6 ms·

I think there are two complementary things at play: 1) You can be very impressed with the tech (as everyone is) 2) You can be creeped out by how it could be a

• ordinaryradical 9y ago
  I think I'm both, but I will tell you, the idea of having my own automated assistant deal with a company's automated assistant when trying to get through a phone directory to a live human sounds AMAZING. Like, I have zero problems with the ethics there.
  • throw7 9y ago
    You beat me. I want assistant to deal with robocalls and phone trees for me. I don't want assistant to annoy people.
    • daveFNbuck 9y ago
      Unless you can perfectly predict which calls are robocalls, assistant will end up talking to real people. If people know they're talking to a robot, there's a good chance they'll be annoyed.
      • Ajedi32 9y ago
        Why would I be annoyed at talking to a smart answering machine? Seems at the very least no worse than hearing a prerecorded message and leaving a voicemail, provided the conversation goes as naturally as it did in the demos Google showed on stage. Assistant: "Hello, you've reached Dave's personal assistant. Dave's not available right now, can I take a message?" Bob: "No, just tell him to call me back as soon as he can." Assistant: "Okay. Can I ask who's calling?" (Bob was not in Dave's contacts list.) Bob: "It's Bob Jones." Assistant: "Alright, I'll let him know." Bob: "Okay, bye." Perfectly natural conversation, and provides a much nicer user experience for Dave when he checks his missed calls. (Notification: "Call from: 444-444-4444 Bob Jones says 'tell him to call me back as soon as he can'")
        • ForHackernews 9y ago
          That's perfectly fine as long as it identifies itself as a robot: "Hi, this is Dave's automated assistant..." A big part of what creeps people out is the notion of bots impersonating humans.
          • Ajedi32 9y ago
            What's so creepy about that? If I can get the same quality of service talking to a bot as I can to a person, why should I care what it is I'm talking to? Unless you mean impersonating a _specific_ human (e.g. if my personal assistant were pretending to be me) I don't really see the issue.
            • Balgair 9y ago
              I mean, all humans are specific humans. How could a bot not impersonate a specific human? It would be impersonating your assistant, who may not exist in the first place, but the bot is trying to get others to think that the person is a real person with real feelings. That duplicitousness is the problem. Like, other people are real people too, not just sheeple (terrible term that it is).
              • Ajedi32 9y ago
                Why does it matter if I mistakenly think the answering machine bot is a real person? Assuming I can treat it like a real person and still get the results I want, why should I care one way or the other?
                • Balgair 9y ago
                  Because it is not a person. It's a machine. There is no shared experience, it doesn't have experiences, it's sand and metal. Like, a really smart parrot is not a person, right? Even if the parrot could be an answering machine, it would not be due respect and it would not respect you back; because it's a parrot. I think the issue is that the answer-bot is inherently disrespectful to the real human. Just using one at all is like saying to the real person:"You are not worthy of the time and/or respect of a real human; talk to this clever metal parrot." Text devices and digital sign-ups are at least 'equal', though the transaction is sterile. Trying to fake that a person is talking to a bot is disrespectful of that other real person and their time; it's trying to pull one over on them and fake them into thinking that the bot's owner is worthy, but that the other real person is not worthy. Just use a sign-up service. If the company/person does not have one, they are signaling that you have to actually talk to them, and you should respect their decision because they are a real person too, not try to pull a fast one.
      • rbanffy 9y ago
        Is there a reason to be annoyed? It's not very different from leaving a message with the possible exception you'll have a higher chance of having your message coming through (voice mail is where my inbound calls go to die)
    • pixelpoet 9y ago
      I want this too, but it leads me to worry that in the not too distant future, poor people will deal mostly with robots in a sort of 2nd apartheid where social status dictates how many humans you can reach.
      • wlesieutre 9y ago
        We're already in the situation where the only solution for a Gmail account being permanently hosed by some automated system is knowing someone at Google or having a million twitter followers.
    • s2g 9y ago
      But then you have to tell your assistant what you need done. Then it has to navigate through the maze. This sounds great, but seems fraught with failure.
