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Lol, but if you think about it, what stops businesses from doing this today? It's the lack of a universal API. If a barber shop wants to make it possible for
by ZainRiz 8y ago
Lol, but if you think about it, what stops businesses from doing this today?
It's the lack of a universal API.
If a barber shop wants to make it possible for a 3rd party app to book appointments then they have to release some API. But that's not the end of it. The 3rd party app has to first discover their Api, someone has to understand it and write code to use it, and then deploy that code.
This is a problem today because there is no universal Api that all services can use
With Duplex, verbals speech becomes a universal Api that every service can parse and communicate to each other wtih. Also, the discoverability is taken care of by using publicly cataloged phone numbers on services like Google Maps, Yelp, etc
- madrox 8y agoEnglish, an API with over 1.5 billion clients in the wild
- WhiteNoiz3 8y agoIf you think about it, conversation is just a loosely defined API with an extremely high degree of tolerance for poorly formed input.
- jamesmiller5 8y agoI mean we are all just emotional processing silos that trade information and process it right :) ?
- hestefisk 8y agoThat’s a very Wittgensteinian view.
- Piskvorrr 8y agoThis thread now contains a loop. Granted, it's a really long loop, all the way back to 1956, but it's a loop all right: you've essentially summarized the Dartmouth Conference and its assumption "gee, that ought be just a minor research subject - easy, right?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_artificial_intelligence#Dartmouth_Conference_1956:_the_birth_of_AI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_artificial_intellig...
- hipjiveguy 8y agoword
- state_less 8y agoTrue, many people know english, but that doesn't mean they know statistics or some other complex domain. "Show me a k-means cluster of this dataset", is likely to be parsed but not understood by many english speakers.
- asfasgasg 8y agoFortunately, Duplex's purpose is booking salon appointments, not to provide a conversation partner about statistical theory.
- state_less 8y agoI was attempting to communicate to the parent and grandparent that transcribing/parsing english and communication are different. We both need to share the model being spoken of to transfer or communicate the knowledge.
- akskos 8y agoyep, english is the protocol (like http) and the domain in question (for example booking an appointment) defines the (very loose) api
- chickenfries 8y agoMy god no one in this thread has a clue about the complexities of natural language. English is not a protocol like HTTP, it's a natural language.
- asfasgasg 8y agoI think you may be confused. I suspect everyone in the thread knows that English is a natural language.
- nyanotech 8y agoOptional functionality :P
- ben_w 8y agoIf it was that straightforward, we’d already have bots that pass the Turing Test. Whatever natural language is, it’s not an API. Might have some overlap, but it’s different.
- uryga 8y agoNobody said it's easy to implement :) I'm curious - what differences do you have in mind?
- danShumway 8y agoAPIs map to a single canonical concept. A "class" in Java actually has a correct definition. There are a nontrivial number of philosophers who believe that this isn't true for language. To simplify that and put it in more technical terms, an API is perscriptive and a language is descriptive. If a bunch of coders decide to start capitalizing "Class" their code won't compile. If enough people start using the word "aint" it becomes a word, regardless of what the dictionary says (see "irregardless"). There is no single authority that can decide what is and isn't a canonical definition. This is why spoken languages evolve so much. Even languages where we've explicitly tried to go the opposite direction (like Esperanto) have evolved into multiple dialects, where subsets of the community simply ignore the standards and still communicate with each other just fine. Note that this is the opposite of what you want with a federated, universal API. The whole point of an API is to standardize between unfamiliar devices. Language is actually pretty bad at standardizing communication between unfamiliar people. Even in the US, different regions and communities use different euphemisms, terms, and definitions.
- ben_w 8y agoJust to add a fun example to demonstrate your point, the original name for Esperanto wasn’t “Esperanto”, it was (translated) “the international language”. It was given the nickname “Esperanto” after the chosen name of the creator, and the word itself it supposed to mean “one who hopes”.
- Piskvorrr 8y ago
- s73v3r_ 8y ago"Lol, but if you think about it, what stops businesses from doing this today?" Systems like that are much more expensive than paying a receptionist?
- nathan_f77 8y agoThat doesn't sound right. I think you'd pay something like $99 per month for a SaaS product that manages bookings and provides an API. That's how much the average receptionist earns in one day ($12.25 per hour.)
- salehhamadeh 8y agoAnd $20,000 to get someone who knows how to install such a system to do the job.
