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Google’s new conversational AI could eventually undermine our sense of identity

verdict.co.uk

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Re: Google’s new conversational AI could eventually undermine our sense of identity

#61

Post by bsenftner »

whataretensors wrote: post #59
bsenftner wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a cute statistical trick. It has zero insight. Current AI is a very sophisticated manipulation of past event resolution, seeking to fit a current event into past resolutions. The term "idiot savant" is closer than "artificial intelligence" - because the algorithm knows not what it is doing, why it is doing, or how it is doing. It's an idiot.

I'm more hopeful that narrow ai can be the same thing as strong ai with a few theory breakthroughs, increases in model capacity and metacognition.

Narrow AI is like a single celled animal, while strong AI is like a complete human in comparison. The complexity difference is more than an order of magnitude, it's an entire evolutionary era.

Re: Google’s new conversational AI could eventually undermine our sense of identity

#62

Post by 21 »

evrydayhustling wrote: post #26
bsenftner wrote: post #22

"Impressive, but what happens if Google Assistant eventually learns how to masquerade as its owner?" This is the stunning level of anthropomorphic granting of super human abilities the common person places on our cute statistical trick we saying is "artificial intelligence". Naming this field AI was a poor choice. I am sick of the clown-authored-mentality of the articles being published about AI today.

Yes, fear of turning on its owner is way overblown. What about the more immediate issue that it is designed to be turned against service workers, so that when it screws up it wastes their time instead of yours? Or the more immediate wake-up call that this tech will be used in malicious phishing attacks against your grandparents (not by Google, obv) in another year (or month)?

> Or the more immediate wake-up call that this tech will be used in malicious phishing attacks against your grandparents

This one is quite scary. "Grandma, I'm stuck in Malta and people are after me, send me immediately 500 through Western Union"

Or you get called by your boss: "I need you to urgently send this payment or our production factory goes down".

Re: Google’s new conversational AI could eventually undermine our sense of identity

#63

Post by sumeno »

heckanoobs wrote: post #36
evrydayhustling wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, fear of turning on its owner is way overblown. What about the more immediate issue that it is designed to be turned against service workers, so that when it screws up it wastes their time instead of yours? Or the more immediate wake-up call that this tech will be used in malicious phishing attacks against your grandparents (not by Google, obv) in another year (or month)?

I'm surprised at how well Google's awful little autodialer has been received. None of us like when we call a number and are handled by an automated script on the other end. But we are immediately okay with deploying an automated script which does our bidding? You need a Google Glass-level lack of social accuity to think siccing autodialers on barbers is okay

If I could do everything I wanted to do by talking to a bot I'd love it. Imagine being able to cancel Comcast just by talking to their bot, that sounds fantastic to me.

Re: Google’s new conversational AI could eventually undermine our sense of identity

#64

Post by MPSimmons »

21 wrote: post #62
evrydayhustling wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, fear of turning on its owner is way overblown. What about the more immediate issue that it is designed to be turned against service workers, so that when it screws up it wastes their time instead of yours? Or the more immediate wake-up call that this tech will be used in malicious phishing attacks against your grandparents (not by Google, obv) in another year (or month)?

> Or the more immediate wake-up call that this tech will be used in malicious phishing attacks against your grandparents This one is quite scary. "Grandma, I'm stuck in Malta and people are after me, send me immediately 500 through Western Union" Or you get called by your boss: "I need you to urgently send this payment or our production factory goes down".

