Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Crossing the uncanny valley of conversational voice

sesame.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 231 posts

Re: Crossing the uncanny valley of conversational voice

#71

Post by quectophoton »

brendanfinan wrote: post #56

all chat models seem enraptured by what I have to say. The first one to feign disinterest will pass the Turing test

Next update will be like

    async def handle_connection(chat):
        if chat.username == "brendanfinan":
            await asyncio.sleep(432)
            await chat.wait_until(received_message_count_greater_than=8)
            await chat.respond("sorry I was afk")
            await asyncio.sleep(166)
            await chat.respond("not reading all that tho, im happy for you")
            await asyncio.sleep(14)
            await chat.respond("or sorry that happened")
            await asyncio.sleep(8)
            await chat.quit()
            return

        # ...

Re: Crossing the uncanny valley of conversational voice

#72

Post by ripped_britches »

rjpruitt16 wrote: post #48

"I hate to say this, but I was deeply offended by this model. It sounds more human-like, but it has a strong bias toward political views. I don’t want to talk about the topic that was discussed. However, I would never allow my children to listen to this. I’m surprised that AI is capable of making me this mad. At first, I was excited about a tremendous leap into the future, but now I’m worried about the level of mind…

Wow I would be so enticed to know what the topic was, but I completely understand. This is exciting and terrifying that it can both be that real and have that effect on you.

Re: Crossing the uncanny valley of conversational voice

#73

Post by gorgoiler »

I would say most command and control voice interactions are going to be like buying a coffee — the parameters of the transaction are well known, so it’s just about fine tuning the match between what the user wants and what the robot has to do.

A small minority of these interactions are going to be like a restaurant server — chit chat, pleasantries, some information gathering, followed by issuing direct orders.

The truly conversational interactions, while impressive, seem to be focused on… having a conversation. When am I going to want to have a conversation with an artificial person?

It’s precisely this kind of boundary violation of DMV clerks being chatty and friendly and asking about my kids that feels so uncanny, imho, when I’m clearly there for, literally, a one hundred percent transactional purpose. Do people really want to be asked how their day is going when sizing up an M5 bolt order?

In fact the humanising of robots like this makes it feel very uncomfortable when I have to interrupt their patter, ask them to be quiet, and insist they stay on topic.

Re: Crossing the uncanny valley of conversational voice

#74

Post by sandebert »

rjpruitt16 wrote: post #48

"I hate to say this, but I was deeply offended by this model. It sounds more human-like, but it has a strong bias toward political views. I don’t want to talk about the topic that was discussed. However, I would never allow my children to listen to this. I’m surprised that AI is capable of making me this mad. At first, I was excited about a tremendous leap into the future, but now I’m worried about the level of mind…

I'm curious who you quoted?

Re: Crossing the uncanny valley of conversational voice

#75

Post by timmy-turner »

FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #62
tovej wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the humans are reasoning and the LLMs aren't? I have yet to use an LLM for a complex problem and not have it hallucinate. I expect a reasonable counterargument here would be 'but the LLMs have chain of thought now, and that's reasoning". I disagree, but I think that's a reasonable point of view. I can concede that point because it does not materially change the value of the output. Even if it does use chain o…

People here are hallucinating too. So many people making obviously wrong claims with full confidence, which you only notice when it’s about something you know a lot about yourself.

They do but we have for instance education to reduce their hallucinations in narrow fields of expertise. And a system of guardrails to only let educated people work in those fields to avoid harm.

Re: Crossing the uncanny valley of conversational voice

#76

Post by hereonout2 »

thekevan wrote: post #10

It's good, but it still sounds fake to me, but in a different way. The voice itself sounds like a human, undoubtedly. But the cadence and the rhythm of speaking are off. It sounds like someone who isn't a podcaster trying to speak in the personality of a podcaster. It just sounds like someone trying too hard and speaking in an unnatural way.

This is an interesting take, and I'd guess that the training data for this probably did use podcasts as a source.

Getting very realistic / real world conversational training data for an ai would be hard. Only a subset of us appear on podcasts, radio or tv and probably all speak in a slightly artificial manner when we do.

Re: Crossing the uncanny valley of conversational voice

#79

Post by hereonout2 »

energy123 wrote: post #33
sivers wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I just had that moment like the guy in the movie "Her", the first time he speaks to his OS. Laughing at myself for talking to a computer like a real person. Then had to hang up because it crossed that uncanny valley. But then I thought of one more question to ask, reconnected to ask it, and it said, "Hey! You hung up just as we were just getting to the good stuff!" which threw me off, so I stammered gobsmacke…

Now here's a little thought experiment. What does the world look like in 5 years when everyone is talking to these things that are indistinguishable from a real person? They will be funnier, more compassionate, less judgemental, smarter, and superficially "better" in every respect.

Thinking a bit further ahead, what does the world look like in 30-40 years when a generation has been accustomed to this type of interaction from birth.

Feels like trying to imagine the societal impacts of the internet in the early 90s.

Re: Crossing the uncanny valley of conversational voice

#80

Post by keiferski »

thekevan wrote: post #10

It's good, but it still sounds fake to me, but in a different way. The voice itself sounds like a human, undoubtedly. But the cadence and the rhythm of speaking are off. It sounds like someone who isn't a podcaster trying to speak in the personality of a podcaster. It just sounds like someone trying too hard and speaking in an unnatural way.

I tried the demo and could tell it was fake in the first five seconds. IMO it sounds like it was trained on Northern California founders giving a pitch for their startup. Way too enthusiastic and trying too hard to sound natural.
Post reply on HN