- indemnity 8y agoWhat is installed when using a SaaS solution?
- FatalBaboon 8y agoWell there is initial setup at the very least. Hooking up whatever landline the client has with the SaaS solution. Then whenever a significant change is required, you need to call back your "expert". New location? xk$, etc. But I think the biggest concern is that suddently the owner does not understand how his reversation system works. He used to be able to call Joe and know what's going on...
- TeMPOraL 8y agoAlso, whatever the SaaS system is, I bet you it's significantly less efficient than a receptionist using paper and desktop software. Web systems are almost never built for productivity.
- dzhiurgis 8y ago
- flukus 8y ago> The 3rd party app has to first discover their API, someone has to understand it and write code to use it, and then deploy that code. I think this would be a better integration point for AI. It could look at the fields and learn to fill them out automatically (name, age) and prompt the user for anything missing. Then instead of the barber shop needing a universal AI users just need their personal AI (or a script) to interact with the API.
- collinmanderson 8y agoRe businesses doing this today: I believe WeChat handles this very well in China.
- sowbug 8y agoIt reminds me of the maybe apocryphal story how NASA invested time, money, and effort to develop a pen so astronauts could write in zero gravity, and the Soviets used pencils.
- 8bitchemistry 8y agoA great story, but you are correct about it being apocryphal: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-write-stuff/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-write-stuff/
- aurailious 8y agoSometimes the simple, old, and reliable tool isn't the best one for your environment.
- sowbug 8y agoAnd one internet binge later, I am now the proud owner of a matte black Fisher 400B Space Bullet Space Pen. Cool story. (The real one, I mean.)
- indemnity 8y agoBoth used pencils initially, and both switched to this same pen.
- nyanotech 8y agoPencils have the disadvantage of putting out conductive graphite dust, which, in 0g, will float around for a very long time.
- smadge 8y agoIn a sense you are correct, but remember that Duplex only works because it is limited to a very strict well specified domain: scheduling for restaraunts and hair salons. That is, Duplex only works because there already is a de facto specification for these transactions. It requires a lot less effort overall to just formally specify this de facto standard and deploy it once and for all, but of course a top down approach rarely works. This actually reminds me of the failure of the industry to adopt semantic web technologies. Many organizations are providing the same services and could easily adopt a common “API.”
- TeMPOraL 8y ago> Many organizations are providing the same services and could easily adopt a common “API.” It's not in the interest of those organizations to adopt a common API. Everyone wants to suck in data and be the platform; nobody wants to give data away.
- Piskvorrr 8y ago...but Google is one of the giants that could pull that off and become The Platform.
- freyir 8y agoBut that's the reason why Duplex is interesting, and why there's a grain of truth in what ZainRiz is saying: Humans have settled on a de facto API for scheduling appointments. It uses the telephone as its interface, speech as its medium, and Duplex is exploiting it.
- ZainRiz 8y agoYou first need "ye old barber shop" and "big corp barber shop" to all agree on what this common API should be. That's the old standards proliferation problem https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ Which is what makes it very hard to define a new common API However, they all already agree on the standard for natural language communication (in the context of a strict, well defined domain). That's the pre-existing common API which Duplex is using
- nyanotech 8y ago> It's the lack of a universal API. This sort of thing is exactly why the healthcare industry still uses faxes, even going electronic charts -> pdf -> fax -> pdf -> electronic charts in some cases.
- dragonwriter 8y agoHealthcare uses faxes mostly because HIPAA rules particular to format and security of electronic communications don't apply to faxes; it's a compliance hack.
- Lorkki 8y agoThat sounds a bit too juicy to be true. Any citations?
- dragonwriter 8y agoI've literally been in the room when legal and compliance offices gave the advice on both the construction of the relevant regulations and industry practices on which a payer relied on in deciding to use a process that created paper documents then faxed them for certain purposes, but, no, there's nothing published I can link to as to that being the reason industry players make that decision. I can, however, point you to the relevant section of HIPAA regulations on which it rests, the definition of “electronic media” at 45 CFR § 160.103, specifically this bit: “Certain transmissions, including of paper, via facsimile, and of voice, via telephone, are not considered to be transmissions via electronic media if the information being exchanged did not exist in electronic form immediately before the transmission.”
- cm2187 8y agoAnd in a way it is justified, you need a warrant to wiretap a phone line but no such constraint on eavesdropping on TCP/IP communication.