> grandma

"Alright sweetheart, just tell me what the emergency phrase is"

Re: Google’s new conversational AI could eventually undermine our sense of identity

#65

Post by evrydayhustling »

jerf wrote: post #60
evrydayhustling wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The common thread is shifting the costs of communication failure (disinterest, misunderstandings, etc) to someone who didn't opt-in. If a restaurant is frustrated at an influx of robo-reservations, I doubt they will be comforted that they are being dispatched by individuals rather than a for loop. I think Google could avoid a lot of these concerns by providing a quick and universal opt-out -- robots.txt for your phon…

"If a restaurant is frustrated at an influx of robo-reservations," That's not a very compelling argument, though, because as long as those reservations manifest as people arriving and paying bills, they're unlikely to find this a problem. And as long as the calls are essentially the same as a human calling them, it's not that different. I think a lot of people in this conversation are conflating annoying phone calls…

So there's definitely a glass half empty, glass half full thing -- nobody knows for sure whether these calls will be annoying, because we've just seen a demo. We don't know if the bot will be effective in general, and we don't know if customer cancellations will be more or less common if they use the bot. It's certainly possible that it improves lives for restaurants.

The problem is, the restaurants (etc.) don't get to choose whether to take the risk, even though they stand to bare most of the cost. That's an ethical problem before the product gets released. After the product is released, it's a problem with incentives: if consumers make the choice to use Duplex, growth means adapting to their needs, not the recipients.

Re: Google’s new conversational AI could eventually undermine our sense of identity

#66

Post by whataretensors »

bsenftner wrote: post #61
whataretensors wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm more hopeful that narrow ai can be the same thing as strong ai with a few theory breakthroughs, increases in model capacity and metacognition.

Narrow AI is like a single celled animal, while strong AI is like a complete human in comparison. The complexity difference is more than an order of magnitude, it's an entire evolutionary era.

I don't disagree with a gap that needs to be overcome. I just think that the exponential nature of technology will cross it quickly.

Evolution is amazing but it doesn't optimize directly for intelligence.

Re: Google’s new conversational AI could eventually undermine our sense of identity

#67

Post by TeMPOraL »

sumeno wrote: post #63
heckanoobs wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised at how well Google's awful little autodialer has been received. None of us like when we call a number and are handled by an automated script on the other end. But we are immediately okay with deploying an automated script which does our bidding? You need a Google Glass-level lack of social accuity to think siccing autodialers on barbers is okay

If I could do everything I wanted to do by talking to a bot I'd love it. Imagine being able to cancel Comcast just by talking to their bot, that sounds fantastic to me.

You won't be able to. The reason it's hard to cancel Comcast now is because they made it that way, on purpose.

Businesses will use this tech to their advantage, and they'll fight anyone trying to use this tech on them. Same reason why websites don't expose APIs and instead fight anyone who tries automate their experience themselves.

Re: Google’s new conversational AI could eventually undermine our sense of identity

#68

Post by TeMPOraL »

bsenftner wrote: post #50
aje403 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good thing bear in mind is that, as technology continues to develop, human stupidity will remain constant. The moron speculating on witchcraft 300 years ago has now defyingly managed to get a text editor open on the internet and is now pontificating about some buzzwords they've heard of.

Human stupidity is an endless resource that will never be exhausted.

If only we could base our economy on that, we'd be good until the heat death of the universe.

Re: Google’s new conversational AI could eventually undermine our sense of identity

#70

Post by rtkwe »

leblancfg wrote: post #31

What struck me the most was the business decision from Google to have it make reservation calls, and not take them. Granted, the technical complexity between the two might be an order of magnitude, I don't know. They are purposefully "giving" it to millions of customers and rolling out features with time, instead of holding out for more research and actually selling a phone assistant system to businesses. I think thi…

There's a couple things going on that makes it easier to make reservations than to take them. First and foremost I think that generally the questions and responses Duplex will get while making a reservation are much more constrained than the questions a front of house version of Duplex would get while taking them. In making a reservation the restaurant generally will only need to know when and how many so the questions Duplex will be asked are pretty constrained. If a person is calling a restaurant they can have any number of esoteric questions about menu, special dietary accommodations, and special requests all of while will either need to be provided to Duplex or taken over by a human.

I think the difficulty factor plays much more into how they're implementing and rolling out Duplex than any competitor.

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