  • dredmorbius 9y ago
    What about others' automated assistants to harras or defraud (imitating known voices) the hell out of you. Think robocalls from hell.
• sgt101 9y ago
  I'm impressed with the speech synthesis, but I want to see a systematic evaluation of the conversational automation. A few demo calls do not cut it. All of the successful Google innovations (Tensorflow, Alphago, Alphazero, map-reduce, millwheel, TPU) seem to have arrived with a proper publication style writeup. The ones that were less successful like Glass, Wave... not so much.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• hknd 9y ago
  "Google is still debating how to unleash it, and how human to make the technology, several employees said during the conference." They haven't decided in how to make a product out fo this. This was just a tech demo of what could be possible.
• chillingeffect 9y ago
  In the big picture, these projects are really about attention-grabbing, not necessarily researching products. They are supposed to create mixed, intense emotions, questions, dialog, and above all sublime awe. The function of this work is to control the dialog, to communicate that this organization is the nexus of the future to bring in money to survive and expand. Many famous academic programs and large companies do this. After generating the anxiety, the lab pairs it with intimate access to the research labs in the form of sponsorship, partnering and other ways of reciprocating. Essentially, the labs establish themselves as the alpha dog in the system. You may be afraid of what's coming, but at least you can look to them to understand it. It all breaks down when you start to realize the same people creating the stress are the ones you offer to relieve it, not by slaying it, but by cutting you in on the deal. And it's always difficult to interpret because the tech itself is 1st class, so the artisan class is awed and jealous, so they want to be part of it. Meanwhile, most of those critical of technology sound like complete wankers who want us all playing homemade instruments around a campfire eating raw seaweed. And Chris and Sal Average Family is still cheering for U.S. space dominance as conditioned by the space program since its inception, so they're rooting for technological progress in the form of narcotizing Narcissism (as described by McLuhan). Sorry if I'm a downer, but I have been part of this system in the past and now I'm on in the edge in and out of it and I study lots of philosophy and media theory. This is how this system survives.
• basch 9y ago
  > they seem to just not realize that people might find it totally creepy. MOST people dont or dont care. The same with #deletefacebook. There is a vocal minority including the press, and then there is everyone else who just wants cool things to work well and easily, and doesnt care at all about privacy.
• lallysingh 9y ago
  I think #2 can be really simply fixed: they always have to identify themselves as machines. Once you know it's a machine you're talking to, you treat it as a less-awful version of the voice prompts we've had on phone systems for years. The potential efficiency gains from this (think of calling into one of these instead of your traditional phone menus) are substantial. We should start looking into how to regulate AI (even if it just starts as "AI should identify itself as AI when they're using human communications channels") to make it work well for us.
  • sjm-lbm 9y ago
    This goes against the most interesting part of the demo, though - that the 'umms' and 'uh-huhs' (and other small things) are enough to make this system pass the Turing test, at least over a narrow communication channel. Honestly, one thing your idea may show how far the big tech companies have strayed from their desire to create a concise and interesting product. Doing something like what you propose - basically, a system that calls, identifies itself as a robot and then is freed from the (difficult) technical problem of appearing to be human would be much easier to implement. With a bit of Twilio, "weekend hackathon to a workable demo" levels of easy to implement, IMHO. And, honestly, it looks like the public at large might have preferred that, and anyone using such a system to schedule an appointment would likely have a pretty much identical experience to the one provided by Duplex.
    • lallysingh 9y ago
      I don't think the technical problem vs the self-identification are conflated. It's still easier to talk to something that acts like a human (at the conversational level, at least). I'd prefer those subtle hints ("umm") over explicit "That's not what I asked for" when communicating. I'd prefer to expect them to understand the same. When I know I'm talking to a software agent, I can change the way /I talk/ without having to lose fidelity from the way it talks. For example, I can spit out a large, complex sentence that's usually harder over the phone: Groups of four don't need or get reservations. "Reservation availability is Tuesday 2 to 5 pm, wednesday 2 to 3pm, friday 4pm to 6pm. " Then a "Thank you, goodbye" message tells me that I'm done with them, and as I know it's an AI, I don't have to worry about having offended a customer.