great help, b…

To accurately imitate human speech? You could type something, and it could be read like a human. There are plenty of other reasons, but they're equally as obvious. I don't understand what purpose you have in attempting to make this point.

Different things: You are describing voice narration or TTS use cases. My comment was regarding "emotional chatbots" that are imitating to have a genuine connection with their users.

Re: Crossing the uncanny valley of conversational voice

#202

Post by RockRobotRock »

djeastm wrote: post #193
RockRobotRock wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I meet people in VR who are ESL, I can tell based on their accent and mannerisms that they learned English by playing video games with westerners or watched a lot of YouTube. Do we really want to dilute the uniqueness of language by making everyone sound like they came out of a lab in California?

>Do we really want to dilute the uniqueness of language I can't speak to whether it's desirable or not, but this has been happening with the advent of radio, movies, and television for over a century. So, are we worse off now, linguistically-speaking, than then? Do we really even notice missing accents if we never grew up with them?

good points.

Re: Crossing the uncanny valley of conversational voice

#203

Post by kats »

pmarreck wrote: post #160
FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you live in reality? Because that clearly isn’t happening.

And phones enable scams. So your idea is to… Abandon all telephony?? You should not judge a tool by the worst use someone can come up with it

It's the most common use by far.

Re: Crossing the uncanny valley of conversational voice

#204

Post by arendtio »

awfulneutral wrote: post #183
arendtio wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there are many use cases where emotional voices are not needed, but that's not the point. The core is not to have emotional voices, but to train neural networks to emulate emotions (not just for voices). Humans are very emotional beings, and if you want to communicate with them effectively, you will need the emotional layer. Otherwise, you just communicate on the rational layer, which often does not transport th…

But there is no message outside the rational layer when you're talking to a non-human. The only message is the amount of true information the LLM is able to output - the rest is randomness. It's fatiguing to have your human brain try to interpret emotions and social dynamics where they don't exist, the same way it's fatiguing to try and interpret meaning from a generated image.

I am sure that if you talk to a dog, it will probably take as much from your emotions as your words (to disprove your point about non-humans).

You look at it in binary categories, but instead, it is always some amount of information and some amount of randomness. An LLM can predict emotions similarly to words. Emotions and social dynamics from an LLM are as valid as the words it speaks. Most of the time, they are correct, but sometimes they are not.

The real difference is that LLMs can be trained to cope with emotions much better ;-)

Re: Crossing the uncanny valley of conversational voice

#205

Post by jazzyjackson »

raus22 wrote: post #153
noodlesUK wrote: post #147

I tried the demo, but I decided to not say anything. It desperately tried to make me talk. The entire experience was bizarre and unsettling - another commenter described it as a northern Californian startup CEO’s level of strange fake enthusiasm. As a Brit, I found the level of synthetic bubbliness in the voice extremely off-putting. I’d hate to live in a world where that was the way everyone behaved in real life. Th…

> I found the level of synthetic bubbliness in the voice extremely off-putting. My thought exactly, it was to the extreme in its, as you say, bubbliness. I would not be able to use a tool that had this behavior.

Douglas Adams was onto something when he decided the superintelligent servant in Hitchhikers Guide was to loudly complain about its endless depression. Maybe then we’ll only ask things of it when we actually need it and otherwise avoid interaction.

Re: Crossing the uncanny valley of conversational voice

#206

Post by jazzyjackson »

underdeserver wrote: post #171
moralestapia wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They have a demo at https://youtu.be/qE673AY-WEI That's not a demo, that's a video. Anyone can make something like that in an afternoon with a couple friends and a microphone. Also, Google is known for putting out fake "demos", remember the Google Duplex scam?

Scam? Duplex worked.

I thought it was announced and never heard from again. It may have worked but it never shipped did it?

Re: Crossing the uncanny valley of conversational voice

#207

Post by underdeserver »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #206
underdeserver wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scam? Duplex worked.

I thought it was announced and never heard from again. It may have worked but it never shipped did it?

I made some restaurant reservations, it worked.

Re: Crossing the uncanny valley of conversational voice

#208

Post by jazzyjackson »

underdeserver wrote: post #207
jazzyjackson wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it was announced and never heard from again. It may have worked but it never shipped did it?

I made some restaurant reservations, it worked.

I see, I guess it was never a standalone product then, from reading a Reddit post, it’s a feature built into assistant. Thanks, solves a mystery for me.

Re: Crossing the uncanny valley of conversational voice

#209

Post by reducesuffering »

SamPatt wrote: post #139
martingoodson wrote: post #104

I played with this last night with my four-year old daughter. We had fun with asking Miles to explain what bones are made of etc. Today, she asked "where has that robot guy gone?". Crying now because I won't let her talk to Miles anymore. She has already developed an emotional connection to it. Worrying indeed.

I can see how it's worrying, but mostly as a replacement for real connections - if instead it supplements them, then not so bad. Most children love talking to a fun adult who enjoys talking to them. As parents we hope to be that adult for them most of the time, but of course that's not easy to do all the time. If parents made a tool like this a crutch and it replaced quality time with them or they were less likely to…

How are phones going as a "supplement" for real connections? 25% of university students (digital natives) on antidepressants?

Re: Crossing the uncanny valley of conversational voice

#210

Post by awfulneutral »

arendtio wrote: post #204
awfulneutral wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there is no message outside the rational layer when you're talking to a non-human. The only message is the amount of true information the LLM is able to output - the rest is randomness. It's fatiguing to have your human brain try to interpret emotions and social dynamics where they don't exist, the same way it's fatiguing to try and interpret meaning from a generated image.

I am sure that if you talk to a dog, it will probably take as much from your emotions as your words (to disprove your point about non-humans). You look at it in binary categories, but instead, it is always some amount of information and some amount of randomness. An LLM can predict emotions similarly to words. Emotions and social dynamics from an LLM are as valid as the words it speaks. Most of the time, they are cor…

Yes, fair enough about the dog - "non-human" was the wrong choice of words. But I don't agree that emotions and social dynamics from an LLM are valid. Emotions need real stakes behind them. They communicate the inner state of another being. If that inner state does not exist (maybe it could in an AGI, but I don't believe it could in an LLM), then I'd say the communication is utterly meaningless.
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