5 ms·

Can't decide whether this is amazing or scary.

sumoboy 8y ago
moving prank calls to a new level
politician 8y ago
Just wait until a Google Duplex caller "on behalf of a client" calls to schedule a reservation at a restaurant using Google Duplex to answer the phones.
- detaro 8y ago
  I wonder if they detect that and solve whatever task it is directly then.
  - politician 8y ago
    It'd be trivial to detect if they transmit high-frequency noise over the line, and then fallback to DTMF tones.
    - lifeformed 8y ago
      That'd be a creepy conversation to listen in on. "Ah yes, I see you are a robot too." Proceeds to transmit data through dial-up-esque noise
    - rtkwe 8y ago
      Since the restaurant in this situation is clearly using a digital booking system already why would Google (or whatever service inherits this kind of bot call) not just check on the popular booking sites before placing the call?
- jonknee 8y ago
  The most inefficient API you could design!
  - advisedwang 8y ago
    But backwards compatible!
  - ryandrake 8y ago
    Seriously. Instead of a single, clean restaurant reservation HTTP POST API, the future is two neural nets modulating and demodulating the request to and from inexact and potentially ambiguous English audio.
    - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
      To be fair, we could make the same complaint in regards to the web - it's largely all plain-text on a line, as opposed to some form of compiled bytecode (I know, it's coming). What we lose in using human speech for precision we make up in it being pretty much universal. Talk about an adaptable interface. You can phone the restaurant and do anything from reserving a table to ordering takeout to informing them that their cat is on fire.
    - tyrankh 8y ago
      Not backwards compatible. :) (I mean that as both a joke and a real comment - you could never force every restaurent in the world to learn REST, but you sure can call a bunch of them)
    - scarmig 8y ago
      Silly. The future is a stenographic handshake in the initial greeting, which negotiates an upgrade to a proprietary gRPC8 protocol when the caller and recipient are both Google, which Google uses to get a monopoly on telephone-mediated social interactions which it can then monetize by building a social graph to more efficiently target advertising to captive audiences riding Waymo cars.
      - dcbadacd 8y ago
        You are joking, but it's not funny in the future. :S
  - 8y ago
- kps 8y ago
  Or Alexa answers the phone and refuses to speak to it.
- amhokies 8y ago
  I wonder if it would be able to tell if it was talking to another Duplex bot and instead of speaking in English, it would communicate more efficiently.

moving prank calls to a new level

Just wait until a Google Duplex caller "on behalf of a client" calls to schedule a reservation at a restaurant using Google Duplex to answer the phones.

detaro 8y ago
I wonder if they detect that and solve whatever task it is directly then.
- politician 8y ago
  It'd be trivial to detect if they transmit high-frequency noise over the line, and then fallback to DTMF tones.
  - lifeformed 8y ago
    That'd be a creepy conversation to listen in on. "Ah yes, I see you are a robot too." Proceeds to transmit data through dial-up-esque noise
  - rtkwe 8y ago
    Since the restaurant in this situation is clearly using a digital booking system already why would Google (or whatever service inherits this kind of bot call) not just check on the popular booking sites before placing the call?
jonknee 8y ago
The most inefficient API you could design!
- advisedwang 8y ago
  But backwards compatible!
- ryandrake 8y ago
  Seriously. Instead of a single, clean restaurant reservation HTTP POST API, the future is two neural nets modulating and demodulating the request to and from inexact and potentially ambiguous English audio.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    To be fair, we could make the same complaint in regards to the web - it's largely all plain-text on a line, as opposed to some form of compiled bytecode (I know, it's coming). What we lose in using human speech for precision we make up in it being pretty much universal. Talk about an adaptable interface. You can phone the restaurant and do anything from reserving a table to ordering takeout to informing them that their cat is on fire.
  - tyrankh 8y ago
    Not backwards compatible. :) (I mean that as both a joke and a real comment - you could never force every restaurent in the world to learn REST, but you sure can call a bunch of them)
  - scarmig 8y ago
    Silly. The future is a stenographic handshake in the initial greeting, which negotiates an upgrade to a proprietary gRPC8 protocol when the caller and recipient are both Google, which Google uses to get a monopoly on telephone-mediated social interactions which it can then monetize by building a social graph to more efficiently target advertising to captive audiences riding Waymo cars.
    - dcbadacd 8y ago
      You are joking, but it's not funny in the future. :S
- 8y ago
kps 8y ago
Or Alexa answers the phone and refuses to speak to it.
amhokies 8y ago
I wonder if it would be able to tell if it was talking to another Duplex bot and instead of speaking in English, it would communicate more efficiently.