Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone

Post by d1zzy » Tue, May 08, 2018, 9:02 PM UTC

Mizza wrote: post #228

Besides creeping dystopia of it, I find this aesthetically disgusting most of all. If you listen to the sample call, the computer voice sounds incredibly _rude_, at least to my ears, especially at the end of the call. I would never speak to a service employee that way. I try to always say a clear and proper please and thank you, and would never ever want a robot to subject somebody to an"uhhhhh, thanks " on my behalf…

Post by killjoywashere » Tue, May 08, 2018, 9:02 PM UTC

whazor wrote: post #251

braindongle wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely correct. And so-called general AI may never happen. Regardless, this is shocking. It immediately needs to be factored into any speculation about what the world will look like in 20 years. Innumerable questions.

Maybe a general AI is just a very big collection of many smaller abilities.

Post by booleandilemma » Tue, May 08, 2018, 9:03 PM UTC

floatrock wrote: post #207

empath75 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how no matter how amazing something is, someone will eventually say it's trivial, even though it's taken the smartest people on earth decades to figure out how to do this. >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. The end game is clearly to use an api, not this.

> The end game is clearly to use an api, not this. My understanding is API integration is what wechat is in china -- every hair salon and equivalent-of-corner-pizza shop has some wechat integration, payment and all. Voice bots like this will have the advantage of ubiquity. At least a couple years ago before every resteraunt had 5 tablets for all their seamless/grubhub/chowhound/whatever apps, pretty much the only rea…

Post by nneonneo » Tue, May 08, 2018, 9:03 PM UTC

punnerud wrote: post #148

cromwellian wrote: post #128

The 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…

To save CPU/GPU/TPU there should be a high-frequency sound, as in people can’t hear, so the computers talking to each other and switch to a faster way to communicate. If this is included you also have way to detect if you are talking to a bot/duplex.

Post by macintux » Tue, May 08, 2018, 9:04 PM UTC

jstanley wrote: post #241

macintux wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think historically "noon" expresses less precision, although I suspect that's less true now that everyone always knows what time it is and has GPS in their pocket to help calculate arrival times. 20 years ago, had I said to someone "I'll be there at 12pm" it would have had a stronger implication of precision than "I'll be there at noon." I don't think it's true today.

Understood. So the difference is you interpret "noon" as an ill-defined probability distribution centred roughly around midday, rather than a concrete point in time, whereas you interpret "12PM" as a concrete point in time. Fair enough.