- dx034 8y ago> if the information being exchanged did not exist in electronic form immediately before the transmission So you need to print them out before faxing? PDF->Fax wouldn't work with that definition.
- pjc50 8y agoMuch of the "semantic web" work was directed at similar things. The reason we don't have it already after 20 years of web commerce is that it's an adversarial process. The business wants to mislead, upsell, or discourage a customer from asking for support; and likewise some small fraction of customers are looking to exploit the business. Bots that automate UI tend to get banned.
- henrieri 8y agoIf both sides were to use Duplex, it would already know to just send 1010 instead of verbal communications. Also if it was unknown whether the opposing person was a bot, a bot could firstly send a common test according to some protocol to ask if the other one was bot by some kind of sound representing that. In which case both would start sending machine readable information to each-other.
- siva_ss 8y ago"This is a problem today because there is no universal Api that all services can use" "It's the lack of a universal API." I disagree with that. We already have universal APIS. Adopting a newly established Universal Api is far more painful and has slower adoption rate than using the existing-globally-reached one like a telephone. Google duplex like systems addresses a broader scope of computer verbal communication and it feels like a step in the right direction.
- ZainRiz 8y agoWhat's a universal API that everyone agrees on? It's the old Standards Proliferation problem: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
- jen729w 8y agoMay 2001: “XML: the universal language?” https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/XML-the-universal-language https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/XML-the-universal-lan... I recall a Wired article from the same era. “XML means your doctor’s system can just talk to the hospital system even though they’re different!” Hasn’t happened yet... will it? Can it?
- andai 8y agoJSON? And no doubt in another ten years, something else!
- xroche 8y ago> Hasn’t happened yet... will it? Can it? Nope. XML (or Json, etc.) are just "human-readable" presentation of data. It does not provides any semantic whatsoever. So you need some semantic on top of these data. And a general-purpose, universal API is yet to be invented (hint: it is probably not feasible)
- sitepodmatt 8y agoMicrosoft and others enterprise selling vendors loved the end goal back in early 2000s - the universal API solved by middleware. That's why you had Biztalk and Biztalk consultants that made more than SAP consultants (think todays crazy Salesfarce consultants that compete for gamification badges). For example you could be a small insurance company submitting to a larger underwriter, and when you work out the transactions per month you have to take $5 off each app just to pay for biztalk infrastructure and licensing. People rode that gravy train hard. I'd be surprise if any of the biztalk shit still remained though, grand goals means juice enterprise sales. Oracle had a similarly crap product that was equally slow, painful and verbose, can't recall the name. XML and it's lofty goals beyond what it was can be compared to today's ICO toxic industry, no reflection on XML itself though.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoIt's basically what 'pjc50 said - it's not in the interest of businesses to expose their data via a common API. WRT. using English as universal API, I think this is just dumb. You solve exactly zero problems by going that route, because the actual problems to solve (beyond no incentive for businesses to care) are exactly the same as you have with XML APIs, or any other APIs. The problems of discoverability and machine understanding is something the Semantic Web space has been dealing with for quite a while, and other people before that. Adding natural language to the mix only makes the job significantly more difficult, because you now have to deal with natural language parsing/understanding.
- nothis 8y agoNow that you mention it, this super advanced AI project sounds like a failure of software standardization rather than a triumph of technology, lol.
- ynniv 8y agoThe one or both speakers could use a handshake noise at the start of the call to tell the receiver that it's capable of "speaking" a modem protocol. It might change a little every time, or be of an especially low or high frequency so that a person doesn't realize they're talking with a computer. After handshaking, the receiver could send a URL that would allow the channel to be upgraded to the Internet... or not. English is a good fallback if both people speak it and you can't find a more efficient channel.
- Piskvorrr 8y agoRevenge of Cap'n'Crunch :D
- hedgedoops2 8y agoIf I remember correctly, CORBA was all about standardizing APIs. You'd have your distributed "CORBA Objects" whose methods anyone who knew the unique object ID could call. The idea was that there would be a "standard library" for each industry. So all the barbers would implement a standard library "Appointment Schedule" object, all the exchanges would implement a stdlib "Orderbook" object, etc. CORBA would generate RPC stub objects for you in various OOP languages, and potentially automate discovery, so you could say, give me all an array of all the orderbooks of all the bitcoin exchanges, and ask each for the last price.